Since childhood, Sayeeda Moreno has been fascinated with capturing life’s moments. When she was a young girl, Moreno thought photographs froze each person so that they were partially stuck in time.

Moreno, an award-winning filmmaker, will speak at Syracuse University’s Shemin Auditorium on Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. as part of the department of Transmedia’s Colloquium Lecture Series. Moreno will present on her work and how she draws inspiration from life’s captured moments.

“I think that each film or each body of work reflect where I am at, in the moment,” Moreno said.

Moreno’s upbringing also heavily influenced her artistry. Her mother, who fell in love with a woman while Moreno was a child, helped Moreno explore her own sexuality. Moreno said her relationship with her mother had been complex throughout her life. But from a young age, she remembers her mother as being one of the people who inspired her love for film.

As a queer woman of color, Moreno’s sexuality and ethnicity have shaped her perspectives. Growing up, Moreno faced discrimination in her own community. Moreno said while she was rushing home to avoid bullies, who in some cases would even throw firecrackers at her, she was also trying to explore her identity.

At 15, she found herself living alone — the same year she began exploring photography. She said she loved self-portraits because she could create “characters that were me, but also not me.” This gave her a stepping stone into filmmaking.

Her experiences growing up have led her to value a sense of security, a continuous theme in her work.

“As a black woman, as an Afro-Puerto Rican, an African-American, being a woman, being a queer person, being a mother, all of these things mean I have to navigate the world with a sense of safety that doesn’t exist at all times for me,” Moreno said.

Years later, after Moreno’s mother died, the story for her short film “White” came together. It takes place in a future where climate change has turned the world into a burning hot place, where melanin is a commodity. The plot follows the main character’s quest to save her newborn daughter from the melanin-harvesting industry.

Moreno said she grew up watching films with her mom, something that was important to her.

“My work, all of it, is all aligned with an emotional state of being, akin to a rite of passage,” she said. “That’s where it is. That’s my relationship to the world and to my work.”

Published on October 21, 2018 at 10:24 pm

Contact Alex: ajrouhan@syr.edu