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Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts SICCA
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Jamil Baldwin

OWED

"OWED" is meant to find a common vernacular for where we find comfort and what we learn to be comfortable with. Through a series of vignettes responding to poetry from Dr. Joshua Bennett’s book of the same name, "OWED" reconciles our relationship with people and spaces we’ve been taught to see as insignificant.

 

 

"OWED" leans into sitting within the contradictions within the relationship between ourselves and the people, spaces, and objects we have been taught to think of as insignificant. As we contemplate where we find comfort and what we learn to be comfortable with, OWED's vignettes echo the vernacular of how the everyday person is currently recording their lives.

Although the poems of Owed are rooted in NYC, the film is primarily rooted in Los Angeles, but also contemplates the shared values across interiors and exteriors and geographies  within Los Angeles, CA; Long Beach, CA; Cleveland, OH; Philadelphia, PA; Cortlandt Manor, NY; Boston, MA; and Jackson, MS.

Q&A

Fellowship Cohort: Spring 2024

Why did you choose this project?
As it's an ode to the effort to the challenges of what plurality asks us to hold on a daily basis.

How was this fellowship meaningful or impactful to you?
This opportunity has given me space to image larger. The money has gone to the animation budget for the project, which not only opens up the film, but also allows me to  collaborate with a hero of mine who is also important to the history of animation and its power to materialize new worlds!

Have you showcased this work in any other ways or places? Do you have any future plans related to this work? 
I've shown this excerpt as a part of a community workshop in my neighborhood

Jamil G. Baldwin was raised in and has worked across the Inland Empire and Los Angeles. Baldwin’s work is an inquiry into the limits of the ability of the photograph to function as a force of liberation. The work asks audiences to engage in gestures of reorientation, as a means of cultivating a practice towards a value system rooted in care.