Jesus Is King

Jesus Is King (2019)

A Kanye West Film

Filmed during summer 2019, Jesus Is King brings Kanye West’s famed Sunday Service to life in the Roden Crater, visionary artist James Turrell’s never-before-seen installation in Arizona’s Painted Desert. This one-of-a-kind experience features songs arranged by West in the gospel tradition along with new music from his forthcoming album.

Date of release
2019-10-25
TMDB
4.9 / 10 (11)
Runtime
31m
Genres
Music, Documentary
Director
Nick Knight

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Roden Crater, Arizona, and United States

Jesus Is King is a 2019 American experimental concert short film written by rapper Kanye West and directed by Nick Knight. Featuring gospel songs arranged by West and material from his ninth studio album of the same name, it also serves as an album companion piece. Primarily shown through a circular eye and features differing shots of the Sunday Service Choir performing music, as well as various Bible verses, West only appears briefly and performs his material towards the end.

Production

On September 27, 2019, at a listening event for the album in Detroit's Fox Theatre, Kanye West revealed a film set to accompany his ninth studio album Jesus Is King. At the time, his wife Kim Kardashian had announced the film's title as Jesus Is Lord on her Instagram stories.

Jesus Is King features songs arranged by West in a gospel style and music from the album, fully "presented in the immersive sound and stunning clarity of IMAX". The film uses a few tracks from the record: "Selah", "Everything We Need", "Use This Gospel", and an alternate version of "Jesus Is Lord" entitled "Every Knee Shall Bow".

Roden Crater remained under construction at the time of West filming there, having been worked on by Turrell for around 40 years. In 2018, West toured the crater multiple times after he made trips across the United States to see Turrell's art and in December, he revealed his first pilgrimage to the location.

On October 17, 2019, British fashion photographer Nick Knight was announced as the director of Jesus Is King. He had worked with West in the past, shooting the music videos for his 2013 singles "Black Skinhead" and "Bound 2". Discussing collaborating with the rapper in an October 2019 interview, Knight drew a heavy comparison to how he worked with fashion designer Alexander McQueen, after "understanding his world and his desires".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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