The film “Bleach” is one of three to be featured during the inaugural Sitelines BLM Film Festival. (Photo courtesy Cadence Theater Co.)
To be seen and heard is the goal of every artist, but not all creatives get the chance to have their work acknowledged. That’s one of the reasons Cadence Theatre Co. developed Sitelines BLM to offer a platform for underrepresented filmmakers.
Sitelines BLM was also created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial justice movement of 2020, as well as an interest in uplifting historically underserved communities.
Omiyemi “Artisia” Green, program director of Sitelines and professor of theater and Africana studies at William & Mary, says, “We sought to commission work by historically marginalized artists and members of the global majority to write screenplays that considered any of the following sites: sites of memory, sites of reclamation and reimagination, sites of resistance, sites of displacement and injustice, and sites of ritual and/or spiritual activation.”
On Oct. 14, Sitelines will hold its inaugural Sitelines BLM Action Film Festival at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. Three films will be featured: “Still Fighting” by Margarette Joyner, “Bleach” by Brittany Fisher and “Break” by dl Hopkins. All of the productions were filmed at locations in and around Richmond.
Joyner’s film is an exploration of racism over the years. “I was speaking with a group of young people who expressed how tired they were of fighting for the right to simply coexist in the world,” Joyner says. “After listening to them and letting them know that I heard them, I gave them some insight as to what we went through in the past and how we survived and will continue to survive.”
“Bleach,” set during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, represents the notion that people often want to clean up specific aspects of history and leave the parts of the story that sound good at the forefront.
“So, while it’s true that you can’t erase history, it’s equally true that you can’t simply ignore the painful parts of history that you don’t want to face,” Fisher says. “Ultimately, I wrote this film because I wanted to highlight the fact that the traumas of the past always affect our future, and that’s something that we all need to be more understanding and empathetic about as humans, regardless of whether or not it’s something that directly affects us.”
The festival also includes a dialogue with historians Cassandra Newby-Alexander from Norfolk State University and Adrienne Petty from William & Mary, as well as NSU film and mass communications professor Cathy Jackson. Three Welcome Table discussions led by facilitators trained by the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities will create communal dialogues meant to inspire participants to continue identifying areas of mutual understanding beyond the festival that can lead to action or social transformation.
“We want to inspire people to talk to one another, to meet someone new, and gain new perspective and a deeper level of understanding of their community members,” Green says.
