Netflix's 'Civil' Couldn't Be More Urgent Or Timely [ABFF 2022]

For more than two decades, Attorney Benjamin Crump has been at the forefront of advocating for Black Lives in America. His cases have included the families of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Andre Hill, and countless others. When the American Justice system has refused to be an equal playing field, Crump and his team have proceeded with civil charges so that the families could obtain some monetary justice where the criminal justice system failed to work for them. 

Now, with her latest Netflix documentary Civil, Becoming filmmaker, Nadia Hallgren takes viewers through one year of Attorney Crump's life. The documentary follows Crump, who has continually advocated for Black life and humanity, not just in cases of police brutality but also in fighting back against racist banking structures and businesses who placed profit over the protection of Black life. 

Ahead of the Civil premiere as the opening night selection of the American Black Film Festival, Shadow and Act spoke with Crump and director Hallgren about the documentary and why the film has never been more timely. 

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In ‘Descendant,’ The Clotilda Slave Ship Wreckage Is Only The Beginning

In 1860 on the eve of the American Civil War and 52 years after the international slave trade was outlawed in the U.S., 110 African men, women, and children arrived on the shores of Alabama in a ship called Clotilda. The captives were sold to various plantations, and the vessel was set ablaze by Timothy Meaher, the man who had chartered the illegal expedition. 

One hundred sixty-two years later, filmmaker Margaret Brown has turned her lens toward the descendants of Clotilda’s survivors in her captivating documentary film Descendant. The story of the Clotilda has always been alive and well amongst the descendants of the ship’s survivors. Many of them still call Africatown, Alabama – founded in 1866 by the formally enslaved – home. When the ship’s wreckage was found in 2019, the world began to pay attention. But as Brown’s film suggests, many more questions still arise. 

Continue reading at Essence.

'Comfort Farms' Is A Stoic But Powerful Doc on the Veteran Experience

There have been many films that address the veteran struggle, from 1979's Apocloyspe Now to 1998's Saving Private Ryan and even Spike Lee's most recent film, Da 5 Bloods. These films tell the story of war heroes on and off the battlefield. Over the years, audiences have been captivated by the stories of these soldiers. We've watched them press forward during the war and into the eerily silent aftermath. Yet, despite our society's collective fascination with war, and the veterans returning home afterward, there have been very few films addressing their trials and triumphs from their own words. 

Director Carlisle Kellam gives the vets back their story in his stoic but compelling Comfort Farms. Though we praise our armed service members as heroes, society seems unable to grapple with how to help veterans truly return home and find their beat in their respective communities. Veterans Affairs in its current state was implemented during World War I. However, like any government agency dependent on funds and lacking resources, the VA can only provide so much help. In turn, many vets have had to find their own ways to cope with life-- and some of them have been incredibly destructive. That's where former combat Army Ranger Jon Jackson's Comfort Farms comes in. 

Named for Jackson's fallen Ranger brother Captain Kyle A. Comfort, the farm has become not just Jackson's sanctuary but one for vets across the nation. After attempting to take his own life following six tours oversees, Jackson decided to take back his narrative. He found purpose in the earth, in its dirt, history, and animals' life cycles. Set in central Georgia, the farm helps vets become butchers, farmers, chefs, and activists. Comfort Farms gives them something solid to lean into while they rebuild a sense of camaraderie and self that is often lost in civilian life. It also provides them with the opportunity to stretch their hands toward their community. The farm has become a new mission for these vets, one that teaches them how to eat, live, and thrive. 

One of the most profound things about Comfort Farms is Kellam's choice to intertwine the footage from the farms and the war zones. This allows the vets to reflect on their past and connect it to their present. Vets like Trenton Free, Forrest Giles, Scott Kennedy, Bryan Kyzar, and Cr Sabathne make it clear that PTSD shouldn't be a catch-all phrase for vets. It only affects some vets. For others, it’s a battle that they are fighting in everyday life.

The film might have been even more effective if the structure had been shifted just slightly, Setting the audience in the middle of the farm first before pulling us back on the battlefield, but it’s still a solid film.

Since this is farming, Kellam does not shy away from addressing and putting a spotlight on the butchering that comes with it. Still, as we watch Jackson reflect on the deaths of animals and even demonstrate it, it's done humanely and with compassion. It's not supposed to be comfortable. Instead, the Agricultural Cognitive Behavior therapy forces an emotional connection for the vets and the viewers. It's a feeling that may have previously been buried deep inside. 

Comfort Farms is not always an easy film to watch. In the beginning, as you're trying to sink into Jackson's story and the story of Comfort Farm, it feels at times unsettling. But that's precisely the point. By allowing these men to tell their stories, Kellam empowers these vets to take back their lives in a way that is healthy, active, and on their own terms, It's certainly not a pretty picture, but that's what makes it one of the most powerful docs on veteran experience out there. 

Comfort Farms won the  Grand Jury Prize at Film Invasion Los Angeles for Feature Documentary. It will be released this year on Video on Demand.

'Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am' Presents A Personal Perspective Of A Miraculous Life [Sundance Review]

If we do not tell our own stories, someone else will paint a picture of our lives and call it the truth. Prolific writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Toni Morrison has been writing her story and chronicling the lives of Black folk for nearly 50 years. Though her work is world renowned, her personal history and life’s journey has remained somewhat mysterious.

In director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders intimate documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, the audience is taken on a journey through the Beloved author’s life, from her humble beginnings in Lorain, Ohio, to her days as an editor at Random House and then as a lecturer at Princeton University. Using Morrison’s own recollections along with anecdotes from her childhood and earlier years, the author and Greenfield-Sanders construct a picture of a woman who single-handedly reshaped literature not just for Black folks, but for lovers of language and the written word across the globe.

Toni Morrison’s life did not begin with her birth in 1931. Instead, The Pieces I Am stretches backward —two generations before Morrison — to her grandfather, who would proudly boast to anyone listening that he’d read the Bible from cover to cover five times. Literacy has never been a given for members of the Black community which is why for Morrison — who learned to read at age three— books have always been somewhat of a miracle.

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