Culture Club: Watching INDIANARA by Marcelo Barbosa and Aude Chevalier-Beaumel

Selina Robertson Writing

Casa Nem is an occupied house where LGBT people, mainly sex working trans women of colour, can stay and live together. Indianara is the founder. The film is full of shots of the girls hanging out at Casa Nem or Indianara’s place: in a pool, dancing tits out, getting ready or whatever. It’s so rare to see trans women lounging around together and having fun on screen. 

Culture Club: Reading IN THE DREAM HOUSE by Carmen Maria Machado

Selina Robertson Writing

My friend warned me when she got me the book. I kept it on a table for two weeks before I picked it up. Five days so that if it had traces of Covid on it, it would die. Nine days to gather the courage. The book she was talking about is Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House.

Culture Club: Watching THE WATERMELON WOMAN by Cheryl Dunye

Selina Robertson Writing

I love Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman for enacting how hard it can be to sift through history to find those trailblazers who actually left little trace behind them. And also, how history doesn’t always reward us with heroism.

Culture Club: Watching SWEET SUGAR RAGE by Sistren Theatre Collective

Selina Robertson Writing

By Grace Barber-Plentie. What Sweet Sugar Rage does so successfully is to show resistance as well as solidarity through art and problem-solving. The women in this film provide community – they listen to each others problems, but more than that, they offer viable solutions.

Culture Club: Watching HISTORY AND MEMORY: FOR AKIKO AND TAKASHIGE by Rea Tajiri

Selina Robertson Writing

I have been thankful, during social isolation, for the generosity of the many media artists, especially women of colour, who have shared their work on the Internet. Among them is Rea Tajiri, whose classic, half-hour experimental documentary video, History and Memory, has long been hard to see outside of art spaces and classrooms.