Malia Obama and Nike were accused by filmmaker Natalie Jasmine Harris Monday of being credited with her short film “Grace” for the new campaign announcement by Obama of the sports brand with A’ja Wilson.
The short film – “A dramatic Black Southern Gothic”, according to the filmmaker – screened the Spending Film Festival 2024, the same year, Obama projected his beginnings as a director, “The Heart”.
The part of “grace” in question involves two young black women in the 1950s seated on the steps of their house, laughing and applauding while playing a hand game. The new Nike advertisement presents the star of the WNBA Wilson doing the same – nowadays – with a young girl. In addition, parts of the composition of the announcement seem to echo Harris short-circuit, including the use of house entrance doors as a framing device for the two pairs. The color of the film grain in the two projects is also visibly similar to what Harris shared on social networks on Monday with video clips and fixed images of his short and the announcement.
“I have been sitting with this for some time. My short film by Sundance ‘Grace’ (shot brilliantly by Tehillah de Castro) was done with deep love and care. The social cup of the new Nike advertisement led by Malia Obama (who was also at Sundance My Year) feels shocking similar to my work,” initially written Harris on X.
“I know that art overlaps often, but moments like this have hit hard when you have shed your heart in stories told with care and barely get the recognition you deserve,” wrote the filmmaker in a second post X, marking Nike and Wilson. “If the brands want a certain look, why not hire the source rather than for the recognition of the name?”
Early Tuesday, Harris met his X feelings on Instagram, as well as other fixed images of the two projects and a photo of Elle and Obama de Sundance last year.
“I don’t have much else to say, in addition that it is quite discouraging and disappointing,” she legend the post. “I am constantly posting how difficult it is to be a filmmaker emerging at the moment and to support me without benefiting from family ties, generational wealth or nepotism … And then to see it really gives me less hope that this industry wants me to be here.”
The representatives of Obama and Nike did not respond to the request for Thewrap comments.
The Nike announcement is part of Wilson’s campaign for his Nike shoes at the hot ball, which sold this week just a few minutes after having become available.
In his official Synopsis of Sundance of “Grace”, Harris described the project as follows: “” Grace “is a dramatic short film of Gothic and the short film in the 1950s which explores conflicts according to which religious traditions and rites of passage are often present in relation to identity training. be.”
The short-circuit of Obama 2024 “The Heart”, for which it is credited like Malia Ann, was described by the New York Times as centered on a “sensitive man was assured of guilt when his mother died after having an argument”.
