丁香园AV

Please tell us about ...to glimpse: African Cinema Now!, your curated film series.

I've been thinking about access to African cinema, its short life span in the festival circuits, and the need for it to live beyond that and be ingrained as a noticeable canon in broader film discourse and history. There's an endurance of classic African cinema that has formed a language of being within dispossession and oppression, and far beyond that. To examine the ways this language and a more extensive lexicon of African storytelling has continued to emerge and expand in refusal to western imagination 鈥� I was excited to curate this program focusing on contemporary African cinema from 2017 鈥� now.  

I'm interested in film from a lens I'm personally framing as the spiritual, but is commonly referred to in film as magical realism or surrealism, which deals with sometimes hard-to-articulate situations through often unexpected or unfamiliar means. I think about this idea with the hope of examining the complex space where these genres intersect as a site for possible resistance and for creating a re-newed language when cut off from traditional or cultural practices, specifically in the context of migration, (post-)colonization and the aftermath of trans-Atlantic slavery, which continues to frame and affect the experiences of Black people across the diaspora. This program highlights African cinema, but Black people throughout the diaspora are theorizing and creating a new language rooted in the spiritual as a tool for framing dispossession and the unfathomability of systemic oppression, cultural destruction, and ongoing colonization. I think of the idea of spiritual aesthetics as a meeting point of the past and the future, how we honor history and envision futures yet to come.  

What are the films in the series?

For now, there is (2019), (2017), and (2023), but more films will be announced soon. .

What other curatorial projects are you working on?

I'm also curator in residence at , with a show in the works that should be out between October and December, 2024. I've also recently started in the position of Assistant Curator, Engagement at , UBC. It's a great position, and I'm learning more and thinking about exhibition-related programming.  

Knowing that you're also a filmmaker, artist, and writer, what artistic projects are you working on?

Filmmaking has been a bit harder since graduating, but I'm glad to be working on my first short film since graduation, which is for 's BIPOC New Media Screen. I love a cohort-based project, so it's been exciting. I also have a performance at the Western Front in conjunction with their current exhibition, . A group of us will read the letters we have written as part of an ongoing project by the exhibiting artists titled Shameless Light. I have a film showing in the exhibition, It begins with knowing and not knowing, at starting in July.

Returning to the SCA, how was your time here? Any particularly memorable class, events, or people?

I liked the Magic and Cinema class I took in my 4th year with Laura U. Marks; It helped me think of cinema even more as a flexible, unpredictable, and expansive thing. Great teachers and mentors like Kimberly Philips, Joe Clark, and 鈥� without their trust in me and guidance, I would be way more confused than I am now :)

What advice would you give prospective and new students to the SCA (and 丁香园AV more generally)?

Have fun with your work, and experiment as much as possible. There is a tendency for work to emerge from a place of exploiting others 鈥� try to avoid that. Consider what you put into the work and take care of yourself accordingly. Foster relationships that aren't only about making art but about genuine connection and having fun. Focus on what interests you. If your interests aren't available, don't be afraid to advocate and shape it for yourself. Also, apply for everything and take advantage of great workshops in the city. I wish I had the capacity to do more of them!