‘Meet the Artist: Saul Williams’

For this edition of Afropolitan Festival, BOZAR invites multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams. He will present his last movie, co-directed with Anisia Uzeyman, Neptune Frost, and will have an in-depth conversation with Simone Zeefuik on his work as slam poet and musician. 
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Saul Williams (1972) has received an MFA in acting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. While at NYU, he often transcribed hip-hop lyrics into monologues for his theater classes. He started actively reading poetry in 1995 and was named a Grand Slam Champion at the Nuyorican Poets Café a year later. The documentary film SlamNation portrays the story of the Nuyorican Poets slam team, of which Saul Williams was member, that made all the way to the National Poetry Slam finals. In 1997, Williams landed the lead role in the Lions Gate film Slam and received raves for his performance as an imprisoned street poet. In 2001, he released Amethyst Rock Star, his first solo debut album which is considered unique in terms of connections of styles, genre and rhythms. After gaining global fame for his poetry and writings at the turn of the century, Williams has performed in over 30 countries and read in over 300 universities, with invitations that have spanned from the White House, the Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center, The Louvre, Queen Elizabeth Hall, to countless, villages, townships, community centers, and prisons across the world. Most recently, Williams released Encrypted & Vulnerable, which acts as the score to the film Neptune Frost, a co-direction with filmmaker and poet Anisia Uzeyman.