Edgecombe County is a predominantly African-American agricultural community in the eastern region of North Carolina. Like many communities in the historic South there are remnants of chattel slavery and monuments to civil rights struggles. It is on this stage that Edgecombe presents a small opening into the lives of Shaka Jackson, a new resident living under house arrest, Ms. Doris Stith, President of the Community Enrichment Organization, Deacon William Joyner, an elder in one of the oldest churches in the community.
Crafted as a character exploration, Edgecombe highlights the exhaustion of overcoming individual circumstances while navigating shared systemic experiences. Through a small window of time and space, the film presents the numerous ways Black folks overcome across generations. By revealing this timeline, the film exhumes a long lineage of survival.
Screening in: Salak Shorts
Bio
Crystal Kayiza grew-up in Oklahoma and is now a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker. Her work focuses on pursuing more nuanced storytelling about Black communities. She is a recipient 2018 Sundance Ignite Fellowship and 2017 Jacob Burns Film Center Woman Filmmaker Fellowship.