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UPENDO

1 Jan, 1970 at 12:00 am - 6 Feb, 2016 at 12:00 am

LGBT History Month is celebrated each February in the UK to highlight the positive work done across the country to challenge homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. This event will focus on the LGBTQ community in Africa and its diaspora, with an exploration of human rights, religion and philosophy. Join us throughout the day for entertainment and debate with guest speakers, films screenings, and live performances from Parisa East & Collective.

Presented by Stella Vision in partnership with The University of Nottingham. In association with Nottingham City Council. Funded by BFI Fan Central East.

11am
Welcome

11.30am
Stories of Our Lives – Film screening

12.30pm
Q&A with Aderonke Apata ( Nigerian LGBT Rights Advocate)

1pm
Lunch & Live Music – Parisa East & Collective

2pm
Born this Way – Film screening

3.30pm
LA Skype Conversation with Shaun Kadlec ( Director of Born this Way) & Cédric Tchante (featured in the film & LGBT Advocate).

4.30pm
Closing remarks

5pm
Networking & live music

*schedule subject to change

ADMISSION: £10 / £8 CONCESSION 2 FILM SCREENINGS, A SET LUNCH, ENTERTAINMENT AND WORKSHOPS

 

Parisa East
A writer foremost and vocalist second, Parisa is influenced by a range of decades and styles, always pushing to find her own sound within it. Working with Rick Donohue, the pair have spent time digging through Rick’s vast record collection, selecting some of their favourite hip hop, soul and jazz beats for Parisa to write fresh material over. With Rick DJing the tunes and live vocals on top, it’s like stepping out of time into a new period entirely.

LGBT History Month is celebrated each February in the UK to highlight the positive work done across the country to challenge homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. This event will focus on the LGBTQ community in Africa and its diaspora, with an exploration of human rights, religion and philosophy. Join us throughout the day for entertainment and debate with guest speakers, films screenings, and live performances from Parisa East & Collective.

Lance Hume

Guitarist, bassist, percussionist and sitar player has been a long time collaborator of Parisa’s. Lance’s style is hotly reputed in the Nottingham hip hop and grime scene amongst MC’s, as he puts the sweetest chords along a tapping beat making pattern all with two hands and a guitar. His knack for creating percussive guitar parts is perfect for jazzy vocalists like Parisa that like to rap a little too.

Shaun Kadlec, Director and Producer
After completing a degree in musicology at Carleton College (focusing on twentieth-century experimental music), Shaun spent a year in Sri Lanka on a Fulbright fellowship studying the country’s ethnic conflict. He made his first documentary during that time, a short piece on the murder of a prominent Sri Lankan journalist. Since then, Shaun has produced and directed short documentaries and commercials around the world. Born This Way, his first feature-length documentary, premiered at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival and won the Outfest Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Documentary Feature.

Cédric Tchante
Cédric Tchante grew up in a small town near Douala, Cameroon. After completing a degree in International Business at the Higher Institute of Management, he went to work at Alucam as an Administrative Assistant. He then worked at Alternatives Cameroun, the first LGBT center in Cameroon, as a sexual health, counseling and peer educator trainer, and as coordinator of HIV-prevention education. After participating in the documentary Born This Way as one of its main subjects, he came under severe threats for which he received asylum to the United States. He lives and works in San Francisco and continues to advocate for LGBT rights in Cameroon and across Africa.

Born This Way
This film describes both the impossible and the possible. The filmmakers’ unobtrusive proximity to their protagonists has yielded conversations in which their interlocutors discuss their longing for a love life they are forbidden to have. Alice Nkom is a lawyer and human rights activist fighting to protect the rights of gays and lesbians. Thanks to her, there is quiet hope and small niches can be discerned where there is something akin to a life not based upon self-denial. After Call me Kuchu, which documented the situation for homosexuals in Uganda and won a Teddy Award in 2012, BORN THIS WAY makes it clear that the worldwide struggle for tolerance and equality still has a long way to go.
http://www.thefilmcollaborative.org/films/bornthisway

Stories of Our Lives
Created by the members of a Nairobi-based arts collective — who have removed their names from the film for fear of reprisal — this anthology film that dramatizes true-life stories from Kenya’s oppressed LGBTQ community is both a labour of love and a bold act of militancy.
http://www.thefestivalagency.com/films/details/stories-of-our-lives#!main