Walter Benjamin suggests that film is comparable to surgery, the instrument allowing the operator to penetrate the body of the subject while, paradoxically, maintaining his or her distance. This statement self-reflexively sets up the female spectator at the helm of the art-installation opening of Blu in You—an eloquent essayist film with visual conversations that dissects historical and contemporary representations of the black female body, sexuality and subjectivity. The female spectator (Melanie Smith), views the staged art installation conversations between visual arts curator (Andrea Fatona) and writer (Nalo Hopkinson). The conversations begin with a cultural history of violence, ethnographic display and spectacle (embodied in the figure of Sara Baartman, "the Hottentot Venus"), the gaze shifts to contemporary discussions of performance and visual art representations of celebrated cultural icons Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, and then to present day black queer female body and sexuality. Bodies that have been simultaneously celebrated and reviled in history, art and culture.
[Writer/Producer/Director and Visual Design]
Canada/Tobago, 2008 Creative Essay Documentary 50 mins)