The Legend of Sing Hey
November 3 | 8:00pm
@ OCAD University
Sliding scale $5-15
(no one turned away for lack of funds)
This screening will be preceded by performances by Legend of Sing Hey stars Dijah Redd, Kai Cheng Thom, and Malek Yalaoui.
PERFORMER BIOS
Dijah Redd
Dijah Redd is an Afroterrestrial rapper, vocalist, and storyteller living on Turtle Island after ancestral displacement (Mafaa) from West Africa to Abya Yala (Caribbean and Latin America). Dijah Redd explores the multiple layers of being and freedom through words, rhythm, and visual aesthetic, with an album to be released in the future. Dijah Redd’s sound is eclectic and pan-African by nature. This art is meant to heal. This art is meant to normalize. This art is meant to provoke. This art is meant to love.
Kai Cheng Thom
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performer, lasagna lover, and wicked witch. She lives and dreams from the unceded Indigenous territories that make up colonial-era Canada. A prolific poet, fiction writer, and essayist, her published book-length works include the award-winning Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press), a place called No Homeland (Arsenal Pulp Press), and From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (Arsenal Pulp Press).
Malek Yalaoui
A Montreal-based writer, advocate and public speaker Malek Yalaoui has been called many things but the most frequent of these is “force to be reckoned with.” Born in North Africa but bred in the American Midwest, Malek’s work is all about reconciling her multiple, intersecting identities as she moves towards wholeness. A queer femme of color and adult survivor of child abuse living with long-term depression, the sole purpose of Malek’s work is to heal herself and her community. Malek believes in the power of representation to lift up underserved communities and uses social and independent media to highlight both her own voice and the voices of other women of color.
Films
The Legend of Sing Hey
Becca Redden
Centuries ago, on a rural fishing island in South Korea, a little voice began to grow. As generations passed, the voice grew stronger as it was passed down but not released. Through years of diaspora, environmental changes, and the emergence of the various oppressions that we know today, the voice was kept inside waiting to be unleashed onto the world at the right moment. This voice’s name was Sing Hey. As the voice continued down the bloodline, passed from holder to holder, it was born into the throat and the namesake of Janice Sing Hey Lee.
This feature documentary follows Lee, her sister, and her friends from Ontario to the East Coast: playing shows, sharing music, and rediscovering what home means by leaving it. The Legend of Sing Hey is a story that connects family, identity, and community with history and ancestral roots through performance, music, and celebration of spirit.
Featuring Janice Jo Lee, El Jones, Alysha Brilla, Kai Cheng Thom, Redd, Jamaal Jackson, King Kimbit, Saleem Ansari, Andre Fenton, Shawn Johnston, Malek Yalaoui, and Lydia Mainville.