'We show queer, black love through a lens of joy'

Two Black Boys in Paradise, a short animated film based on a poem by Dean Atta, follows the love story of Eden and Dula

The team behind an award-winning animated film about two black boys who fall in love says it want it to "show queer love and black love through a lens of joy".

Two Black Boys in Paradise, a short stop motion movie based on a poem by Dean Atta, follows the story of Eden and Dula.

"We really wanted to how all aspects of queer love and queer black love are to be celebrated," says executive producer Ben Jackson.

"One of the main themes of the film is self-acceptance and overcoming shame and we didn't want to censor that in any way."

Ben Jackson said the film was a "genuine passion project"

He said the film, produced in Manchester, took five years to complete and was a "genuine passion project" for both him and director Baz Sells.

"It really kind of started with my struggles with my sexuality and I didn't come out until I was 30," Mr Jackson says.

"After coming out, I was still struggling quite a bit with self-acceptance.

"I then started exploring the idea of making a queer film, basically because I thought it would force me to speak more openly and more proudly about my sexuality."

Mr Jackson, now 40, said that "seed of an idea" began to grow when he heard Dean Atta, who became an executive producer on the film, perform his poem Two Black Boys in Paradise.

"That one just really stuck with me for a lot of reasons.

"I think one of the lines which really got me - given I was on my journey of self-acceptance - was 'they are in love with each other and they are in love with themselves'.

"But the poem as a whole, I just thought it was beautifully written and very important."

Baz Sells volunteered at the Manchester Animation Festival in 2016

Ben Jackson and Baz Sells have been working together since they met at film school in Leeds.

Seven years ago, they formed their One6th Animation company, which produced stop motion films.

Mr Sells, also 40, says the genre's "disarming quality" was a perfect fit for Dean Atta's work.

"Dean's poem has such striking imagery and moves through various emotional spaces quite rapidly as well.

"We like to take social, political stories and we like to expand upon them, explore them through animation and stop motion in particular.

"Given that it's such a tactile art form, it's so handmade and we feel that it often has a bit of a disarming quality to it, that in itself allows us to go to quite difficult places in terms of subject matter."

The film was made with silicon puppets

Two Black Boys in Paradise was filmed over 18 months in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester.

Their labour of love was not without its challenges, Sells reveals.

"The underwater scene was incredibly labour-intensive. We got about 12 frames a day, which is half a second a day. And the scene itself is about 20 something seconds long.

"Water is incredibly difficult to work with, in terms of animating in a way that your characters have that fluidity."

He says the silicone puppets would frequently split due to the freezing winter conditions so animators would have to patch up the puppets while trying to create the tricky scene.

"It was a really challenging shot, but equally one of the most beautiful shots of the film," says Sells. "It was absolutely worth it."

Their hard work was rewarded when festival season came around.

Two Black Boys in Paradise picked up top honours at 19 festivals, including the Oscar-qualifying Woodstock Film Festival in New York and the BAFTA-qualifying festivals Thessaloniki Animation Festival and Encounters Film Festival.

Most recently, it won Best of British at Manchester Animation Festival, a full-circle-moment for former volunteer Sells.

"Manchester Animation Festival was definitely a big one for me because I moved up from London in about 2014 and I volunteered there a couple of years later as a means to kind of put some roots down here and and establish a new network," he says.

"So from going from volunteering to winning Best of British there was really quite a journey."

The film has so far won 19 awards

Sells and Jackson are set to attend the British Independent Film Awards later, where they have been nominated for Best British Short Film, which the duo says is a "huge honour".

Jackson says making the film has helped him on his self-acceptance journey.

What does the future hold?

"We're Bafta and Oscar qualifying, so who knows and... whatever happens, like the journey on this film, has just been so incredible," he says.

"Also for me on the personal level, I was speaking about wanting to make a queer film to help me on my journey of self-acceptance - it's definitely done that.

"I think that journey never completely ends, but when I was younger, every opportunity I got to make a wish, I used to wish that I was straight.

"And now I would never wish anything like that.

"It seems so horrible to me now because I have such a beautiful relationship with my boyfriend - imagine if one of those wishes had worked and I wasn't with him now.

"So the film has given me that, which is amazing."