The decade-long story of a queer artist-activist from Uganda transforming discarded rubbish into visions of liberation.
A documentary film by AX Mina
Produced by
AX Mina
Kira Simon-Kennedy
Flor de Oro Tejada
About the Film
Rubbish: The Queer Kingdom of Leilah Babirye tells the story of a queer artist-activist from Uganda transforming discarded rubbish into visions of liberation. Outed in homophobic media amidst a climate of rising hateful legislation, she applied for asylum in New York City and began building the liberatory queer kingdom of her dreams.
A 10-year film about one extraordinary artist’s work to reimagine life for the queer diaspora based on compassion, beauty and celebration. From underground pride parties in Kampala to the drag shows of Fire Island to her own Bushwick studio, this film follows her building online community and constructing incredible totemic sculpture work, shown in some of the most celebrated spaces of the international art world.
Called “triumphal” and “luminous” by Roberta Smith in the New York Times, Leilah’s work tells the story of kuchu, or queer, life in Uganda. The film’s title references ebisiyaga, the Luganda word for sugarcane husk, or rubbish, used to pejoratively describe kuchu people. As an artist working with found materials, Leilah transforms the objects humans discard into otherworldly figures, centering and honoring queer ancestors, past and imagined.
With support from
Sundance Institute Trans Possibilities Intensive
Athena Film Festival Documentary Pitch Program
Asian American Documentary Network Allies Program
USC Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellowship
With thanks
Audrey Lyall
Gordon Robichaux Gallery
Stephen Friedman Gallery
BL Visual Arts
Judith Helfand
Melissa Silverstein
Kristin Molloy
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
La Biennale di Venezia
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Fiscal Sponsor
Rubbish: The Queer Kingdom of Leilah Babirye is a Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program Project.
Established in 1972, Women Make Movies is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media arts organization registered with the New York Charities Bureau of New York State. As the fiscal sponsor, WMM accepts donations or grants on behalf of the filmmaker and takes the responsibility of administering the funds received in support of the development and completion of the film.
About the Team
AX Mina (Director, Producer) is a queer nonbinary filmmaker, artist and author. Mina has led exhibitions in spaces such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Mozilla Festival Open Artist Studio (curated by the V&A Museum and Tate Modern), and the Museum of the Moving Image, and she produces Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work and economic justice.
She’s written about art, culture and global politics for over a decade, with work in Hyperallergic, Places Journal, the Atlantic, the New York Times, and Foreign Policy. Her second book, Hanmoji Handbook, co-authored with Jason Li and Jennifer 8. Lee, is a Kirkus Best Book of 2022 and teaches the Chinese language through emoji.
She is a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications and member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Asian American Documentary Network. She served as associate producer on the award-winning documentary Ascension, directed by Jessica Kingdon, and co-director of the Lijiang Creative City Guide, produced by China Residencies with support from the British Council China.
Kira Simon-Kennedy (Producer) is the co-founder & co-director of China Residencies/爻 yáo collaborative, a multifaceted arts nonprofit supporting hundreds of different international creative exchanges since its inception in 2013. Kira is also an Academy Award nominated documentary film producer, currently producing feature documentary projects by Yeelen Cohen (Lights of Passage), Jiayu Yang (The Entomologists), Shelley Cheung (Laying The Last Track), Morehshin Allahyari (The Remaining Signs of Future Centuries), and Mia Bendrimia (Magma). Through all of her work, she is committed to redistributing resources and mentoring the next generation of artists, cultural workers & organizers.
Flor de oro Tejada (Producer) is a multidisciplinary filmmaker and creative producer based in the Bronx, New York. Flor’s films explore Black, Indigenous, Latine and LGBTQIA+ communities through futurism and healing. She’s produced branded content and creative non-fiction shorts for clients including Condé Nast, AT&T, Amazon Web Services, Comcast, Time Inc., Tribeca Studios, P&G and many more. Flor graduated from the Kanbar Institute of Film & Television school at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and her films have appeared in AFI FEST, Allied Media Conference, Camden International Film Festival, Seattle Trans Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Martha's Vineyard African-American Film Festival, Afrikana Independent Film Festival, Odù Film Festival Brazil and more. Her latest film Bone Black: Midwives vs. the South won the Best Short Documentary award at Blackstar Film Festival and New Orleans Film Festival in 2023. Flor is a Fellow to the 2023-2024 Sundance Documentary Producers Lab and Fellowship with her latest documentary feature, Wild Darlings Sing the Blues (And It’s a Song of Freedom.)
Leilah Babirye (Co-Writer) was born in 1985 in Kampala, Uganda. She studied art at Makerere University in Kampala (2007–2010) evolving a multidisciplinary practice that transforms everyday materials into objects that address issues surrounding identity, sexuality and human rights. Publicly outed in Uganda by a viruently anti-gay local newspaper, she fled to New York in 2015; participation in the Fire Island Artists Residency was her refuge. In spring 2018, with support from the African Services Committee and the NYC Anti-Violence Project, Babirye was granted asylum, settling in Brooklyn where she lives and works today.
Leilah presented her first solo show at Gordon Robichaux, New York in 2018, her first solo show in the UK and Europe in 2021 hosted by the Stephen Friedman Gallery and has exhibited in group shows around the world from LA's Hammer Museum to the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria. In May 2022 she created site-responsive work with the Public Art Fund in New York's Brooklyn Bridge Park and currently has a residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK) where she's creating new work towards major exhibitions opening in 2024, including the Venice Biennale.
Yes, her Bushwick, Brooklyn studio is very busy.