Travis Alabanza

Commissioned by the BBC & BFI, CLASH is a short experimental documentary critiquing Britain's obsession with period dramas, and how they erase the diverse reality of Britain today. This film - part parody, part candid interview - is a response to Humphrey Jennings' 1942 'LISTEN TO BRITAIN', a documentary used to propel a myth of national unity. CLASH, through the perspectives of underrepresented queer people of colour, critiques the myths we still tell ourselves on screen. Through candid interviews and staged period-drama sequences with our subjects - involving a hobby horse race in East London - our film explores the issues surrounding nostalgic heritage cinema, and how it erases the diverse landscape of Britain today.

42 members of the trans and non-binary communities share their stories and explain why, no matter what the current media narratives or political climate, they won’t be erased.

Travis Alabanza returns to their home town of Bristol to talk to writer and historian Edson Burton, co-founder of Kiki - Bristol’s first visible community for QTIPOC. Examining blackness and gender non-conformity in the context of growing up in Bristol, Travis discusses the importance of oppressed people archiving their own communities so that they are recorded in history in all their complexity. Part of the Chosen Family series from gal-dem Magazine.