Welcome
My films and multimodal projects will try to highlight under-spotlighted situations- like the dancers. My next project is a multimodal project about a family of generations of brothers and sisters who have participated in responding to the challenges caused by the pandemic in education, economics, telecommunications, technology, violence, public health, and medicine. I am also working on a short film about Beverley Manley Duncan, prime minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley’s ex-wife, who is a rich tapestry of what happened to Jamaica during its most significant political time period- the 1970s. I believe in the Caribbean narrative and the need to create our own stories, our own heroes and deepen our understanding of who we are. I am a visual anthropologist interested in studying myself and my own people. It’s such an honour for me to live here, to learn in Jamaica, to see and to try to understand this place from which I have come. My journey is just beginning but I am excited for the road ahead.
About Joelle
Joelle Powe is a visual anthropologist, documentary filmmaker, program developer, cultural website curator researcher, and writer based in Kingston, Jamaica. A senior at Bard College, New York, Joelle hopes to continue her work uncovering the varied richness of Jamaican and Caribbean culture. Her first film is Out There Without Fear released in 2020 on YouTube. It celebrated the dancers in Dancehall. On the day of the launch of the film, the Jamaica Style Observer covered the work in an article called Out There Without Fear: Jamaica’s Dancehall on May 24, 2020. Joelle is also the creator of the Out There Without Fear Dialogues programs which allow universities, cultural centres, and educators from across the world to talk through some of the central issues in Dancehall. Out There Without Fear has been screened and discussed at the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis College, Luther College, Bard College, the Stratagem Black Queer Futures Conference in Canada, the Williams Myers African Roots Center in New York, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, and the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. She has presented at Smolny College in St. Petersberg Russia on “How Jamaica’s Dancehall dancers translate everyday life into dance”. This won an award for the best presentation in humanities at the conference. Joelle is also a contributor to the Jamaica Journal and the anthropology blog, anthro{denum} as well as the co-founder of and contributing writer to the collaborative e-ethnography website project: https://anthrocovid19.wixsite.com/. She was the memorial website curator for DK Duncan C.D., a stalwart of Jamaican politics of the 1970s, at www.rememberdkduncan.com. Her next project is a multimodal exploration of a powerful Jamaican family’s response to the pandemic to be released in 2023. Much of Joelle’s film work aims to highlight understudied topics, in the effort to contribute to the promotion of black people creating their own narratives and telling their own stories.
Contact
I write biographies, curate websites for cultural figures, research, film, and moderate panels. Let's connect.