Director, author, and activist, Amandine Gay divides her time between research, creation, and “paper business”. She has been back in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal since June 2022 – after an eight-year immigration saga.
Following, Ouvrir La Voix – her first self-produced and self-distributed film giving the floor to twenty-four French-speaking Afro-descendant women – released in French, Belgian and Swiss cinemas in 2017 and Quebec in 2018; she directed a second documentary, A Story of Its Own. This archival film is on national adoption from the point of view of 5 adopted people, now adults. She is a regular speaker on Afro-feminism, film, intersectionality, and adoption. In 2018, she founded the Mois des Adoptées, a series of events: conferences, screenings, performances, workshops. This is held every year in November between France, Switzerland, and Quebec to allow adoptees to reclaim their narrative. In 2021, she published her first book at La Découverte (France) and Remue-Ménage (Quebec), Une poupée en chocolat, an autobiographical essay on adoption.
Its new projects aim to continue and deepen its dialogue between the world of research and art, through a multifaceted reflection-creation around white supremacy involving the writing of an essay, curation of an exhibition, and publication of an exhibition catalog. She also intends to rely on Alliance’s support to develop her career on the English-speaking side of North America, in particular by working on the translation and English-language edition of her first book.
Website: https://linktr.ee/orpheonegra
Photo credits: Jean-Baptiste Demouy (Radio-Canada)