IF NOT NOW
Kordae Jatafa Henry
Artwork Description:
IF NOT NOW is a speculative short film and expanded cinema work situated at the threshold of ecological collapse, where ritual, sound, and performance operate as technologies of survival rather than narrative devices. The film unfolds through a series of choreographed gestures and environmental encounters, treating landscape as an active system—one that records extraction, ceremony, and adaptation over time. Human figures move in relation to animal traces, weather patterns, and sonic frequencies, allowing affect to guide meaning where language recedes. Sound design and score function as a temporal engine within the work, stretching and compressing time to create a state of suspended urgency. Dialogue is minimal; instead, the film prioritizes embodied listening, repetition, and rhythm as methods of knowing. Visual effects and compositing are used sparingly and deliberately—not as spectacle, but as a way to reveal invisible forces shaping the environment. Formally, IF NOT NOW embraces slowness, looping structures, and restraint, resisting linear resolution in favor of accumulation and resonance. The work positions cinema as a site of attunement—where image, sound, and movement collaborate to ask how we sense responsibility before we understand it. Rather than proposing solutions, IF NOT NOW functions as an invocation: a call to notice what is already failing, already transforming, and already asking for care.
Project Collaborators:
IF NOT NOW was made possible with development and production support from Sundance New Frontier Lab, Tribeca, Warner Media, and Onassis ONX, with additional support from NEW INC / New Museum, Artizen, MAPS Design Lab, and Onassis Stegi. The film is written and directed by Kordae Jatafa Henry and produced by Serial Pictures, with producing support from Sophia Rothbart, Juan Sebastian Jaimes, Paola Ossa, and executive producer Sarah Greco. Performances by Brixx (Mahatma Brixx) and Bones (Bones the Machine) are choreographed by Marlon Taylor Wiles, with additional performances by Oscar Vera and Jonathan Redore. Cinematography by Htat Htut, original music by Jamire Williams, sound design and VFX by Kordae Henry, and color by Kya Lou shape the film’s audiovisual language. Technical and research support was provided by Matthew Niederhauser and John Fitzgerald (ONX).
