top of page
As a double bill, Brandon Wint’s poetic, whimsical, and introspective documentary My Body is a Poem/The World Makes With Me pairs perfectly with Alex Eskandarkhah’s hard-hitting sports documentary Coaching While Black. Both films offer distinct commentaries on Blackness and its prairie intersection, complementing each other seamlessly.
Wint’s smooth poetry, accompanied by a dreamy, jazzy score, holds us with care while he bares his soul—immersing us in what it is like to live as a Black disabled man with Cerebral Palsy in Edmonton. By using a kaleidoscopic pastiche of animation, archival maps, family photos, and documentary-esque footage of himself, he explores white supremacy, colonialism, artistry, activism, and pleasure by grounding these themes in how his body occupies space, while simultaneously transcending it.
Eskandarkhah’s film works in contrast by offering a different facet of Black masculinity as he outlines how divisive a thriving Black college basketball team proved to be to rural Albertan communities in the late aughts and early 2010s. Through archival game footage, interviews with former team members, and the team’s former coach, Donald ”Tex” Phillips, Eskandarkhah retells a dramatic and heartbreaking story steeped in racially-based discrimination.
Both films prompt us to reconsider our bodies' significance in relation to space and challenge our politicization of bodies. These filmmakers courageously present a thought-provoking pair of films that should not be missed.
Aisha Evelyna, Programmer
Director Bio:
Brandon Wint is an Ontario-born poet, spoken word artist, and multi-disciplinary collaborator who uses poetry to attend to the joys, challenges and miracles of being alive.
For Brandon, the written and spoken word is a tool for examining and enacting his sense of justice, and imagining less violent futures for himself and the world he has inherited. For more than a decade, Brandon has been a sought-after, touring performer and has presented his work in the United States, Australia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Jamaica. His poems and essays have been published in national anthologies, including The Great Black North: Contemporary African-Canadian Poetry (Frontenac House, 2013) and Black Writers Matter (University of Regina Press, 2019). Divine Animal is his debut book of poetry, while MY BODY IS A POEM/THE WORLD MAKES WITH ME is his debut short documentary.
CAST & CREDITS
Director
Brandon Wint
Cinematographer
N/A
Principal Cast
Brandon Wint
Producer
Brandon Wint
Editor
N/A
Writer
Brandon Wint
My Body is a Poem/The World Makes With Me
Brandon Wint
November 5th, 1:30PM at The Paradise Theatre
bottom of page