To our community –
You have shared with us your thoughts, visions, words, writing, directing and producing. You have shared with us your creativity, your expertise, your hesitations, frustrations, your light and your beauty. Without You there is no We, Kashif would not exist.
As the days of utter duress, violence, and upheaval around the globe, near and far, draws us into the holiday season, tears are flowing, hearts are breaking, children are dying. The atrocities we are experiencing may not be new, but they are particular and specific. We are bearing witness to a heightened reality of human destruction most of us have not seen in our lifetimes. It hardly feels like a time for celebration.
And yet.
Here we are.
We are here to circumvent the devastation that exists merely due to our existence. And it is from here we choose love. We choose togetherness. We choose connection. And we choose resistance.
We counter hate – racial, religious and otherwise. We understand we are the equilibrium that keeps us and the world balanced, afloat. We are here to honor, to fight for and to remember the beauty of our spirits. Our own spirits, those of our ancestors and the spirits who have just left us.
We dance.
We make art.
We reveal.
We have made so many mistakes y’all; individually, collectively, globally. I am doing what I must to shed the old ideas of who I think I am, to release what the white patriarchy has instilled in me as “normal” within so many different realms of my life, our lives. I am failing, every day. I’m also winning. And I refuse to give up. I live to embody and be the spirit the universe intends for me to be.
As we go into the new year, Kashif promises you all we will continue to do the intimate work on ourselves for our own individual and collective transformation, so we have the ability to contribute to the transformation of others, as well as the film and media landscape as a whole. We promise to stand in solidarity with you, to collaborate and partner in the ways your creative vision needs us to show up. It is our time. The ancestors deem it so. We will not be dissuaded by our fear, because our courage prevails.
Take time. Love on yourself, love on your family, love on some strangers. Trust your instincts, trust your instincts, trust your instincts. And even though the imperative is to be in the present, the right here, the right now, know we can’t wait to create with you in 2024.
With deepest gratitude,
Chanelle & the Kashif Fam
