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Selly Thiam is a Senegalese American journalist and filmmaker who founded None on Record, an Africa-based digital media organization dedicated to lifting the voices and stories of African LGBTQ people.
“There’s a level of silence around African LGBT experiences. There’s an idea that we are un-African, that we don’t exist. So, when we started this project, it was very difficult to find queer stories, and we don’t want that to continue to happen. If communities are documented—even through oral histories, audio-based oral histories, small documentaries that they’re making—then there becomes a record, a record of our existence, and that’s why it’s really important to empower communities to basically tell their stories.”
– Selly Thiam
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