Black Lives Matter : 'Mama'
Description :
There are no words that can describe that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I watched George Floyd being murdered on camera. I was driven by disbelief and anger when I conceived the idea for this project.
The footage that we see of regular shootings of unarmed black men in the USA was more powerful than anything that I could film myself so I wanted to make that the main focus of the film. We have seen these police shootings so many times that it can be almost easy to become immune to the grotesque brutality embedded in these images.
I wanted to catalogue the murders of these innocent people in a way that doesn't shirk away from the real violence that people in our society are experiencing. The fury and of the speech by senator Flowers held the exact level of intensity I wanted. Her words expressing her anguish for her son's life had a profound impact on me.
For any Black or Brown person watching these images it's like watching a family member, a father, an uncle, a son, being killed again and again. I feel that both the media and police in the USA in particular, often dehumanise these victims. I wanted to reverse this. I wanted people to remember that George Floyd, Philando Castle, Rodney King, Eric Graner, Michael Brown Jr and all the victims of police brutality had mothers. And to feel that insurmountable and devastating loss that any of us would feel after the murder of a family member
Credits :
Director: Meena Ayittey
Editor: David Warren
Sound Design: Liam Conwell