Documenting Community Through Film

Who gets to document a community - and what does it mean to make a film from inside the story rather than looking in from outside? Join filmmaker Sami Miranda for a film screening and conversation about community documentary, public history, cultural memory, and filmmaking as an archival practice. We'll consider how film can preserve voices, neighborhoods, relationships, languages, rituals, music, gestures, and the everyday textures through which communities know themselves. Following the screening of May there be words between us - documenting It's Your Mug Reading Series in D.C. - Miranda will discuss creative process, ethics, collaboration, and the responsibilities involved in documenting people and places. Part screening and part public conversation, this event asks us to imagine documentary film not merely as representation, but as a contribution to the community archive.