Italian Modernities Lecture Series: Conversation with the makers of Teranga

Speaker(s): Sophia Seymour, Daisy Squires, and Lou Marillier (Co-Directors of Teranga) and Yankuba Fatty

Please join us on Monday, February 28 at 12 pm PST on Zoom for the next meeting of the Italian Modernities lecture series. We will be joined by the makers of Teranga, an award-winning documentary about migrant status and nightlife set in Naples. Co-directors Sophia Seymour, Daisy Squires, and Lou Marillier, and one of the film's protagonists - Yankuba Fatty, will share their thoughts. 

Teranga is a 35-minute observational short-documentary about youth, music and conquering collective trauma. Filmed in Naples over two years, this film follows the lives of migrants as they wait in limbo for a response to their asylum request in corrupt migrant camps and how they find solace in Teranga, an Afrobeats migrant-run nightclub.

This documentary seeks to show asylum seekers as they are rarely perceived: ambitious, talented, and determined to achieve their goals, despite a de-humanizing immigration system. Fata and Yankuba fled poverty and a 22-year-dictatorship in The Gambia with very distinct dreams. Fata wants to become a world-famous DJ; Yankuba is an aspiring biochemist. Haunted by their journeys across the desert, Libya and the Mediterranean seas and dreaming of a future with indefinite leave to remain, they escape the boredom and fear of life by dancing away their trauma in Teranga.

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