LGBTQ stories no longer have to be ancillary to straight narratives, and they don’t need to revolve around trauma (coming out, for example) or pain (loss of loved ones to AIDS) anymore either.
Instead, they’re inviting audiences of all walks of life to participate in the joyousness of the multiple meanings of being queer, and the power of no longer existing on the margins, of breaking ceilings and crossing boundaries that were not eve conceivable two decades ago.
Sophia Nahli Allison
Sophia Nahli Allison describes herself as a “Black queer radical dreamer,” and the wide range of her work shows a filmmaker who’s just getting started.
SOPHIA NAHLI ALLISON
Born 1987, Los Angeles, USA; lives and works in Los Angeles, USA
As a black queer radical, she reimagines the archives by excavating hidden truths. A spiritual meditation, her work conjures memories, mysticism, and abstraction to explore the intersection of fiction and non-fiction storytelling.
Sophia was a 2020 United States Artists Fellow, a 2014 Chicago 3Arts Awardee and has held residencies at MacDowell, The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France., POV’s African Interactive Art Residency, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.
She earned a Master’s degree in visual communication and a Bachelor’s degree in photojournalism.
The text consists of carefully and joyously edited archival footage, which Sophia shot and edited; she also produced the short.
In 2021, she participated in the Sundance New Frontiers with “Traveling the Interstitium with Octavia Butler,” using web-based extended reality to craft an Afrofuturist narrative inspired by the visionary sci-fi writer.
Sophia is currently working on her ongoing self-portrait series Dreaming Gave Us Wings and developing a dark comedy series with her creative partner.
Gay Directors: Almodovar, Todd Haynes, Van Sant, John Waters. By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press).
