Arthur Jafa: Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death
In just seven-and-a-half minutes, Arthur Jafa’s seminal work 'Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death' encapsulates African American experience as a tale of resilience.
It combines footage shot by Jafa—an artist with a long career as a cinematographer and director—with excerpts from films, newscasts, sports coverage, music clips, and citizen videos. These images traverse the twentieth century, focusing on the lives of Black people set against the backdrop of systemic racism and white supremacy.
Scenes of trauma, racism, and grief are shuffled with others of joy, defiance, and creativity, such as performances by exceptional Black athletes, dancers, and musicians. Set to Kanye West’s emotional gospel anthem ‘Ultralight Beam’, it is a poignant, visceral, kaleidoscopic meditation on African American life, history, and identity.
'Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death' exemplifies Jafa’s goal to craft a ‘Black cinema’, one with strong ties to music, responsive to the ‘existential, political, and spiritual’.
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