Film Categories: Diaspora

  • Meditation 4 Black Women

    Four women, with seemingly unrelated lives, meditate on identity setting off a mystical event that allows them to breathe again.

  • Don’t Forget The Water

    A phone conversation sets the diasporic table as a disembodied figure prepares Qahwah Arabi / Arabic Coffee. Here, the contradictions inherent in Google Translate’s instant camera feature are made visible through glitched mistranslations. Using these flaws as a prompt, the communication between a mother and a daughter considers ambiguity as a source of embodied knowledge. 

  • processing…cleaning…refreshing…

    a depiction of an individual going through a phase in their life, they are navigating what constantly shifts inwards and outwards.

  • Lion in the Wind

    Fugue for wushu in the West.

  • After Bed

    Pulsing flashbacks from the summer of love reawaken a queer California classic.

  • Farzana

    Inspired by a true story, Farzana (2021) is a short narrative film which revolves around the relationship of two middle-aged women and how they navigate their work in the home. Charmaine is a psychotherapist who works from home, and she hires Nasreen as a domestic worker to help her maintain her household. Nasreen is a recent migrant who is dealing with financial precarity. When there is a crisis in Nasreen’s family, she asks for assistance from Charmaine, but lack of trust between the two women results in hostility and conflict. We see all of this through the eyes of Zinnia,…

  • Modulations

    A short film about memory, dislocation and cultural identity.

  • Shoes Off

    Shoes Off is a story about a Brazilian immigrant who becomes the subject matter of an artist’s canvas in Brooklyn. The film explores the themes of the queer diaspora beyond the family trauma trope in immigrant stories through the lenses of danger and desire. Shoes Off blends together its influence from the aesthetics and tropes of DIY porn, thrillers, and realistic dramas. Shoes Off is the portrayal of the challenges, pleasures, and adventures of what a queer immigrant experience could be, based on true stories. Shoes Off depicts how vulnerable and unique the queer experience can be in a search…

  • He Loves Me Until He Hates Me

    He Loves Me Until He Hates Me is the long-form music video from Baby, You’re Projecting, Vivek Shraya’s debut label release on Mint Records. Director statement: Taking inspiration from such 90’s classics like The Bodyguard and erotic thrillers, “He Loves Me Until He Hates Me” creates a meaningful (and playful) look at the unpredictability of masculinity–how it can fluctuate in insidious ways within a relationship, how one can be worn down in this type of power dynamic, and worse, how that can turn into lateral violence towards other women.

  • Atmospheric Arrivals

    This film is at once a living archive/polytemporal memory bank and a love letter to my other selves. I consider the act of revisiting my personal archives a time travelling practice and incorporating this into my films is an exercise in making said practice legible to others. “Atmospheric Arrivals” is about home and the (im)possibility of return. The “atmospheric arrival” captures a means of coming into being through memory and imagination; by reaching across spacetimes to “fetch” parts of the self that may exist in elsewheres.