The Black Box is Orange

A gentle character study of Harvey - a straight, fat man who decides to submit a photograph of himself to a gay magazine for 'big men and their admirers'.

Three women engage with the medical system to confront strange dreams that may not belong to them. Early one morning, I regained consciousness in a hospital bed as the sun was coming up. I was sixteen. First thing I heard was the news: Princess Diana had died in a car accident. Two hours earlier, I was hitchhiking home from a party with friends. We were picked up by a Toyota hatchback; the driver was drunk, but we were desperate. At the bottom of the twisted mountain road we crashed into the wall surrounding my town’s cemetery. As I watched updates on Diana from my hospital bed, images of her smashed-up car crept into my mind and imprinted as my own. (Yuula Benivolski)

In March, the streets of Mexico City are covered in purple Jacaranda flowers. Obrera— “Worker” in Spanish—is a working class neighbourhood. I follow the trail of purple flowers on the ground, and discover a large bronze monument behind the fence of an apartment building courtyard: a seamstress, working on a sewing machine. At home, I look up the address: Manuel José Othón, corner of San Antonio Abad. I find a photo of the monument and these words: "Topeka, large garment factory, employed hundreds of women." And then: "Bronze statue at site of collapsed factory."

"My mother always wanted a garden, and now she has one. A poem about family genealogy that highlights the relationship between a name and a place. *** Tatars and other non-Russian communities in the USSR were forced to go through Russification - the spread of Russian language, culture, and people into non-Russian cultures and regions. Forcing the many minority groups within Russia to accept the Russian culture was an attempt to prevent self-determination and separatism. As a result my mother, a Tatar woman born in Moscow, never properly learned her mother tongue or practiced Tatar traditions outside her family home. Composed of super 8 home movies." –Y.B.