Black Ibis depicts a young black woman's inner search for intimacy in a world where the boundaries between the individual and the collective, the political and the personal, the present and the past, are increasingly blurred.
Black Speaks Back's poetic short film calls into question preconceived views of Black intimacy in the diaspora. It is an Afro-surrealist exploration of contemporary notions of relationships, both with ourselves and with an imagined community.
Black Ibis won the Prize for Best Experimental Film at the Afrofuturist Femmes Film Festival in Washington DC (USA) and the Prize for Best Cinematography at the All African Independent Film Festival in Kigali (Rwanda). The film has also been selected for the Black Star International Film Festival in Ghana, the Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Festival in the United Kingdom, and nominated for best original idea for MT Queer Premia in Brazil.
On November 25 AMOR will host the Antwerp premiere of Black Ibis. After the screening, director Emma-Lee Amponsah and lyricist Mathieu Charles will have a talk with Latifah Abdou about the motivations for making this film, its diverse layers meaning-making and the message of hope it contains.
Black Speaks Back is a Belgian-Dutch experimental multimedia platform aimed at promoting Black narratives. They open debate, conduct artistic research and make poetic short films. Their work has been screened at film festivals, conferences and cultural centers around the world. EUphoria (2018), their very first film, was awarded the prize for Best Fiction at the Belgian Widescreen short film competition.
BLACK IBIS - a film by Black Speaks Back in collaboration with If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, in co-production with La Fam Productions.
With: Henriette 'Aelia Sapph' Valies - Direction: Emma-Lee Amponsah - Screenplay: Nohely Koeyers, Smita James, Emma-Lee Amponsah, Chris 'Ci' Rickets and Alexine Gabriela - Music: Chris 'Ci' Rickets - Editing: Chris Tjong Ayong - Visual Effects: Robert-Jonathan Koeyers - Photography: Henck Pengel
