Filmmakers and Producers

Seyi Adebanjo

Seyi Adebanjo is a Queer Gender-Non-Conforming Nigerian media artist. Seyi raises awareness around social issues through digital video, multimedia photography and writings. Seyi’s work is the intersection of art, media, imagination, ritual and politics. Seyi has been an artist in resident with Allgo and is exhibiting at the Longwood Art Gallery and previously Skylight Gallery -Restoration Plaza Corporation, Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance (BAAD!), MCNY, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art & Waterloo Arts Gallery. Seyi is currently a fellow with AIM at the Bronx Museum and has been a fellow with The Laundromat Project, Queer/Art/Mentorship, Maysles Institute, IFP and City Lore Documentary Fellow. Seyi is the recipient of the Best International Short Film Award, Sydney Transgender International Film Festival, Best Documentary Short, Drama Baltimore International Black Film Festival, Pride of the Ocean LGBT Film Festival Award and Hunter College’s Dean of Arts & Science Master’s Thesis Support Grant. Seyi has been a presenter with NYU, UFVA Conference, AWP & Lambda Literary Foundation & the Brazilian Queering Paradigms Conference. Seyi’s work has been published at Ọṣun State University, African Voices Magazine, Q-Zine, and the Mott Haven Herald. Seyi’s powerful short TRANS LIVES MATTER! JUSTICE FOR ISLAN NETTLES has screened on PBS Channel 13, Brooklyn Museum and continues to screen globally including Official Selection at the 28th BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival, Black Star Film Festival, Gender Reel Film Festival and Al Jazeera America. Other screenings include Brooklyn Film Festival, Reel Sister of the Diaspora Film Festival, The Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival, and the Walker Art Center. Seyi’s current documentary ỌYA: SOMETHING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO WEST AFRICA! Is screening globally and on a speaking tour.

AVAILABLE FROM TWN

Against the Grain
Seyi Adebanjo & Betty Yu
2011, 6 min., Color, US
To break the mold of past documentaries about gender transformation, AGAINST THE GRAIN goes beyond the usual gender binary and linear racial focus. This short documentary follows the story of OluSeyi, a cultural organizer, artist, healer, and Queer Nigerian whose spirit is transcending gender. OluSe...

Ọya: Something Happened On The Way To West Africa!
Seyi Adebanjo
2015, 30 min., Color, US/Nigeria
In this documentary, Queer Gender-Non-Conforming Nigerian media artist Seyi Adebanjo tells a tale not often heard about gender and indigenous Yorùbá spirituality. ỌYA follows Seyi's journey to Nigeria, a journey to connect with Òrìṣà tradition, or African God/dess tradition, and the powerful legacy ...

Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles
Seyi Adebanjo
2013, 7 min., Color, US
TRANS LIVES MATTER! JUSTICE FOR ISLAN NETTLES is a powerful and moving document of a community vigil for Islan Nettles, a Transgender Womyn of Color who was beaten to death in front of a New York Police Department precinct in Harlem. When Islan was taken off life support on August 22, 2013, she was ...


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TWN acknowledges that in New York we are on the unceded territory of the Lenni Lenape, Canarsie, Shinecock, and Munsee peoples and challenges the harm that continues to be inflicted upon Indigenous and People of Color communities here and abroad, which is why we all need to be part of the struggle for rights, equality and justice.

TWN is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Color Congress, MOSAIC, New York Community Trust, Peace Development Fund, Ford Foundation, Golden Globe Foundation, Kolibri Foundation and individual donors.