Members and Friends,
film screening and Q&A
[THE LISTENING HEART]
WITH WRITER & DIRECTOR
STORÄE MICHELE
THIS FILM EXPLORES ART AS
RESISTANCE, THROUGH AN AFRO-
NATIVE FUTURISTIC
NARRATIVE ABOUT SELF-LOVE AND
DEEP LISTENING.
AFTER THE SCREENING, WE WILL
HAVE A "TALK- BACK " WITH STORÄE
MICHELE ABOUT HER ARTISTIC
JOURNEY AND FILM.
VIEW TRAILER
HOSTED BY THE NORTHERN
VIRGINIA ETHICAL SOCIETY
THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2018
7:30 PM TO 9:00 PM
MEETING ROOM 2 OF THE RESTON
REGIONAL LIBRARY
Artist Statement
As a black queer womyn, my POV centers women of color of varying orientations and gender expressions. I retell our stories with radical truths that allow for simultaneously wild and holy beings to exist. I challenge and subvert constructions of power, reframing the human condition of women of color. Drawing from Indigenous and Greek mythology, I explore new meanings in well-known stories and excavate lesser known details of the archetypes in seeking healing and self-love stories with these wounded-healers as subject.
My film, [the listening heart], is realized through southern folk wisdom and avant-garde Afro-Native inspired costuming. I imagined a world in balance, where language is [re]indigenized and the word love is now archaic: people do love and no longer need to constantly say it. Throughout my writing process, I inquired about how love is demonstrated or explained in an intergenerational construct. What isn’t said? How do we break the cycles of being unloved and abused? My research illuminates my passion for the goddess archetype, as I desire her true story to be heard and reclaimed from the Western hegemonic imagination that has created her for her doom—the moment she turns away from set normative values, she is destroyed. I reimagine her as highly integrated, radical and imperfect. I understand the ways in which women’s lives parallel, overlap, and are demystified in each retelling.
Film title: [the listening heart]
Running time: 25 min 40 sec
Synopsis: [the listening heart] is an Afro-Native Futuristic film about self-love and deep listening, bringing to life an original story grounded in Mayan and Yoruba cosmologies. Our protagonist, named after the Mayan Goddess Ix Chel, is a child healer who searches for the meaning of love. This story follows a common paradigm of women who are hurt when going against social norms—but in this film, reclaim their voices through self-healing.
