Director: Julianknxx

Synopsis: Shot in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone and narrated by its Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the film considers what it means to move: “I really appreciate that you really care about the people who come to your city, but I really care about the people who leave my city. Travel should be a choice, not a thing people have to do because they have no other option”.

For some of us our environments offer a space and a context for us to move within them, however, this is not the case for many more of us. As both a meditation and a listening exercise, On Freedom Of Movement (wi de muv) considers the necessity and inevitability of movement and the ability of the environments we live in to create the space we need, with a focus on cities. Moving between places and across borders is so much more than just crossing them and cities play a key role in this journey of ideas, people and cultures.

Julianknxx places this work within his existing artistic series After the Ocean, alongside previous work In Praise of Still Boys (2021). In this series, Julianknxx explores the ocean as both a point of departure and meeting, of movement and multiplicities, with water becoming a symbol of life and loss, death and rapture, tragedy and transformation, while continuing to operate as a conduit for shared experiences. What does it mean to carry the water with us, when our history left us an ocean?

Bio: Julianknxx is a resident artist at 180 Studios, London, and has exhibited in the UK and internationally. 

Program: Color, Movement & Fashion – VAEFF 2023