Cinema Workshop – “Camera Ministry”

Jamaican-Iranian filmmaker and photographer Khalik Allah, based in New York, documents the lives of diverse communities from the African diaspora. Whether it’s producing footage in East Harlem for the movie “Field Niggas” (2014) or in his first book “Souls Against the Concrete” (University of Texas Press, 2017) or traveling to the interior of Jamaica to explore his family roots in ‘Black Mother’ (2018), Allah directs his practice around young blacks and women “to give them ‘Self-Knowledge’, to elevate them and raise awareness of black contributions to world history before American slavery.” He discusses looking at black communities in urban settings and the ethics of portraying marginalization on the movie screen.

Khalik Allah, runs a workshop for the first time in Lisbon, in which he discusses the spiritual implications of his work, namely the use of photography to capture the essence of a person from a non-judgmental perspective; the recognition of all people as a light, and as a child of God; the choice to find beauty everywhere and in everything around us; and the use of photography to build intimate relationships.
The artist will also share aspects that marked his evolution as a filmmaker and as a photographer, in which he will address the practice of producing work that is not always understood, the search for representation (gallery, etc.), the balance between artistic production and the market of art, and the honesty that his work implies.