Repurposed found and archival materials prompt a series of fascinating dialogues across generations exploring forgotten histories, memories of colonial trauma, and gentrification as cultural erasure. Total runtime: 104’

So They Say
Ayo Akingbade | 2019 | UK | 11’

Set in 1985 and the present day, the film explores and reflects on the often forgotten histories of the Afro-Caribbean and South Asian community struggle in East London. The legacy of community and activist group Newham Monitoring Project is spotlighted.  

Sight Unseen
Alessandra Ferrini | 2019 | UK | 19’

Omar al-Mukhtar (1885-1931) was the leader of the organised resistance against the Italian colonisation of Libya (1911-1943). Sight Unseen reflects on his life and the related histories through the analysis of visual and material culture that has been subject to either manipulation or obfuscation, attempting to portray the carefully orchestrated politics of visibility and invisibility that shape the memory of colonial trauma in Italy.

This is an Address
Sasha Wortzel | 2020 | USA | 18’

This is an Address interweaves a 1995 interview with prominent trans activist Sylvia Rivera and unhoused LGBTQ+ folks, many of whom are HIV-positive and facing barriers to accessing care on the basis of having no permanent address, with recent documentation of the area as it is redeveloped as a “cultural corridor” populated by art museums and luxury condos.

Softer
Ayanna Dozier | 2019 | USA | 5′

Softer examines the demands of “softening” that are requested of Black women’s bodies in society—from job prospects to romantic ones—be that in their voice, their manners, and, critically, their hair. The experimental short plays upon the grooming rituals of softening that are terrifyingly rough through a recreation of a perm by a permanent wave machine (popular in the 1930s-1950s).

The Way We Wait
Ji-Yoon Park | 2020 | UK, South Korea | 11’

Soon after the director moves into her 22nd house, she receives a phone call that her grandmother is in a critical condition. Elsewhere, a huge apartment made of sand is being constructed as the tide rolls in, while she belatedly tries to build a relationship with her grandmother. As the camera observes how we wait for the upcoming days, The Way We Wait embraces the fragility and uncertainty of life.

A Song About Love
Rikkí Wright | 2019 | Italy, Germany, USA | 14’

A Song About Love explores the complex relationship between sexuality and religion, and the director’s personal experience with finding herself within that paradigm: navigating what redemptive love vs. real love is.

Superheroes without Superpower
Beatrice Baldacci | 2019 | Italy | 15’

Drawing from blurred VHS images and equally blurry childhood memories, Superheroes without Superpowers shows a journey in which the filmmaker processes some of the most important moments of her life and the relationship with her mother and her sickness, reconstructs the most intimate of narratives in order to find what she had lost. 

I ran from it and was still in it
Darol Olu Kae | 2020 | USA | 11’

I ran from it and was still in it poetically interweaves personal family memories with original and found footage to offer a more complex portrait of loss and separation. Kae wades through deep emotions surrounding the death of his father and the sudden relocation of his children, repurposing intimate family scenes from daily life by pairing them with archival materials sourced online to explore how the autobiographical model can potentially extend beyond the personal.

Screening includes Q&A with filmmakers.

Available: Block 2 (Sat 12th Sept midday – Tue 15th Sept midnight BST)

Please note: this programme is only available to view in the UK.