The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, 2024

​

Starring Zita Hanrot and Motell Gyn Foster

​

Weaves archival materials with cinematic narrative scenes filmed with an unconventional and modern cast. Drawing inspiration from Caribbean aesthetics and Surrealist artwork, this film installation brings attention to new aspects of Roussi-Césaire’s legacy that are undocumented in the public arena, while addressing the broader question of the continued erasure of women from historical accounts.  22 minutes

​

A collaboration with artist Simone Leigh titled for the 1975 album by Jeanne Lee. Featuring Lorraine O'Grady and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. 24 minutes

​

​

"Footnote to the West" is a dreamy fragment about the end of the world. A black girl wanders into a Hollywood western and mourns for the dead. 5 min

​

​

"Outfox the Grave" is a short film and a spell of protection.

5 min

"Spit on the Broom" is a surrealist documentary that explores the margins of the history of the African American women's group the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of black women organized in the 1840s during the height of the Underground Railroad.

​

The film uses excerpts from the public record, newspaper articles related to the Tents from over the course of 100 years, and a visual tapestry of fable and myth as a way to introduce a history that remains secret.

12 min

"A Quality of Light" reaches into the filmmaker's familial lineage of black women artists. This film examines the under-told story of the haunted artist who also inhabits the unique political position of being black and a woman. The film applies principles of music theory and West African performance structure in their construction.

8 min

​

As part of her ongoing work with artist Simone Leigh, Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich has spent the last two years working with the United Order of Tents, J.R.Giddings and Joliffe Union on an oral history series and archive of their history.

​

The Tents are the oldest continuous African American women's group in the United States, founded by freed slaves in the 1840s.

Made in the last years of McKayla Hanson's short life, this film explores a young woman's fearlessness and the women who helped her "survive something you should not have survived." 

 

Growing up in the Flint, Michigan foster care system McKayla was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and lost one of her legs. Doctor’s told her not to expect to be able to run, or ride a bike again, but McKayla had other plans.

13 min

​

​

A body of work composed of sixty photographs that portray street culture in Caribbean American neighborhoods in Miami and New York City. The work examines the visual creoles of these spaces through the curation and spontaneous occurrence of objects and images in people’s homes and businesses and in the everyday instance of street life. These images explore a liminal cultural space, where home is not something fixed but rather something negotiated again and again by the placement of bodies and symbols.

​

"What do they know of Cricket, who only cricket know?" - CLR James

​

This portrait of a summer cricket league in New York City completed in 2013, is a story of the utopian world this predominantly immigrant community has constructed on their weekends.

17 min