Black Bodies (2020)

Directed by

Kelly Fyffe-Marshall

Genre

drama

Country

Canada

Runtime

5 min

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Inspired by a real incident where the director and friends were falsely accused of burglary, this short film uses spoken word performances to convey the emotional weight of anti-Black racism. It follows two people sharing their experiences of being targeted.

urgentrawspoken wordpersonalcontemplativesorrowfulfact-based

What happens

Black Bodies is a 2020 Canadian short film, directed by Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, and produced by Tamar Bird and Sasha Leigh Henry. Inspired by a real-life incident when Fyffe-Marshall, Komi Olaf and Donisha Prendergast were travelling in California, and a woman in the neighbourhood called the police on them because she wrongly believed they were burglarizing their Airbnb rental, the film features Olaf and Prendergast performing spoken word pieces about the trauma of being victimized by anti-Black racism. The film premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, where Fyffe-Marshall was named the winner of the inaugural Changemaker Award. The film was named to TIFF's year-end Canada's Top Ten list for short films. Fyffe-Marshall was subsequently awarded the Jay Scott Prize by the Toronto Film Critics Association. The film won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards. The film has been released to digital platforms as a bonus feature accompanying Charles Officer's feature film Akilla's Escape. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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