I Forgot How to Speak Spanish (2018) & La Ciguapa (2019)
In ‘I Forgot How to Speak Spanish’ Sydney Rahimtoola talks about her hometown New York and the household she grew up in on Junction Boulevard in Queens, a district dominated by Latin American immigrants. With a crew of family, friends and locals, Rahimtoola revisits familiar family routines and places from her Dominican-American heritage. The cast plays stereotypical versions of themselves while the domestic setting is appropriated for an eerie, exuberant and cinematic journey through identity and anxieties. As a second-generation Dominican-American, Rahimtoola looks back on her youth, contemplating what home means to her and questioning her identity. She elaborates on notions from her film in the accompanying series of portraits ‘La Ciguapa’.
Sydney Rahimtoola uses photography, film and performance to reflect on her personal and collective experiences of diaspora, the cultural influence of family and contemporary identity politics. Rahimtoola’s connections with the people she portrays are essential to her work, which is full of colour and satire. These images initially tap into deep-rooted traditions and everyday customs, but Rahimtoola brings them into the present by providing them with a new context, by re-enacting memories or breathing new life into folktales. The stories of her protagonists form a kind of co-authorship that leads to new visual stories. For this edition of the festival Rahimtoola is also guest curator of the exhibition ‘Tell me,’ at the Noorderlicht Studio.
film and photography
director, photography and installation: Sydney Rahimtoola | director of photography: Frisly Soberanis | editing: Saffia Rahimtoola
