No one embodied that auteurist ambition like Donald Glover. The 35-year-old headlined Friday night under his Childish Gambino moniker amid excited whispers about Guava Island, a project of his that had been shrouded in mystery and debuted for a small number of people in the desert just the night before. The 55-minute movie, tenderly shot in Havana by Glover’s frequent collaborator Hiro Murai, is something like Purple Rain shrunk way down for a short run on cable. It stars Glover as a rebellious musician on a tropical island that is under the brutal rule of a sort of paramilitary capitalist regime (the film is now available exclusively on Amazon Prime).

Guava Island, which co-stars Rihanna, is charming but narratively undercooked, and it works most interestingly as a tonal counterpoint to Glover’s Friday night set itself. For the performance, Glover was again photographed expertly. But where Murai’s camera in Guava Island (or in “Atlanta”) plays to Glover’s considerable strengths as an actor—especially his eyes and the way they project distrust—the Coachella set was shot in a way that emphasized a Glover who was always in motion, confronting the audience and the viewer at home.

Cameras tracked him closely and rendered him in jarring HD on screens beside the stage; he was always shirtless and usually bathed in colored light of some kind. In between songs, Glover spoke in cryptic, urgent fragments, at one point musing about his father’s passing. It was an audacious turn at the top of the marquee, even if Glover has yet to become a consistently engaging musician.