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10 Feb Nyassa Munyonge

Posted at 15:50h Highlighted Member, Members by
As part of February’s #MainArtist, Nyassa speaks to you directly about what it is to be of here and there and in between, what it means to live through it, think through it and create with and within it. In addition to her contribution to #MainArtist, Nyassa completed the P.R.I.S.M.E program in 2024 and won first prize in the program’s pitch competition!
Nyassa Munyonge shares the profound alienation that is growing up as a foreigner, contending with race, identity and the weight of expectations, all while finding comfort through creative expression.

 

A screenwriter of Congolese descent, Nyassa Munyonge has written and directed various short fiction films in her home province of New Brunswick. After finishing her bachelor’s degree in screenwriting and creative writing at the Université de Montréal, she was a finalist in Cours écrire ton court and was a member of Being Black in Canada’s 2023 cohort, where she directed her short film Fille de son père, presented at the Black Film Festivals nationwide. She presented her fiction webseries ZOOMBA! at the Pitch des scénaristes – séries, a project for which she received development support from the NB Arts Council and won the Main Film first prize pitch contest at the fourth edition of the PRISME training program. Her current artistic approach explores the extraordinary through the ordinary, moral grey zones, identity, and silent rebellion through the prism of her own intersectional experiences.

Filmographie :

  • Noir animal, short fiction film – in production
  • ZOOMBA!, fiction web series – in production
  • Fille de son père, documentary short, Being Black in Canada (2023)
  • D’homard et d’eau douche, mockumentary, l’Acadie suit son COURT (2020)
  • Canette sur roue de bicycle, short fiction film (2018)

❝ Having to solve riddles your entire childhood with your white rural besties who were too polite to utter the word “black”. “The person… with curly hair, you know? A bit tan, with… big lips?”

Hating, without exception, all words beginning with N, including your own first name.

Never, ever, having people over, not in the house or in the rusty clunker.

Always being associated with a country that’s never seen your face, in part because of a war that has devastated it for years, but also because the plane ride costs too much money.

Making sure you’re the one with the biggest Brayon accent and having a penchant for regional expressions in order to not betray your otherness.

Crushing on/being jealous of blue-eyed blondes because they represent the inaccessible.

Hoping a move to the big city will aid your rural ailments, psych.

Not fitting into the big city because there aren’t enough rural people.

Not being able to want to shoot yourself in the head in peace because your suicide would reflect more on your parents who left everything to immigrate to the West and who never asked for an ungrateful, Canadian passport holding child.

Claiming the words bisexual and queer because lesbian sounds too gay.

Cringing hard when someone asks about your intersectionality because, well shit, at some point, fucking get over it, I mean, whoop-de-fucking-doo, you’re checking (almost) every box, but still, LOL, still, you’re not that special.

Hating yourself so much that dissociation becomes your entire personality.

Not knowing how to unfuck yourself, not being able to afford therapy, so making stuff instead.

Spitting your venom onto a Final Draft page, releasing intergenerational trauma in ways that are only imaginary, reaching orgasm fictionally.

Finally feeling at home in single-spacing.

A necessary evil, I guess. ❞

Nyassa Munyonge

Created in 2023, the two-minute demo of ZOOMBA! was developed during the Créateurs en série competition, showing the first version of this fictional web series combining comedy and drama. Produced by A PAS PEUR INC. the project is scripted and directed by Nyassa Munyonge and is still in development.

#MAINARTIST

Our organization is an artist-run center committed to supporting its community as a whole, without distinction.

Beyond the simple declarations of solidarity against racism following the events of the summer of 2020, but also against more recent racist acts and those that persist historically, it seemed essential to us to offer a place to our members so that they can express their feelings in the face of the discrimination they experience and which could be based on the color of their skin, their origins, their sexual orientation, their gender or a handicap.

We invite them to share their thoughts on this societal drama that constitutes all forms of rejection of the other.

Main Film is an artist-run center committed to supporting its community as a whole, without distinction, in the creation of independent film.

Our 30th contributing artist is Nyassa Munyonge.

#MainArtist #ArtisteImportant

Because it is artists who carry both the role of representing society and making it evolve.

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