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“More Than a Production, It Was a Communion” | Kahlil Joseph, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
Still from BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions. Courtesy of Sundance Institute. Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why?
We filmed in Accra, Ghana for Track 16. Reflection Eternal, which is about W.E.B Du Bois in his later years. It was late November when we arrived, and the humid air was thick with the season’s slow, deliberate pulse. We stayed through the turn of the year, marking the holidays in West Africa, far from the frozen rituals of home.
The entire crew—those who had flown in from Los Angeles and London alike—lodged in a grand hotel that stood overlooking the restless streets. In the lobby, a two-story Christmas tree stretched toward the ceiling, adorned with ornaments that sparkled faintly in the soft light of late afternoons. It was a strange and beautiful juxtaposition, that tree, to the world outside, where children sold wares on corners and the call of the city never seemed to sleep.
Onye, my wife and producer, moved through the production like a quiet force, balancing logistics and artistry with an ease I can only marvel at. Her sister joined us as well as our children and my mother. It was a family affair to say the least. Garrett Bradley, director and artist, elegantly honed her vision every day as she met the actors and led the table reads, her focus so precise it seemed to draw clarity from the very air. Bradford Young, our cinematographer, caught the Ghanaian light in ways that made the red earth hum, his lens transforming the ordinary into the sublime. Irvin Hunt, the writer/scholar, offered words that framed our work within a history both immense and personal. Grace Wales Bonner, with her discerning eye and soulful presence, elevated everything she touched, in the frame and outside of it. And Kristen Calhoun, the playwright who had been living in Accra for some time, guided us with a local’s grace, showing us the subtleties we might otherwise have missed.
Many of the crew brought their families—some for whom this was their first time touching African soil. Their awe was tangible, like something sacred and private laid bare. For the children, we created a kind of school within the gardens of the hotel. Local tutors came each day, their voices soft yet sure as they shared not just lessons, but the quiet rhythms of a culture unbowed by time. The children laughed often, their bodies lithe and brown beneath the midday sun, their joy a reminder of what was possible even in the midst of work.
The studio financing the film (Participant), in a gesture rare and perhaps accidental, chose to stay home for this particular shoot. This absence meant the machinery of Hollywood—the structural, the creative—was ours alone to orchestrate. What a gift it was to shape something free from the long, shadowed corridors of corporate oversight. Every morning, writers gathered in rooms to sketch out the day’s scripts, and by evening, the pages were marked with the fingerprints of people who believed in what they were building.
The children swam endlessly, their brown limbs cutting through the blue water, their laughter bouncing off the walls of the courtyard. At lunch, we’d pause to watch them, their ease a kind of balm. In these moments, it seemed, the weight of the world we carried—stories of diaspora, of longing, of possibility—was made lighter.
Through one of those serendipitous turns that only the universe can orchestrate, I joined my mother for lunch one afternoon. She had been introduced to a journalist by a friend; his name was Anas Aremeyaw, and he wore a beaded mask and had two security guards seated with him and another patrolling the lobby. His presence was electric, his brilliance undeniable, though he carried it with an air of mystery. Anas, the elusive and fearless undercover journalist, would later become a central character in the film. Meeting him felt less like a coincidence and more like a crossing of fates.
And so we worked. Each day we layered the story, one frame atop the other, one voice lending itself to another, until what emerged felt almost holy. We filmed on Lake Volta days before Christmas in a Soviet era architectural hotel overlooking the Volta Dam that I’ll never forget. It was more than a production; it was a communion, a meeting of minds and hearts and histories. Accra became a place where we were not merely visitors but participants in something vast and unspeakable. We belonged to the red earth, to the evening songs of birds, to the unyielding rhythm of this land. I think often of those days, of how they felt infinite and fleeting all at once. It was not just filmmaking; it was living. Fully, expansively, joyously. It was a chapter of a story that I carry still, a story that continues to write itself, even now.
See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.
