Through audacious formal experimentation, filmmaker and artist Ja’Tovia Gary unleashes an arsenal of techniques and materials, including direct animation on archival 16mm film, cinema verite, and montage editing to explore the creative virtuosity of Black femme performance while interrogating the histories of those bodies and lives as spaces of forced labor and commodified production. Filmed on location in Harlem, the United States, and in Claude Monet’s historic gardens in Giverny, France, this documentary offers a multi-textured cinematic poem that meditates on the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women. Discussion with director Ja'Tovia Gary, moderated by Kevin Everson (UVA) to follow.

The Giverny Document (Single Channel) is part of the Women in Film Series supported by Virginia Commission for the Arts & National Endowment for the Arts