Exploring the concept of shadeism through movement and text as the work tackles what it means to be viewed and scrutinized for your shade. An original art created and choreographed by Esie Mensah, Shades of Blackness looks at the past and present of these woven threads. Using movement to tell the story of several vignettes that plague our communities of color. The role of the field negro; one with limited access and opportunity.
Documentary link here
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Shades of Blackness Team
Lindsey Addawoo | Director
Lindsey Addawoo is a Toronto-based Afro-Indian filmmaker. In 2014, she earned a prestigious Tara Award nomination from Ryerson University for UNDERside, a student-based webseries project highlighting underprivileged youth based on their social class, gender, and race. Her script, ‘ROOM 219’ (formerly called ‘Diagnosis’), placed in the quarterfinals for ScreenCraft’s Pilot Launch TV Script Contest. That same script later took her to the Caribbean where she was a recipient to mentorship in the Bahamas International Film Festival 2015 Screenwriters Residency Program. In 2016, Lindsey completed the BlackWomenFilm! Leadership Program.
Her recent short film, Queen of Hearts, imagines a Black supernatural Queen in a fictional Victorian era and focuses on themes such as love and betrayal, consent, queerness, polyamory and Black magic through an Afrocentric lens. It won the 2017 Inside Out Film Festival BravoFACT Pitch Competition and just recently completed post-production. She has a strong passion for tackling social issues and broadening difficult conversations through stylized visual narratives.
Alexis L Wood | Director
Alexis L. Wood is a British filmmaker now based in Toronto and has made documentaries for the BBC, VICE, CBC and BRAVO on social issues and current affairs. She’s particularly interested in the topics that we discuss the least and with communities that are underrepresented in mainstream media. Her first documentary, How Long is Indefinite?, exposed the practice of detention without time limit in the UK through the stories of three migrants trapped in its immigration system. Before making documentaries, Alexis spent five years working with refugees, asylum seekers and migrant communities in the UK, Egypt and Palestine. She continues this passion by working with people and issues that are under or misrepresented in the media by making thought-provoking films that encourage us to question the status quo.
Dimitris Mastroyiannis | Director of Photography