Sydelle Willow Smith is an award-winning South African photographer, filmmaker, NGO Director, and lecturer. She has a research background in Visual Anthropology and holds a masters degree in African Studies from Oxford University. During her degrees, Sydelle particularly focused on participatory visual research with youth in Southern Africa, and youth media advocacy in a social movement in South Africa.
Apart from her academic career, Sydelle has a broad body of work as a documentary photographer and filmmaker, work that has taken her across the African continent for clients like , UNAIDS, Médecins Sans Frontèrs (Doctors Without Borders), SF, Red Bull, DHL, Facebook, and The Treatment Action Campaign. She has worked as an editor, producer, researcher, script writer, camera operator, photographer, and director of various short media advocacy films across Africa.
Sydelle is the co-founder of Sunshine Cinema, a solar powered mobile cinema that hosts off the grid screenings in diverse spaces, partnering on impact campaigns, running media training workshops and virtual reality immersive engagements focusing on public health.
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Un/Settled is a project that explores white South Africans’ histories, privileges, and reflections on identity.
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