Beyond the Cut is a live discussion series featuring influential artists from the realms of film, art, and culture. Here, their storytelling perspectives are celebrated, and their career journey is examined, with emphasis on how live audience members can learn from and share these stories.  This first season will shed a continuous light on the contributions of African-American influencers who live or work in and around Bedford-Stuyvesant, focusing on the impact their work has on the world and their community.

Classic British-Trinidadian Film “PRESSURE” Returns to Brooklyn For One Night Only at The Caribbean Film Series, December 5th at BAMcinématek

Carnival Meets Bollywood in the Machel Montano starring “Bazodee”

Our guest  is filmmaker NIKYATU JUSU.  The Sierra Leonean-American filmmaker's short films have played at festivals nationally and internationally garnering her NYU’s prestigious Spike Lee Fellowship Award, the Princess Grace Foundation Narrative film grant and Director’s Guild of America Honorable Mentions.  Her feature screenplay Free The Town was one of 12 projects invited to participate in Sundance Institute’s first Diverse Writers Workshop. Additionally Free The Town was hand selected for Africa’s most prestigious Film Market, the 2013 Durban Film Mart and one of five narrative films selected for Film Independent's Fast Track.  Presently Nikyatu is in development on her feature film FLOWERS.  The short film rendition of Flowers, which she co-wrote/co-directed with Yvonne Shirley, won the HBO Short Film Competition at the American Black Film Festival (2016) and is currently touring the festival circuit.  Nikyatu studied narrative filmmaking at New York University’s MFA film program and teaches filmmaking full time. She is a resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. This edition is co-presented and produced by Weeksville Heritage Center.

Beyond the Cut is proud to have Mr. King examine his ongoing and ever-evolving film career for our inaugural edition. 

SHAKA KING is a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn raised, award-winning filmmaker, known for his bold and challenging film work. “Newlyweeds” (2013), his ambitious feature film debut, was a bitingly funny ‘black’ comedy and a truly focused character study of two young people refusing to begin to take their lives more seriously. 

Beyond the Cut is proud to have Mr. King examine his ongoing and ever-evolving film career for our inaugural edition.