PROJECTS
THE PALACE
(Coming in 2025) Short sci-fi thriller
At a secret forest hideout, suburban teen Dani meets up with her crush Jayde, only to discover that something else has joined them.
With this story, I'm imagining what it would look like if you could take all the feelings of adolescence, the excitement, fear, anxiety, horniness, body-awareness, insecurity—especially for femme teens—and wrap it all up into one breathing, living thing. What if there was a place to put it all? Would it be terrifying or would it be a relief?
TABANCA
2022 Short Drama
Dampened by office life during a wet Vancouver winter, a genderqueer Trinidadian woman, Marlinn, misses out on the chance to celebrate Carnival season back home. Until, one night, they discover that the power of masquerade is within them no matter where they are.
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Starring: Nneka Croal, Elsi Industrius, & Dayleigh Nelson
Supported by the British Columbia Arts Council
Currently available in Canada on CBC Gem
Watch Trailer HERE
THE COCONUT EFFECT
2020 Short Experimental
The Coconut Effect is a short digital film that uses binaural sound, ASMR, Foley performances and text captions to create sensory narratives around Trinidadian food and cultural memory. The narrator, who takes us on a journey through waking and dream states, lulls us into a series of experiences that meander between two worlds, both inside and outside of the tropics, while navigating a Caribbean authenticity that is continuously called into question.
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This film has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Originals Initiative.
LOGO-MAN-SEE
2019 Live Performance, 25 mins
A live performance presented to an audience in the form of a YouTube dance tutorial that taught five new street dance moves inspired by terms relating to the broader experience of cultural appropriation: Using humour, honesty, dance moves, and stock images, Alyssa and Sophia raised issues about cultural representation, identity, respect, appreciation, and the dangers of appropriation, all stemming from their own lived experiences.
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Performed and co-created by dancers Alyssa Amarshi and Sophia Gamboa
WAVES OF NENA
2018, Photo Installation and gif
Nena was raised in Ontario and I imagine that, in this photograph, she is swimming in the ocean for, perhaps, the first time in her life—it is her taut expression and that the waves seem about to overtake her. I assume that the picture was taken at Maracas Bay on the north coast of Trinidad sometime in the 1940s. I have felt those waves too and, for us Ontario lake-women, the water at Maracas is surprisingly aggressive. The original film slide no longer exists, only a degraded JPEG remains. In its absence, I attempted to reverse the process of encoding that this image had been subjected to by sending it back into an analogue format, using 4K, Hi8, CRT, and 35mm film. I wanted to suspend the moment captured, to bring her back into the waves in the only way I could, by sending her image through modulated or ‘wave-like’ signals, instead of that deadening OFF or ON of the digital binary.
BIRDS OF PARADISE
2017-18, multi-media installation and short film
Through a sequence of filmic fragments and pauses, Birds of Paradise tells the story of a near-future, post-energy crisis world, one in which pole dancers become symbols of the human struggle for resources. Accompanied by a collection of energetic landscapes, dreamy narration, and kinetic props, their performances point to a seductive yet frustrated vision of paradise. Performed by Sydney Southam, Jiles Barrett and Leiah Engel, narration by Pia Shandel, costume design by Megan Veaudry, and additional aerial footage by Robert Krogh.
THE AUDITION TAPES
2014, experimental film, 52 mins
In The Audition Tapes, five, vaguely familiar, fictional men come to life through the meandering interpretations of 10 actors’ on-camera and improvised auditions. The actors were asked to perform as The Seasonal Bachelor, The Affectionate Drug Dealer, The Sociopathic Gentleman, The Frisky Entrepreneur, and The Son of a Dead Rock Star.