Kumi James

Kumi James is an American multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker, DJ, radio host and music producer who performs under the stage name BAE-BAE.

Career
In 2013 Kumi James founded the New Negress Film Society, a Black femme and non-binary collective that aims to promote their short films. The name alludes to Alain Locke’s 1925 book The New Negro which was written to challenge the beliefs held by politicians, social scientists, and artists that positioned Black people in America as social problems. The first exhibition by the NNFS was held at Brooklyn Fire Proof in New York on May 23, 2013, and titled I am a Negress of Noteworthy Talent. Running for more than a decade now, the NNFS has featured works from many artists including Nevline Nnaji, Nuotama Bodomo, Nikyatu Jusu, Dyani Douze, Stefani Saintonge, Chanelle Aponte Pearson and Yvonne Michelle Shirley.

While at Columbia University studying for an MFA James recalls feeling that there was a lack of clear direction and support for their short film Savage to be exhibited and distributed by faculty and advisors. While reading feminist theory as a counter-discourse to its apolitical program James was inspired to start the New Negress Film Society in order to promote the films of other Black femme and non-binary talents. The collective has since exhibited works in multiple venues such as the Brooklyn Museum, Anthology Film Archives, Hammer Museum, Black Radical Imagination, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Afrikana Independent Film Festival, NY Media Center, Indiana University Cinema, and the South Dallas Cultural Center.

Kumi James has written and directed several short films that center on themes of race. Their short film Savage was featured at the Brooklyn Fire Proof for those exact themes. The film takes the well-known story of a white teacher who goes into urban communities with a romanticized idea of pushing the Black character(s) into respectability and being the inspiration for their future accomplishments and flips it. Hollywood stories such as Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds are examples of this narrative. One pivotal scene in these established Hollywood narratives is one where the teacher shows up at the house of the student. In Savage the role is reversed with the student appearing at the teacher's house in order to showcase just how uncomfortable and inappropriate violating one’s privacy in that way actually is.

In 2020 Kumi James founded Hood Rave, an alternative space in the L.A. dance scene where the majority of DJs are Black femme and/or queer. The event draws on the Black roots of rave culture in order to return its participants to those roots. Friend and fellow artist Kita Clarke run Hood Rave together with Kumi to create the infrastructure necessary for the event.