Towards the end of the 20th century, British novelist and critic John Berger insisted on the importance of what he termed “pockets of resistance”: small-scale efforts to resist global systems of domination and exploitation, or at least to find alternatives. invent. The possibility of change, Berger suggested, could not be found in major revolutionary movements, but in local practices, including the making and contemplation of art.
I thought of Berger after seeing “Neptune Frost,” a strange and compelling new feature film from Saul Williams, an American musician, writer, and artist, and Anisia Uzeyman, a Rwandan filmmaker. The film, an Afrofuturistic fantasy that is also a musical, a science fiction parable and a hacker manifesto, shows a resistance zone in the form of a community of African rebels. Surrounded by political violence, economic injustice and cultural alienation, they try to create a space where imagination and solidarity can flourish. The challenges are formidable, but their commitment is part of what makes “Neptune Frost” both moving and mind-blowing.
It is also a resistance in its own right, insofar as making the film – and thinking about it, for that matter – amounts to a critique of the way things are done. The main characters are Matalusa (Kaya Free), who works with his brother in an opencast mine in Burundi, where he digs up coltan, a mineral that powers the world’s mobile phones. After his brother is murdered, Matalusa flees. At the same time, Neptune (Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo), described by the filmmakers as ‘an intersex runaway’, escapes attempted sexual assault. Their journeys eventually converge at the hacker camp. (“Frost” is the name of a magical, brightly colored messenger bird.)
The plot of “Neptune Frost” is loose and evocative. This isn’t so much a clean, tidy allegory of capitalism and colonialism as it is a collage of vibrant images, sounds, and words that cut across the film’s themes as hashtags. Williams and Uzeyman combine anarchic politics with anarchic aesthetics, creating something that feels both handmade and high-tech, digital and analog, poetic and punk rock.
The hackers’ general greeting and slogan is ‘unanimous goldmine’. I don’t know what the phrase sounds like in Kinyarwanda or Kirundi (two of the languages spoken in the film), but in English it evokes both collective possession of wealth and optimism for all intents and purposes. Somehow it captures the film’s unsentimental, exuberant energy, which is a wealth of ideas and provocations – a pocket full of possibilities.
Neptune Frost
Not judged. In Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theatres.