English and African American studies professor Irvin Hunt thought twice before he answered a phone call from an unknown caller, but little did he know that it was about to change everything. It came from film director Kahlil Joseph, asking Hunt if he would be interested in writing a script for his newest film idea
The opportunity would take Hunt from the classroom to Ghana to the world-renowned Sundance Film Festival. Hunt was commissioned as a lead screenwriter for “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions ” (2025), Joseph’s Afro-futurist film that “interweaves fictional and historical characters in an immersive story that spans 247 years across land and sea,” according to the official film description.
It was a significant moment for Hunt. Though he focuses mostly on teaching and scholarship, and he recently published his first book, “Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement” (UNC Press), he had thought about getting involved in filmmaking since he was in graduate school at Columbia University and was introduced to the work of Swedish film director screenwriter Ingmar Bergman.
“I watched (Bergman’s) films over and over again. What captivated me was how intimately he portrayed some of the most difficult human emotions. He would bring the camera so closely to a character's face you felt like the entire story was taking place there. The face was like an image in a poem, and there's nothing that has pulled me into the magic of writing more than the magic of images. I wanted to do on the page what Bergman did with a camera."
While Hunt’s interest in film bloomed in graduate school, his journey to the written word began at a young age. After his father passed away when Hunt was 12, Hunt grieved and found relief through the written word.
“It's difficult to understand what drew me to words at that time, but I think it was how quiet my Dad was. I think I made some basic connection between his silence and his passing. Since then language and poetry has been a kind of lifeline," Hunt said.
He’s always strived to expand storytelling techniques. That’s why when Joseph—who’d learned of Hunt from someone who’d read Hunt’s book—called about “BLKNWS,” Hunt felt that the opportunity was “heaven-sent.” Hunt was familiar with Joseph’s stunning work on the companion film to Beyonce's 2016 album "Lemonade." Hunt knew that Joseph’s desire to portray the richness and beauty of Black life aligned with his own.
“I don’t know if you’ve had a moment where time seems to fall away in a conversation, but it was kind of out of body,” said Hunt, thinking back to his initial phone call with Joseph. “And by the end of our conversation he asked me whether I wanted this project or not. I said, ‘I’m doing this.’”
Joseph explained that he wanted a screenplay detailing the end of William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois’ life in Ghana for a diasporic nonlinear feature film. Du Bois, a highly revered figure in the Civil Rights Movement, is known for many accomplishments, from co-founding the NAACP to his tireless challenges to historical racist ideologies and social structures.
Hunt would write about a lesser discussed period of Du Bois’ life, when he moved to Ghana to work on his final project, “The Encyclopedia Africana,” and focus on the Pan-African movement to unify people of African descent. Hunt would essentially tell the story of the end of Du Bois’ life, from when he was invited to Ghana by President Kwame Nkrumah to when he died in 1963, at age 95.
Hunt’s story is woven into the film among other screenplays. He explores how Du Bois might have been grieving his daughter Yolande, who recently passed away. She was the second child he lost. At the same time, Hunt said, he had also lost a country. Authorities in the United States refused to renew his passport and made his working life insufferable due to his leftist politics, according to the professor. So in the same year he buried his daughter, he decided to move to Ghana in a sort of exile. Hunt wondered how these disruptions affected his emotional and intellectual life.
It was a high-pressure assignment, not only because Hunt had a relatively short deadline of about two months, but also because he would be working with a star film crew. His screenplay would be shot by “Selma” (2014) cinematographer Bradford Young, edited by Oscar-winning “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022) editor Paul Rogers, and directed by "Time" (2020) producer and director Garrett Bradley. Being on set with them, along with the actors Penny Johnson (Shirley Graham) and Peter Fernandez (Du Bois), who embodied the screenplay with arresting depth, was a clinic in collaboration, Hunt said.
To write the screenplay, Hunt had to understand the project and the characters at a deep level. He remembers trying to think of the types of jokes Du Bois might’ve told or even laughed at.
“It took a lot of meditation,” Hunt recalled. “I wrote a lot of it in this park on Devonshire Drive next to Harvest Market (in Champaign) because there’s this beautiful pond and meditation area,” Hunt said. “When writing under pressure, I had to enter from a place of play.”
He was writing right up until he got on the plane to fly to the film set in Ghana. Once there, he was rewarded for his work by watching his writing come to life through actors, scenery, and cinematography. Through careful selection of the details being portrayed in the film, from the tropical flowers on Du Bois’ dining room table to the type of automobiles present at that period in history, the project team was devoted to accurately and creatively portraying Du Bois’ life.
“There was so much creative energy on these sets and so much devotion to the bigger idea of finally telling a story for a broad public about one of the most important figures in African American history,” Hunt said.
When Hunt saw “BLKNWS” for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival, he said he was "no doubt nervous." But as soon as it started rolling he was immersed and impressed with how Joseph edited the material.
“By the time it turned into the film, it became a new different thing,” Hunt said. “I look at it now like this part of a whole, a creature in this world he has made. I had a small part to play in a huge collective undertaking.”
He added: “There's this quote from June Jordan that I feel really resonates with this film's message for marginalized people today. In a poem for South African women subjected to apartheid, she wrote, ‘We are the ones we've been waiting for.’”
Hunt is currently working on two books, a short story collection, “I Can't Make You Speak,” and a study of modern Black poetry, “A New Language for Grief.”Hunt plans to do more screenwriting in the future.
Editor's note: A symposium on "BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions” will be held on campus in spring 2026 and will include a screening of the film and a public conversation with film director Kahlil Joseph. Details coming soon.
