A young, pregnant and overworked woman gets a few things off her chest as she prepares to give birth in an undisclosed post colonial Pan-African country.
Director Statement
We filmed this at Sandy Point State Park Annapolis, Maryland. It faces the Chesapeake Bay, an endangered body of water on Indigenous land.
I was going through an Ousmane Sembene phase...
I had a vision of a woman my age carrying a basket on her head and gazing toward the bay...
I came across a news report on YouTube about a province in The Congo called Katanga. It told the suppressed accounts of Japanese miners who fathered Congolese infants. Many of them delivered by Japanese doctors and "mysteriously" dying in the hands of their Congolese mothers.
I came across a quote by Zimbabwean feminist activist, Winnet Shamuyarira: "The violent nature of the extractives sector and how that violence plays out on women’s bodies can be traced back to the colonial period. In many ways, colonial history has been written on female bodies that serve as the metaphor for the conquered land, an untamed space that must be regulated... Extractivism was born out of colonialism, which wasn’t just about conquering land. It was also about taking control of women’s bodies, silencing them, and turning them into objects for male consumption. That context impacts everything.”
I thought about colonialism, anti-blackness, land and body autonomy, black women, displacement, violence, pan-africanism... and got Somewhere Everywhere in the Motherland
I see Somewhere Everywhere in the Motherland expanding into a feature documentary on people of the Katanga Province telling this story.
Director Biography - Boluwatife Adeniran
Hi, My name is Boluwatife (Bow-lu-wah-tee-faye). I'm a Nigerian-born filmmaker based in Maryland. I’m a University Of Maryland Baltimore County graduate with a BFA in Cinematic Arts. My creative work focuses on using visual storytelling to encourage empathy. My mission is to create visual media centered around black experiences, anxiety-inducing situations, and freedom in all its forms.
A young, pregnant and overworked woman gets a few things off her chest as she prepares to give birth in an undisclosed post colonial Pan-African country.
Director Statement
We filmed this at Sandy Point State Park Annapolis, Maryland. It faces the Chesapeake Bay, an endangered body of water on Indigenous land.
I was going through an Ousmane Sembene phase...
I had a vision of a woman my age carrying a basket on her head and gazing toward the bay...
I came across a news report on YouTube about a province in The Congo called Katanga. It told the suppressed accounts of Japanese miners who fathered Congolese infants. Many of them delivered by Japanese doctors and "mysteriously" dying in the hands of their Congolese mothers.
I came across a quote by Zimbabwean feminist activist, Winnet Shamuyarira: "The violent nature of the extractives sector and how that violence plays out on women’s bodies can be traced back to the colonial period. In many ways, colonial history has been written on female bodies that serve as the metaphor for the conquered land, an untamed space that must be regulated... Extractivism was born out of colonialism, which wasn’t just about conquering land. It was also about taking control of women’s bodies, silencing them, and turning them into objects for male consumption. That context impacts everything.”
I thought about colonialism, anti-blackness, land and body autonomy, black women, displacement, violence, pan-africanism... and got Somewhere Everywhere in the Motherland
I see Somewhere Everywhere in the Motherland expanding into a feature documentary on people of the Katanga Province telling this story.
Director Biography - Boluwatife Adeniran
Hi, My name is Boluwatife (Bow-lu-wah-tee-faye). I'm a Nigerian-born filmmaker based in Maryland. I’m a University Of Maryland Baltimore County graduate with a BFA in Cinematic Arts. My creative work focuses on using visual storytelling to encourage empathy. My mission is to create visual media centered around black experiences, anxiety-inducing situations, and freedom in all its forms.