“My Dead Selfie” To Premiere At The Downtown LA Film Festival

(Los Angeles, Ca) – The Downtown LA Film Festival will screen My Dead Selfie by Joy Shannon on Oct 21, 2018, at 8:30 pm, at The Regal Cinemas LA Live located at 1000 W. Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, California.  In her latest film Joy Shannon tackles the issue of race.

MY DEAD SELFIE stars Ginger( Sharena Walker) an African American woman and her white husband Hal(AJ Garrett) as they enjoy their passionate marriage that does not include much discussion on race.  Yet Hal has a family secret, he comes from a long line of vicious overseers form slavery who secretly practiced the occult. Now, in a house that is possessed by the demonic spirits of racism, Ginger has no choice but to hope that her life matters. Ms. Shannon takes into a world of ancestry and race and makes us wonder about the power of karma.

Tickets can be purchased at www.dtlaff.com

                                                                              Joy Shannon(Writer/Director)

Director’s Statement:

Making a social-horror film, a sub-genre of horror films, just felt natural to me.  It allowed me to look at elements of racism in an aggressive, yet creative, way. No doubt, the collective Black American experience has been horrific in every sense of the word, thus it’s likely that horror films on race will be some of the most unique films that Black filmmakers create.  My leading cast of Ginger and Hal is symbolic. Ginger represents a segment of Black Americans who look away from racism, even when it’s staring them in the face, and Hal represents this country’s long-going exploitation of Black people. So I took the set-up of a standard ghost story and placed Ginger and Hal in the center. Why call it, “My Dead Selfie”? It’s a play on words.  We all need to look at ourselves and examine how we treat one another; if not, our ‘selfs‘ will be void, from the inside out. We made this film with spit and chewing gum, almost no money. Really, almost no money. But the skeleton crew, mainly young people from Craigslist, and a very talented cast from LA helped to make magic! We were strangers, blacks and whites, who love cinema — that’s what brought us together and kept us together.

Website: www.mydeadselfie.com