Belly

Cacophonous urban saga Belly is set in the summer of 1999. Power, drugs and money have catapulted young Black men Tommy (DMX) and Sincere (Nas) from a poor neighbourhood in Queensto upscale opulence. But these gun-toting big-shots have big targets on their backs, and are hunted constantly both by other gang members and the FBI. Gradually, they both realise that their lives are headed nowhere, fast. Sincere discovers his African roots and convinces his girlfriend to emigrate to Africa, while Tommy undergoes a religious epiphany and joins the Nation of Islam.

Preceded by short film

On July 4 and August 6, Belly will be preceded by a short film also selected by Garrett Bradley:

Diary of an African Nun (Julie Dash, 1977, 14')

A nun in Uganda reflects on the emptiness she feels in her supposed union with Christ, and starts to have doubts about her faith. This lyrical, political film was made by groundbreaking Black female filmmaker Julie Dash, director of Daughters of the Dust and one of the most influential members of the LA Rebellion movement, active in the 1970s.

Garrett Bradley

This film is selected by American artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley, whose exhibition is on display at Eye. About her film selection she says:

There exists in this constellation of films, something that shaped me as I emerged in the world, a terrible and beautiful symmetry—a series of visions that reflect not only the abyss of human ignorance and the convulsions of violent power, but also the quiet, stubborn radiance of resistance.

These sacred dispatches from the edges of human consciousness are a bulwark against the erasure of memory. When art is silenced, the past is sterilized, the present flattened into obedience, and the future a barren repetition of sanctioned myths. A singular narrative emerges: one that dares not confront its own ugliness, nor does it have the courage to imagine beyond this.

These works are not mere entertainment (although some were commissioned as such); they are fever-dreams of our shared condition, how we stagger beneath the weight of history and yet still raise our heads to dream. I return to them again and again as a reminder that, though the world is often cruel, our collective capacity to endure, to fight, and to imagine something better is a defiance so profound it borders on the sublime.