Awards
Special Jury Award for Documentary Feature, deadCenter Film Festival
Diversity Film Prize, Afrika Film Festival Köln
Jury Award for Non-Fiction Feature, Wicked Queer: Boston’s LGBTQ Film Festival
Best Documentary Nominee, SXSW
Special Presentation, Hot Docs
Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Documentary, Utah Queer Film Festival
Audience Award for Best Documentary, Black Alphabet Film Festival, Chicago
Honorable Mention for Audience Award, Wicked Queer: Boston’s LGBTQ Film Festival
Reviews
“Stunning”
– New York Daily News
“Ambitious”
– IndieWire
“Empowering… Assembly is a loud and proud assertion from a community that refuses to be dismissed anymore.”
– POV Magazine
“A marvelous documentary…Newsome is infectious and a force of nature as he imagines, improvises, and executes his dazzling vision. ‘Assembly’ will make everyone jealous about missing Newsome’s multimedia production in person, yet grateful that this fabulous film exists to show them what happened.”
– Philadelphia Gay News
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“Assembly is a rich, extraordinary documentary that takes its lead from Newsome’s expansive, inspiring and invigorating process as an artist. Not only does it capture the excitement and anticipation of putting on a show and the thrill of seeing it come together from conception to execution, but it compellingly delivers the emotional human stories of many of those involved and presents us with some profound questions.”
– The Queer Review
“An artistic triumph, it’s the most innovative documentary of Frameline49, offering us a future vision of unlimited possibilities when we allow love to empower us to live fully and freely in joyful resilient communities.”
– Bay Area Reporter
“The work of artist Rashaad Newsome, [creates] a new space for Black and queer culture.”
– Variety
“Assembly isn’t simply a portrait of resistance — it’s a blueprint for what becomes possible when Black queer artists are given the space to flourish on their own terms. It’s not designed for White institutions. It’s not asking to be decoded. It asserts its own language, its own logic, its own audience.”
– Damien Davis, HYPERALLERGIC
“Assembly is Olympic-level, award-winning, *best of the best* contemporary art of our time. The film provokes critical thought, invokes predecessors and spirits, and invites viewers to bring themselves into Rashaad Newsome’s work. Newsome’s profound love and acceptance is a model of interconnected healing. I was visually and spiritually dazzled and I will never be the same.”
– Zackary Drucker, Artist/Activist
“Assembly fuses the energy of the Queer underground with sharp political commentary, capturing the behind-the-scenes process of Newsome’s groundbreaking installation … an Afrofuturist reality where power, pleasure and resistance collide.”
– Melbourne News
“A visually stunning and thought-provoking cinematic journey that reimagines art as a tool for resistance and community-building.”
– Black Girl Nerds
“Newsome, as a main character, is compelling – an artist pouring the deepest parts of himself into his work and who genuinely believes in the power of it to elicit healing and change.”
– The Austin Chronicle