Monica Sorelle
2023
Film
Miami, FL
Monica Sorelle is a Haitian-American filmmaker and artist born & based in Miami. Her work explores alienation and displacement and preserves cultural traditions within Miami & the Caribbean with a focus on the African & Latin diasporas that reside there. Her photo and video work has been shown in group exhibitions at Oolite Arts and the University of Maryland and supported by Pérez Art Museum Miami’s Caribbean Cultural Institute Artist Fellowship. She has produced and worked as a department head on films for Film Independent, A24, HBO & PBS. Her work has won awards at Berlinale, BlackStar, and Miami Film Festival and has been exhibited at Sundance, New Orleans Film Festival, and Criterion Channel.
Monica is a member of Third Horizon, a creative collective dedicated to developing, producing, exhibiting, and distributing work that gives voice to stories of the Caribbean, its diaspora, and other marginalized & underrepresented spaces in the Global South. Currently, Monica is completing post-production on her feature film directorial debut Mountains as an Oolite Arts’ Cinematic Arts resident.
BIO
My work explores alienation and displacement and preserves cultural traditions within Miami & the Caribbean with a focus on the African & Latin diasporas that reside there. Using storytelling, photography, and video, I examine the marginalized through a cinematic lens, delving into both the tangible and the speculative.
Influenced by spaces and landscapes that are in flux, or at risk, my work serves as an archive — contending with that which has always been present and bringing it to light to be seen or heard in ways previously left unexplored.
STATEMENT
How can we make the outdoors a space of belonging?
The outdoors has been primarily seen as a place for white adventurers and yet people of color have long felt uneasy and unsafe in “the great outdoors.” The fear is understandable – generational trauma has taught us that if the land doesn’t inflict violence, those in power will. Historically, the Everglades has been a place for both ecological and racial refuge and resistance, but this history is not commonly known and rarely honored. I believe this can change through intentional and specialized outreach and education on history, flora, and wildlife. With climate change knocking on our door and gentrification displacing largely black and brown folks, I’d love to use my work as a way to hypothesize a world that both validates the outcomes of our traumas but offers counternarratives and centers the outdoors as a crucial space for post-capitalist responses and possibilities.