Summary
Winner of Audience Choice Award during stAnza on Screen 2024, this is a poetry film that utilises poetry to focus on the British Empire's trade histories of tea, spices and coffee; exploring the complexities and consequences of colonialism as well as delivering a message of humanism and progressivism.
Credits
Producer - Laila Sumpton
Cinematographer/Editor - Damian Wilk
Production Assistants - Julia Boehm, Sophie Ann, Rebecca Hindmarsh and Zara Arts
Poets - Laila Sumpton, Daniella Fearon and Fathima Zahra
Partners - City Of London Corporation, London Metropolitan Archives, Keats House Museum and Prodigious London
Laila Sumpton a poet, editor, performer and educator who has worked with schools, hospitals, museums, galleries and charities on a wide variety of poetry projects. Currently, she is managing the Arts Council unded initiative Poetry Vs Colonialism which uses poetry with museums, acadameics and schools to unravel the complex history of the British Empire. She was recently the Keats House Poet in residence and has co - edited 'Where We Find Ourselves,' an anthology from Global Majority writers published by Arachne Press. Laila has been commissioned by Tate Modern, the Tower of London and the Royal Free Hospital amongst others and published in numerous anthologies and magazines including Ambit and Modern Poetry in Translation.
Damian Wilk is an award-winning journalist, acclaimed photographer, skilled cinematographer, succesful TV producer and prolific director known for his creativity and hands-on approach to campaigns and visuals that injects humanistic sensitivity along with high quality video production. His accomplishments include winning the "Best Young Journalist Award" from Adam Mickiewicz University, being a directorfor global brand campaigns such as Peugeot, Samsung, EE and Mcdonalds, being the creative director for multiple change-making organisations such as Poetry Vs Collonialism, #followersNOTwanted, SHEroes and Portrait of Britain, being a short listed photographer by the Portrait of Britain, being a Cannes Lions-winning video editor and a record-breaking work director and editor.