Immersive Impact: Tamara Shogaolu’s Queer in a Time of Forced Migration

Professor Thomas Allen Harris and the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media invite director and immersive artist Tamara Shogaolu for a talk around new forms of documentary storytelling.
Tamara is the director of Queer in a Time of Forced Migration, an award-winning, non-fiction transmedia series that follows the stories of LGBTQ refugees from Egypt, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia from the 2011 Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa region to the world today. The three-part, animated series leverages intimate audio accounts—from women, LGBTQ individuals, and people from ethnic and religious minorities—collected by Tamara and Egyptian journalist Nada Tarek during the 25 January Revolution, as well as follow-up recordings later made by Tamara in Europe. Incorporating a film, Half a Life; a VR experience, Another Dream; and a web-based interactive experience, They Call Me Asylum Seeker, Queer in a Time of Forced Migration combines these oral histories with visceral animation and the latest immersive storytelling techniques.
Shogaolu’s visit is part of Professor Harris’s course Archive Aesthetics and Community Storytelling, which he is teaching in Film and Media Studies at Yale College this semester.
Tamara Shogaolu is the founder and creative director of Ado Ato Pictures. She is an international director and immersive artist who strives to share stories across mediums, platforms, and virtual and physical spaces in order to promote cross-cultural understanding and challenge preconceptions. With a track record in featuring her work at film festivals, galleries, and museums worldwide—such as the Tribeca Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Indonesia—her innovative approach to storytelling has led to sources like The Guardian, Forbes Magazine and Vogue naming her as a leader in the field of new and immersive media. She was a 2018 Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab Programs Fellow, a 2019 Gouden Kalf Nominee, a 2020 Creative Capital Award Recipient, and a 2020 Sundance New Frontier John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grantee. Tamara was a Burton Lewis Endowed Scholar directing at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she graduated with an MFA. She was also a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt, a Luce Scholar in Indonesia, and an Academy Nicholls Fellowship Semifinalist.
About Queer in a Time of Forced Migration:
https://www.adoatopictures.com/qtfm