Late Screenings: All That You Can’t Leave Behind

Ufuoma Essi

Friday 25th June 6pm (BST)
Available for 48 hours (25/06/2021 – 27/06/2021 6pm (BST)
Runtime: 14m

Password: allthatyoucantleave

For the next installment in our late night screening programme, Rhubaba will be showing All that you can’t leave behind by Ufuoma Essi (2019).

This film is an experimental, appropriated archival film; which explores the relationship between Black women’s collective experience with music, history and the act of reclamation. It takes inspiration from writer Daphne A Brooks’ essay: Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe, as well as the impacts of Nina Simone, Grace Jones and Abbey Lincoln to the development of black women’s history. Using footage from Abbey Lincoln’s 1964 performance with her husband Max Roach at both the start, and end of the film; Ufuoma builds a compelling film exploring the act of reclamation for Black women, particularly in regard to radical histories of reclaiming power and images for themselves.

Ufuoma Essi is video artist and filmmaker based within Lewisham, South London, working with film, moving image, photography and sound. Through her use of archival footage, Ufuoma’s work revolves around Black feminist epistemology and displaced histories, resulting in the process of both unlearning and discovery, as she seeks to re-centre the marginalised histories of the Black Atlantic and specific histories of black women.

This film has been selected and is being shown as part of our multidisciplinary project exploring the work of Scottish-Ghanian artist Maud Sulter. Rhubaba’s work, and this project is intentionally slow burning; creating connection’s between Black artists/writers/researchers (whether they have a practise or not) in Scotland, or who have connections to Scotland. Through our screenings, projects and workshops we explore methods of braiding knowledge, networks and locations.