The African Desperate: Preview Screening

The Skinny and MUBI are super excited to present a free screening of The African Desperate, artist Martine Syms’s wickedly funny send-up of the New York art scene.

The film tracks one very long day in the life of Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily), a newly minted MFA grad whose final 24 hours in art school become a real trip. Palace is a Black visual artist on the rise, and her success has rubbed some people up the wrong way. In protest, she vows to not attend her graduation party, even though she has promised to DJ it.

Channelling gonzo cinema and 1990s teen movies, the film follows Palace as she goes on a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory night-long odyssey, stumbling from academic critiques to backseat hookups.

Syms brings the razor-sharp satire and vivid aesthetic of her art practice to this visually inventive coming-of-age comedy, which riotously tracks the microaggressions and social dynamics that anyone familiar with the art world will recognise.