Jamila Wignot
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“We Needed a Visual Approach that Would Match the Poetry of Mr. Ailey’s Words”: Jamila Wignot on Ailey
With Jamila Wignot’s documentary Ailey opening today from NEON, we are reposting Randy Astle’s interview with the director out of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Alvin Ailey’s choreography was as powerful and muscular as it was elegant and sublime. Most dance outsiders probably come to him through his most famous work, 1960’s Revelations, which exemplifies the fierce pride of the Black community moving from slavery through baptism and into celebration. The work also includes delicate and restrained moments, such as in an early pas de deux, where a slowly raised arm contains all the beauty of a the later exultation. […]
by Randy Astle on Feb 1, 2021 -
“My Film Family Was Atomized”: Director Jamila Wignot | Ailey
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? Ailey was made in fits and starts over a period of four years. We’d raise a sum of money to cover one portion of the process, spend the money, stop down, raise more money. Rinse repeat. Stopping down and starting is always tough. You lose momentum or you risk losing key collaborators. By 2019, we’d completed the bulk of production and we were trying to figure out whether to start up our edit when, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 30, 2021
