Allowing waters and truths to sluice in
Shivanee Ramlochan discusses Michelle Mohabeer’s Coconut/Cane & Cutlass, a mythic/poetic rumination on exile, displacement, and nationhood from the perspective of an Indo-Caribbean lesbian who migrated to Canada twenty years ago.
Moving through manipulated pasts
Shirine Shah responds to Flesh and Paper (1990), a lyrical exploration of the sense and sensibilities of Indian lesbian poet and writer, Suniti Namjoshi, directed by Pratibha Parmar.
Longing for the homelands of our imagination
Asyia Iftikhar responds to (Tending) (to) (Ta), a dream-like journey across parallel dimensions that imagines a world without capitalism, by interdisciplinary artist April Lin 林森.
Speaking back to silence
Deborah Chu responds to Mourad Kourbaj’s striking tale of a family escaping the horrors of the Argentine dictatorship and 'La Junta Militar' in Una Muerte y Un Nacimiento//A Death and A Birth.
The taste of a mother tongue
Nasim Rebecca Asl responds to Violeta & Sofia, a film by Noah Berhitu and Alejandra Rogghé Pérez on the power of food to maintain generational links to culture and place after migration.
To hold, to touch and to shape Black Scottish history
Eilidh Akilade
Her hands bloom outwards again and again. Another’s hands clasp mid-air before sinking to the right, sweetly. One hand – of another, still – holds their fingers tightly and then suddenly detaches, spinning out in circles. And the left hand of another comes under the right and it is held, supported, by that which is its sistren, its brethren. It relaxes before springing upwards, fingertips splaying, signally a new thought for Maud Sulter and for us all.
Communing with our ancestors to sever the past
Memuna Konteh
Journeying through dense forest into open fields, Mojereoma Ajayi-Egunjobi calls on Omolore, her mother’s mother who she never knew. She does not need a conversation partner, but a witness, an accomplice on a path paved with pain and promising freedom. Dear Omolore is testament to the power of poetry and film to distil otherwise indigestible emotions.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Andrés N. Ordorica responds to Batería, a film by Damián Sainz Edwards that captures the raw beauty of a disused military base just outside of Havana, a refuge for gay men for cruising, connection, and imagining better futures.