Reimagining Identity: The Feminine Perspective at the Seattle Black Film Festival

For this year’s Seattle Black Film Festival, arts organization, and festival host LANGSTON Seattle paid homage to the complexity of Black experiences. The festival offered a variety of films featuring local and international Black actors, directors, and producers. The genres and styles varied from unconventional mediums, like music and dance videos, to short yet devastating films showcasing the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. I focused on short films from the series “‘Waiting to Exhale: Films from the Feminine Perspective” and was struck by how each filmmaker chose to utilize or subvert expectations placed on Black women.

The first film I watched, entitled “Dressed” (2023), challenges the idea that marriage is the pinnacle of achievement. It follows the main character through her series of misadventures trying to sell her lightly-used wedding dress. While the context behind her urgency to sell the dress remains unclear to the viewer, writer, and director Bethiael Alemayoh pushes us almost uncomfortably close to the main character, so close it feels like the viewer is an accomplice to her unsuccessful attempts to get her life together.

Cinematically, this is achieved through many close-up shots of the main character. The cameraperson moves in close relation to her, sometimes focusing on views of her whole figure or even details as small as her hands as she reaches for the wedding cake. The focus is rarely diverted from her: an interesting way of centering the film around a female figure.

We watch her repeatedly try to get rid of the dress by bringing it to various buyers until she finally gives up, slicing into her pristine wedding cake on her couch in full bridal gear. The color palette of the film is pristine, clean, and polished. A juxtaposition that underscores the absurdity of the main character’s behavior, especially her indifference about a failed marriage.

The turning point in the film is when she goes to pick up a package from a nameless delivery guy, one that she initially refuses, saying “I don’t need this anymore.” The contents of the package are not explicitly defined. Perhaps the ambiguity and her refusal to accept it are a nod to her resistance to accepting a life that is conventional, yet restrictive. From this point on, the main character returns to her apathy, finding comfort in the mundane.

Alemayoh’s strongest choice throughout this film was to make the audience into a voyeur to the film’s tenuously constructed reality. However, the secondhand cringe from the main character’s decisions was the only aspect of the film that drew me in. The lack of a clear plot or context left much to the audience’s overanalysis. There was too much room for the director to expand on her ideas and too many opportunities to more explicitly express the themes of angst and satisfaction she began to convey.

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You know a film has achieved its purpose when it can figuratively remove you from your couch and transport you to another life, one where you’re confronted by the question, “what would I do if I was in their shoes?” This is the exact effect that “Blue Hour (2023),” written and directed by J.D. Shields, exerts on its audience.

The name “Blue Hour” directly contrasts with the lighting the film opens with a shadowy, intimate setting with golden hues. Like the main character in “Dressed,” main character Rene is also trying to sell something that was once dear to her—her vintage camera. She needs the money, a fact that is made clear as she meanders around her apartment packed with unopened moving boxes to make a microwave dinner. But after declining the first lowball offer she receives on the camera, she accepts a last-minute request for a photo shoot at the local children’s hospital. The pacing of the film is initially slow. Here, she joins young mother Jaz, and they wait together for the nurse to bring out the baby—a child born so prematurely that they couldn’t possibly survive without intense care.

This context was initially unclear to both the viewer and Rene, but she balances her professionalism with empathy, taking a series of portraits of Jaz and her baby. The interaction between the two women displays another kind of intimacy, one that feels both tender and temporary. Though their paths only intersect for a few minutes, the connection they form over this emotionally complex moment is priceless.

“Blue Hour” was filmed in a 4:3 ratio, the industry standard from 1892 to 1996. Shields’ decision to revive this style speaks to the notion of time as a tangible thing; something which could be preserved through a simple photograph (or photographic style, in this case).

It seems the characters are always in a moment of transition, trying to leave an indelible mark on their surroundings. Rene begins and ends the film trying to capture a moment in time with her camera, even as she is surrounded by symbols of transition and the future. Jaz is facing immense loss, but she, too, wishes to memorialize the moment. The baby faces the same, though they are equally incapable of putting into words the emotions in the room. Even the prospective buyer of Rene’s camera is in flux, wanting something that he can’t have because the price was too high.

There is also an interesting element of continuity, even in scenes as Rene comes home to finish cooking the meal she had put in the microwave at the start of the film.

Within “Blue Hour,” Shields attentively crafted a portrait of loss, connection, and hope. Her attention to detail allows for the story to claim a beginning and end that transcends the simple boundaries of a predictable plot arc.

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In “PEMA” (2022), the film addresses the classic trope of mother-daughter conflicts through a new lens, that of the immigrant experience.

Written and directed by Victoria Neto, this film takes place in France but centers around a Congolese-French family. Murphy, the main character, is profoundly depressed. There’s a permanent dent left on her bed, the sheets strewn and intertwining with equally discarded black clothes. She is a stark contrast to her sisters, both ebullient young women, and her mother, a serious and devoutly religious Congolese immigrant.

Actress Lorena Masikini skillfully takes on her role as a depressed, apathetic character—a role that is hard to play. To effectively perform a character who, on a surface level, is doing nothing, the actor must express complex internal conflict. From the pain in her eyes to the emptiness in the first few sentences she utters, it’s clear that she is struggling. Masikini’s strength in this role comes from not leaning too far into the dramatically expressive aspects of this struggle until her character reaches a breaking point.

The juxtaposition between Murphy and the rest of her family is most poignantly portrayed when her mother forces her out of bed and into a church pew. There, she sits in her angst as those around her sing gospel songs with rising urgency. Though her expression remains apathetic, the director’s incorporation of emotionally-driven music gives voice to Murphy’s internal monologue. When the family returns home, Murphy’s mother questions her reasoning for staying in bed so much, encouraging her to spend more time seeking help from the church. In response, Murphy angrily screams that the church alone is not enough to help her; she is depressed and needs professional help. Her mother is taken aback by this response and explains that she offers her spirituality as a first resort because that is most familiar to her. “I will always pray for you because it’s the only thing I know how to do well,” she says. In spite of this, she does her best to offer support to Murphy as she navigates her way to professional help.

This brief interaction holds the most important message of the film: the unconditional nature of family bonds, even when those bonds are influenced by misunderstandings due to generational or cultural differences. Because of how powerful this interaction was in both providing closure between Murphy and her mom and showing the viewer the intricacies of relationships between immigrant parents and their kids, this could’ve been an appropriate stopping point for the film.

Neto’s decision to continue on the storyline to show how Murphy’s sisters also support her in throwing away her old bed, symbolically helping her to move past depression, feels like a cheap and conventional ending to the story. I see her desire to appeal to the audience with a feel-good ending, but it would have been more powerful to allow viewers to sit in their discomfort as they come away from the film.

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Interestingly, the original name of the French Canadian film “Troubled Water” (2021) is “Dors-tu?”, meaning “Are you sleeping?”—a darkly ironic title.

Right from the beginning, an unequal power dynamic is established between the two main

characters, cousins named Lila and Maxime. Lila is Black, and Maxime is white. Lila is visiting Maxime, as it seems she has done for years. The film alternates between scenes showing Lila and Maxime in childhood and young adulthood, the first being of them together in a pool, playing and pushing each other as children do. At one point, Maxime pushes Lila down, leaving the audience to wonder if he’ll let her resurface. He does, eventually, and we let out a sigh of relief that it isn’t that kind of film.

Director and screenwriter Nadia Louis-Desmarchais opted to use frequent transitions to show the characters’ growth. The focus, both cinematically and intent-wise, feels less on them as individuals and more on how they relate to and perceive each other.

In the brief instance when another character is introduced–Lila and Maxime’s grandmother– it seems that Maxime is favored over Lila, demonstrated by her asking after his needs more often and displaying only photos of him in the living room. It seems odd—Maxime clearly treats Lila like a sibling, but their grandmother doesn’t extend the same level of welcome. The viewer has the option of viewing these interactions as a form of subtle discrimination and hostility—or simply a grandmother with a favorite.

True to the nature of this film, Louis-Desmarchais allows the viewer one last chance to choose a side: believing Maxime is innocent and childish, or that he is taking advantage of his power and privilege over Lila.

As young adults, Lila and Maxime share a bed at their grandmother’s house, something that seems familiar to both of them. But what is unfamiliar to the viewer is how, as Lila sleeps, Maxime gropes her with a sort of disgusting tenderness and no sign of remorse. Suddenly, the camera shifts from capturing how the characters see each other to how they respond to each other. Shots of hands and feet curled in expressions of terror and satisfaction contrast each other, and there is a feeling of complete disconnect between the two.

As a viewer, I reflect back on all the times where I had the option of viewing the film through the lens of tension or familial tenderness. I think of how Lila’s grandmother was barely there to appreciate Lila’s presence in the house, let alone there to stop Maxime from holding her underwater or keeping her trapped in bed without having to hold her down. And I think of how many Black women have been ignored or afraid to speak up after being assaulted because no one is there to listen to them.

The twists and turns of this film were often abrupt, which allowed room for interpretation. I especially appreciated how it allowed viewers to reflect on their initial assumptions, forcing them to think of the context in which each event happened and how their own assumptions play a role in the ability of young women like Lila to feel heard.

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Seattle Black Film Festival’s series “‘Waiting to Exhale” explored complex dynamics of Black culture, life, and relationships in a way that felt authentic and eye-opening to me as a non-Black viewer. Unlike other films that have tried to “represent” minority experiences, the films at this festival avoid shaping Black artists, particularly women, into a monolith. These films gave deeper meaning to experiences that I had only begun to quantify from my outsider’s point of view. They are a reminder of the subjectivity of human nature; and how culture, connections, and community influence our lives. In particular, the "Waiting to Exhale: Films from the Feminine Perspective" series showcased the power of storytelling to illuminate the nuances of Black womanhood, and how Black women are asked to navigate societal expectations.

Lead Photo Credit: Doyin Domingo in Blue Hour (2023), written and directed by J.D. Shields

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