Akusoa Adoma Owusu showed two of her films, the first one of a close friend of hers, a coming out letter to his mother that he was queer. It was in black and white 16 mm film and captured the everyday life of this man. The everyday things that shaped his identity, he writes a letter to his mother, letting her know of his identity by writing about a series of histories in his life that alluded to his queer identity.
We see him desperately scrubbing himself in the shower, we see him twisting and turning, and sitting thinking and writing, in fact wrestling with his identity, because it meant different things in different parts of the world. Things that could be interpreted and felt by visuals rather than just words alone.
Her second film was about Micheal Jackson, showing his visit to Dakar between the 90s and the 2000s. It was a personal project during the COVID-19 years, where she found a documentary of his visit and his reception. She uses his album covers, merging them with the documentary to convey the message, and the cherry on top is the music she chose.
In the same light, she conveyed the same message of identity, especially that identity is relative to your location. She later expresses in her Q&A session that her films are a documentation of her perception of life.
~Holiness Kerandi ‘26