Review of The African Desperate, directed by Martine Syms

I have a tendency to watch movies whenever I think that I have nothing to do that night, even when I do, which puts me down a specific path every single time. Usually I pick a streaming platform, which is either Netflix, Kanopy, Hulu, or MUBI, and once I’ve locked down which platform I’m going on that night, I end up scrolling endlessly until I finally land on a movie.

On this night, for some reason, I did not take long to find the movie I was watching. Call it a golden miracle because there’s been times where I’ve straight up wasted twenty minutes deciding on what to watch.

I had never heard of The African Desperate or the filmmaker behind it, but if you’ve followed this blog for awhile or found me through my Goodreads, you know that I’m a major sucker for a tale about art school. Maybe it’s because I spent seven years, high school and college, in arts settings, but I love a good story that takes place inside of art programs.

This one is set inside of an art MFA, but it was close enough for my purposes. I refused to get an MFA for myself as a young creative, so kudos to the protagonist.

Onwards with the review!

A Black artist prepares to graduate from their MFA, but finds some obstacles first.

The African Desperate opens with this scene: the artist in question, Palace, is sitting in front of four white professors. This is her final critique to decide whether she passes her dissertation phase of her MFA, and they nod and ask some questions throughout their brief time together.

She answers their questions, which comes across as really snobby at times and pseudo intellectual, as if they’re trying to project something that’s not really there half of the session, before they decide it’s time to let her have the MFA. She’s done it. She’s passed the hardest part of graduate school (supposedly).

Now with the MFA about to be in her hand, Palace has to prepare to head back to Chicago, where she is from, in order to start her life over again. But before she leaves, we zoom out and look at her interactions with everyone around her.

It becomes apparently obvious that her entire cohort except for her is white, and the comments being made towards her are a little tone deaf or ignorant at times. Throughout her MFA career I presume Palace has had to battle a white academic setting as a Black artist.

So fun fact: if you haven’t watched this already, it takes place over the course of a single day in Palace’s life. There’s a mention of a party later that Palace keeps trying to dodge because of needing to prepare to go home to Chicago, which is quite a bit away from where the school is located in Upstate New York.

She meets up with her friends at the school during various points of the movie, which is where we really get insight into the dynamics here and what stakes are at play for Palace as an artist, community member, and just a human being.

The biggest conflict here is pretty internal. Although Palace has been in a setting that probably isn’t as inclusive as it thinks it is, especially when professors and people around her project their thoughts about her work and identity because she is a Black woman, I think that the cushion of art school falling away is a major conflict for her as a character.

She has to confront the reality of the fact she’s leaving very shortly, which has her making certain decisions throughout the day and kind of adopting an attitude of “screw it’ because she’s aware this is the last time she’s going to be a student here like this.

It’s a lonely world outside the cohorts we create in our programs, which is what draws people to MFA programs to begin with. I was sold on the idea of a writing MFA for community, which is why I ultimately did not end up deciding to pursue one straight out of undergrad.

I got my master’s degree in something else. But I understand deeply what Palace is going through here, even if I have not lived through an art MFA.

Overall Thoughts

For a debut indie movie, this is a pretty solid effort in my book. The actor playing Palace does a decent job as the character, bringing their anxiety and thoughts about the world directly onto the screen for viewers like you and me to see. I enjoyed watching this movie, although I don’t think it’ll garner a rewatch in my book.

There’s a lot of wisdom and authenticity in this story that I think is true for a lot of people living within certain creative spaces. Even programs that boast diversity of thought and DEI are still bargaining with the fact that their programs aren’t diverse.

They’re still pretty much keeping the status quo. So seeing Palace’s experiences on-screen made me think deeper about systems of inequity in the arts.

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