Of Self-Blessing
Virtual Q&A for the Portraits of Us program: 9/26 (Mon) 8PM EDT
Virtual streaming available in the U.S. from 9/16 12:00 AM EDT - 9/29 11:59 PM EDT.
Not sure what tickets/passes to get? Check our Festival Pass page.
Description
Dir. by golden lionheart collier
USA | 2020 | Experimental Documentary Short | 12 min
Rich, a dreamy Black non-binary artist, reflects on community, exploration, and embracing the mercurial seasons of self-blessing in the heart of a rapidly changing West Philly.
Director's Bio
golden collier (they/he) is a Chicago-based radical facilitator and multidisciplinary artist with work in the collections of The Getty Museum Research Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, London College of Communication, Pratt Institute, The Library of Congress, New York University's Tamiment & Wagner Labor Archives, and more. He is currently a 2022 printmaking fellow at Spudnik Press and is also a filmmaker with works shown across the globe including Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Outfest LA, Seattle Queer Film Festival, and more. They create strengths-based intersectional healing & recovery reflection tools through Diasporan Savant Press & Black Queer Trans Recovery and is the founder of The Black Non-binary Archive, an Allied Media Sponsored oral history Project. They love dancing, writing letters, gardening, teaching, wheel throwing, keeping bees, and learning/connecting all kinds of new skills in their spare time.
Director's Statement
"I grew up in Atlanta in the age of the "inner city"- a racist, classist, dehumanizing term for African American city centers that were abandoned by non-Black people who fled to the suburbs to evade integration. Now, decades later, they are flooding back into those same centers, displacing the very people who stewarded them through the very worst of times- with the gleeful support of municipalities, the police, the real estate industrial complex, etc. West Philly, like Atlanta or Brooklyn, is no different. As Black queer and trans people, we occupy a marginal space in the queer and Black worlds, but through Rich's beautiful journey of self-exploration, I hoped to illuminate the resilience of my communities as well as document Black West Philly which, like most majority Black city centers in the U.S., is undergoing a devastating and violent wave of gentrification."
- golden collier