Project Description
Darol Olu Kae
Black Film Project – FSC Fellow 2025-26
Darol Olu Kae is an award-winning filmmaker from and based in Los Angeles, California. His highly collaborative, research-based approach to storytelling draws from local, community histories, utilizing real-life stories to build introspective films that carry the poetry and power of black existence. Kae’s films have screened at festivals and institutions worldwide including Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), BlackStar Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center, International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Locarno Film Festival, MoMA, SXSW Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival. He is currently writing his debut feature film, Without a Song.
FSC Works
Message to the Messenger
Darol Olu Kae
Message to the Messenger is a feature-length essay film that uses legendary jazz drummer Art Blakey’s enigmatic journey to West Africa in the late 1940s to explore the deeper forces behind his music. Navigating the historical ambiguity created by Blakey’s own contradictory accounts, the film moves past the myth of the singular musical genius to reveal how a personal search for meaning shaped a powerful philosophy of music and life. Message to the Messenger is a meditation on the social and spiritual stimuli that made his art possible, while also examining the complex relationship between Africans and Black Americans.
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Announcing the 2025-26 FSC Fellows
We are excited to welcome nineteen Film Study Center fellows to our community this year. We look forward to supporting their work!