Young Critics Workshop 2017

I’m a 23-year-old Portuguese cinephile and a graduate from Lisbon’s School of Theatre and Cinema, where I studied set and costume design. Currently, I write about cinema for two online publications, Magazine HD and Filmin PT, while working in small theatre productions. Partially influenced by what I’ve read and seen over the years, cinema is, to me, an audio-visual art form, above all else, so I try to write about it as such. I personally believe film criticism can constitute a way of helping people understand cinema, giving them tools to appreciate it in wonderful new ways.

I am a young academic and writer, continuously looking to understand and express things in new and unexpected ways. My favorite film, book or poem rarely remains the same for more than two weeks in a row, yet I am convinced that the greatest masterpieces can be watched or read time and time again, successfully telling a thousand stories. Translating fragments of those filmic stories into the written word is a delightful challenge I’d take on any day.

I am a Ghanaian-Nigerian with a passion for words and moving images. I am currently a student at DocNomads – the Erasmus Mundus MA in Documentary Film Directing. Alongside cinema, I have a keen interest in history, literature and anthropology, and hold BA and MPhil degrees in these fields from Harvard University (2015) and the University of Cambridge (2016) respectively.

I am a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice at Harvard University. My film criticism has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Film Quarterly, Little White Lies, Senses of Cinema, and other publications. I have also contributed chapters to books on Delmer Daves and the global road movie. Current projects include a dissertation on France’s culture of cinematic authorship, from the multidisciplinary avant-garde of the 1910s and 20s to the emergence of transnational production in and out of the former African colonies, and a translation of a novel by Sembene Ousmane.

I was a lit geek first, a film school goer second, and I am now finishing an MA degree at Goldsmiths College in Film and Screen Studies after spending a whole year doing research and writing extensively on the topic of ‘saudade’ in cinema. In truth, I’ve been mostly stealing as much as I can from the talented souls the city of London is garnished with. My favorite place on earth is still the tiny theatre in my hometown of Porto where I first saw Bicycle Thieves from the projectionist’s booth. Since I was first published in Premiere Portugal at fourteen, I’ve written for Mubi Notebook and The Rumpus, among many other publications.