Residue

Forty years after his mother, Shirikiana Aina, directed her seminal short film Brick by Brick, the artist Merawi Gerima took up the gauntlet, expanding upon the themes of Aina’s lyrical cinematic meditation and applying them in the context of 21st-century Washington D.C., where Gerima’s protagonist, young filmmaker Jay (Obinna Nwachukwu), returns home after many years away. Seeking to reconnect with the memories, spaces, and lingering traces of his childhood, he instead discovers that his old neighborhood is no longer recognizable, and many of his old friends have met with a tragic fate. Premiering during the pandemic era at the Slamdance Film Festival before going on to screen at the Venice Film Festival, Residue is at once a reflection on the lived experience of gentrification and a layered, authentic portrait of the Black Lives Matter generation.

Screening with:
Brick by Brick
Shirikiana Aina, 1982, U.S., 37min

Shirikiana Aina—one of the few women members in the original cohort of student filmmakers who would come to be known collectively as the L.A. Rebellion—documented the stigmatization of Black residents within the Washington D.C. area in her first film, produced during her final year at UCLA. Brick by Brick depicts families and individuals, otherwise ignored by the media, who were then in the process of being pushed out of their homes. Gentrification and urban redevelopment are at the core of this powerful short, which captures the extraordinary spirit of a neighborhood community who came together to fight against the perpetuation of a systemic injustice.

Digital presentation courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.