Kahlil I. Pedizisai

Gospel Hill

Two University of Virginia workers share a drink and conversation at a local nightclub. One worker is a phlebotomist and the other is a former EKG technician who has relocated from New Mexico and works now in the university cafeteria.Starring Ricky Goldman and Richard Cooper. Inspired by the 1973 film "The Mack" starring Max Julian and Richard Pryor.

Lago Gatún

The artist travels through the Panama Canal, filming 10-minute reels of 16mm to create an almost abstract journey modulated in time through the light and dark of the opening and closing locks. Alternating with submerged darkness, we observe the beauty of the landscape, and the global trade that the canal was built to facilitate; bringing to mind that its American engineers imposed US segregation laws on the canal’s Jamaican migrant workforce.

Glenville

Portrait based on the first cinematic representation of Afro-American intimacy in the 1898 film Something Good-Negro Kiss.

Toxic: A Black Woman's Story

Racism. Toxic stress. Birth outcomes. How are these things intertwined? The short film, Toxic: A Black Woman's Story, seeks to explore that question - Peer into the world of the film's lead protagonist, Nina. An elite lawyer, loyal wife, and loving mother of a teen boy, Nina is navigating life (and a pregnancy) to the best of her ability. But sometimes the forces on a woman - especially a black woman - can be too much to bear. Follow Nina in this day-in-the-life drama, and see the world through the eyes of a successful black woman who must navigate an unjust world while trying to protect the world she has created for herself and her family.