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Shaka King on Releasing His Sundance Short Mulignans Online
MULIGNANS from Shaka King on Vimeo.
Newlyweeds filmmaker Shaka King made the slightly unorthodox decision to release his short film Mulignans online almost immediately following its Sundance premiere last month. Turns out, King never thought of Mulignans as a festival hopper, but a piece of work meant to be seen by “as wide an audience as possible as soon as possible.” Currently at 61,000 views and counting on Vimeo, I asked King to elaborate on his decision:
We initially made Mulignans for the web, but a couple friends suggested I enter it into Sundance…and I’m glad I did. But the ultimate goal was always to get it out there to as wide an audience as possible as soon as possible. And see if the appeal (or lack thereof) was race/gender specific and quite frankly stir some shit up. Ironically, I unknowingly disabled comments on Vimeo for the longest so I had no sense of the conversation taking place around it. But then someone posted it to Reddit and since then I’ve had a chance to track public opinion and it’s just so interesting to see the range of reactions…from confusion to folks grasping every nuance. And those that do get it are quick to educate those who don’t. So social media isn’t all Satanic, I guess.
You can read my pre-Sundance interview with King here, and you can, and should, watch Mulignans above.
