Chloe
March 14, 1793 Chloe Cooley, an enslaved Black woman in Queenston, Upper Canada, was captured and thrown into a boat and taken across the river to be sold in the United States. Her screaming helped save her life and introduce the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada.
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Howard J. DavisDirectorC'est Moi
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Howard J. DavisWriterC'est Moi
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Kimberley RampersadKey CastShaw Festival, Shall We Dance
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Project Type:Experimental, Short
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Genres:history, short, women, music, black history
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Runtime:1 minute
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Completion Date:July 28, 2017
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Country of Origin:Canada
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Country of Filming:Canada
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:4K
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Black & White
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Cardiff International Film FestivalCardiff
United Kingdom -
60 Second International Film FestivalIslamabad
Pakistan -
60 Second Short Film FestivalVirginia
United States
February 29, 2020
North American Premiere
Haui aka Howard J. Davis is a multi-disciplinary artist of diverse heritage whose work spans direction, design, performance and visual arts.
He has worked at Stratford Festival as an assistant director in the Michael Langham Director's Workshop, Shaw Festival as an actor/designer; National Arts Centre as an assistant director; Tarragon Theatre, Black Theatre Workshop, GCTC and Neptune Theatre as a video designer; and performed with Neptune Theatre, Native Earth, Cahoots Theatre, Paper Canoe Projects and Factory Theatre.
In 2022 he is video/projection designing the world premiere of Hamlet 911 by Anne-Marie MacDonald at the Stratford Festival directed by Alisa Palmer.
His film work has included his award-winning internationally screened short film "C’est Moi" (www.cestmoifilm.com) about the history of Marie-Josèphe Angélique, assistant producing Marie Clements as well as the stills photographer and EPK artist on her feature film "Red Snow" released in 2019 with a theatrical release in 2020 and broadcasting on CBC and APTN this fall and an untitled project with Canadian indigenous legend Tantoo Cardinal.
He recently released his feature film debut entitled "Mixed↑" and is creating a new devised operatic work about Canadian singer Portia White supported by the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian Opera Company.
His photography has been published in Harpers Bazaar UK, Amina Magazine (Paris) and was commissioned and featured in the design for Canadian Opera Company's 2018 world premiere of Rufus Wainwright's and Daniel McIvor's "Hadrian".
For more information check out haui.ca
"I don't know how to feel...and I wonder who's to blame"
Her memory can be felt the length of the Niagara parkway. Her screams were muffled by the oppression of slavery. None of us today know how to even comprehend the trauma that she faced. Her resilience has been relegated to the peripheries of history.
Currently living where the underground railroad led to in Upper Canada I am reminded about this tumultuous history every day of my life. We all have a direct link to history and are deeply implicated by the traumas of slavery to this day.
As an artist of mixed black and white heritage, I recognize my own family history is fraught with the reality that some of my ancestors were free and some were enslaved in this cruel system.
Nowadays racism is coded and masked in a different way, however, we must always acknowledge that slavery was and still is a systemic problem that cannot be ignored. How do we do this conscientiously to move forward collectively as humanity? For those who beat this system like Chloe Chloe, every minute of their freedom counted. Chloe is just one of many voices who escaped and made it to freedom.