Leslie Cuyjet

A seriocomical short film on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery. For All Your Life unpacks the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives—especially those of people of color—are monetized. Part of an ongoing performance project and installation by Leslie Cuyjet that examines the value of black life and black death.

In Paris in 1928 American Djuna Barnes writes a farcical novel about the lovers, friends and publishing elite that make up "lesbian Don Juan" Natalie Clifford Barney's sordid salon. Dolly Wilde, Elizabeth Gramont, Romaine Brooks, Mimi Franchetti, Colette, Gertrude Stein, Liane de Pougy, Radclyffe Hall, Mina Loy, Janet Flanner and many more of the finest minds of her time enter her colorful book. Concocted to cheer up Barnes' ailing girlfriend, Thelma Wood, who is sick in the hospital, the story ultimately outlives the romance.

In her work, Brooklyn-based dance artist, choreographer, writer, researcher, and filmmaker, Leslie Cuyjet candidly “aims to conjure life-long questions of identity, confuse and disrupt traditional narratives, and demonstrate the angsty, explosive, sensitive, pioneering excellence of the Black woman.”