shirt and teapot

Shirt and Teapot (2014) was inspired by my mother’s stories of her experiences as a student in the private missionary schools during the colonial era in Ghana, West Africa. The film highlights the monotony and banality of domestic duties. The melancholic soundscape creates an atmosphere of a longing for an imagined life. The sound of African children playing evokes a feeling of the loss of childhood. The gestures of hands suggest that the person in the film is subordinate and marginalised by her circumstances. These actions represent the power structures that have evolved between privileged and marginalised persons in the context of domestic enslavement. The absence of a person wearing the shirt implies that it is an institutional legacy that has set up domestic enslavement rather than attributing the cause to one individual. Shirt & Teapot (2014) was officially selected for the International Black Women's Film Festival in San Francisco in December, 2015.