Black History Month Spotlight: Seyi Adebanjo's Journey as a Non-Binary Filmmaker and Activist

Seyi Adebanjo is a filmmaker and trans activist whose work sits at the meeting point of art, imagination, ritual, and politics. A queer, gender-non-conforming Nigerian artist, Adebanjo makes films about the people the wider LGBTQIA+ story keeps leaving out — and does it in whatever medium the story needs.

Two films built their reputation. "Trans Lives Matter!: Justice for Islan Nettles" documents the murder of Islan Nettles, a transgender woman, and has screened on PBS Channel 13 and at the Brooklyn Museum. Both that film and "Ọya: Something Happened On The Way To West Africa!" come out of Adebanjo's commitment to the lives of queer and genderfluid Africans, in Nigeria and in New York.

"Ọya" runs 30 minutes and takes on sexual and racial identity — the disparities, and the lived experience inside them. It has screened internationally, which tells you the questions it asks travel well.

https://vimeo.com/60815981

Adebanjo also teaches, currently on the faculty at New York University, passing the craft to the next set of artists and activists. The fellowships have stacked up too — among them the Sundance Institute Trans Possibilities Intensive Fellowship and the Fatales Forward: Trans Stories Fellowship. Recognition that followed the work, not the other way around.

The latest project is "Afromystic," a lyrical documentary guided by LGBTQ Yorùbá practitioners in Nigeria, the US, and Brazil. It braids animated queer and trans-Òrìṣà mythology with poetry, theater, and ritual — a film about the lives and leadership already present in these communities, made with the cultural and spiritual grounding the subject deserves.

Adebanjo's films don't ask permission to exist, and they don't explain themselves to outsiders first. They document and they insist. That's the work, and it's why we point you toward it this Black History Month.​