Neptune Frost’s radical sci-fi future - The Verge
Directors Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman discuss their Afrofuturistic musical Neptune Frost, which hits theaters on June 3rd.
Each story has a beginning, just as each has many interpretations, like dreams. For Neptune Frost, that story begins with an ending. More specifically, the death of Neptune’s grandmother. In the afterglow of life and the religious importance of moving on from the mortal plain, a comment from Neptune, played by both Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo, feels poignant: “my life never felt like my own.”
From here, it’s into the cobalt mines we go, where colonialism takes new form as workers extract cobalt and other precious materials — the same ones that power the electronic devices you’re reading this article on right now — mostly for richer Western countries without the benefits being felt at home. For all these countries have found independence, capitalism has ensured the old power dynamics remain: border disputes replaced by dollar signs and executive bonuses paid for by Rwandan and African labor slaving away for their new-age masters.
One of them is murdered simply for taking a rest.
Surely there’s a way to break this cycle. A way to turn the electronic tools of oppression into the tools of liberation. To not just take control of their labor and their lives but to hack the system, picture a dream, and dare to live it. An idea can turn into a community that can turn into a movement that can turn into genuine change. It’s a chance to become a catalyst for systemic, revolutionary change, a MartyrLoserKing.
Neptune Frost is dense, a film and musical like few others. Even describing it as a movie would be inaccurate. For artists and directors Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, the “film” of Neptune Frost is just part of a multimedia project encompassing the music and graphic novel, first brought to realization with the MartyrLoserKing album released by Williams in 2016 and a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2018.
Rating: 5