Micro film festival & Artist talk: But where are you really from?

But Where Are You Really From? is an umbrella programme T A P E has been working on in the past few years using short films to engage in a wider conversation around the mixed heritage experience. Exploring the personal experience of immigration, the significance of names, labels of identity and the impact losing or learning a language can have on individuals T A P E addresses the themes of othering and belonging. Some of the films will be available to watch in advance, and Isra Al Kassi, T A P E co-founder and curator will lead a discussion around removing barriers to conversation and leading a season which addresses creating safe spaces for a wider audience.

More information about T A P E and But Where Are You Really From? THE GOOD IMMIGRANT T A P E Collective present a three-part series of programmes of short films by mixed heritage filmmakers around the themes of identity and heritage, exploring othering, belonging and the trouble of melting pots. The first programme The Good Immigrant explores the ‘good immigrant’ trope experienced by refugees, and children of immigrants where acceptance is afforded those deemed best behaved. The films in the programme offers a look at shaping an identity beyond labels and an emergence from generational and ancestral trauma.

TRIPPIN’ OVER MY TONGUE

Whether it’s learning or losing a language, the programme looks at the barriers raised when the mother tongue isn't as fluent as we want, or the words simply slip away. How do we connect to our language when a language has been lost, and who do we turn to to serve as translators or teachers?

CALL ME BY MY NAME

It’s an experience not uncommon within a diaspora to have your name viewed as too foreign or exotic, and subject to either whitewashing or clumsy - and sustained - mispronunciation. Expanding on the theme the programme will look at the wider ideas of labels and definitions of identity and heritage.

FILMS Homeland Trilogy

(UK 2017 Dir Asena Nour Oyzoyn 7 min)

A trilogy of short documentaries ('Fatherland', 'Motherland', 'Homeland') mapping out the personal migration stories of the filmmaker's family, as well as a look at a generation of young Muslims in multicultural London.

Watch here

Taarof: A Verbal Dance

(UK 2018. Dir Alannah Olivia. 17min)

A young woman attends the funeral of her estranged father and trips on the customs and traditional ideals of what it is to be an Iranian woman.

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Mother’s Apricot Compote

(UK 2020. Nia Fekri. 23 min)

A fragmentary narrative of two women whose lives are distant from each other yet hold traces of one another. This film conjures the ghosts that hover over the day to day lives of these two women; a rumination on the experience of the immigrant.

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Without Warning

(UK 2020, Emily Macrander, 7min)

Without Warning is about a girl who struggles to understand her heritage and identity as a sperm donor baby that grew up not looking like her parents. In an attempt to get to the bottom of ‘where she’s really from’, Ria approaches her Pakistani sperm donor father and hopes to learn more about her heritage through him

Watch here

Sorry, My Somali is not Very Good

(UK 2020. Warda Mohamed. 2min)

A young Somali woman has trouble with her mother tongue and gets the encouragement she needs on a phone call with her father.

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Once an Old Lady Sat On My Chest

(UK, 2017, Candice Onyeama. 13min)

A magical realism short about a young British Nigerian woman who is forced to deal with her identity crises when a mysterious old woman squats on chest.

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Rice & Bread

(UK 2019, Greta Griniute, 5min)

A monotonous night in a south London takeaway is ‘enlightened’ when a delivery driver is reminded of a contentious theory he learnt on YouTube.

Watch here