My short sign-language poetry film, Deaf Brown Gurl, has been accepted at Lady Filmmakers Film Festival in Los Angeles, California! Deaf Brown Gurl, along with other shorts and features, will be screened at the Wilshire in Beverly Hills over the course of 3 days on September 27-30, 2018. I am so excited and proud to be part of this fantastic festival. Thank you to the organizers for picking my film. I'll see you all in Los Angeles!
Women Cinemakers, an online magazine based in Italy, has interviewed me about making Deaf Brown Gurl and asked many questions about the process of filmmaking and why/how I made the film. I believe the interview might be interesting for many of you who have followed my works for years.
You can read the article (my interview starts on page 164-165) I have successfully completed a short poetry video for Elephant's Footprint, an UK poetry organization. The video, Wild Whispers: New Mexico, was made possible with funding from the Arts Council of England. I performed an Afrikaans poem translated to English, American Sign Language and Navajo. I shot, directed and edited the short film, with Navajo voice-over by a Native American translator and music by Ronald Roybal, a Pueblo Indian musician from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The video will be released and shown at various festivals all around the UK and Europe starting in the spring of 2018. A short trailer will be out soon.
Here is an incredible video created by Super Sisters UK, an organization based in Great Britain that advocates on behalf of British Minority Ethnic women and British Muslim women. I am so grateful and humbled for their support. I feel that the video did a great job introducing my works to a bigger audience.
Watch: My poetry film, Deaf Brown Gurl, will be screened at Scottish Writers' Center in Glasgow, Scotland on April 25th, 2017 for a night of poetry film screenings. I am grateful to L.A (Lesley) Traynor of Scottish Writers' Center, who is also the founder of Women Poets with Fierce Words, for reaching out to me and to bring more awareness of my works for people in the beautiful city of Glasgow. The event will be interactive with GR codes for the audience to access my channel (along with other poet filmmakers' channels). If you live there, you can attend the event for free. 7-9pm (evening) on April 25, 2017 (Tuesday night) Centre for Contemporary Arts 350 Sauchiehall St Glasgow G2 3JD Scotland, UK (event link) Hola, friends. I have been in Veracruz, Mexico for the past month and we wanted to do a short film project for fun. Mexico is rich with many cultures, languages, and histories, with 60 Indigenous languages, which have been threatened by Spanish. Mexico have had an ugly history of colonialism, but that hasn’t stopped many Indigenous groups from still thriving and practicing their cultures and speaking their languages today.
My beloved friend, Alberto, is 100% Indigenous, with Nahua and Totonaco heritage. We were interested in meeting Totonaco people, an Indigenous group from Veracruz and Puebla. They speak Totonaco, which is a complicated language, and apparently much harder than Nahuatl to learn. We met an old Totonaco elder from Papantla who agreed to work with us! He recited a beautiful poem in Totonaco. Alberto is helping me edit the audio for this video. I have been busy writing. I wrote some new poems and short stories. I will work on a new feature script. I also have a performance coming up on September. Also, thanks to everyone who have watched my latest new short film from India, “Deaf Brown Gurl.” The comments I got on the video were amazing. You can check out my creative writings on here: http://sabinaengland.blogspot.com and you can watch my short films, http://www.youtube.com/velmasabina Thank you for reading! I hope you have a good summer. Blessss! My new film, Deaf Brown Gurl, is finally here! After one year in the making, it’s here for public viewing. ENGLISH & SPANISH subtitles are available for your convenience.
WATCH IT HERE My film shows the diversity of Indian society in Patna--I wanted to show a variety of Indian groups (Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists), including Deaf Indians and myself as a Deaf Indian. Deaf Brown Gurl ("La Morena Sorda") is a short film written, directed, shot, performed, and edited by Sabina England. -Voice Over & Sound Design by Micropixie. -Music by Om/Off (Paco Seren and Pablo Alvarez) -V.O Recording by Elliott Peltzman. Filmed in India (Old Delhi, India and Patna, Bihar, India) Many thanks to Jaggery Lit for helping promote my short film, नमाज़ की उदासी (The Prayer of Sorrow/La Oración de Tristeza) and introducing many new readers to my works!
Here, I explained the premise of my short film and who I was inspired by. Here is a small screenshot of my ASL poetry rap video "Deaf Brown Gurl" I am editing. I am just putting down scenes for now, so I haven’t done colorization or audio correction yet. I want to put in scenes from the gurdwara (Sikh temple), mandir (Hindu temple), the dargah (Sufi Muslim tomb), the Buddhist temple, the train station, the Ganges river, scenes from a deaf girls school, and then I want to put in scenes of the St. Louis City skyline, the arch, downtown graffiti murals, and snippets of my own stage performances. I shot the film footage in India on Feb-March and the city footage 2 months ago but barely did any work since I had to do freelance projects for other clients. i hope to have my video finished by Christmas, insha’allah.
I am proud to announce the release of my new short film, नमाज़ की उदासी (La Oración de Tristeza // Prayer of Sorrow), a Rani Azaad Films production in association with La Cine Films. Watch my film. Subtitles available in English and Spanish.
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