Screening and Q&A with Natasha A. Kelly, in collaboration with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Due to unforeseen circumstances this event will be rescheduled. Please note: the event is not taking place on 6th September. we will inform you about the new date shortly.
Millis Erwachen (Milli’s Awakening) will have a special presentation and Q&A with director Natasha A. Kelly, within the context of the Adda screenings. After the screening, the filmmaker will discuss her film via Skype from Germany.
Millis Erwachen (Milli’s Awakening)
By Natasha A. Kelly
Video, b/w, sound, German with English subtitles, 45’, 2018
(In collaboration with Anh Trieu, Henning Fehr and Philipp Rühr)
In 1911, at the height of German colonialism, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted Sleeping Milli naked on a couch. The painting remains until today a testament of the exoticizing and eroticizing gaze under which Black women have been objectified for centuries, but in Millis Erwachen, Milli awakes figuratively. Inspired by the tradition of quilting, Kelly’s documentary brings together interviews with Diana, Maciré, Maseho, Nadu, Naomi, Patricia, Sandrine, and Zari – eight artists of various generations living in Germany, – who through their artistic, social and political activism, claim their self-determined positions as Black women in a white majority society.
Natasha A. Kelly is an author, curator and lecturer with a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology and a research focus on colonialism and feminism. Her work combines theory and praxis at the intersections of academia, art and society. As a Research Assistant at the Centre for transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt-University Berlin, she dealt with the decoloniality of knowledge, power and beings. Her publications include Schwarzer Feminismus (2019) Afrokultur (2016), Sisters & Souls (2015) and Afroism (2008) amongst others. Milli’s Awakening, Kelly’s debut film, was commissioned and co-produced by the 10th Berlin Biennale. Kelly is based in Berlin, Germany.
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