A conversation about design, filmmaking, Afrofuturism, world-building,
and other topics with Hannah Beachler, Academy-Award-winning production
designer of Black Panther.
Hannah Beachler is known as an award-winning production designer, but
she tells an audience that she considers herself to be more of a story
designer. As film stills and concept art from a few of those
stories--Moonlight, Miles Ahead, Creed, Lemonade, and Black
Panther--flash across a screen, Beachler engages in a meandering
conversation with Jacqueline Stewart and Toni L. Griffin about set
building and curation, urban design, location scouting, Afrofuturism,
fictional histories, and Black feminist narratives, and illustrates her
role: a designer behind on-screen tableaux that provide not only visual
feasts of artistry and imagination, but also intimate spaces of emotion,
humanity, and constructed memory.