FILM + CONVERSATION EVENT
This startlingly personal documentary presents a moving yet unsentimental view of motherhood and adoption. It explores the feelings surrounding the reunion of a young woman with her birth mother twenty years after being given up for adoption. The reunion is between filmmaker Camille Billops and her own daughter, Christa. Facing the re-encounter with mixed emotions, Billops interrogates her family and friends as well as her own motivations. The result is an original and daring work that challenges social biases about adoption and offers new insight into mother-daughter relationships.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Rachelle Salnave is a filmmaker and cultural leader. With over 20 years of experience, she has focused her lens on Black Global stories. The first of a handful of filmmakers to document the gentrification of Harlem, Rachelle works include capturing stories about the Haitian Guantanamo Bay experience, Macadamia Nut planting experiments in Guatemala and spotlighting Haitian identity and its society. Rachelle was part of the first class of Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive Fellows in Miami in 2015. In that year, the General Consulate of the Republic of Haiti nominated Salnave with the “Beacon of Hope and Achievement” award. Her second feature documentary, LA BELLE VIE: THE GOOD LIFE landed her an Emmy nomination in 2016. In 2017, Knight Foundation honored Rachelle as a “Knight Arts Champion” for her cinematic programming, Ayiti Images and Black Lounge Films. Her current documentary films, MADAME PIPI is airing on PBS' REEL SOUTH season 7 and her 3rd feature documentary entitled DUAL CITIZEN is in post-production. Rachelle has been newly appointed Executive Director of Artists Institute in Jacmel, Haiti.
Screening of Finding Christa will be preceded by Suzanne, Suzanne.
Suzanne, Suzanne
written and directed by Camille Billops & James Hatch
25 min
A remarkably incisive short documentary film, much more than one woman's story of abuse and addiction, this film captures the nature and spirit of a troubled family.