Yance Ford, 2017, 97 min

In the spring of 1992, William Ford Jr. was murdered by a young white mechanic named Mark Reilly. Strong Island weaves together excerpts from personal journals and institutional texts to tell the story of the Ford family—Barbara Dunmore, William Ford and their three children—and how they dealt with grief and the lasting shadow of racial injustice in America.

The screening will be followed by a talkback session with producer Joslyn Barnes and visual artist Kalen Na’il Roach, who will discuss the filmmaking process, the relationship between archival material and memory, and Strong Island's investigations of historic understandings of justice.

This Studio Screen event is the first installment of the annual Studio Museum partnership with Maysles Cinema. Now in its second year, this collaborative film series highlights how film and contemporary art practices intersect and address the on- and off-screen legacies of under-represented cultural producers. This year's selection of films explores the boundary between documentary and narrative filmmaking, and is thematically inspired by The Studio Museum in Harlem's exhibition, Fictions—a survey of recent work by nineteen emerging artists working to imagine and reimagine history and identity through visual practice.