POST-SCREENING DISCUSSIONS
A friend and mentor, Anna Har, once told me that a film is not complete without its audience. As of now (December 2020), we have had a number of different settings of film screenings: public screenings (physical and online with more than 30 people), private screenings (physical and online between 10-20 people), and private online screenings (one person with Faith and myself).
We were on the traditional route of film sharing in the beginning, with public physical screenings in film festivals with moderators for Q&A. In these settings, most of the questions were pre-set with limited time for discussions. Some places also did not have the option to video call Faith as she was already back in Kenya at the time. Due to the size of these screenings, we could not get deep conversations with the audience as much as we’d like it to be and the discussions revolved mostly around the technicality of the film. Furthermore, many film festivals are no longer the platform for true independent filmmakers – it has become a marketplace for distributors and controlled by the demands of the commercial neoliberal market. This is further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced most if not all film festivals to go online. Even though this makes film festivals more inclusive and can reach wider audience, but with so many options becoming available, most of the festivals we have screened at seemed to have difficulty in reaching out to their regular audiences. Our experiences with online film festivals so far are less than satisfying, especially when it comes to engagement.
As we reflect on the importance to combine feminist theories and praxis, Faith and I decided to experiment with organizing our own private screenings in smaller and intimate settings. Inspired by Dagmar Schultz’s documentary project Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 (2012) whereby the film continues to be shared after its festival rounds with thoughtful conversations and community engagements, we wanted to create similar space with intention, informed by Black feminist thoughts, feminist scholars of color and Audre Lorde’s legacy. Most importantly, we want a space of collective healing. Our first private screening was done in my hometown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (in the summer of 2019). We booked a small screening theatre with about a dozen seats. Since the event was only focused on our film, we were able to spend up to two hours of post-screening discussion, with Faith calling in on video call. The conversation was much more engaging and meaningful for both of us and the audience. Audience could take time to process and ask us questions that we hadn’t thought of before. For example, one audience asked me why I did I keep saying sorry to Faith in the last scene, and what was I sorry for. This made me realize that it was part of my conditioning to submit to power and dominance in conflict resolution, which is also gendered and deeply rooted in heteropatriarchy. This approach has not served me and as seen in the film, did not serve Faith and our friendship either as it became a barrier for us to have honest communications with each other. One audience also shared how she saw herself with her mother when she was her caretaker before she passed away, and the challenges they faced with the power dynamic in care work. We believe the conversation could have gone even deeper if it was just us (Faith and I) and this particular audience.
Intrigued by the level of intimacy we experienced in the private screenings’ conversations, we decided to try another form of private screening, this time online via Zoom (due to the pandemic and Faith being in Kenya and myself in US) and with just one person at a time. We have done three private screenings so far and the conversations that followed have been very transformative and healing. One of the participant is a cohort of mine at Syracuse University, while the other two are from Faith’s contact. All of them identify as Black and are informed by critical race theory, critical disability studies and Black feminist thoughts.
The three main themes I identified from all of the conversations we have had in the post-screening discussions are: access intimacy, representation and tokenization, trauma and healing.
Access Intimacy
Access intimacy was one of the topics that came up the most in these conversations. One of the participants mentioned, “there’s a lot to say about access intimacy… I think this film is the reality of what does it mean to try to cultivate access intimacy? What does it mean to sit in the uncomfortableness and powerlessness? What does it mean to have a disability?”
Access intimacy is a term Mia Mingus, a writer, educator and trainer for transformative justice and disability justice came up with to describe “… that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level. Sometimes it can happen with complete strangers, disabled or not, or sometimes it can be built over years.” (Mingus, 2011).
Caretaking and access intimacy with someone whom you are close to can be extremely complicated. In the ‘climax’ of the film, Faith and I were both navigating access intimacy when dealing with the situation of getting into a taxi in Philadelphia. One of the participants shared how the scene reminded him of the time when he was doing caretaking work for his mother for about three and a half years before she passed away after an illness. In her last year, she lost her functional mobility and this participant had to navigate his medical privilege when they made certain decisions, both in caretaking and medical and he remembers how painful it was.
We spoke about the importance of forgiveness and giving grace to ourselves. Faith said, “The dynamics of care is messy as hell. It will be nice if we all came with manuals as human beings, but we didn’t. In the end, it’s the intention that matters… The hurt shouldn’t erase the intention.”
Trauma and Healing
Many audiences shared how difficult it was for them to stay on their seats watching the ‘brilliant conversation’ between Faith and I towards the end of the film. One participant states, “it’s like witnessing a therapy session”. Some have shared how they felt it was inappropriate for them to be there, yet they can’t help but got drawn into the moment of tension and silences. More importantly, many audiences revealed how they could see themselves in the similar situation with their ‘messy-ness’ in their relationships with their loved ones.
Faith said, “This film has been a big part of my family opening up because for me, I used it as a tool to have serious conversations”. Faith and I have come a long way and we continue to have many more ‘brilliant conversations’, before and after making the film. As Beverly Daniel Tatum states, “Dialogue is like antibiotic. You have to keep doing it instead of just doing small doses here and there” (Tatum, 2007, p. 125). In order to heal, we need to dialogue with ourselves and with each other on how we have unintentionally hurt each other. This I believe is the crucial part of solidarity and coalition building. How can we take care of each other if we don’t’ know how we are hurt? We need to dialogue to know how to take care of each other better.
One of the participants said, “Healing is fighting. Healing is complex.” I couldn’t agree more. Healing requires us to face our shadows that we have repressed. It also requires us to refuse to leave.
Representation and tokenization
One of the ways we push back on the single-story narrative is by showing our complex selves. As one of the participants said, “we get wrapped up in the narrative a lot of the time. I’m a marginalized person, therefore I’m always a victim. We don’t realize how easily we become victimizers, and that two things can be true at the same time”. I am queer and non-binary, and I have work to do with my internalized heterosexism and sexism. Faith is disabled, and she has work to do with internalized ableism. These are the ways we try to show our complexities, and what intersectionality means for us. It is situating our simultaneous positions of privilege and oppression.
As much as we tried to push back on ‘inspiration porn’, it was difficult for us to not be labeled as such when films are treated as a commodities and the need for film festivals to categorize them. One film festivals even advertised our film as “For All the Brilliant Conversations could certainly be a poster child for #intersectionality” on their social media page. We didn’t push back right away as it happened, but it is clear to me how the imperial gaze continues to dominate film festivals, even the independent ones.
The discussion about representation and tokenization resonates with some of the participants in their organizing work. One of them said, “there is the tension between the craft and a performance for grants and funding. You have to make it appealing enough for you to be given the funding, but also you want to be true to your craft and true to the people who you want to talk to… There’s no ethical anything under capitalism.” We addressed some of these tension in the film too when I speak about the frustrations with grant and the need to push the production forward despite all the obstacles we faced, such as the scene with the staircase where we were trying to capture the inaccessible apartment and the difficulty in getting Faith up to the apartment. Another participant recognized this tension right away. “The desire to put Faith in a vulnerable position is in itself inspiration porn… It can be very hard to resist because of the commodification aspect of it, such as the grant and the narrative that is driven into us.”
Lastly, we are also concerned about how the film is read by others. It could perpetuate ableist thinking and victimization if interpreted without ‘critical witnessing’. Critical witnessing, also known as wahkohtowin (Scully, 2019) is a term used in Indigenous storytelling. I came across this term when I attended a talk by Ionah Scully, an Indigenous PhD student in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University. Wahkohtowin requires the audience to situate themselves in the story rather than merely observing as an outsider. It requires both critical thinking and emotional engagement. Scully states, this practice is rooted in the interconnectedness between all entities, including relationships, responsibilities and reciprocities with all animate and inanimate objects.
For this reason, we would like to encourage viewers to think about these questions after watching our film:
How do you see yourself in the film? Is there any part of the film that you resonate with the most?
Where do you recognize yourself holding onto your own pain? Which part of yourself have you rejected?
Who would you like to watch this film with and what kind of conversations do you want to have with this person(s)?
References:
Mingus, M. (2011). Access Intimacy: The Missing Link. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/
Tatum, B.D. (2007). Can we talk about race? And other conversations in an era of school resegregation. Boston: Beacon.
Scully, I. (2019). “What’s Land Got to Do With It? Nehiyaw (Cree) Stories of Queer Kinship in Dialogues Across Difference”. Open Doors Presentation, Syracuse University.,