Black Mother: Cinema as Poetry

Tickets are $12, Watch Streaming Here: https://grasshopperfilm.vhx.tv/products/epsilon-spires-presents-black-mother

Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present.

Trailer

Discussion of the film led by Shanta Lee Gander on Tuesday, June 2nd @7pm EDT

Zoom Link to Join the Conversation: https://zoom.us/j/93111712827

Shanta Lee Gander is an artist and multi-faceted professional in leadership, marketing, management, and a range of other areas. As an artist, her endeavors include writing prose, poetry, investigative journalism, and photography.  Shanta Lee's prose has been incorporated into her former weekly radio segments, Ponder This on Green Mountain Mornings 100.3 FM/1490 AM WKVT.  Her poetry, prose, and personal essays have been featured in Rebelle Society, on the Ms. Magazine Blog, and The Commons weekly newspaper.  Shanta Lee’s contributing work on an investigative journalism piece for The Commons received a New England Newspaper & Press Association (NENPA) 2019 award. Shanta Lee has served as a Brattleboro Selectboard member and is the co-author of Ghosts of Cuba:  An Interracial Couple’s Exploration of Cuba in the Age of Trump—Told in Images & Words (in manuscript).  Shanta Lee was a CT Health Foundation Fellow, created Planned Parenthood of Southern New England’s first statewide internship program while living in CT, and has served as a Brattleboro Selectboard member. 

In 2017, during the first debut of VOICES, Shanta Lee stretched the boundaries of poetry by marketing the event as a mix-media approach to words.  Rather than your usual poetry reading, she shaped it as an experience. The show engaged the audience through imagery and music paired with poetry and prose. Shanta’s piece, Woman Untitled, is an example of her poetry paired with a dance performance by Cyndal Ellis. Shanta Lee has also served as the president of the Arts Council of Windham County board and co-designed their creativity forums, Nourishing the Inner Artist: Conversations about Art, Creativity, and Imagination which has reached parts of NH and MA.  She has completed a recent collaboration with the Vermont Arts Council co-curating the statewide show, “I AM…” featuring 27 artists from across Vermont.  Shanta Lee is currently completing her MFA in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.  She has an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College.   She is currently the director of outreach and publicity for Mount Island—a small press and magazine dedicated to rural LGBTQ+ and POC voices/artists and gives lectures on the life of Lucy Terry Prince as a member of the Vermont Humanities Council Speakers Bureau.