Achievement in Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Original Screenplay, Casting, Overall Sound, Actor - Leading Role, Actor - Supporting Role
Client: Canesugar Filmworks
Production Company: Canesugar Filmworks
Role: Graphic Designer
I’ve admired the work of my friend Charles Officer for years. He’s a talented director and old friend but this was the first time we’ve worked together officially. When I got the call to design the poster, press kit and vinyl materials for his film Akilla’s Escape I was both honoured and excited to dive in.
What I love about movie posters is that they tell stories about the film and characters and are essentially stories onto themselves. For this poster I wanted to contrast young and old Akilla by exploring themes of capture & escape. Images of Black men behind bars is over-represented in movies, media and history. The mythology of Black men being “threats” to the public at large has been hardwired into our collective thought pool so when we see a Black face behind bars it reflects a harsh reality of survival, discrimination, misrepresentation, and historical abuses of power. On a deeper level this film explores the cycles of criminality and the resulting trauma from those social conditions that can spawn an “Akilla” and entrap Black men into a world where that cycle never ends.
Knowing these layers, I wanted to explore themes of incarceration, confinement and suppression and I chose to use STRIPES as a device to convey these ideas. When we see stripes, we automatically we think of jail cell bars, this alone didn’t feel strong enough to capture what I was trying to express. There needed to be more to the narrative. The bars act as both divider and unifier, they separate yet bind both Akillas. And in weaving this idea of escape, by layering the title fonts on top and behind the bars creates a push and pull of trying to break free.
