Uptight (1968) Poster

Designed for the From Below Microcinema screening on June 18, 2025

One of the most iconic scenes in the phenomenal Black Radical thriller Uptight involves the main character, Tank, examining himself through a series of fun house mirrors, speaking to the morphing, degrading, anxious ways his self-image are being affected by the situations of the film. Beyond that, a core visual motif is Julian Mayfield, co-writer of the screenplay and star (as Tank), and his sweaty face, sprawled across the frame of the film, as he tries to assume different faces amongst the groups of radicals that he has a precarious relationship to. I wanted to capture those two ideas in creating a morphing, psychedelic tripartite portrait of Mayfield for this poster, which plays with and against the life-or-death situations within the movie, hinting at both the national moments following MLK’s assassination, and in the inner state of the main character, as his face slips from conviviality to worry and fear.