PARTING SHOT
IN A YEAR WHERE IT SEEMS LIKE EVERY FACET OF LIFE IS GOING THROUGH a massive shift, musician and actor Janelle Monáe is front and center as a voice for that change, especially in her new film Antebellum, available on-demand on major cable and digital platforms September 18. “I want this to be a real look at the burden that Black women carry every single day to deconstruct systemic racism and to deconstruct white supremacy.” Monáe plays Veronica Henley, a successful writer trapped in a terrifying reality mirroring America’s original sin: slavery. “One of the things that this film says is that the past is not even the past.” While Monáe is best known as a Grammy-nominated music star, she hit the ground running with her first two films: Hidden Figures and Moonlight, winner of on an Oscar for Best Picture. She says she’s grateful those films were her debut. “They had a very specific perspective around the Black experience and about broadening who we can be as a people.” After Antebellum, “community and being a good citizen is what I’m focused on next,” says Monáe.
“We’re in the middle of a revolution. We’re in the middle of a reckoning.”