Khalil Joseph’s “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” is a singular film that required its own unique process. Loosely adapted from an ongoing museum installation about a fictional news channel documenting the Black experience in America, the acclaimed video essay encompasses the work of multiple artists and a massive amount of archival footage from every corner of the internet.
Turning all of that footage into a coherent whole was a massive project for editor Luke Lynch, who explained the film‘s intentional breaks from the rules of cinema during IndieWire’s craft roundtables.
“One of the way’s that Khalil’s articulated it really well is that if classical cinema is akin to classical music, in process — you write, you assemble, you rehearse, and then you execute — this is sort of jazz,” Lynch said. “Free form, total break of structure, unfamiliar. And so we’re pulling from the experience of us loving growing up watching movies, and the things that films can do, but sort of going down the more emotional journey of it and how it affects us. The abstract nature of storytelling, you can actually say a lot indirectly.”
Lynch went on to explain that Joseph’s approach to the film had more in common with music than traditional narrative storytelling. The two collaborators hoped that audiences would appreciate “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” the way music fans see great albums: as something that can be revisited over and over again, and whose symbols and meanings can be absorbed over time rather than fitting into a linear package that makes perfect sense after one viewing.
“The way he approached the movie is kind of like an album,” he said of Joseph. “He hopes that it gets dissected the way albums do. He loves the idea of people pausing it and stopping, talking in the movie theater, just letting it flow over them the way you let an album flow over you. You don’t dissect or articulate or try to understand it the way you would watching a movie.”
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This conversation is presented in partnership with Rich Spirit.
