UNU delves into the diasporic reconfiguration of Black Atlantic memory, examining the connective threads that shape the Afro-Caribbean diasporic experience. Through the communal term “Unu”—denoting “You” in both Jamaican creole and the Igbo language—the film asserts a shared lineage, tracing the connective threads that shape Afro-Caribbean identity. Here, “Unu” emerges as a collective address that unites the voices of the artist’s grandmother and her carer, grounding ideas of arrival and departure through their recollections of migration from Jamaica to the United Kingdom.
UNU resonates as a cultural preservation medium, foregrounding an Afro-Caribbean sensibility that intertwines sound, image, and embodied history into a circular, boundless journey of collective identity. Here, language functions as both a signifier and a vessel, preserving the cultural memory coded within Igbo and Patwa—dialects that carry ancestral reverberations, transcending physical and temporal boundaries. By positioning oral histories within a circular framework, the film disrupts traditional documentary conventions. Through multi-layered imagery, fragmented narration, and rhythmic cadence, the film constructs a fluid, living archive that challenges the confines of linear storytelling. It reclaims archival video and colloquial language not as static records but as vessels of soft, intergenerational memory.