Beyond the Frame: kelechi agwuncha Talks Presence, Possibility and Taking Up More Space

by Kai Warrior

kelechi agwuncha is an Igbo-American, first-generation filmmaker, documentarian, and storyteller. agwuncha combines audio and visual blips in time with fervor and play, inviting you into their world while motivating you to question your own. Born and raised in Illinois, earning their BA at Southern Illinois University and their master’s at The University of California, San Diego, they landed in New Mexico in 2022. agwuncha employs their connection to body, introspection, childhood, and play to pair with feelings that arise from being diasporic, Black, and present-minded in the Western world, creating works that stick with the person experiencing them.

“I am diasporic and I have been fragmented in a way. Having to take on all these identities and in moving to New Mexico, there is a culture that I’m coming into and learning from and witnessing that I will carry within my spirit and my values.” - kelechi agwuncha

Diaspora as Medium

agwuncha spent their childhood playing outdoors, participating in sports like hockey, rollerblading and soccer. They watched their dad act as the family documentarian and pondered the fabrication of fantasy while watching various bootlegged West African, Senegalese, and Nollywood films, which piqued their interest in filmmaking. Later, they began embedding video, sound, and television monitors into their physical sculptural works, opening up an entirely new approach to creating.

Performance As Portal

One of their more recent works, amplifies it, doubles it, and trebles it, is a live multimedia performance series that debuted in Santa Fe in 2024, founded and produced by agwuncha. “The performances integrate video installations, poetry, sound, and lighting to communicate a language of possibility that connects with nature and open-air spaces,” and agwuncha is searching for funding to bring that experience to Albuquerque.

Doing the Work

agwuncha is rupturing past First Cinema—which is cinema designed for entertainment, distraction, and profit—into Third Cinema. Third Cinema explores the importance of documentary work within the film industry. Its purpose is to receive, document, and recollect narratives without any sort of overseer filtering the stories and information. “I think I'm learning how to develop this framework of politics within documentary work. This is a whole new sphere for me… I’ve watched it, but I've never really been taught what the deep history is. And that's what I'm interested in—I'm interested in doing the homework,” says agwuncha.

Creation as Resistance

In works titled “synonyms of orange” and “tether,” their purpose is assessing the experience of recess in the Western elementary school system and how we understand recess as a space of social formation for children and “productivity” as they grow into adulthood. “There’s something about what’s happening in Gaza and the Southern Hemisphere of Africa that made me think, ‘What am I doing? …I need to do something.’” That’s what agwuncha has been focusing on lately. They’ve created works in the past that have been indirectly political, but agwuncha is now making the conscious decision to create more directly political artworks.

Firsts in Focus

agwuncha is currently working on a few firsts. They’re making their first documentary, titled breath to breath, about Phoenix Savage, a queer elder who’s leading a peer-led teaching program that makes loving space for yoga and song for women in New Mexico’s Springer Correctional Facility; the goal is reminding the viewer of the humanity and softness tightly tangled up within the incarceration system. Along with that, agwuncha is editing their first-ever music video for an artist known as BSA Gold (a.k.a. Baredu Ahmed), and recently traveled to Indiana to film it, having watched a handful of Sinead O’Connor music videos in preparation.

Learn more about agwuncha and their work at: kelechiagwuncha.com