Angela Adusah
Skin is poetry piece about the significance of embodying a black identity in America. Winner of Critics Choice and Best Local film for the Carnegie Museum of Art 2-Minute Film Festival 2016.
Written, Directed, Performed: Angela Adusah
Filmed, Co-Directed, Produced, Edited: Brennan Alexa
Angela Adusah, also known as Ama Akata, is an award-winning Ghanian-American director, artist and author raised in the Bronx, NY. Inspired by modes of self-actualization, Angela creates reflective pieces/works to add texture to the collective African experience.
Emmanuel Afolabi
Revolution is a 5 minute compilation pulled from the award-winning identity series, Black History Untold. The project tells untold Black histories through powerful and personal interviews. The full 30 min Black History Untold: Revolution documentary shares stories of Black revolution across the globe. Ballin and Afolabi worked to release this compilation with current protest footage after the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. This piece aims to showcase the lineage of resilience and love it takes to spark a revolution. It reminds us to be inspired by and learn from those before us.
Emmanuel Afolabi is a Nigerian-American Film and DIGITAL DIRECTOR, with a degree in Film Production - based in U.S.A. and living in Detroit, Michigan.
Afolabi’s work explores our collective humanity and the topic of identity, giving his subjects and clients individuality and dignity through visual storytelling. His primary mission is to empower communities of color and use visual platforms as a means of amplifying an array of voices.
Sofiya Ballin
Revolution is a 5 minute compilation pulled from the award-winning identity series, Black History Untold. The project tells untold Black histories through powerful and personal interviews. The full 30 min Black History Untold: Revolution documentary shares stories of Black revolution across the globe. Ballin and Afolabi worked to release this compilation with current protest footage after the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. This piece aims to showcase the lineage of resilience and love it takes to spark a revolution. It reminds us to be inspired by and learn from those before us.
Sofiya Ballin is an award-winning journalist, writer, producer and curator. She is the creator of the Black History Untold project.
She's written about trends such as cuffing season and the emergence of Black Twitter, covered major news events such as local Ferguson and Baltimore protests, photographed and produced digital fashion features, and contributed opinion pieces that speak to the Millennial soul. Ballin aims to humanize all walks of life through mentorship and her work, including being a Features Reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She’s interviewed everyone from Tyler Perry to Tamron Hall. Her written work has also been featured on Huffington Post, Okay Player and FADER. Her dedication to the craft has led her to honors that include being named the “2017 PABJ Journalist of the Year", a “Caribbean American 30 Under Thirty Emerging Leader” and Temple University’s “ 30 Under 30 Owls To Watch.”
“All my life, I’ve learned that there were stories untold and that not every legend was etched into bronze. My goal is to tell their stories.” The Temple graduate is a lover of culture and identity and takes every opportunity to interweave the elements of what makes us who we are into the fabric of her work.
Anagh Banerjee
The Other Side is a body of work on the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. This includes a series of woodcut prints and monoprints depicting first-hand accounts of Partition survivors. Based on personal stories of displacement and loss from the Partition, the project takes inspiration from the rich storytelling culture of India and finds expression in the gritty mark-making qualities of woodcut prints.
The objective of this ongoing labor of love is to balance the political narrative of the subcontinent with the incredible human story, thereby, taking small steps toward memorializing one of the greatest human tragedies in the history of humankind.
Anagh Banerjee is an illustrator, printmaker, and muralist originally from Mumbai, India, and currently based in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA from the Illustration as Visual Essay program at the School of Visual Arts, NY in 2018. While at SVA, he was awarded the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for Exceptional Achievement. His work has been recognized by several illustration publications such as Communication Arts, 3 x 3, Society of Illustrators LA, and American Illustration.
Javier Castro
Four Basic things (Coconuts) - A spiritual man throws four pieces of coconut to the ground in a bid to predict the future, but the tale of fate is never revealed to the viewer, who watches in constant wait. The video focuses on themes of uncertainty, anxiety, fortune and control.
Javier Castro (b. 1984) is a Cuban artist whose groundbreaking work focuses on the use of video and multimedia installations to explore the human experience and modes of survival. Castro examines Cuban contemporary society by presenting a unique perspective of diverse realities; from pleasures and frustrations, to vice and violence, language and love, and the other hidden complexities of life. He allows the human voice within the work to speak directly to the viewer, without manipulating or judging his subjects.
Castro has been awarded several grants and notable commission programmes. His work has been shown in more than fifteen countries from the United States to Senegal, Colombia to the United Kingdom. He lives between Havana and New York.
Aundre Larrow
Float, shot on the iPhone 13 Pro, is a short film about the journey that a father and daughter take together.
Aundre Larrow was born in Jamaica, grew up in south Florida, and is currently based in Brooklyn. Aundre is a photographer who tries to understand and communicate the core of what makes us human, and the fundamental value of each person. As an Adobe Creative Resident, Aundre has traveled the country to speak to people of all backgrounds where they’re at. Aundre also works on the set of W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades, which has a similar mission: excavating the distinct value and dignity of each human being.
Joekenneth Masau
Days after your Departure - After losing his mother to a years long battle with cancer, Joekenneth Museau is left to question the meaning of his own existence. He grapples with the nuances of grief and travels to his mother’s homeland in search for answers. Joekenneth’s poetic interludes narrate this true story of a young man fighting himself to stay alive. (HBO American Black Film Festival 2018 - Finalist)
Joekenneth Museau is a Brooklyn-bred artist who seeks to connect with the world around him through dynamic storytelling. Museau’s penchant for style and spoken word poetry initially commanded the attention of spectators; both in-person and online. An undeniably unique talent, Joekenneth, continues to rivet audiences with his vivid writing style and his charismatic, passion-filled delivery.
Throughout his creative career, Joekenneth has sought to express himself in various mediums beyond writing; these include photography, creative consulting, and filmmaking. In the summer of 2013, Joekenneth self-published his first book Tales of a Troubled Romantic; a compilation of poetry and prose writings. His second book, Days After Your Departure, released in 2017 is the author's most vulnerable work to date. Best described as a multimedia memoir, Days finds Joekenneth processing life after his mother’s death. The book was later adapted as a short film with the same title; starring Joekenneth and directed by Sam Sneed.
Naeem Mohaiemen
Rivers of Babylon (2021) - An animated version of a scene familiar to viewers of Mohaiemen’s 2017 film Tripoli Cancelled, in which Greek-Iranian actor Vassilis Koukalani performs a lonely dance in the deserted Ellinikon Airport in Athens. The song playing from a weathered cassette tape is the Boney M version of “Rivers of Babylon”, a global pop hit of the 1970s, including in Libya and Bangladesh where Mohaiemen grew up.
The original version is a reggae song by The Melodians (Brent Dowe, Trevor McNaughton) in 1970. The lyrics were adapted from Psalms 19 and 137 of the Hebrew Bible and intended to invoke solidarity against state violence and policing. It was made into a disco hit by the German-Caribbean pop group Boney M in 1978. While the members of Melodians were from Jamaica, Boney M’s members came from Jamaica (Liz Mitchell, Marcia Barrett), Montserrat (Maizie Williams), and Aruba (Bobby Farrell).
The Babylon river is meant to be the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq. In Rastafarian concept, "Babylon" is used for any governmental system which is oppressive and unjust, even if it originated from a liberation movement. Commissioned by MoCA Cleveland
Naeem Mohaiemen combines films, photographs, drawings, sculpture, and essays to research the many forms of utopia-dystopia slippage in the Muslim world after 1945. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University, New York.
Chelsea Odufu
Everybody has a Right to Survive // Director — Chelsea Odufu / DP — Sam Hicks / Costume Designer & Wardrobe Stylist — Beoncia Dunn / Summer 2020
Chelsea Odufu is an award-winning Nigerian, Guyanese and American filmmaker who fuses her passion for culture and Afrofuturism to highlight the uniqueness of underrepresented groups on screen. Her award-winning film Ori Inu: In Search of Self screened at film festivals globally and at institutions such as Harvard, Yale and the British Film Institute. She has directed content for brands including Cadillac, Gillette Venus, Target, and Fiverr where she traveled across Asia for four months as a Chief Digital Nomad. She has worked for Spike Lee on his projects Chi-Raq and She’s Gotta Have It. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes Magazine and The Huffington Post, among other notable outlets. Chelsea has recently completed her new Afrofuturistic TV pilot, Black Lady Goddess as well as an experimental short film titled, Everybody Has a Right to Survive. In 2021, Chelsea will participate in Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal Artist in Residence program.