SNAPSHOT SHORTS
Presented as part of our nationwide, 12 month long season SNAPSHOT. We’re proud of this incredible rollercoaster of teenage angst, mother & daughter relationships and the sweet liberation of finding your tribe. Screenings dates coming soon, if you’d like to see the programme on the big screen, please do check in with your local cinema.
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.
Courtesy of Women Make Movies.
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.
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
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'.
