Our Summer Music Festival continues with a unique look at La Chat, the Memphis rapper known for her uncompromising attitude and hard-hitting lyrics.

Belgian artist Luna Mahoux’s The Other Queen of Memphis details the ins-and-outs of the Southern city’s rap scene, featuring none other than pioneering female rapper La Chat at the helm to chronicle the histories of violence, activism, and solidarity that have defined a whole generation’s musical output. We’re delighted to present this short film in collaboration with AIRTIME, an alternative streaming platform dedicated for filmmakers from around the world to show work independent from institutions. In New York, Metrograph will also present the U.S. premiere of The Other Queen of Memphis in collaboration with Montez Press Radio; the latter is hosting La Chat in concert alongside her peers.

The Other Queen of Memphis introduces us to La Chat in the middle of a performance, her iconic gold teeth shining beneath bright blue lights. Soon, she becomes Mahoux’s Memphis tour guide, driving the filmmaker around to a series of locations that invoke personal and historical memories. Her spirit wanes and swells throughout her conversations with Mahoux, yet she remains funny and forthright in their chats. Over the course of several drives, what emerges is a sinuous snapshot of Memphis — shot in probing, graceful long takes by DoP Kevin Elamrani-Lince — that reveals how the legacies of dearly departed trailblazers like Martin Luther King Jr. and La Chat’s friend Gangsta Boo continue to influence the city’s  arts scene.

“La Chat didn’t answer my emails, and numerous messages. So I set off alone with a friend to look for her in Memphis, scouring the clubs and the city. I met my driver Mike Clayton who was suspicious at first, but we got to know each other and he gave me this first date with La Chat one night in a bar. She told me she’d always refused to make documentaries about herself, but after Gangsta’s death, she felt ready and it fell to me.” LUNA MAHOUX

As an artist and a filmmaker, Mahoux has always been interested in the history of Black music. While at Beaux-Arts in Cergy, she spent a year in Chicago researching and writing about the music from the south side of the city. Since then, she has become more invested in how Black music functions as a tool of community resistance, but troubled by the lack of archival care awarded to it compared to other forms of music. Studying at Le-Fresnoy, she made it her mission “to make visible what I’ve never seen,” by which she means “a documentary about iconic Black female rappers.”

Luna Mahoux was born in Dessié, Ethiopia, in 1996. She studied classical art at La Cambre in Brussels and received a double master’s degree from Beaux-Arts in Cergy. More recently, she became enrolled in Le Fresnoy, where she has built upon her tradition of representing the Black diaspora through archival documentaries. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including KANAL – Centre Pompidou Brussels, Basel Social Club, and Photo Museum Antwerp, among other prestigious art institutions.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Aslı Baykal, Kaila Hier, Luna Mahoux, and producer Le Fresnoy.