Being a woman makes me hyper-aware of being watched. People are constantly looking at me, up and down, observing my outfit, how much of my body is visible, how much make-up I am wearing, etc etc. I know other women will deeply understand this experience. Of pretending you aren’t aware someone is looking at you, especially when that person is a man. This is compounded when you are a young queer femme.
Queer women are judged. We are examined. We are checked out. We are scrutinized. We are searched. We are ogled. We are constantly under surveillance.
Finding balance has been an important topic for me as I have previously found myself caught in a spiral of procrastination due to my tendencies towards perfectionism, and admittedly still occasionally do.
Coated with imagery of the local Haitian practices of Vodou and Kanaval, this reflexive narrative was created through direct collaboration between Casanova and his film students from the Ciné Institute of Jacme. The film simultaneously questions the ethics of its ethnographic filmmaking, while also exploring the aftermath of colonialism in Haiti.
