Until the Quiet Comes

Featuring stunning cinematography by Matthew J. Lloyd, Until the Quiet Comes, based off the new album by Flying Lotus, is the most notable work yet from Khalil Joseph, a creator making a name in the music video world for his moody, contemplative and dreamlike treatments of hip-hop and urban culture.

Flying Lotus is a great commissioner of content—music videos for tracks from this album by Cyriak and David Lewandowski, have been excellent—but it was the relatively unknown Joseph who got to tackle the juiciest prize, a “music short film” which weaves several of the songs from the album into a haunting, somewhat magical perspective of L.A.

The poetic, beautiful, but not romanticized, look at urban life calls to mind As I Am, and feels like another piece of a larger trend. A host of recent festival work that could almost be called magical realist has depicted Black America in similarly impressionistic ways, Court 13′s Beasts of the Southern Wild being the most obvious example, but the Ross Bros. with their inventive doc Tchoupitalis and Grainger David’s 2012 SXSW-winning short The Chair also applying.

Joseph most recently showed up with another beautiful, but slightly perplexing piece, a short film for the Intel/W Hotels short film competition Four Stories, which he was able to direct off of his own winning script. This piece further establishes his unique voice in today’s short media landscape, and the Sundance selection hopefully means Joseph will have further freedom to wow us with his creative vision.

This review is part of our Sundance 2013 playlist.