Nile Dee Don

film and drawing

received the John Byrne award for June 2022, archived in National Library of Scotland

Shown at StAnza poetry festival 2024

funded by Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards

filmed in Comper Hall (St Margarets Episcopal Church, Aberdeen), Donmouth and Deeside at Potarch

The seed for our film is Noon’s poem, Daughter to the Nile. Noon says: ‘The poem talks about my experience of leaving my birth country in my twenties to navigate the skies of a new country; how I feel as a Muslim, black woman; the feeling you get at the airport of being an outsider; and how tense you feel going through the immigration lines; my parents hopes and dreams for me, and their wisdom and love that held me through some difficult times. The poem also pays special tribute to a young Sudanese refugee who died in Glasgow as he struggled with lockdown.’

The river settings of both poem and film play an integral role. Drone shots of the river Don, like a map, are a visual parallel to the river Nile of the poem. Then shots of Helen drawing a river landscape on a paper skirt worn by Noon, with audio of the two women discussing their rivers, conveys a universal experience of connecting with water and equating a river with home. Finally, the connection extends to the riverside recording of Noon’s poetry performance where the river she wears merges with the river Dee and the river of her words. 

We wished to push the boundaries our collaboration by integrating Helen’s act of drawing into Noon’s poetry performance. Helen took an idea from a Korean TV show she’d watched in lockdown called Saimdang, in which the eponymous 16th century woman artist and poet paints onto a silk skirt to hide a tea stain. We trialled making a paper skirt and then drawing on it as Noon wears it; drawing the river Don as it loops and runs out into the sea. The rivers run through our lives; the Nile through Khartoum, the Dee and Don through Aberdeen and now the drawing across Noon’s body. Nile Dee Don was filmed partly on Mother’s Day, by/with our children and Mormor (grandmother).

COLLABORATORS:

Adam Coutts of Ten Feet Tall Theatre advised on performance

James Love (drone) Instagram YouTube

Naomi Christie of Outlines Collective (camera)