A documentary look at Memphis’ rap culture, caught between visibility and disappearance. Framed by a car ride with rapper Lachat (Chastity Daniels), the film 'The Other Queen of Memphis' unfolds a layered portrait of the local scene, where personal memory, social reality, and musical lineage intertwine. Between the figures of Lachat and Gangsta Boo, a double narrative emerges: one of female presence, influence, and the unspeakable woven into the city’s cultural memory. A central element is the film’s atmospheric score, co-created by New York based artist Embaci, whose work rooted in operatic vocals, experimental production, and poetic compression opens up alternative emotional spaces. Her live concert following the screening echoes the film’s themes, extending them into a sound-based dimension that bridges intimacy and scale.
About the film
Memphis, outdoors, cold. The first Queen is Lachat, an idolised local rapper with gold teeth. At the driving wheel, she guides us through her winding story, which is a little like this city, or at least the vision of it that she wants to convey to us. Riding alongside her, the film agrees to lose its way and quite quickly turns into an opaque quest: recounting Memphis’s rapper community, the successes, blind spots, inspirations, disappearances, joys and violence. Here, Lachat is sovereign, she drives her stories to the locations involved and through this mysterious drift she becomes a secret queen, the queen of the ruins she uncovers for us. Yet, although the film draws on an encounter, it shuns portraiture. Behind the first queen, from out of the invisible, her double is spawning. Another rapper, the other queen: Gangsta Boo. Immense but destroyed by this city and its stories. It would be overstepping the mark to say she’s a ghost, she still exists through Lachat, who reveals her. This other queen is a little like Lachat, a little like this city, still there but at the same time not really. What better than a film from a moving car to tell the story without saying too much: go fast, develop the mystery and find your right distance. The supreme frame, the right distance, would be that of the car window: a frame within a frame cut as an American shot. A passing frame that stops on people, their rules, their music, our fantasies, their unspeakable lives, their teeth, and their stories in gold.
(Clémence Arrivé Guezengar)
Information on accessibility and language
The evening – including the film screening, conversation, and poetry reading – will take place in English. Translation will be provided if needed. The concert will not feature strobe lighting or rapid light changes; only minimal haze will be used.
Doors open at 8:30 PM
Start: 9:30 PM
