Get Up, Stand Up Now - This is England Film Series presents Sharla Shabana Sojourner Selena

A series of films exploring the paradoxical nature of identities at once hypervisible and invisible in our current social context. Drawing upon the themes of Get Up, Stand Up Now.

Offering different perspectives on race, gender, class and their intersections, the characters in Ayo Akingbade’s Tower XYZ (2016) wander thought London’s concrete jungle as the narrator reflects on the current state of the city and her imagined future whilst Rehana Zaman’s Sharla Shabana Sojourner Selena (2016) has female narrators recounting personal experiences and reflections around presence and visibility.

Commenting on the political structures that perpetuate racial and social inequality, Farai’s This Is England (2018) music video laments on the harsh outcomes of decisions made by those in positions of power. A contemporary lament on the harsh realities of arriving to the Motherland from the African diaspora.

Nadeem Din-Gabisi’s blk boy flight (me & my cousins) (2015) depicts young black boys, innocent, carefree and playing whilst Caleb Femi’s Coping (2018) fast-forwards to the challenges of racialised hypervisibility faced by black men whilst also commenting on and portraying a soft black masculinity in a way that humanises and gives way to conversations around mental health.