From Cinema Rediscovered 2023 Film Critics’ Workshop, Bushman (Reassembled) by Kwame Phillips is a video essay commission in response to the 7th edition of the festival.
“My video essay is on Bushman (1971), leaning into its experimentation in the liminal space between documentary and cinéma verité. This was done by remixing, recutting and reassembling its dialogue and footage to create a piece that accentuates the film’s discussion of othering and belonging. With the film still being resonant more than 50 years after its release, I tried to channel the poetic and ironic character of the film to speak to today’s ‘strangers in strange lands'” Kwame Phillips
Kwame Phillips is Senior Lecturer in Media Practices at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, specialising in sensory media production, visual anthropology and audio culture. Phillips’ work uses multimodal and experimental methodologies, often grounded in remix and repurposing, to focus on resilience, race, and social justice. He is author of the chapter “Dub, ecstasy and collective memory in Lovers Rock” (and the accompanying visual mixtape Lovers Rock Dub) in ReFocus: The Films of Steve McQueen (Edinburgh University Press 2023). He is also co-creator (with Dr. Debra Vidali) of the multi-sensorial sound art work, “Kabusha Radio Remix: Your Questions Answered by Pioneering Zambian Talk Show Host David Yumba (1923-1990).”
He is part of the Visual Scholarship Initiative.
