Private Project

The Golden Chain

The distant future. A Nigerian space station in a remote corner of the galaxy orbits an artificial pinpoint of matter so dense it cannot exist in our solar system. It is a recreation of the birth of the universe itself, contained for the purpose of study, and overseen by Yetunde, sole crew member on the space station Eko.

  • Adebukola Bodunrin
    Director
  • Ezra Claytan Daniels
    Director
  • Ezra Claytan Daniels
    Writer
  • Denenge Akpem
    Key Cast
  • Ezra Daniels
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Short
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes 20 seconds
  • Production Budget:
    200 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • International Film Festival Rotterdam
    Rotterdamn
    Netherlands
    January 30, 2017
    Netherlands Premiere
  • Whitney Museum: Dreamlands Exhibition
    New York, NY
    United States
    October 8, 2016
  • Images Festival
    Toronto, Ontario
    United States
    April 18, 2015
    Canadian Premiere
  • Redcat Theater: Let It Be Known, Films Inspired by Octavia Butler
    Los Angeles, CA
    United States
    November 28, 2016
  • BFI: Black Star
    London
    United Kingdom
    November 18, 2016
    UK Premier
  • Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago: Black Radical Imagination
    Chicago, IL
    United States
    May 17, 2016
    US Premier
  • Flaherty Seminar
    New York, NY
    United States
    January 19, 2017
Director Biography - Adebukola Bodunrin, Ezra Claytan Daniels

Adebukola Bodunrin is a film, video, and installation artist who explores language, culture, and media. In her collage animations, she manipulates film using unorthodox manual and digital techniques in order to produce unexpected cinematic experiences. Bodunrin completed her Master of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been screened or exhibited nationally and internationally at venues that include the Jersey City Museum of Art, the Scope Art Fair, Onion City Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Nightingale, Chicago, Festival Animator, Poznań, Poland, Ok, Quoi? festival, Sackville, New Brunswick, Anthology Film Archives, New York, and the Black Cinema House, Chicago, the Whitney Museum of Art, New York. She has participated in studio residences at the Chicago Artists Coalition as a participant of the BOLT residency, and at the Chicago Cultural Center. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

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Director Statement

The Golden Chain is a first time collaboration between experimental filmmaker Adebukola Bodunrin and graphic novelist Ezra Claytan Daniels. Fluent in very different disciplines, the two artists found common ground in their passion for Afrofuturism. Bodunrin has thrived exploring the loose structures and formal play of experimental cinema, while Daniels has met acclaim with rigid, cerebral science fiction graphic novels.

The Golden Chain finds the two artists intertwining their contrasting aesthetics to revisit the themes of the Yoruba creation tale. Obatala’s descent from the heavens to create the earth and mankind becomes an astronaut traveling to the edge of the galaxy to create a new Heaven. Blending traditional motifs with hard science fiction, Bodunrin and Daniels create a world at once fantastical, yet almost plausible, in order to ask the question: "Where will we go, given where we came from?"