Image description: An illustrated portrait of Kime, a black woman with flowing pink braids. Her eyes are closed. An orange butterfly sits in her hair. The background is a pale blue and has soft clouds. The text reads: Smile4Kime doors 7:00 | screening 7:30 film screening performance grief ritual Vox Populi 319 N 11st 3rd floor FREE TO ATTEND
Smile4Kime Film Screening
Presented By The Film’s Creators: Elena Guzman, Director, Cybee Bloss, Producer, & Malachi Lily, Conceptual Director of Animation
Free! Doors at 7pm
We would like to invite you to a free screening of Smile4Kime at Vox Populi Gallery on October 21st at 7pm.
Smile4Kime is an experimental short film that tells the story of two friends who transcend time, space, and even death to support each other and stay connected through their struggles with mental illness.
This event will be facilitated by Malachi Lily, the Conceptual Director of Animation for the film, and the Director, Elena Guzman, will be in attendance.
The screening will be followed by a participatory grief ritual led by death doula Lenée A. Voss, as well as a live musical performance by Sabrina Pantal, who created the original score for the film.
We ask that all attendees mask and will provide masks at the door for those who need them. There is limited seating in the Black Box theater, and we will cap the screening when it reaches capacity on a first-come-first-serve basis
ARTIST BIOS:
Elena Guzman: Elena is a documentary filmmaker, educator, and anthropologist from the Bronx and Lower East Side of Manhattan. She co-directed a film entitled Bronx Lives that explores homelessness for Latinx and African Americans in New York. Her work has shown at MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana and she has received grants from Scribe, Leeway Foundation, Cornell Council for the Arts, Society for the Humanities, and the 2020 Summer DocuLab sponsored by Haverford College. As a part of her work in film, she co-founded a feminist filmmaking collective called Ethnocine and is a producer of the podcast Bad Feminists Making Films.
Cybee Bloss: Cybee is a nonbinary animator and producer whose work explores surreal stories of a pedagogical nature. Their work currently focuses on land-stewardship, development, and the commons. Their work has been supported by The Leeway Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and Philadelphia Independent Media Fund, and Scribe Video Center, The Andy Warhol Foundation, and Doc Society. When they are not working on video projects, they are gardening in South Philadelphia, animating with the Philadelphia Animation Ensemble and learning about ecological restoration.
Malachi Lily: Malachi Lily (they/them) is a black, shapeshifting storyteller, illustrator, and director. As an energy worker, they practice spiritual channeling to summon stories of queer love/cosmic horror that decompose colonial fears such as nature, unconsciousness, and femininity. They embrace the monstrous as a pathway to remembering the mycelial networks of the spiritual body. This depolarization of nature/human/spirit is essential for liberation and collective evolution. Their work has been utilized/recognized by Black Quantum Futurism, In These Times, 3311 Productions, Hachette Publishing, The Baffler, Autostraddle, Forward Together, Beyond Queer Words, Roxanne Gay, and more. Lily was a scholarship fellow of the 2022 Lighthouse Writing in Color retreat and a fellow for both the 2023 winter sessions of Tinhouse and Roots.Wounds.Words.
Sabrina Pantal: Sabrina Pantal is a first-generation Haitian artist from Pennsylvania. As a predominantly self-taught vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, they bring such a unique quality to their sound. Their music is truly a collaboration with The Divine, soothing the soul through layered harmonies, dreamy synths, and transcendent lyrics.
Lenée A. Vloss: An internet person since 1996, Lenée has written some interesting things in a lot of places. She works as a grief doula, ancestral healer, and reiki practitioner. You can follow her on Twitter, where she’s equal parts rose quartz and brass knuckles.