Darol Olu Kae
I Ran From It and Was Still In It, dir. Darol Olu Kae, 2020
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Darol Olu Kae (b.1984) is a filmmaker born, raised and currently living in Los Angeles, California. He’s collaborated with filmmakers Kahlil Joseph, A.G. Rojas as well as the colorist Kya Lou and sound designer James William Blades. Aside from making films, Darol has been guest editor for SEEN journal, published by BlackStar Projects, home of BlackStar Film Festival and served as one of the curators for Black Radical Imagination. He also curates and runs an online image sourcing research project called SRC MTRL. It is in this “speculative imaging of things” and his first film, I Ran From It and Was Still In It that we see the role of the archive as both a literal material and as something to help him think through and with the communal and the personal aspects of a black cultural life.
His first film, I Ran From It and Was Still In It (2020), borrows its title from a poem by Fred Moten, screened at Locarno Film Festival. The film interlaces online found footage and images from the filmmaker’s personal archive. The film explores the loss of his father and the separation from his children as they moved out of Los Angeles and to Philadelphia. Kae has expressed in video and written interviews about his work that he had a desire to think about the autobiographical in a manner that pushes past just the personal. In an interview with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive , Kae expresses being drawn to the archive “initially out of necessity.” He says, “I have a very non-traditional approach with film. I didn’t have access to cameras or editing software. So part of it was this deep urge to engage with the medium of film and the things I have at my disposal are found footage.” Kae seeks to work outside of the necessity and pragmatic aspects of the archive, as he explained in an interview with Bomb Magazine: “Part of the archival process is searching for yourself…the archive is, in part, a storage house for feelings. In the found footage, I am able to locate core, or guttural, feelings.”
In his next film, Keeping Time (2023), the practice of the archive has moved from a literal material relationship to one where we see the archival trace and our understanding of it expands within the film. Taking up the work of Horace Tapscott and the avant garde jazz ensemble, Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (the Ark), Keeping Time follows drummer Mekala Sessions, son of Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra member, Michael Sessions, as he tries to get members of the band together to practice for a gig. The film starts in the garage with a discussion about locating some sheet music of the Ark – the “charts” – and follows Mikaela and his father looking through different folders and papers for the music. The film ends in the garage as members of the band have all arrived, ready to practice.
But we don’t ever see them practice. In an interview with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive , Kae says that “when we think about jazz representation in film, like documentary features, the majority of this stuff is focusing on the creative explosion that happens on the bandstand. It’s often the intense performing aspect of it…if you listen to the musicians, they talk about how much what happens on the bandstand is really like a product of the relationships that they have.” In this labor of gathering, searching, and preparing, Mekala and Kae learn how to bridge the gaps between older and newer members of the band, listen to and find the stories and histories of the band and its members, and figure out ways to care for those who show up. Taking place in the liminal spaces of the garage, the van, boxes, and the front porch, Keeping Time shows the interdependence of the past and present, solo and harmony.
While writing the script for Keeping Time, Kae spent time sitting down with members of the Ark. This may be where we start to feel the expansion of Kae’s own archival practice. This script is evidence of an oral history archive, one that is built through conversation and relationships with members of the Ark. The stories of the Ark from Ark members allow Kae to fabulate and construct a narrative for this film and to translate it into a film script. It’s in this film that we witness Darol Olu Kae’s archival practice opening up and participating in the spirit of the Ark, or to put it more directly, honestly, and from the words of Ark member Jesse Sharp, “Pass it on. Those were (Horace’s) famous words. You gotta pass it on. If you don’t pass it on, you didn’t really have it, or you won’t have it for long.” (The Dark Tree. chapter 12. Page 351). It is this, the ensemble’s communal interdependence, its trust in memory and celebration of experimentation, that comes to shape the formal and political imaginary of Keeping Time and Kae’s work as a filmmaker.
SELECTED WORKS
Director
Without A Song, narrative feature, forthcoming
Ellipsis, music video, serperentwithfeet feat. Orion Sun, 2024
The Spirit of A Thing, single channel video installation, 2023
Keeping Time, short film, 2023
I Ran From It and Was Still In It, short film, 2020
Collaborations
2022 “All the Places"by Lila Drew, co-directed with Vince Haycock
2021 “Say Peace"by Common feat. Black Thought, co-directed with A.G. Rojas
2019 “Godchild,"dir. A.G. Rojas, writer and creative researcher
2018-present “BLKNWS,"dir. Kahlil Joseph, writer and creative researcher
INSTALLATIONS
2023 Darol Olu Kae: Keeping Time, California African American Museum (CAAM)
2022 Infinite Rehearsal, MOCA Geffen, LA — Memory-Material program
PUBLICATIONS
TBA — Untitled Ark Book, Co-Editor
TBA — SRC-MTRL: PRIMARY DOCUMENT
2022 — “25 New Faces of Independent Film,"Filmmaker Magazine
2022 — SEEN, BlackStar Projects, Guest Editor, Issue 004
2021 — SEEN, BlackStar Projects, Guest Editor, Issue 003
2021 — i-D Magazine, Writer, The Darker Issue, no. 365
PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS AND FILM FESTIVALS
2023 International Film Festival Rotterdam
2022 The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University
2022 1-800 Happy Birthday, Vimeo short film showcase
2021 Le Cinéma Club
2021 SXSW Film Festival
2021 Sundance Film Festival
2020 Encontro de Cinema Negro Zózimo Bubul/Zózimo Bulbul Black Film Festival
2020 Camden International Film Festival
2020 BlackStar Film Festival
2020 Locarno Film Festival
2019 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
SELECTED INTERVIEWS
“Melissa Lyde and dir. Darol Olu Kae."By Melissa Lyde. Most Power, A Message to THe Black Man, Alfreda’s Cinema. February 14, 2024. https://youtu.be/-VwbtoV8smk?si=aD3HxGVyfl5hDx5l
Michèle Stephenson and Darol Olu Kae. “Black New Wave vol.2."By Taylor Renee Aldridge. Los Angeles Film Form. September 29, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKNVLkG8FSA
“Black Life: Darol Olu Kae."By Ruth Geybreyesus. Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. December 4, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3vy-UfVW64
Tristan Aymon, Pat Heywood, Darol Olu Kae, Jamil McGinnis, Samuel Patthey. “Conversation With Annemarie Jacir."Locarno Film Festival. September 8, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfq5v2JgJVI
“Mining The Gap: Darol Olu Kae."By Megan Steinman. Bomb Magazine. August 18, 2020. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2020/08/18/darol-olu-kae-interviewed/
Ufouma Essi, Darol Olu Kae, Sara Suarez, and ariella tai. “All That You Can’t Leave Behind."By Jheanelle Brown and Madison Brookshire. Los Angeles Film Form. August 9, 2020. https://youtu.be/LINR7njyhgg?si=A9OzuQx7x8E-MGSe
In Conversation
“Different Shades of Metadata: an interview with Kya Lou."By Darol Olu Kae. Seen, Issue 4, Summer 2022. https://www.blackstarfest.org/seen/read/issue004/kya-lou-interview-colorist/
“Jenn Nkiru In Conversation With Jheanelle Brown and Darol Olu Kae."MatchesFashion. July 22, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfZPjF1eQfY
Ephraim Asili, Frances Bodomo, Alima Lee, Jenn Nkiru, Amelia Umuhire, and dana washington. “Screen: Black Radical Imagination."By Jheanelle Brown and Darol Olu Kae. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. April 3, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geweGO6G2qc
