SpellING (Green Bay)

Directed & Filmed by Shawn Antoine II
Choreographed & Performed by Marsae Lynette
Awards: Astoria Film Festival’s Best Experimental Short (2025)
Photo by Shawn Antoine II

I offer her this dance at dawn

this cinnamon

this broom

Mopeo Ase Yeye Osun

SpellING is a dance short film by Shawn Antoine II and Marsae Lynette that explores themes of ritual, intention, and ancestral connection through movement. The film opens with the sound of Lake Michigan’s waves, paired with Alice Smith’s haunting rendition of “I Put a Spell on You.” The dance becomes a ceremonial act, sweeping away what no longer serves and calling forth that which is meant.

The movement is improvisational reflecting fugitivity and vulnerability inviting spirit and ancestral presence into the creative process, allowing space for the unexpected and the unseen. According to filmmaker and scholar Bree Gant, art is a way of accessing alternate forms of knowledge. Thus, SpellING becomes a site of knowledge production, archiving the embodied memories of those who came before me and an archival offering of embodied memories to future generations(BG). Filmmaking is therefore an inter-generational inter-dimensional art form; a temporal crossroad (giving honor to Elegua) and creative collaboration with the past, present, and future.