Negotiating Liberation

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Amirah Tajdin: “Negotiating Liberation”
Dreamlovers: Wistful AfroRomantics in Emirati 16mm

Amirah Tajdin’s short “Negotiating Liberation” is almost entirely set to music and could be experienced at first glance as a gorgeously framed music video, foregrounding technicolor fashions and delectable pastries. But what may initially present itself as a sultry dance between its two beautiful black leads is deeply embedded in Tajdin’s own experience as an African woman artist living and working in Dubai, toggling between commercial video and her own practice as an art filmmaker. The music of the lovers on screen is a melancholic exploration of how the very act of expressing private love is a form of quiet rebellion against the loneliness of immigrant life outside one’s home country. The setting is an unfinished Dubai villa, its arches and bare walls becoming the architecture of the ultimate migrant dream in a city defined by the pursuit of personal property and sun-kissed luxury. In centering the story on two young African migrants, reuniting after a long separation, Tajdin draws on her vocabulary of fashion and music to draw out the pleasure principle of migrant life ‘after hours.’ While realism and documentary may be two modes to explore the tiered nuance of the black migrant experience in the Gulf, Tajdin focuses on dance, interwoven bodies and live performance for those too, she says, are a central part of the immigrant experience. Emotional moments of reprieve walled off from the Sunday-Thursday struggle are as hard-won and deserving of celebration as the economic advances and choices that fuel migrant life. Shot on 16mm film stock overlayed with occasional text messages, the piece pays tribute to the 1960s African High-Life movement and the colors and songs of Tajdin’s native Kenya. The resulting piece is a film of unapologetic beauty and black love created entirely on location in the Gulf, a private dance enacted in a dreamy Dubai home.

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