Editorial – Week Two: We See Each Other

“The human body must live through linear time but the human mind … exists at all points in time, present and past and future at once.”

- Kazim Ali

The films in week two of Fringe of Colour Films make me think about the way our minds weave together memory and history; how our imaginations rupture temporality so that we might still embody // relive // reproduce what occurs beyond our physical experiences. There is something exceptionally beautiful about how art so naturally and so precisely reflects these crossings of time and space.

In art, we reanimate ghosts; from that, we might create a root system, a kind of truth. Here, I am thinking of Niall Moorjani’s Mohan: A Partition Story, which so carefully re-imagines Moorjani’s grandfather’s experiences of the Partition of India. There is a clarity in its storytelling, in its exploration of heritage and familial lineage, of remembrance.

Lately, ‘diaspora’ has felt, to me, differently textured; multi-directional. Not only a ‘looking back,’ but a weaving together of the present and past and future at once. After watching Empirical Sleepwalks, where Mahenderpal Sorya combines archival material and contemporary aesthetics, I imagine diaspora as a living concept that stretches its shape, growing like a vine. In this film, through its stylistic choices alongside its documentation, memory reaches beyond the borders of time, pulling forward the story of Sorya’s grandmother into the present tense.

The truth is, sometimes I feel so overwhelmingly different and out of place that I extend toward the concept of diaspora with longing. And often, in my own art, I hope to invoke a sense of homeland; a sense of belonging somewhere where I am not so hyper-visible. In this way, I feel myself reflected in Jinling Wu’s stunningly directed One Day Summer Collapses Into Autumn. In this film about a cognitive neuroscientist relocating to Scotland, there is both a tenderness as well as a familiar ache in its quiet symbolism, its penetrating solitude.

But I’m learning, through trial and error, that the complexity of a diasporic identity also includes its leaps forward. I’m considering more thoroughly the beautiful and hopeful acts of community building, the glimpses into the future: another’s hand reaching out toward my own. That is why I was immediately enthralled by Hope Strickland’s Home Soon Home, an intimate portrayal of lives that flourish in those gaps, those distances, that unravel in the journey(s) from the Caribbean to South Manchester.

Fringe of Colour similarly builds community. It provides a platform to these conversations – it centralises the vastly different observations and lived experiences of Black and Brown bodies. And this platform is a space where we can see each other - truly see each other - under a gaze that doesn’t try to streamline our experiences or corner us into a single narrative. In that way, it is truly a celebration of voices, the kind amplified in films like Celebrating 50 years of Diversity in Wester Hailes directed by Aboodi Taha, where race equality work is highlighted alongside moments of joy.

‘Glory. Hallelujah. You’re the reason why I sing’. Joy also reverberates in the dazzling lines in Don’t Take Harlem, a love letter to Harlem by Marshall Wayne Cooper. As viewers, we are invited into the intimacy of Cooper’s hometown and are generously gifted with its stories. Intimacy appears again in the film BLACK WOMEN DATING WHITE MEN by Somebody Jones. This piece conjures a Zoom support group for five Black women to share stories about dating white men – love, humour, and strength all make an appearance. I adore the breadth of this film; it is wound with the evident pleasures of close friends coming together as well as candid anecdotes about privilege and perception.

What most draws me toward week two’s films is how each piece seems to work in collaboration with the others. The narrative moves so fluidly across each project. I think specifically of Hannah Lavery’s curation of the series Sorry I Was On Mute, which is so deliberately and carefully selected. This week, Titilayo Farukuoye captures the relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter in In Wolf’s Skin. I am a long-time admirer of Farukuoye’s mesmerising performances, and I find myself watching this film again and again. Her performance is complemented by the precise and evocative imagery in They Want by Marjorie Lotfi Gill. They want. I feel that emphasis deeply. ‘They suggest I write a poem, they say, about Iran. The revolution maybe…’

I think of how important it is for artists of colour to have the space that Fringe of Colour has created. A space where they can fall away to the edges, where performances are charged with the word we. What do we want? This is a space that doesn’t ask for any single narrative. It is refreshing, magnetic even. I loved comedian Athena Kugblenu’s piece WPAU for this reason, where Kugblenu explains why she doesn’t attend Black Lives Matter protests. “Black Lives Matter isn’t much of a stretch is it,” she says before telling white people to put their energy toward chanting ‘White People Are Unreasonable’ instead. And Fringe of Colour is a place where, if trauma does come to the surface, we embrace it with empathy – with heart and not with hunger. I felt the truth of this while watching the moving film, A Moment In My Cosmic Narrative by Nicole Cyrus, where Cyrus reclaims representations of women’s mental health.

And like other films this week, Mandla Rae touches on moments of mistranslation in Category Mistake. Although, mistranslation isn’t quite accurate here. The context, the feelings, the experiences are all exceptionally present – translated – in this piece. But it’s the words that are missing. ‘My language isn’t actually on Google Translate…” Rae says, before exploring the history of their mother tongue, its missing lexicon for their queerness.

Only two weeks into its new programme, Fringe of Colour has already been a personally transformative experience. The work is so vibrant. It is a reprieve. Recently, I saw founder Jess Brough’s posts on social media about who and where Fringe of Colour Films is reaching. Pins were dropped all over the globe – in over 45 countries. I think of all the people watching, everywhere, within and far outside of Scotland. All the people who desire each other’s stories in all styles, and themes, and forms. All of us, across time and space, who see each other.