Two guest-curated programs reflect upon Black womanhood at DOXA, May 5 and 8

Films chosen by Nya Lewis and Farah Clémentine Dramani-Issifou are accompanied by thought-provoking essays

SPONSORED POST BY DOXA

Rebecca Huntt’s Beba.

DOXA Documentary Film Festival’s 2023 edition is swiftly approaching, with screenings at The Cinematheque, VIFF Centre, and SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts taking place from May 4 to 14. On the festival lineup are two meaningful programs that undertake a nuanced exploration of Black womanhood, put together by guest curators Nya Lewis and Farah Clémentine Dramani-Issifou.

A Vancouver-based curator and writer, Lewis has selected Rebecca “Beba” Huntt’s 2021 film Beba for her program A Radical Pluriverse: Reflections on Black Womanhood on Both Sides of the Lens. Lewis’s essay under the same name contemplates the power of documentary filmmaking in sharing the lived experiences of Afro-diasporic women.

First-time feature filmmaker Huntt undertakes an unflinching exploration of her own identity in the remarkable coming-of-age documentary Beba, which can be seen at The Cinematheque on May 5 at 6:15 pm.

Reflecting on her childhood and adolescence in New York City as the daughter of a Dominican father and Venezuelan mother, Huntt investigates the historical, societal, and generational trauma she inherited and ponders how those ancient wounds have shaped her, while simultaneously considering the universal truths that connect us all as humans.

As the current director of Artspeak Gallery, Lewis’s practice is a culmination of centuries of African resistance, love, questions, actions, study, and embrace. It continues a long lineage of work undertaken by Black artists, curators, writers, activists, and thinkers who blaze a trail of critical discourse surrounding the Black experience.

Dramani-Issifou, whose research and curatorial work focuses on Afro-diasporic cinema and visual arts, has curated a program of short films called I AM A (WO)MAN: Transatlantic Perspectives on Political Struggles in the 1960s–1970s in Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, the USA and France. These short works highlight the cross-cultural and -continental “struggles for the emancipation of colonized peoples,” and display the collaborative work of filmmakers and labour activists in the fight.

An independent art and film curator, researcher, and film critic, Dramani-Issifou’s essay titled after her program details the six short films that will be featured in it, and unfurls their historical and geopolitical contexts. The shorts will be shown at The Cinematheque on May 8 at 7:15 pm.

A full list of DOXA’s programming, with links to view more information and purchase tickets, is available here.

Post sponsored by DOXA.