9 Quick Questions with Filmmaker Terence Nance
Photo: Barbara Anastacio
Questions on Paris and Filmmaking
Dallas native Terence Nance has solidified his place in black America’s film cannon with his directorial debut “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.”
In 2010, before black Twitter became a hashtag, the community used its influence to share a Kickstarter campaign launched by Nance to finance the completion of his film. Within just 31 days, Nance raised more than $20,000 from 431 backers to ready the film for the Sundance film festival.
So, in 2018, when the New York Times asked, “Is America ready for the mind of Terence Nance?” I’ll shameless speak for the collective and say we’ve been ready.
And the multimedia artist has not kept us waiting. A man of many talents, Nance collaborated with fellow Texan, Solange Knowles, for the film “When I Get Home,” and continues to win over critics and fans alike with the HBO series “Random Acts of Flyness,” and has starred in the Tamara P. Carter short “The Paris Project.”
In 2019, the young filmmaker was even set to direct Ryan Coogler’s “Space Jam 2," but parted ways with the studio and producers due to “different takes on creative vision,” according to Deadline Hollywood.
Apres Josephine caught up with Nance, who spent a couple of years “on and off” living in Paris to discuss the creative life in Paris and just how he ended up in Kehinde Wiley’s “The World Stage.”
How has living and working abroad influenced you both in front of and behind the camera?
I think it decentralized my concept of home. Even the term “abroad” centralizes America or one’s place of birth as a jumping-off point – the origin creative context.
What's it like creatively filming in Paris?
Things are just a bit slower there. Space is more available for the rhythm to be meditative and methodical in a creative process.
Terence Nance in Random Acts of Flyness.
Photo Credit: HBO.
In 2012, if my memory isn’t betraying me, I believe you were featured in Kehinde Wiley’s “The World Stage” exhibition at Galerie Templon in Paris. How did you end up on canvas, particularly in the work of Wiley?
Myself and a few friends of mine were making a documentary about him at the time. We only shot for one day I believe and the documentary never ended up happening, but he took my photograph that day and ended up doing a few portraits.
Previously, you have mentioned novelists such as Toni Morrison as one of your influencers. In what ways has she shaped your work?
She has a way of representing the metaphysical aspects of our lives that I have attempted to unlock in my own conversation with the medium I happen to work in.
It was written that you consider Random Acts of Flyness both a creation of flynessness and resistance. How does that resistance translate on a global scale?
I don’t know - that’s for the people to determine. I just make the thing. I try and resist acting like I know how it will move through the world after the act of making it is done.
Random Acts of Flyness offers a view of the black experience in America. How does that differ in France?
The history of slavery in North America, in the Caribbean and in South America creates a specific type of fictive kinship among black people that has its own patina. The fictive kinship that exists in the black diaspora in Paris implicates and includes slavery, especially given France’s relationship to Guadalupe, Martinique, and Haiti, but the more active dynamic and play is colonialism. So all of the experiences that drive the fictive kinship there have a different tonality.
“I think I’m very influenced by literature, Toni Morrison specifically. How she is able to find so many ways for a sentence to work.”
What's your favorite french film?
No faves but… Black Girl.
Who are some emerging filmmakers you are excited about, both in the states and abroad?
I am definitely excited about the following filmmakers: Mariama Diallo, Nuotama Bodomo, Sam Bazawule, Savanna Leaf, Caleb Jaffe, Keisha Rae Witherspoon, Amjad Abu Alala, and Nelson Mandela Nance. Just to name a few.
You have the second season of Random Acts of Kindness coming up. Any other projects in the works?
I’m just really excited about uncovering all that is season 2!