REEL Stories: Unfinished Business

Reel Stories: A Black Film Showcase

Presenting a series of three films accompanied by food, performances, art, and guided conversation on the Black-lived experience, Reel Stories: A Black Film Showcase is a Waco-made ethnographic documentary, paired with two of the most highly acclaimed Black documentary features of the last three years. There will be light refreshments, live music performances, and local art curated by Blaccent, exploring change and the Waco community.

Unfinished Business unpacks and showcases the untold stories of Black elders and the ways the distinctive history of Pittsburgh’s Great Migration (1916-1970) connects to contemporary Black social movements. This work leaves audiences to wrestle with the profitability of justice and their role to address our “unfinished business” of race.

This film is an ethnographic research project using a multimodal approach.

The live and filmed storytelling comprise an engrossing compilation of societal and cultural knowledge from African American elders from historic Black churches and community organizations. Their oral history interviews are being augmented by keeping ethnographic diaries of the participants. These diaries include photos, letters, and journals, as well as other primary or secondary sources.

This musical documentary portion of this work offers a creative interactive approach to documenting oral histories of African American elders. The musical documentary engages the audience and provides a powerful storyline that is followed by courageous and compassionate conversations to call audiences to remember our past and consider our “unfinished business” related to racial identity, race relations, and systemic racism. (27 minutes)

https://www.unfinishedbusiness1916.com/