Storytelling in the AI Era

Good afternoon, good afternoon.

My name is Jason Barham, I'm a senior writer at Wired.

I cover social media, pop culture, visual politics,

and intersection of race and technology.

Today I have the immense, immense pleasure

of speaking with Blitz Bazawule

about art and storytelling in the AI era.

Blitz is an award-winning Ghanaian filmmaker,

musician, author, and storyteller.

He's the director of the highly anticipated

The Color Purple movie,

which is set to release on Christmas Day.

It's produced by Oprah, Steven Spielberg, stars Fantasia,

it's gonna be incredible.

Blitz's featured directorial debut,

The Burial of Kojo released on Netflix in 2019.

In addition to his experience as a filmmaker,

Blitz is an accomplished musician and visual artist

having released four studio albums.

He received a Grammy nomination for his work with Beyonce

on her visual album, Black Is King.

Please welcome him to the stage, Blitz Bazawule.

[audience applauding] [bright pop music]

[bright pop music continues]

So for audience members

who are maybe not familiar with the story,

this big movie you have coming out in December,

what is The Color Purple about?

First of all, how's everybody doing?

[audience cheering and applauding]

Fantastic. [audience applauding]

The Color Purple is a story of Celie,

a black woman growing up

in the rural south

between 1909 and 1947.

And, you know, it just follows her trials, tribulation,

and her path to self liberation and ultimate triumph.

It was truly an honor to get to reimagine

this brilliant, brilliant text written originally by

the legendary Alice Walker.

And this brilliant, brilliant book became

a cinematic classic courtesy of Steven Spielberg and

went on to Broadway,

became a Tony Award-winning Broadway show.

So there was absolutely no pressure

when I decided to take this on at all.

Where's the, sort of the both,

this is a bit about AI as well and storytelling,

there's a lot of criticism where sort of

the hope and the horror of AI or Gen AI is that

it builds upon existing data sets,

which is essentially what you've done with

the sort of re-imagining of The Color Purple.

Where do you find the beauty in the re-imagining

for you personally?

Where do you source that? Where do you find that?

Well, I mean,

the human mind and its ability to create

these expansive, sometimes disconnected, disjointed

stimuli, right?

Cannot in any way

be compared to artificial intelligence, I don't think.

We're wired differently, you know?

And when I take on a film that is as

historied and as layered as The Color Purple

I'm bringing, [clears throat]

I'm not just taking The Color Purple,

I'm taking my background as a Ghanaian artist

born on the continent of Africa

and the complexities and layering

that an African perspective has

in terms of rhythm, cadence, culture,

those are things that I bring to this story.

So, in spite of Steven's incredible classic,

my film is completely different

and it's completely different based

strictly on my perspective on life and the world.

What it feels to be an outsider looking in.

That for me is truly, or was for me truly

the reason I said yes was because

I knew for a fact

that the human being is incapable of creating a

carbon copy of anything.

That's the one blessing we have.

So we can be biters, we bite,

but we can never reproduce and Xerox

'cause it's always gonna be filtered through

that soul, okay? That living, breathing, organic thing.

And for me, given Celie an imagination

was my way into this story

because I grew up around people who had been through

trauma and abuse and had seen them in their heads

create pathways of liberation

and those pathways of liberation

are often not talked about.

We often miscategorize people

who have been through trauma and abuse as docile,

as passive, waiting to be saved.

Couldn't be further from the truth.

We're constantly working in our heads.

So that was my way into The Color Purple

and it's very individual,

it's like your thumbprint, you know?

As they say, no two thump prints are the same,

I mean, that's pretty much what art in my opinion is

and why it truly differs

from the synthesizing of all of these things

that have existed prior and the regurgitation of it.

The human soul is just deeply complex

and what we allow into ourselves and what we bring back out

is a thumbprint, so yeah.

Is the work for you more about

posing questions and challenges or

is about giving the audience sort of resolution?

Where is the fun in it for you?

In The Color Purple specifically?

Yeah, just in the work that you would create,

The Color Purple, yeah. In work.

I mean, that's a great question.

I mean, look, the culture I come from

is a very participatory culture,

so all art, there's always a place

for the audience to participate in it.

That means that there is no finite art, right?

That means that if I create a painting

and you see it when you're 10 years old,

when you're 30 years old,

you're gonna see the painting differently

because it's a living breathing thing.

Same with music.

I remember when I was young, I couldn't understand jazz.

I'm like, This is confusing, I can't find the beat.

I literally can't go a day without listening to jazz now

because Miles Davis' work is living, breathing.

Coltrane's work is living, breathing.

And I think that that's something that's very peculiar

about art in general, but specifically about

the art that I know.

All I know about storytelling

comes from my grandmother's stories.

In Ghana where I grew up at,

there was a time at which electricity was very irregular.

So at night, the only thing that we had

was my grandmother's stories.

Now, these stories were incredibly

flexible, let's put it that way

because of course she ended up being our Netflix, Hulu,

HBO all in one.

And what I realized about her idea of storytelling

was how cyclical it was.

She's never quite lenient, I mean, you know,

the protagonist would change sometimes they would be

in form of a bird, there'll be a form of a table,

they'll take the form of a human

and there was always a way in which

the moral of the story was constantly in rotation,

but the protagonists were changing and the

set of circumstances were changing and I found that

to be a really informative way

into how I get into storytelling.

So I never quite make anything

as a resolute ending.

There's everything I've done

is open to interpretation by the audience

and based on your personal set of circumstances,

what you see as truth or false,

you'll project that into the work.

And so in making certainly The Color Purple,

even when I made Black Is King with Beyonce,

it was like, all right, if somebody gets it, they do,

but if they don't, that's fine.

At some point, you know, in 10 years

you might watch it and go and go, oh, I see that, you know?

And for me, that's good art.

Good art is constantly evolving

and constantly keeping up with time.

It's less about it being universal

and more deeply personal

'cause within the personal you find the universal.

That's absolutely true.

So you mentioned a phrase earlier,

pathways for liberation.

We're coming off a sort of

historic writer strike in Hollywood.

I'm wondering if you think now

there is a better way forward

for black artists in the industry?

Nope. [audience laughing]

I mean, let's be clear, let's be honest, look,

the industry exists in a much more larger

structure that is deeply institutional, right?

And so any bias that you might find

in a microcosm comes from a macro problem.

And the reality is that the way in which

we still relate to one another

is still so deeply, deeply

separated and biased.

And so, yes, I've gotten to make a major studio picture,

by the way, as the first Ghanaian who has ever done so,

which is in, oh, no, no, let's not applaud that guys,

I mean, that's when you go, that's insane.

You know how long Ghanaians have existed?

You know how long cinema has existed?

How the hell am might the first one doing this in 2023?

And here's the bigger challenge, who do I call?

When I'm in the midst of madness

and I cannot understand studio politics,

how to relate, how to release a movie?

You know, so now I got pioneer syndrome

and I'm going, I have to literally fall every time

to learn my lesson, right?

Versus somebody else who can pick up the phone

and call Scorsese

and go, Hey, when you did 'Goodfellas,'

you know, and you got to this point,

how did you handle that? You know?

And I had Steven Spielberg,

great guy, was very helpful to me.

My set of circumstances couldn't be further away.

I'm an immigrant, first of all,

like, where do we even start talking

about what it means to be such an outsider looking in?

And so it is challenging,

you know, to be in this position,

but it's also necessary work because

I truly believe that it is incalculable

how much the world loses every day

by the intentional exclusion of African,

black, brown, indigenous creative and intellectual genius.

It's like you can't do the math on it, you know?

Like we know how great Einstein was.

You know how many Einstein's never, never, never get to

see any opportunity and are in coltan mines

and are in, you know, slave based labor today?

Like, how are we gonna advance

as a people, as a species, as a anything, right?

And so I say that to say

there's so much work to be done

and as much gratitude in my heart that I have

to have these opportunities,

boy, we have not even begun the work.

Do you feel like you have a certain responsibility

as a black artist at this position now in your career?

Oh, I don't have a choice.

I mean, listen, I would love to just show up and do art

and go home. Yeah.

How nice will that be, you know?

But I can't even fathom that.

I have to build institutions,

I run an organization in Ghana

called the Africa Film Society.

It takes up a considerable amount of my time.

I fund it fully myself.

We create outdoor screening programs

for free outdoors.

Where I'm from is a very classist society,

so anything that is great and well-funded

goes to rich kids and the average kid has no access,

there's very little public programming.

So I have to do that work

because art education is central.

I was lucky, I had a mother who allowed me to be an artist.

It's unfathomable.

I mean, I don't see any Africans in the house,

but I guarantee you if you ask them

there's like four jobs you possibly could be.

Your parents are like, you are going to be a lawyer,

a doctor, perhaps a pilot, okay?

All right and so when you come up

and you want to be an artist, what is that?

My mother, I was just very fortunate,

the house we grew up in was always under construction

for some reason,

like, there was always a room that wasn't quite done.

It was like, when are they gonna finish this house?

There's always a room somewhere

and my mother would say, You can have this room.

And I'll stay in there, that's where I learned to draw,

that's where I learned to paint,

that's where I learned to write music,

that's where I knew, you know,

and for cinema, here's the wild thing about cinema.

So there weren't many cinema houses and if there were,

my parents were not taking us.

So how I came into contact with cinema

was through the evangelicals

who came to show Jesus movies

for free in the park.

And by the way, that was Christmas.

I mean, you'll finish your chores early,

you will pack your stuff, you'll take your mats

to the soccer field and wait.

And the one movie they always showed

The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ.

And you know what?

I didn't know it was Martin Scorsese,

I didn't even know who he was.

And Paul Schrader wrote it.

And then I found out these guys

make some of the most gangster movies ever.

Goodfellas, you know, Taxi Driver.

And they made a Jesus movie

with Willem Dafoe, guys, it was wild.

And that was Jesus to me.

Now I see him and I can't believe it,

I'm like, Willem Dafoe was Jesus.

[audience laughing] Some wild casting.

But all to say, all to say

these outdoor cinematic experiences

was so fundamental to me

in terms of seeing an art form

that was so global

that was encompassing of all the arts.

'Cause to make a film, you gotta know how to write,

you gotta know how to photograph, paint, frame,

you gotta understand music and cadencing and scoring

and all these things I was doing in isolation.

I didn't know there was an art form that

could combine them all

and the feelings that I got from them

and so what I do now is

I've taken over the evangelicals

and now I go to the soccer parks

and project all kinds of movies, I mean all kinds.

And primarily African movies and African diaspora movies

because I want them to know

that there's a cinematic language that is African

and African diasporan and

all we do is add to the lexicon.

So every film I've done Burial of Kojo my first,

Black Is King, and of course The Color Purple

It's just expanding on this lexicon

and just adding slang to a language that already exists.

Speaking of that lexicon where,

and despite the conditions you described earlier

of Hollywood and sort of the black creator

trying to come up within it,

we're at a really exciting time as well.

We have creators like Nikyatu Jusu,

Terence Nance, Juel Taylor, people making really-

I was roommates with Terence Nance for five years.

[Jason laughing] Yes.

I'm so glad you mentioned these

brilliant, brilliant artists.

I know Niki, I've known Niki for years.

So amazing, but keep going.

What most excites you about this

next wave of black filmmaking

that we're seeing from these sort of young minds

that are coming out

and sort of the possibility within their art?

Well, first it's the liberation of the tools.

You know there was a time where

you couldn't fathom making a movie,

literally, because

you know, to make a movie,

it was the same way you couldn't fathom recording an album,

you know, 'cause there were like three studios

in the country that you had to go to

and, you know, cut a record.

Same way, you know, film cameras,

celluloid was so expensive

that it made it improbable and impossible

for anybody who is disenfranchised or marginalized

to participate in the art.

The liberation of the tools

and the accessibility of the tools

only makes for an incredible, incredibly diverse

and exciting medium.

So, to give you an example, music, right?

The tools of music have been liberated for a very long time.

And that we can just talk about just Africa

and African diasporan music.

Everything from jazz, blues, funk,

hip-hop, R & B, Roomba, Samba.

I mean, I can keep going on and on and on and on

because the tools are liberated and it's easy

and the bars to entry are low.

Now how about creative endeavors which

much higher bars to entry?

Well that's where it becomes very difficult because

even though I am making a film

because the tools aren't liberated

and are still quite colonized because it's like

whoever pays you to do it determines the medium

and how they would like to see it done, right?

It makes it very difficult to innovate.

And I think the medium of cinema has deeply struggled.

I mean, think about this.

When you hear music,

let's say Latin music,

you can immediately go, Yeah, that's a Latin band, right?

You hear Asian music, oh, yep, that's an Asian band.

I mean, there's sensibilities.

You notice, you watch a movie, you can't really tell,

they all just look the same, they're cut the same,

they feel the same, often from the same narrow lens.

There's not a lot of personality in the medium itself.

Now, a few auteurs were able to,

you know, I'm a big Wong Kar-wai fan,

we don't have any fans of Wong Kar-wai in the house,

oh shit, three of you, that's good.

I'm a big Kurosawa fan, Akira Kurosawa.

When you watch his film, you're looking at

Japanese sensibilities.

Where his camera goes is based on the Japanese form,

the Japanese form of engagement.

The camera is a participant, you know?

That's what I hope for the medium itself, right?

And hence because the tools are much more accessible,

people are beginning to take more chances.

Hence the Terence Nance's, the Nikyatu's,

you know, I'm part of that school

of people who can now pick up sometimes a phone,

sometimes a DSLR camera.

You know, I made my very first film in Ghana with $40,000

that I went on tour and saved every dime off of.

I was keeping my per diems, okay?

Now, I was literally spending $40,000 a day on craft service

when I made Color Purple.

So like, can you fathom that range

from like my entire budget

for my first feature film,

which by the way was Ghana's first feature film on Netflix,

thanks to, shout out to Ava DuVernay who made it possible.

And that's what Beyonce saw on Netflix and hired me.

$40,000, we were literally spending that on like,

oh, cookies a day.

So I'm saying that to say the discrepancy is so insane

and the accessibility

and my hope is that at some point

these tools will be liberated enough

that you can actually start to see a truly diverse

art form and not one that is forged

from a very narrow lens of who controls the purse strings.

I couldn't think of a better place to end.

Thank you so much, Blitz. This was an amazing conversation-

It was a pleasure, thank you guys for having me.

Go see The Color Purple.

It's coming out soon, thank you guys.

Color Purple in theaters Christmas, come on now,

you know I'm not gonna leave without shouting that out.

Color Purple in theaters Christmas Day.

Tell a friend to tell a friend, rock your purples.

It's gonna be an event, thank you so much.

[audience applauding] Thanks for having me.