Black Atlas

Commissioned by The Warburg Institute in London, filmmaker, writer, broadcaster, and musician Edward George’s Black Atlas explores the “Image of the Black” archive—a collection of over 30,000 images documenting representations of people of African descent from antiquity through the civil rights era. The American premiere of Black Atlas is presented in partnership with The Sanctuary for Independent Media (Troy, NY) and RPI Arts Department’s iEAR Presents.

Drawing from the archive, George creates a new film that reanimates historical imagery through narration, sound, and montage. Accompanied by an evocative score by Seymour Wright and Crystabel Efemena Riley, Black Atlas unfolds as a meditation on time, place, and presence—considering art as a medium of transcendence, a technology of power, and an affirmation of a humanist, anti-racist project.

In revisiting and recontextualizing these images, the film approaches the archive as both a site of cultural memory and a tool for speculative thinking: What might it mean to encounter the archive not as a fixed record of the past, but as a living structure through which histories can be reimagined?

The screening will be followed by a conversation between George and author, scholar, and NYU professor Fred Moten.