Won’t Give Up
Critically acclaimed drag queen and vocalist Pattie Gonia joined 19-time Grammy award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Indigenous trans musician and Tiny Desk Contest winner Quinn Christopherson to write a climate change anthem. ‘Won’t Give Up’ is a song about not giving up on this planet and not giving up on each other. The three artists traveled to Alaska (Christopherson’s native lands) to create a music video for ‘Won’t Give Up’ and performed the track in front of Holgate and Exit Glaciers – two glaciers that are dying because of climate change.
Filmmaker: Abdul Kassamali
Running Time: 5 mins
Language: English with Open Captions
Type: Musical Short
Abdul Kassamali is an American-born, Kenyan-raised filmmaker based out of Seattle. Although he is classically trained as an electrical engineer, Abdul has been working in film for over a decade, taking an opportunity during an industry-wide layoff in the middle of the 2020 pandemic to pursue filmmaking full-time. Since then he has worked with clients such as REI, HOKA, The North Face, Brooks, Patagonia, Eddie Bauer, Facebook, Cut, among many others. Abdul is an avid storyteller, focusing on work that reflects his own life experience as a first-generation child of Kenyan immigrants in America. He frequently works alongside other artists to help share their stories with the world through film, and finds a lot of joy in this work.
