Reginaldo on Black Is King

Reginaldo Antunes is a talented Namibian creative who worked on Beyoncé's  latest visual album that was released globally July 31, 2020 on Disney plus.

Antunes made it possible to work on the production of Black is king through his projects of the same creation.

“So basically I was working on my own projects of a similar nature did an art exhibition last year and I used Ovahimba ladies, I continued working with them and I created a relationship with them. I would constantly go back to them and post pictures of them on my social media accounts. Having the right people follow me, one of my friends from South Africa who also worked on the project, contacted me with the Ovahimba ladies so then I got on board,” he said.

Additionally, apart from himself and the two ladies from the Ovahimba culture they are the only Namibians who worked on the project, he said.

Black is king was filmed in various countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Belgium, the U.S, the U.K and South Africa, just to name a few.

“The movie and music videos were filmed in different parts of the world and they were brought together but the scenes that we worked on were done in Zululand, Durban,” he says.
The Scenes that involve the Ovahimba ladies:
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“Black is king is focused on Simba from the Lion king and what happens is that he loses his crown to his uncle who misleads him and misguides him, so he then needs to find himself back at the Ovahimba people who are basically a point of reference of our original culture, before the west came and told us that being black was not good enough or wearing your traditional attire was not good enough, that is what we used to wear before, so the scenes which they were filming was more were the older Simba comes and he finds himself, he comes back to his people, to his originality,” he said.

According to Antunes, black is worthy and black is king, having melanin in your skin, having nappy hair and having curls is more than good enough.

“Speaking about Black is king personally, us as black people we have been stripped off our dignity and our identity and as I said earlier, the movie is focused on Simba who loses his crown and he loses himself, it is a journey whereby you need to find yourself, you need to find your identity and you need to get your identity back, it is just realising that it is good to be black,” he said.

“I am really proud to have worked in this art piece because before that I was working on my own art, I did it from the bottom of my heart where I was trying to educate other black people. We need to get our own dignity, we need to accept ourselves and our identity back because if we do not know who we are other people will then define us and they will tell us what to wear, what Gods to worship, how we should be and behave, they can take advantage of that for their own benefit and not for us, our heritage and our culture will become extinct,” he says.
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Antunes dreams of working with big personalities “I would not mind working with Kanye west, Lady gaga, Pharrell wiliams just to mention a few. I always feel like dreams are free and why not dream big and I mean, I never knew that I would be on credits of a Beyoncé production and here I am,” he said.