Directing
Dawta has a power she is not aware of that propels her through time and space to a utopian planet.
Utopia Portals explores utopian concepts of belonging and ‘unbelonging’. Inspired by the Ashman’s first trip to her ancestral homeland of Jamaica, Utopia Portals uses a mix of animated loops, mobile phone footage and soundscapes recorded during her time on the island to create a series of short filmic ‘glitches’ of reality that reveal various forms of surreal hidden worlds. The piece is inspired by the idea of ‘heterotopia’: a concept put forward by the French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural spaces that are somehow ‘other’: contradictory or transforming in nature. Utopia Portals delves into the dreams, desires, nightmares and reality of a “homecoming” to a home you are not connected to.
‘Hold Tight’ explores the importance of Carnival across the UK and how it’s celebrations provide an important lifeline to heritage and identity for younger generations of the Black Caribbean diaspora in Britain. It is a journey into the feeling of belonging, through the rituals of Carnival attendance and the power of bass.
Lucy thinks her brother, Luka, is broken. His obsessive, infuriating arrangements of sugar cubes and thimbles prove it. Lucy thinks he should be fixed, but not in the way she imagines.
We follow Cherelle and Minomi’s 25-year relationship, plagued with micro-aggressions and realisations.
“I don’t want to feel like it’s only me. I know it’s not only me, because there are others out there…” ‘I Don’t Protest, I Just Dance In My Shadow’ is a short visual essay film by artist animator, Jessica Ashman, about navigating the visual art and animation world as a black face in a white space. Using animation and recorded interviews of eight other women of colour artists, ‘I Don’t Protest, I Just Dance In My Shadow’ is an abstract confessional from the director herself: a visualisation of the joy, frustration, wishes and dreams of what it feels like to be a black women and a woman of colour artist, creating and existing.
