Fade to Black: Conversations on Black Grief and Healing Through Experimental Documentary Film

Abstract

Fade to Black... To live is to grieve, to be black is to grieve. This experimental documentary film is a conversation on Black grief and healing, through individual conversations and art focused on interrupting the moment safely and calmly. The work deals with what may be difficult for some to engage with. Topics of community, safety, housing insecurity, financial strain, violence-carceral, domestic state, and societal. We also talk about joy and love and community and what it means to heal. We are many things and although we can not share everything here today, this work and story, I hope, creates space for us to exist and just be without the pressure of proving anything or facing scrutiny. To give ourselves the permission to grieve, and maybe, hopefully, heal. This is for them. The film is accompanied by written work that consists primarily of poetry, prose, letters, stream of consciousness and pure thoughts. This style of intervention seeks to disrupt our comfort and traditional academic and societal understanding of contribution of knowledge. Each individual involved has assertion in this space, we have created it for us. Each person is someone who was willing to share space and wanted to be a part of this conversation. They are my collaborators. As you watch and engage, do so safely and with care for the people and the work we are seeking to do. You in engaging, become the final collaborator.