Directory of Sponsored Projects

In Beijing, Hua Ze discovers a friend is sentenced for exposing government corruption. This uncovers an underground of Chinese political prisoners that she thought was abolished at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Hua Ze cannot ignore this unjust China she never knew existed and becomes deeply involved in the human rights movement. Her activism does not go unnoticed; she is violently abducted and illegally jailed. Held for 55 days, she escapes to the U.S. where she currently lives in exile. She continues her activism work but by doing so, she sacrifices returning home and seeing her family again.

The story begins on video game streaming site Twitch.tv, where a competitive subculture is quickly gaining momentum. It’s called “speedrunning,” the art of exploiting every secret and glitch in a game in order to beat it as fast as possible. Perhaps the best and most famous speedrunner is Narcissa Wright. In 2014, she beats “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,” a game that takes ordinary humans around 20 hours to complete, in just over 18 minutes. This world record-setting feat catapults her to stardom and cements her status as a gaming legend. She’s flown to gaming events all over the world, wins the adoration of more than 180,000 followers, and earns $80,000 per year. To the thousands of loyal fans watching from their computer screens, it seems as if speedrunning’s brightest star will never be extinguished. Then, suddenly, at the height of her fame, Narcissa does something unexpected: she stops speedrunning. When she returns, she makes a big announcement: she comes out as a transgender woman. While some fans are supportive, an obsessive group of online haters harass and threaten her. They claim Narcissa is mentally ill and encourage her to commit suicide. Determined to stage a dramatic comeback, she sets her sights on winning back her former fans by setting the world record for the new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. But when her comeback doesn’t unfold as planned, she begins to question what it really means to feel loved when your entire life is online.

“Bought/Broken” is an interactive experience that examines the relationships and violence of abuse through the lens of objects bought, broken and repaired, evoking memories through objects and exploring the idea of gain and loss. Since Fall of 2014, I have been compositing the experiences and stories of domestic violence survivors, whose personal items were broken during an altercation, bought out of remorse, or rebuilt after leaving the relationship. The stories behind the objects are from people whose partners belittled, threatened, or hurt the - people from many ages and socio-economic backgrounds. The nature of the objects reflects the escalation of control through emotional and then physical violence. The project has three parts: Workshops, Film, and Installation. People can submit or tag their own bought, broken or repaired objects. The “repaired” objects relate to how people transcend their trauma to hopefully reach peace or closure.

BeBe Zahara Benet is a drag performer originally from Cameroon in Central Africa, now living in the U.S. She’s magnetic, and 6’3”– before hair and heels. We chart BeBe’s story across 10+ years: from her early amateur days in Minneapolis, to winning ​the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2009, to struggling to make ends meet in New York​. Behind BeBe (the diva) is Marshall (the man). ​The heart of our story takes place one hot and stressful summer in New York City. Marshall feels tremendous pressure to get his career back on track in the face of dwindling opportunities, a shrinking bank account, and the overwhelming competition of over 100+ ​RuPaul’s Drag Race​ queens whose careers have launched since BeBe’s original win. He’s not sure he can afford to keep living in New York, a dream he’d been so proud to achieve. At the height of precariousness and self-doubt, Marshall puts his remaining savings into one last live BeBe show called “Reveal.” As part of his process for “Reveal,” he takes an intense and unconventional acting class about accessing your most authentic self. Even though he lives in the U.S. now, this vulnerable work is particularly challenging for Marshall, coming from Cameroon, where the mere suspicion of homosexuality is grounds for imprisonment. The creative process leads to powerful revelations and shifts, made all the more impactful by the rich context that the film provides around Marshall's history and internal conflicts.

A white couple living in East Germany in the sixties suggests to their dark-skinned child, that her skin color is a mere coincidence and that it’s of no importance. Until one day as a teenager, the daughter accidentally finds out the truth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes a confrontation with identity in the autobiographical essay film BECOMING BLACK. The film aims at examining the social implications of these personal stories. In 1961 almost one hundred young men from various African countries live and study at the German Union College, a settlement near Bernau. The plan is to convince the students of the socialist victory’s infallibility. In doing so, casual familiarization with the normal population was not wanted. But GDR female citizens and African students fall in love. Like Sigrid from Leipzig and Lucien from Togo. But Sigrid is already married. Seen from the perspective of the now already grown up child, the film tracks the astonishing strategies, that Sigrid and her husband Armin, who are striving for “normality”, develop after the birth of their dark-skinned child. I am that child, director and principal witness all at once. BECOMING BLACK relates the familial and social strategies. The film shows what happens, when something that does not fit the norm suddenly becomes visible in a standardized surrounding, and thus encounters systemic behavior of the majority society. The film ends in Togo, in the middle of my natural father’s African family and could have an happy end.

The feature-length documentary BEBA, is a multi-layered personal history of an Afro-Latina coming of age in New York City. Our protagonist, Beba finds herself working an unsatisfying day-to-day life when she asks herself: “Who am I and how did I get here?” Beba brings her audience along an internal journey, as she examines her community, her heritage, and herself in a personal history illustrated by interviews, various visual anecdotes, and performance art.