The African Desperate (2022)

Roffa Mon Amour and Brutus are joining forces to bring an explosive finale to both the Wild Summer of Art exhibition and the Roffa Mon Amour film festival.

We don’t know what your graduation day looked like, but for sure, it wasn’t as wild, chaotic, and hallucinating as Palace’s – the only Black student of an all-white art school class in upstate New York. Following a bizarre and tense final interview with her all-white teachers, Palace receives her Master of Fine Arts degree. If there is one thing that Palace doesn’t want to do that day, it’s to go to that lame graduation party. However, the night doesn’t go as planned, and her friends drag her along for a hazy, trippy, often hilarious, night.

The African Desperate is a witty, humorous, satirical social commentary film that criticizes the art world and its cliches. With its vivid visual language, it leads us on an absurdist journey through picturesque landscapes, art studios of annoying white privileged people, and desperate last-chance flirtations. The film’s cinematography, rich with references to street photography, exuberant gonzo cinema, and 1990s high school romcoms, pulls you in completely. Only when the closing credits roll will you find yourself asking: “What the hell did I just watch?”

We watched The African Desperate when it was first released and thought: “This is such a Roffa Mon Amour film, we need to screen it at the festival!” In a sea of films centered on the inherent suffering of the Black experience, the film’s director Martine Syms wants to celebrate it. “I’m using a signifier, Blackness, which for some people can connote serious pain,” she said in a New York Times interview. “But I see it as a real space of joy and freedom.” 

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