Supported by Haverford College’s Summer DocuLab initiative, five Tri-College students will spend summer 2020 working on the experimental documentary film Smile4Kime, directed by Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies Elena Guzman along with the film’s Executive Producer, animator/filmmaker Cybee Bloss. Conceptualizing, developing, and creating animated scenes for the film in collaboration with local Philadelphia artists, student fellows will participate in a series of workshops and lab exercises to complete original short animated scenes, as well as a collaboratively designed exhibition. Throughout the project, participants will consider how contemporary film has dealt with mental health and grief for women of color; how feminist theory, such as intersectionality, can help guide our praxis with filmmaking and provide new tools to represent women of color in filmmaking; and how grief can be visualized in ways that take into account the intersectionality of race, gender, and disability.
Animating Grief is made possible by Haverford College’s DocuLabs Program, a joint initiative of VCAM and the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities.
