In an examination of the American healthcare system, Ours To Heal gathers together films that explore the concepts, actions and institutions involved with caring for and healing people both within and outside of dominant Western practices. Drawing inspiration from the feminist and economic thought of Angela Davis, this series connects how we care for, conceptualize, determine to heal and politicize the human body especially as imbued with the weighted concepts of Blackness, womanhood, and labor.
Co-presented with the German Film Office, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films, as part of 1 Million Roses for Angela Davis – U.S. Edition
A live Zoom conversation will take place Thursday, May 6th at 6pm EDT with filmmakers Lana Lin (THE CANCER JOURNALS REVISITED) & Jenna Bliss (THE PEOPLES DETOX) moderated by KAzembe balagun
The People’s Detox
Jenna Bliss, 2018, 57min
The People’s Detox explores the history of a revolutionary drug clinic that transformed contemporary notions of “health” and “care.” In November 1970, local heroin addicts, revolutionary health organizations, the Young Lords, and members of the Black Panther Party collectively organized to occupy the Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. The newly radicalized clinic examined global politics vis-à-vis the influx of heroin into urban centers, and proposed new treatments, such as acupuncture to replace established, economically incentivized protocols. An essential, deeply humane documentary detailing a transformative collective endeavor.
The Cancer Journals Revisited
Lana Lin, 2018, 98min
The Cancer Journals Revisited is prompted by the question of what it means to re-visit and re-vision Black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde’s classic 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience today. At the invitation of the filmmaker, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, twenty-seven writers, artists, activists, health care advocates, and current and former patients recite Lorde’s manifesto aloud on camera, collectively dramatizing it and producing an oration for the screen. The film is both a critical commentary and a poetic reflection upon the precarious conditions of survival within the intimate and politicized public sphere of illness.
Power To Heal
Charles Burnett & Daniel Loewenthal, 2018, 56min
Power to Heal tells a poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the tale of how a new national program, Medicare, was used to mount a dramatic, coordinated effort that desegregated thousands of hospitals across the country practically overnight.
Before Medicare, disparities in access to hospital care were dramatic. Less than half the nation's hospitals served black and white patients equally, and in the South, 1/3 of hospitals would not admit African-Americans even for emergencies.
Using the carrot of Medicare dollars, the federal government virtually ended the practice of racially segregating patients, doctors, medical staffs, blood supplies and linens. POWER TO HEAL illustrates how Movement leaders and grass-roots volunteers pressed and worked with the federal government to achieve a greater measure of justice and fairness for African-Americans.
I am Somebody
Madeline Anderson, 1970, 30min
In 1969, black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the state government and the National Guard. Featuring Andrew Young, Charles Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King and produced by Local 1199, New York’s Drug and Hospital Union, I am Somebody is a crucial document in the struggle for labor rights.
Doin’ What It Takes: Black Folks Getting and Staying Healthy
Donna Golden, 1994, 23min
Black communities are disproportionately affected by cancer, heart disease, low birth weight and infant mortality rates. Facing political, economic and racial barriers to good health, this video documents the anger and mistrust in the Black community towards the medical establishment based on a history of abuse and lack of access.
