Black girls coming of age on their own terms.
From the lands of Brooklyn, NY to South Africa, across the ground-breaking work of Cauleen Smith, Ayoka Chenzira, Milisuthando Bongela, Leslie Harris & more, SNAPSHOT turns the spotlight to Black girls who are coming of age on their own terms. Through these intimate explorations of their interior lives, we find joy in their adventures, in the refreshing variety of perspectives they have to offer, and in storytelling that simply lets Black girls be girls.
T A P E with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery presents a programme of radical archive and critical contemporary offerings with a series of features and short films which capture and celebrate the multi-faceted experiences of Black Girlhood. In a world where Black girls are too often relegated to sidekick or trauma narratives, we bring to the fore the audacious, the hilarious and the beguiling - stories which have long sought to redress this balance.
With an eye that is at once nostalgic and critical, take a deep dive into films by Black female filmmakers across the decades, platforming cinema which allows its subjects to be powerful, complicated, vulnerable, and the main character in their own stories
Featured Films
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Directed by
Leslie HarrisWith hopes of becoming a doctor and not a product of her environment, a Brooklyn teenager is faced with numerous challenges that threaten her dreams.
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Directed by
Milisuthando BonjelaSet in past and present South Africa, Milisuthando is a poetic coming-of-age personal essay documentary on love and what it means to become human in the context of race, explored through the memories of Milisuthando – who grew up during apartheid but didn't know it was happening until it was over.
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Directed by
Ayoka ChenziraA coming-of-age comedy-drama about three African American women living in Brooklyn, Alma’s Rainbow explores the life of teenager Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) as she enters womanhood and navigates standards of beauty, self-image, and the rights women have over their bodies.
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Directed by
Cauleen SmithA lost treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/ romance. Alarmed by the rate at which the young Black men around her are dying—indeed, “becoming extinct,” as she sees it—brash Oakland art student Pica (Toby Smith) attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in an abusive relationship (April Barnett), experiencing love and loss, and being drawn into the search for a serial killer who is terrorizing the city. Capturing the vibrant community spirit of Oakland in the nineties, Smith crafts both a rare cinematic celebration of Black female creativity and a moving elegy for a generation of lost African American men.
Snapshot Shorts
Alongside the feature films in the season, we’re proud to present Snapshot Shorts, an incredible rollercoaster of teenage angst, mother & daughter relationships and the sweet liberation of finding your tribe.
Screenings dates coming soon, if you’d like to see the programme on the big screen, please do check in with your local cinema.
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Directed by
Ngozi Onwurah
A young girl leaves her Nigerian village to attend a ballet school in England. Fascinated by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, she dreams of performing as lead ballerina Princess Odette, but the girls in her close-minded ballet school mock her ideas of a 'black swan'.
UK (1992), 11 min.
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Directed by
S. Pearl Sharp
“In a heartfelt, and often hilarious, attempt to be more than ‘ordinary,’ a girl growing up in the 1940s tries to choose between her African-American and Native-American heritages. It is only when her beloved grandfather dies that she is able to reconcile the power of both her heritages and realizes her own uniqueness." - Moving Pictures Bulletin. Originally released in 1984, this lyrical visual poem featuring Barbara-O urges black women to both discover and invent their own identities.
USA (1984), 7 min.
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Directed by
Yero Timi-Biu
Flipping the 'Essex Girl' trope, this coming-of-age film explores Black British girlhood and magical female friendships in 2009 Essex.
UK (2023), 15 min
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Directed by
Warda Mohamed
A film about teenage dreams, dislocated grief and unexpected connection, following a British-Somali teen navigating a confusing mourning period for a family member she never met.
UK (2023), 19 min.
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Directed by
Maureen Blackwood
Sankofa Film Collective's Maureen Blackwood renders the often unspoken experience of loneliness and sacrifice within migration stories. To ease her homesickness Miriam recreates an aspect of home in her suburban British garden. Cultural memory exerts a healing power, combatting cultural appropriation, hostility towards migrants and the rift between Miriam and her Nigerian-British children.
UK (1993), 11 min.
Latest News
Just Another Girl On The I.R.T.
Special 4K Restoration
The new 4K restoration of the only feature film to date by writer/director Leslie Harris is brought to you in collaboration with Park Circus to close off our SNAPSHOT Series. Join us for the premiere of Just Another Girl on the I.R.T re-lease taking place at Glasgow Film Theatre as part of Glasgow Film Fest ‘25 on Wednesday 5 March.
Tickets for the premiere will go on sale Mon 27 Jan at 10:00am.
Official release date: 21 March 2025.