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Snapshot: Short Film Programme (12A) – Black History Month
Tavistock Place
Plymouth
Devon
PL4 8AT
Opening Times
Sorry, this event has passed
Prices
Tickets £5 / £4 concessions.
About us
Black History Month at Plymouth Arts Cinema With Support from Cornwall and Devon Creative Collective (CoDeCC CIC)
Stories shape the way in which we understand our past, present and imagine our futures. They also inform our sense of connection and identity. Black History Month 2024 focuses upon the contributions of global majority communities across the UK as storytellers, historians and custodians of cultural heritage. Written and directed by contemporary black filmmakers, these films explore the rich, complex and diverse experiences and histories of individuals and groups living in Britain and British Overseas Territories.
Snapshot: Short Film Programme (12A)
Tickets £5 / £4 concessions.
Running time: 63 mins
From the lands of Brooklyn, NY to South Africa, across the ground-breaking work of Cauleen Smith, Ayoka Chenzira, Milisuthando Bongela, Leslie Harris & more, SNAPSHOT turns the spotlight to Black girls who are coming of age on their own terms. Through these intimate explorations of their interior lives, we find joy in their adventures, in the refreshing variety of perspectives they have to offer, and in storytelling that simply lets Black girls be girls.
T A P E, with the support of the BFI, presents a programme of radical archive and critical contemporary offerings with this series of short films which capture and celebrate the multi-faceted experiences of Black Girlhood. In a world where Black girls are too often relegated to sidekick or trauma narratives, we bring to the fore the audacious, the hilarious and the beguiling.
Take a deep dive into films by Black female filmmakers across the decades, platforming cinema which allows its subjects to be powerful, complicated, vulnerable, and the main character in their own stories.
Content notice: historical racist language, brief depiction of lynching
About the films:
ESSEX GIRLS dir. Yero Timi-Biu, UK, 2023, 15 min.
Flipping the 'Essex Girl' trope, this coming-of-age film explores Black British girlhood and magical female friendships in 2009 Essex.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Short Film Competition
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2024
PICKING TRIBES dir. S. Pearl Sharp, USA, 1984, 7 min.
"In a heartfelt, and often hilarious, attempt to be more than 'ordinary,' a girl growing up in the 1940s tries to choose between her African-American and Native-American heritages. It is only when her beloved grandfather dies that she is able to reconcile the power of both her heritages and realizes her own uniqueness." - Moving Pictures Bulletin. Originally released in 1984, this lyrical visual poem featuring Barbara-O urges black women to both discover and invent their own identities. The 2009 remix includes updated audio with vocals by Sharp and Dwight Trible.
Content warning: Please note that viewers may find Picking Tribes upsetting as it includes historical racist language and a brief depiction of lynching in the US. The curators of the programme T A P E Collective carefully considered the inclusion of the film and felt that as it was directed by a Black woman (as are all the films featured in the programme), they wanted to include it to truthfully represent the sentiments, worries and politics of the times.
MUNA dir. Warda Mohamed, UK, 2023, 19 min.
A film about teenage dreams, dislocated grief and unexpected connection, following a British-Somali teen navigating a confusing mourning period for a family member she never met.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2024 - Generation 14plus - International premiere
HOME AWAY FROM HOME dir. Maureen Blackwood, UK, 1993, 11 min.
Sankofa Film Collective's Maureen Blackwood renders the often unspoken experience of loneliness and sacrifice within migration stories. To ease her homesickness Miriam recreates an aspect of home in her suburban British garden. Cultural memory exerts a healing power, combatting cultural appropriation, hostility towards migrants and the rift between Miriam and her Nigerian-British children.
FLIGHT OF THE SWAN, dir. Ngozi Onwurah, UK, 1992, 11 min.
A young girl leaves her Nigerian village to attend a ballet school in England. Fascinated by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, she dreams of performing as lead ballerina Princess Odette, but the girls in her close-minded ballet school mock her ideas of a 'black swan'.
