Film: »salt: dispersed«

»salt: dispersed« is the premiere of artist Selina Thompson’s film adaptation of her award winning show about grief, Black British identity and colonialism in a powerful and intimate screen experience.

In »salt.«, British performer Selina Thompson is a passenger on board a commercial container ship taking the route upon which her ancestors were deported from Ghana to Jamaica and then on to Britain. Thompson’s forebears were among several million black men, women and children sold as slaves whose work made Western prosperity possible and served as the foundation of contemporary European economic success. On her own journey, Thompson is confronted with normalised, systemic and casual racism and observes patriarchal power structures within the crew, suggesting that the colonial past is not as distant as she believed it was before embarking. As Thompson stands in front of the »Door of No Return« at Elmina Castle in Ghana and looks out to the Atlantic Ocean, she recalls the people who died there, on the journey and in the plantations. How can the sorrow that she feels at that moment exist in a world which also contains such banal things as post offices and perfume atomisers? And what does it mean to live as a black woman in a country with a majority white population?

>>> Essay about the production in Pearson's Preview: »salt.«, the Slave Trade and Germany Today

Sound: Guy Dowsett
DOP: João Luís Ribeiro

Adapted from the original theatre production »salt.«
Directed by Dawn Walton
Designed by Katherina Radeva
Lighting Design: Cassie Mitchell
Relights: Louise Gregory
Sound Design: Tanuja Amarasuriya
Music composition: Sleepdogs
Dramaturgical support: Maddy Costa and Season Butler

Produced by Selina Thompson Ltd., Battersea Arts Centre, and Arts Council England.