For the first time, Fringe of Colour Films has invited a guest curator to programme a special event as part of the festival. Our 2023 commissioned curator is Neha Apsara, a film programmer based in Glasgow, focusing on programming stories full of joy, drama and hidden histories centred around the queer and diasporic South Asian experience.

This curated programme, Begana, features two films from the Queer South Asian and Indo-Caribbean archive, which explore themes and conversations that were far ahead of their time. The first, a portrait of Indian lesbian poet and writer Suniti Bamjoshi, by Pratibha Parmar (Flesh and Paper) and the second, a pivotal, pioneering work about the female, lesbian Indo-Caribbean perspective in exile by filmmaker Michelle Mohabeer (Coconut/Cane & Cutlass).

In this episode, Neha discusses the inspirations and influences behind the curation of this programme strand.

Inspired by Foluke Taylor’s words in Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room (“stop interrupting the ancestors; and let them finish their sentences; and try not to whine; and replace instructions with permissions”), multidisciplinary artist Ashanti Harris embarked on her own journey of listening. The artist, whose practice spans dance, performance, facilitation, film, installation and writing, has been researching oil since 2019. In this year, the city of Aberdeen was twinned with Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, after the discovery of oil-producing sandstone on the Guyanese coast in 2015. This relationship founded on extraction is not new to Guyana, it is embedded in the land and its history. From the violence of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, to the industrial mining of minerals extracted from its soils and to oil production offshore, Guyana has a long and complex relationship with violent forms of extraction.

Starting from a place of pressure, intensity, and permission from the ancestors, this film poem is a stream of consciousness in words, images, movements and sounds. Recorded between Scotland, Guyana and Tanzania, Black Gold (2023) is a poetic procession to the bottom of the ocean and into the centre of the earth.

In this episode, Ashanti discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Soundsystem culture injects this triumphant short with a rallying cry, calling on all Black boys and men who have been labelled “soft” to Wake Up! Filmmaker Daniel Bailey returns to our screens with a mission - to turn the derogatory accusation of softness on its head. In yardie culture, “yuh too soft” can mark you from childhood, the equivocation of gentleness and sensitivity with weakness and irrelevance. In this ensemble production, Soft Bwoi (2022) refuses such sentiment and Babylon itself, using folklore and imagery from Caribbean carnival culture and queerness to redefine this misconception. The concealment of emotion, embracing norms, and the repression of femininity are no longer signs of power and strength. Instead, it is in seeking the divine feminine, deep connections with one another and the rejection of toxicity that will unite Black men to find better ways to survive in this harsh but limitless world. Yes lawd!

In this episode, Daniel discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.uk

Two siblings process their grief after the loss of their father and question if their already strained relationship can be saved. In a bereavement counsellor’s office, Noura and Faiz begin to unpack years of anger and conflict that, after the death of their father, has led them down a path of accusation and guilt. Writer and director Mohammedally Shushtari explores the role that therapy can play in diasporic Arab culture. In this unfamiliar environment the two siblings are confronted with each other, and their hidden feelings and truths. They must use their words to find a path back to one another, or risk a second, heartbreaking loss.

In this episode, Mohammedally discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.uk⁠

Using archival footage and poetry, Campbell X showcases the unstoppable force of Black people united across time and water. Still We Thrive (2021) was filmed at a time of renewed faith in protesting and screened during a global push-back against public disobedience. The film contains an invigorating blend of music and poetry, including A Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes) and Yemoja: Mother of Waters (Olive Senior). Campbell X (Stud Life, DES!RE) presents a celebration of Black togetherness using archival footage and powerful performances by Martina Laird, Michelle Tiwo, Kim Tatum and Don Warrington. They, the oppressive forces operating throughout the world, may be an unrelenting force but the same remains true; together we will find ways to flourish, emboldened by ancestry, mythology and an enduring relationship to the waters.

In this episode, Campbell X discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.uk⁠

Looking for love, hopeless romantic Alie allows her friend to set her up with a mystery man, leading to an unforgettable night. After a series of unsuccessful dates and relationships, and with the encouragement of her best friend, Alie decides to get her love life back on track by trying something new. With the time and location of the date the only details at her disposal, she sets off to meet a complete stranger, but it does not take her long to realise that romance and connection can be just as spontaneous as they have been fleeting. Written and directed by Stephané Alexandre, romantic comedy The Perfect Knight (2022) conjures butterflies in stomachs and reignites the notion that love could be just around the corner.

In this episode, Stephané discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.u

The contradictions of home and belonging underlie this autobiographical and documentary-style exploration of the queer Chinese diaspora. For filmmaker Samuel Zhang, Shanghai represents one end of a long term relationship and a past home, but only in the sense of fading memories. In the place where we left and arrived (2022) shows a personal journey, presented through words and the use of digital mappings, as Zhang attempts to understand the possible definitions of home, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese lives, and the reality of being queer in and away from China. Offering a look at the wider context of these important issues, the film gathers shared experiences of other queer Chinese people living in the UK. We see how queer identities intertwined with diaspora are bound up by rejection from the home country and the struggle of ethnocultural transformation. In this way, the reality for people who are marginalised, either culturally, geographically, or socially, is always a state of exile.

In this episode, Samuel discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.uk⁠⁠⁠

A sharp interrogation of colonialism and its effects on our living environment and social world presented as a defiant poetry performance. How heavy are lungs, forced to draw in air toxified by war and degradation? In this poetry film, Palestinian filmmaker Reema Saad and Dominic Guerrera, a Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri poet, collaborate to envision a future of liberation, free from the violent legacies of oppression of Indigenous people. Shot around the site of an abandoned ship on Kaurna Land, otherwise known as Adelaide, Australia, Suffocation (2022) questions what sorts of changes Earth would undergo without relenting assaults on the natural world. As flags representing colonial states are removed and destroyed, we are left to wonder how easily air might pass through communities able to thrive with their cultural memories.

In this episode, Reema and Dominic discuss the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.uk⁠⁠⁠

A family retells their experience escaping the horrors of the Argentine dictatorship and 'La Junta Militar' in the 70s. It is 1976 and Argentina is experiencing a military coup d'état, led by Jorge Rafael Videla and backed by the US, that will grip the country for over six years. At this time, filmmaker Mourad Kourbaj’s family is enduring the greatest upheaval of their lives, the effects of which remain some fifty years later. Una Muerte y Un Nacimiento//A Death and A Birth (2022) recounts the family’s experience through their own words in a memoir that honours the journey and search for safety they and so many others took at this historical time. Blending together oral histories and collages of family photographs and found footage, the film demonstrates the losses and lives turned upside down by the Argentine military dictatorship.

In this episode, Mourad discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.uk⁠⁠⁠

Hidden in the undergrowth of a disused military base just outside of Havana lies a refuge for gay men, for cruising, connection and imagining better futures. In this important documentary, filmmaker Dami Sainz Edwards is interested in two subjects: the physical land of a clandestine cruising spot and the unnamed gay Cuban men who visit it. We meet several people who use the space for sex and socialisation and, through their own voices, learn about the rules, expectations and experiences that take place between these walls. To what extent is gay culture affected, when it is forced to exist in anonymity, away from the embrace of the cishet population? Batería (2016) speaks to the oppression and homophobia still present in Cuba today, and the continued culture of resistance that turns rubble into shelter.

In this episode, Michael discusses the inspirations and influences behind the film and more.

Fringe of Colour Films is a hybrid arts festival for Black people and People of Colour. Find out more at⁠⁠ ⁠fringeofcolour.co.uk⁠⁠⁠