Gabby Sumney is an Afro-Latinx, queer, nonbinary nonfiction filmmaker with a disability based in Boston, Massachusetts. They work in experimental nonfiction with a special emphasis on issues of identity and personal narrative. Their work has screened at curated screenings and festivals across the US and Europe including Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Indie Grits, and Fracto Film Encounter. Gabby is also the creator of This Week in Experimental, a weekly newsletter that features links to experimental films & videos, reading suggestions, and optional assignments.

At this stage of my career, my interests revolve around Personal Filmmaking, Collaboration as it pertains to Experimental Media Production, and Poetic Filmmaking. I am currently in production on my first feature-length project called Paradise, which utilizes ethnographic and poetic methods to explore my own racial identity by examining my family’s history of race and migration. This project will utilize various 16mm and digital techniques to reflect a personal story that also speaks more broadly about Afro-Latinx and Caribbean identity.

While developing Paradise, I have also undertaken two year-long collaborations with another Boston-based media artist altering the same strip of film as a means of exploring the potential for a more collaborative experimental practice that we can both implement in our teaching practices. We presented the first finished piece at the 2020 UFVA conference in July, and our method has been selected for publication in the third issue of Analog Cookbook. We are currently submitting the work, Sorrow Halved, to festivals around the globe.

My media work has always been focused on personal narrative and identity. My MFA thesis, Rituals, was a 16mm installation that focused on long distance queer love. The installation consisted of two 16mm loops projected from above onto the desk on which one of the loops was animated—focusing both on the process by which it was made and the exchanges between my wife and myself. The spiritual sequel to that project, The House These Words Built, takes some of those exchanges juxtaposed with the house we now live in filmed on 16mm film. That project is currently on its festival run having most recently played at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in Scotland. My current short in progress, Age Before Beauty, is a reflection on aging with a chronic illness using images changing leaves, direct animation, and chemically altered film stills.

Whether reflecting on the limitations of the body, the reality of racial complexity, or mundane moments of queer love, my work is always personal, always quotidian, and always at the center of its own universe. These small, quiet films range in approach and scale. They are installations, documentaries, text based games, animations, or even stills. They are always experimental and always personal. These works have been shown largely at experimental venues and festivals such as Fracto Film Encounter, Cellular Cinema, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival, and Indie Grits to name a few.