Amandine Gay

Amandine GAY is a filmmaker, afrofeminist activist, and scholar who divides her time between research and creation. According to her, reclaiming the narrative is an act of emancipation. Following Speak Up -her first feature-length documentary on European Black francophone women released in French, Belgian and Swiss theaters in 2017 and Canadian theaters in 2018, she releases a second documentary, A Story of One’s Own in 2021. This second feature is an archival film on transnational adoption from the perspective of 5 adult adoptees.

Amandine Gay regularly appears as a speaker on Afrofeminism, intersectionality or adoption. In 2015, she authored the preface of the first French translation of bell hooks’ seminal, Ain’t I A Woman. She is also a writer in several collective works: Black Anthology: Adult Adoptees Claim Their Space; Éloge des mauvaises herbes: ce que nous devons à la ZAD ; Décolonisons les Arts ! or Reach Everyone on the Planet … : Kimberlé Crenshaw and Intersectionality ! In 2018, she started « National Adoptee Awareness Month », a series of events centering adoptees’ voices and experiences, and happening every November between France, Switzerland and Quebec. In 2020, she’s awarded the Ted Little Prize, an annual award of $500 presented to a Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling community affiliate. The award acknowledges significant oral history-based research, activism, research-creation, arts-based storytelling, and/or creative, place-based work.

In 2021, she authors her first book, A Chocolate Doll, an autobiographical essay on adoption with La Découverte editions.

You can follow her in French and English as @OrpheoNegra