Darol Olu Kae

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Darol Olu Kae (b.1984) is a filmmaker born, raised and currently living in Los Angeles, California. He’s collaborated with filmmakers Kahlil Joseph, A.G. Rojas as well as the colorist Kya Lou and sound designer James William Blades. Aside from making films, Darol has been guest editor for SEEN journal, published by BlackStar Projects, home of BlackStar Film Festival and served as one of the curators for Black Radical Imagination. He also curates and runs an online image sourcing research project called SRC MTRL.  It is in this “speculative imaging of things” and his first film, I Ran From It and Was Still In It  that we see the role of the archive as both a literal material and as something to help him think through and with the communal and the personal aspects of a black cultural life. 

His first film, I Ran From It and Was Still In It (2020), borrows its title from a poem by Fred Moten, screened at Locarno Film Festival. The film interlaces online found footage and images from the filmmaker’s personal archive. The film explores the loss of his father and the separation from his children as they moved out of Los Angeles and to Philadelphia. Kae has expressed in video and written interviews about his work that he had a desire to think about the autobiographical in a manner that pushes past just the personal. In an interview with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive , Kae expresses being drawn to the archive “initially out of necessity.” He says, “I have a very non-traditional approach with film. I didn’t have access to cameras or editing software. So part of it was this deep urge to engage with the medium of film and the things I have at my disposal are found footage.” Kae seeks to work outside of the necessity and pragmatic aspects of the archive, as he explained in an interview with Bomb Magazine: “Part of the archival process is searching for yourself…the archive is, in part, a storage house for feelings. In the found footage, I am able to locate core, or guttural, feelings.” 

In his next film, Keeping Time (2023), the practice of the archive has moved from a literal material relationship to one where we see the archival trace, and our understanding of it expands within the film. Taking up the work of Horace Tapscott and the avant-garde jazz ensemble, Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (the Ark), Keeping Time follows drummer Mekala Sessions, son of Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra member, Michael Sessions, as he tries to get members of the band together to practice for a gig. The film starts in the garage with a discussion about locating some sheet music of the Ark – the “charts” – and follows Mikaela and his father looking through different folders and papers for the music. The film ends in the garage as members of the band have all arrived, ready to practice. 

But we don’t ever see them practice. In an interview with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Kae says that “when we think about jazz representation in film, like documentary features, the majority of this stuff is focusing on the creative explosion that happens on the bandstand. It’s often the intense performing aspect of it… if you listen to the musicians, they talk about how much what happens on the bandstand is really like a product of the relationships that they have.” In this labor of gathering, searching, and preparing, Mekala and Kae learn how to bridge the gaps between older and newer members of the band, listen to and find the stories and histories of the band and its members, and figure out ways to care for those who show up. Taking place in the liminal spaces of the garage, the van, boxes, and the front porch, Keeping Time shows the interdependence of the past and present, solo and harmony.

While writing the script for Keeping Time, Kae spent time sitting down with members of the Ark. This may be where we start to feel the expansion of Kae’s own archival practice. This script is evidence of an oral history archive, one that is built through conversation and relationships with members of the Ark. The stories of the Ark from Ark members allow Kae to fabulate and construct a narrative for this film and to translate it into a film script. It’s in this film that we witness Darol Olu Kae’s archival practice opening up and participating in the spirit of the Ark, or to put it more directly, honestly, and from the words of Ark member Jesse Sharp, “Pass it on. Those were (Horace’s) famous words. You gotta pass it on. If you don’t pass it on, you didn’t really have it, or you won’t have it for long.” (The Dark Tree. chapter 12. Page 351).  It is this, the ensemble’s communal interdependence, its trust in memory and celebration of experimentation, that comes to shape the formal and political imaginary of Keeping Time and Kae’s work as a filmmaker.

SELECTED WORKS

Director

Without A Song, forthcoming

Ellipsis (2024)

The Spirit of A Thing (2023)

Keeping Time (2023)

I Ran From It and Was Still In It (2020)

Collaborations

All the Places (2022), co-directed with Vince Haycock

Say Peace (2021), co-directed with A.G. Rojas

Godchild (2019), dir. A.G. Rojas, writer and creative researcher

BLKNWS (2018-present), dir. Kahlil Joseph, writer and creative researcher

INSTALLATIONS

Darol Olu Kae: Keeping Time (2023), California African American Museum (CAAM)

Infinite Rehearsal (2022), MOCA Geffen, LA — Memory-Material program

PUBLICATIONS

TBA — Untitled Ark Book (TBA), Co-Editor

TBA — SRC-MTRL: PRIMARY DOCUMENT

2022 — “25 New Faces of Independent Film," Filmmaker Magazine

2022 — SEEN, BlackStar Projects, Guest Editor, Issue 004

2021 — SEEN, BlackStar Projects, Guest Editor, Issue 003

2021 — i-D Magazine, Writer, The Darker Issue, no. 365

PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS AND FILM FESTIVALS

International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023)

The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University (2022)

1-800 Happy Birthday, Vimeo short film showcase (2022)

Le Cinéma Club (2021)

SXSW Film Festival (2021)

Sundance Film Festival (2021)

Encontro de Cinema Negro Zózimo Bubul/Zózimo Bulbul Black Film Festival (2020)

Camden International Film Festival (2020)

BlackStar Film Festival (2020)

Locarno Film Festival (2020)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2019)

SELECTED INTERVIEWS

Alfreda’s Cinema. “Melissa Lyde & dir. Darol Kae (Keeping Time, 2023) for Most Powerful @ BAM (2/15/24).” YouTube, February 14, 2024. https://youtu.be/-VwbtoV8smk?si=aD3HxGVyfl5hDx5l. 

Los Angeles Filmforum. “Black New Wave, Vol.2, September 10, 2022 at LA Filmforum.” YouTube, September 29, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKNVLkG8FSA. 

Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. “Black Life: Darol Olu Kae." YouTube, December 4, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3vy-UfVW64. 

Locarno Film Festival. “Conversation With Annemarie Jacir." YouTube, September 8, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfq5v2JgJVI. 

Steinman, Megan. “Mining The Gap: Darol Olu Kae." Bomb Magazine, August 18, 2020. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2020/08/18/darol-olu-kae-interviewed/. 

Los Angeles Filmforum. “All That You Can't Leave Behind, November 14, 2019.” YouTube, August 9, 2020. https://youtu.be/LINR7njyhgg?si=A9OzuQx7x8E-MGSe. 

In Conversation 

Kae, Darol Olu. “Different Shades of Metadata: an interview with Kya Lou." Seen, no. 4 (2022). https://www.blackstarfest.org/seen/read/issue004/kya-lou-interview-colorist/. 

MATCHES. “Jenn Nkiru In Conversation With Jheanelle Brown and Darol Olu Kae | MATCHESFASHION.COM.” YouTube, July 22, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfZPjF1eQfY. 

The Museum of Contemporary Art. “Screen: Black Radical Imagination." YouTube, April 3, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geweGO6G2qc.