MoAD & SFMOMA present a screening of BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions (Kahlil Joseph, 110 minutes, 2025), followed by a post screening discussion with Filmmaker Khalil Joseph and Key Jo Lee, MOAD’s Chief of Curatorial Affairs & Public Programs.

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MoAD’s groundbreaking exhibition UNBOUND: Art, Blackness, and the Universe invites audiences to experience Blackness as expansive, limitless, and cosmic, reaching beyond the boundaries of Earth into space, time, and imagination.

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In dialogue, with the exhibition, the Limitless film series brings together award-winning films from across the African Diaspora, including the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, the Caribbean, French Guiana, Nigeria, and Zambia. Spanning narrative, documentary, and experimental work, these films explore speculative futures, ancestral memory, science fiction, African mythology, and visionary figures such as Octavia Butler and George Clinton.

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Together, the exhibition and film series offer an invitation to think beyond constraint and to imagine new possibilities for being, becoming, and belonging. Select screenings will feature guest filmmakers and speakers, offering audiences a chance to engage more deeply with the stories and ideas shaping this dynamic cinematic experience.

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About the Film

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Adapted from Kahlil Joseph’s highly acclaimed video installation with a mix of fiction and documentary forms, the film interweaves archival materials and fictional and historical characters. It is an immersive story that spans 247 years across land and sea often with, passengers aboard the imaginary transatlantic liner “The Nautica”. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Saidiya Hartman and others, it can be viewed as a form of inventory as the collective memories of Black people.

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BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions Trailer

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About the Speakers

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KAHLIL JOSEPH, DIRECTOR/WRITER/PRODUCER/EDITOR is an acclaimed artist and filmmaker known for his visionary approach to storytelling through film and video installations. His work challenges conventional linear narratives, using sound and music as materials to evoke lyricism and complexity.

Born in Seattle, Joseph began his career working for photographer Melodie McDaniel and director Terrence Malick. His early visual style was influenced by the experimental films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and references to Andrei Tarkovsky and Chris Marker coexist alongside an exploration of the vastness of the Black experience. Joseph first gained widespread recognition with his 2013 short film, “Until the Quiet Comes,” for musician Flying Lotus, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

A hallmark of Joseph’s practice is his ability to create works that bridge art and community. His most ambitious and ongoing project is BLKNWS, a conceptual artwork and business that redefines how Black culture is experienced and communicated. Conceived as a continuous, curated broadcast, BLKNWS merges news clips, social media content, and cultural artifacts into a dynamic stream that reflects the richness of Black life. First showcased at the Venice Biennale in 2019, BLKNWS has since expanded into a networked platform, featuring satellite installations in barbershops, cafés, and community spaces.

Joseph has also served as creative director for The Underground Museum. Founded in 2013 by his late brother Noah Davis, the Los Angeles independent art space and community hub is a pioneering venue for accessible and innovative exhibitions.

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Key Jo Lee is Chief of Curatorial Affairs & Public Programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), where she thinks with artists about Blackness, perception, cosmology, interior life, and the futures museums rarely know how to hold. With more than a decade in the field, her work lives at the intersection of curating, theory, and institution-building, asking how exhibitions do intellectual work and how care can be designed, not just declared.

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Her recent projects include UNBOUND: Art, Blackness & the Universe and Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors and Radical Black Joy. Previously, she was Associate Curator of American Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. She is the author of Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking, has written for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and holds dual MA and MPhil degrees in History of Art and African American Studies from Yale University.

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