Kiesha’s creative journey is one she’s been on since she was sixteen years old and it hasn’t always been easy. From struggling to balance work with creativity which let to her quitting her job to make more time for the things she loves.
Kiesha at the Beatfreeks Fuel funded premier.
Kiesha is a voice for the voiceless.
Her Fuel funded project to hold a premier that would showcase her work and create a space for people to have a conversation about taboo topics. Her collection of short films explores issues like female genital mutilation otherwise known as FGM, which she goes on to explain how “a lot of people are unaware of it. I felt grateful to be able to educate people on things like this”. Kiesha’s films also touch on topics such as depression, date rape, black woman in creative industries and a parody of 90s music with an underlying love story.
She truly believes that her voice has helped others find theirs, by speaking about these things she’s seen the effect it has had. Her aim to create a dialogue between peoples to highlight issues will create awareness. With a female-driven narrative at the core, Kiesha proudly says “It’s for women but we need allies. Some men asked to come to the event, and I said why not”. She added how “men need to be included in these conversations”.
Kiesha believes that as people we should know what’s going on around us. Otherwise, we’ll keep passing down traumas.
In the past, she dealt with self-belief, when things got hard with the pursuit of her creative goals. She admits it can get depressing but she’s determined to keep moving forward. It was a tough period during production as it the who process took a total of 10 months to produce five episodes. She got help from another filmmaker like Remani Love.
“It was hard working with multiple schedules, sending out scripts. Even on the day, we had set out to film in a particular location and they refused to let us film, we had to find another record store but that turned out to be a better backdrop for my parody of 90s music. One door closes and another opens.” It’s clear that nothing would stop her even the rejections and she hopes by sharing this and using her voice she can inspire others to chase their dreams regardless of the setbacks and self-doubt.
This is how Kiesha, used her voice, how can you use yours?
One Response
This is a beautiful project and I am interested to see how the world continues to get shaped by inspirational beings to society. I like that the radical nature of activism has given space for changemakers to be able to be on the forefront not just in this day and age but continuing time. One thing that I love most about this is that it is the very foundation for discussion to create communities out of the very fabric that can be used to hold us all back down in our own interconnected forms of oppression. The voices that emerge out of this as well as the content above all will create a future I am willing to be apart of.