Kemp Powers
2023 Filmmakers of the Year Didn’t Make Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Alone
Kemp Powers, Joaquim Dos Santos, and Justin K. Thompson pushed animation to new limits -- but they had plenty of help. 2023 Filmmakers of the Year Didn’t Make Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Alone Ben Kaye
Regina King’s One Night in Miami Is a Quiet and Powerful Meditation on Race: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The Pitch: On the night of Cassius Clay’s (Eli Goree) historic win over Sonny Liston in 1964, the man who would become Muhammad Ali gathers his friends — Muslim Brotherhood activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), football player Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) — to celebrate, debate, and plan for a new world. Play It Again, Sam: Based on real events, Kemp Powers’ 2013 play is a speculative consideration of what happened when the four African American icons gathered together for one night in 1964. Historically, this is the year that Cooke would be murdered; Malcolm X would be assassinated the following year in 1965. Expanding upon his original source material, Powe...
Pixar on How Personal Experiences Influenced Soul
Soul marks a series of firsts for Pixar. It’s the first film the studio has ever released with a Black protagonist, a music teacher voiced by Jamie Foxx; it’s the studio’s first film with a Black co-director in screenwriter Kemp Powers; and the first Pixar film to go straight to streaming. Due out on Christmas via Disney+, Soul follows Joe Gardner (Foxx), a music teacher whose aspirations of performing jazz come to fruition after he nabs a cushy performing gig with a well-respected group. That is, until he falls to his death. Now, left as a metaphysical soul, Joe endeavors to return to Earth to his body before it’s too late. It’s an imaginative journey that the Emeryville, California-based animation studio brings to life with a startling array of visuals that feel unprecedented. Edito...
