Fringe of Colour Films 2023: Programme preview
This year's Fringe of Colour offering, in new hybrid format, showcases tantalising theatre and film by artists of colour – here are six picks from the programme
Inspired by the life cycle of a plant, this year’s Fringe of Colour Films programme is concerned with ways of growing, cultivating, and existing in relation to our environments and each other. Programmed across five different strands – Nourish, Symbiosis, Soil, Seeds and Rooted – their rich selection of films spans from experimental visual poems to cute romantic comedies: check out our favourite picks below.
Still We Thrive (2021)
Directed by Campbell X
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 27 Jun, 8:15pm + online
A gorgeous work of archival retrieval and remixing, this short film by renowned filmmaker Campbell X cuts and collages footage from Black histories across the Caribbean, Africa, the UK and the US alongside a collective narrative voice delivered by Black actors, articulating the ongoing legacies of resistance that transform into cultural memory.
Batería (2016)
Directed by Dami Sainz Edwards
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 25 Jun, 7pm + online
The camera slips and slides around the walls of an old Havana military complex, now a gay cruising site, in this tender confessional piece of queerness amidst hostility. Interweaving personal testimonial with the materiality of the half-ruined environment where these men meet, Batería explores ways of carving out joy and intimacy as a means of small revolution.
Pagpapa(-)alam: To Wish You Well, So You Know
Directed by Cecilia Lim
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 24 Jun, 2:30pm + online
English, Spanish and Bangla intertwine in this mesmeric, joyous audiovisual poem that reflects on the ways that women and femme workers of colour in Queens honour and memorialise ancestors and ancestry. Drawing on the translation of the title To Wish You Well, So You Know, Pagpapa(-)alam visualises the often unnoticed acts of care – from prayer and dance to bowls of warm chai – that keep communities tethered to their pasts and futures.
The Perfect Knight (2023)
Directed by Stephané Alexandre
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 27 Jun, 8:15pm + online
One for the gooey romantics who also think dating should die in a ditch (hello, hi), The Perfect Knight is a romantic comedy for the modern, cursed era. When hopeless romantic Allie gets set up on a blind date by her friend, her evening goes miraculously, suspiciously, well. For fans of Chewing Gum and Rye Lane.
GRIN (2021/2022)
Directed by Mele Broomes
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 28 Jun, 8:15pm + online
What looks like the night sky, or a glittering cityscape, shudders as a dancer covered in gold stands and moves through it. A stunning blend of choreography, soundscape, and performance, Scotland-based dance artist Mele Broomes' GRIN confronts and subverts social conceptualisations of African and Caribbean dance as hypersexualised. Here, instead, the body becomes a site of community and friendship: a place where gestures of solidarity and Black love are allowed to blossom.
(Tending) (To) (Ta)
Directed by April Lin
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 24 Jun, 7pm + online
Part of the festival’s Symbiosis strand, which looks at the ways we can exist in community with each other and our surroundings, (Tending) (To) (Ta) is a speculative fiction film imagining a conversation between two people across different realms. Framed through a series of letters across dimensions, April Lin’s hour-long film considers the ways we can transcend Western conceptions of race and gender and find new ways of being together in harmony.
Fringe of Colour, Summerhall, Edinburgh and online, 23-29 Jun
fringeofcolour.co.uk