Writer
An actress, three months post-partum, reads through fragments of the archive of Suzanne Césaire as she prepares to perform excerpts of the writer's work.
Director
An actress, three months post-partum, reads through fragments of the archive of Suzanne Césaire as she prepares to perform excerpts of the writer's work.
Producer
Beautifully layered and expressionistic, After Sherman is a story about inheritance and the tension that defines our collective American history, especially Black history. The filmmaker follows his father, a minister, in the aftermath of a mass shooting at his church in Charleston, South Carolina to understand how communities of descendants of enslaved Africans use their unique faith as a form of survival as they continue to fight for America to live up to its many unfulfilled promises to Black Americans.
Director
This sonic wonder, which premiered as part of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, documents Leigh’s practice as a sculptor and her evocation of the endurance of Black womanhood by way of spirit and tradition. As scholar Yasmina Price puts it, the film is “an incantation of multiple architectures of the self for black women.”
Director
"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.
Director
A short film and a spell of protection.
Director
A dreamy fragment about the end of the world. A black girl wanders into a Hollywood western and mourns for the dead.
Art Direction
The film explores the history of the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of black women in the 1840s, during the height of the Underground Railroad (a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the US during the early to mid-1800s, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada).
Director
The film explores the history of the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of black women in the 1840s, during the height of the Underground Railroad (a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the US during the early to mid-1800s, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada).
Additional Editing
Leigh’s video work Untitled (M*A*S*H) (2018) imagines a fictive order of black nurses operating on the front of the Korean War, a conflict that began between the United States and North Korea in 1950 and never officially ceased. Like M*A*S*H—the long-running American TV show (1972–83) it parodies—the work directs attention to the overlooked life in the staging grounds. Showcasing the agonizing choices faced by those who staff the tented encampments of war, it perhaps also serves as a reminder that our neighborhoods remain a warfront too. Using only artist’s tools, Leigh asks: How do we transform ourselves and others?
Director
Premiered at Cucalorus Film Festival
