Ahead of the DIVA Film Festival, we spoke to one of the amazing directors showcasing her short film about Black British tomboys
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY MENA FOMBO
Mena Fombo is a global speaker, facilitator, and film director who directed the amazing short film Some Girls Hate Dresses which will be showcasing at our Shorts Programme on 27 April as part of the DIVA Film Festival. Her TEDx Talk No. You Cannot Touch My Hair garnered over one million views and sparked international research contributions. She is the founder of the Black Girl Convention and co-founder of Blak Wave Productions.
Her short film Some Girls Wear Dresses won the Iris Prize Documentary Film Fund last year. Some Girls Hate Dresses is a nostalgic and evocative look into the lives of Black British tomboys who wore the label with pride in the 1990s.
We caught up with Mena ahead of the DIVA Film Festival to find out more! Book your ticket now: shorts-programme-real-talk-qa/
What inspired you to make your film Some Girls Hate Dresses? Could you tell us a bit about the process of making this film and reaching out to its participants?
During the making of a previous film called The Glorious Ones, which looked at the experiences and moments of glory coming from queer Black women and non-binary folk living in Britain, there was a really powerful conversation where all the contributors talked about their real hatred for wearing dresses. While I was making that film and listening to all these interviews, I realised that I wasn’t the only one who hated dresses. The idea of Some Girls Hate Dresses was there in the background of that film. When the Iris Prize came up, I thought it was the perfect story to pitch. I wanted to explore further the experience of people who hated wearing dresses.
I also really wanted Some Girls Hate Dresses to showcase and profile the Black British tomboy experience. Back in that pre-social media and pre-internet era – in the 80s and 90s – we didn’t have as many words to describe ourselves. It was very much like “You’re a boy, you’re a girl, or you’re a tomboy”. I wanted to capture the social history of who these “tomboys” were.
The way I approached this film was to contact the people I knew at first. And then I put a call out on social media. A lot of stories you see that centre queer black experiences tend to have this London-centric focus. I’m based in Bristol so I tried to look for the stories that represented the diversity of experience that we have in the UK.
The idea was to tell those stories and find common themes. One of the biggest themes to come out was sport, and I’m a sports geek so I was attracted to that. Everyone had a sports story which they shared. It was this place where you weren’t bullied or looked at differently. If you were good at sports, you were accepted. You were able to be in your element.
How did you get into filmmaking? And what have been some of the biggest challenges in your career?
I started off in the theatre. I was a drama geek. I spent 10 years in the theatre. I studied photography at university first and spent my weekends going to auditions in London hoping that I’d get my big break. During that time at university studying photography, I experienced a lot of racism and I was isolated. I realised during that time that no matter how good of an actor I was, I didn’t sing or dance and there were hardly any mainstream parts for Black women on TV then andI wanted Angela Bassett’s levels of fame I realised that the real power lies in the filmmaker, so I decided to become a film director.
I quit my degree and transferred back to Bristol University West England to study filmmaking. My goal was to create roles that showcased Black lives and stories. In the early noughties, there were a lot of challenges. I really struggled in those early days, but I did get to make films.
My career then took a different path and I started to work with young people, followed by coaching and leadership development. But I still had this passion and desire to tell stories. I realised that I was never too old to do that. Coming into my late 30s I co-foundedBlak Wave Productions. I’m now able to tell the stories I want.
The biggest challenge in my early career was finance. I had to work full-time to survive. I wasn’t able to do what was expected of me by the industry at that time. I couldn’t just work for free. That was a huge barrier to my early career.
The challenge now is not whether I can make it, it’s more so time. I need to balance being an artist and telling stories alongside running my other businesses and spending time with my loved ones. Once you’re in production mode, everything just stops. I’ve just learnt to carve out specific chunks of time to create and then go live my life.
We’ve seen a recent rise in films about LGBTQIA characters. When you were growing up, where did you see yourself represented on screen?
I didn’t see myself represented on screen that much growing up. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I was interested in African-American cinema like Boyz N The Hood and Set It Off – Queen Latifah was my character. I saw myself in her – but not in many black British characters. Now, I’ve watched this past decade more of our stories come to the forefront especially because of independent filmmakers releasing via the internet and it’s amazing to see so much content come out that we’d never had access to if we’d stayed in those mainstream networks.
The challenge now is getting those bigger projects, more funding, and getting to mainstream audiences. Power is in the viewer. As audiences, we drive what we consume. I personally love watching content that centres black and/or female characters, anything sport and of course queer stories. I proactively seek out that content.
What do you hope LGBTQIA audiences at the DIVA Film Festival take from your film?
I hope that audiences take from Some Girls Hate Dresses a nostalgic journey back in time. I hope people see themselves represented who haven’t seen those stories before. I hope people feel a sense of kinship with the contributors onscreen. It’s very healing.
What do you hope to see in the future of LGBTQIA filmmaking?
I want to see more. I want to see the diversity of us everywhere. I want to see what stories are coming out of places like Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa. I want to see how queer Black people in places like Australia or India are living their lives and what those stories look like. Anything sport-related I want to see as well.
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