Saturday November 3, 2018

Author, poet, spoken words performer and director, Joëlle Sambi offers a discussion and a spoken words performance around excerpts from her film project Pinkshasa Diaspora. Pinkshasa Diaspora is the story of Congolese homosexuals. Stories about bodies, identities, struggles, experiences, family, racism, departures and arrivals. A look at communities, those to build and to deconstruct. Pinkshasa Diaspora is a first documentary that gives voice to gays, lesbians and bisexuals of the diaspora of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Joëlle Sambi was born in Brussels and spent her early years there. She grew up in Kinshasa and only returned to Belgium in 2001 to study journalism at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is the author of several short stories including "Je ne Sais pas Rêver" in 2003 and "Religion Ya Kitendi" published by Gallimard (Mercure de France) and for which she won the Young Writer Award 2005. She received the "Gros Sel" Jury Prize in 2008 for her novel "Le Monde est Gueule de Chèvre", published by Biliki (Belgium 2007). Although she dissociates her origin and her work of writing, Congo, its history and contemporary Belgium are nonetheless present in watermark in her stories as well as in her projects. Author and activist LGBT feminist, Joëlle Sambi writes and raises questions about identity, norm, belonging, she exists between several languages ​​and her writings bear the traces. She lives on the border and the strangeness of her language leads her writing to poetry, to slam, she regularly publishes on her blog: "Solola Bien" (http://joellesambi.tumblr.com/).
She is currently performing in the show "Congo Eza" which she co-wrote the texts (Lezarts Urbains).

(You can support the film Pinkshasa Diaspora here : https://www.lepotcommun.fr/pot/tjui5rb6?1533644115)