THE AFRICAN DESPERATE
a film by Martine Syms
FEATURE PRESENTATION
JUNE 24, 2023 • 9 PM
@ LIGHT HOUSE ARTS CENTRE
(1800 ARGYLE STREET, HALIFAX)
2022 / USA / 97 mins
In The African Desperate, the dazzlingly funny debut from multimedia artist Martine Syms, we join Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily) in her first 24 hours as an MFA grad, and follow her through the final gauntlet of academics and inebriants that stand between her and her flight home to Chicago.
Shot in upstate New York on the campus of Bard College, Syms’ real-life alma mater, the film explores and interrogates her own odyssey through the art-school underworld—on the cusp of adult life and artistic discovery, yet serving as an unwitting object of fascination and resentment for the predominantly white faculty and student body.
Dramatised FaceTime exchanges, YouTube tutorial non-sequiturs, memes blinking into frame: at every turn, The African Desperate finds new cinematic language to speak to our perpetually connected lives. It’s the rare and precious debut that bears the mark of a true visionary, bursting with inventive ways of capturing our fragmented, annotated and hyperlinked existence. —Evan Bower
TRAILER
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Martine Syms
Martine Syms is an artist who has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humour, and social commentary.
She is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, a United States Artists fellowship, the Tiffany Foundation award, and the Future Fields Art Prize.