i love upeople

so last night I went over to Solomon's Porch in bedstuy and saw Hanifah Walidah and Olive Demetrius's documentary, U People. you can check out their website here, if you're so inclined - they also do a fabulous podcast.

the basic premise - while shooting the music video for Hanifah's "Make a Move," they also shot a lot of footage of all the women in the house interacting, talking about life, and just generally getting deep. Then they made that footage into a film.

so this post is not going to be long, I just really wanted to urge people to check out the site and see the movie when it starts going to film festivals. It really felt to me like I was sitting in my own living room, talking to my own friends. I felt like every conversation I saw on that movie was one i've had thousands of times before, but just the experience of seeing it on screen, of hearing those words come out of someone else's mouth, was intensely validating. Hanifah and Olive spoke about how these types of conversations about race, gender, and sexuality are conversations that we as black women and queer black women often have among ourselves, but they are not conversations that often make it into the public sphere. This movie is their attempt to bring some of those conversations out of the living room and into other people's living rooms, and I think that's sort of great. I just wanted to give a shout out to them and to all the beautiful people in their movie. I think its the kind of movie everyone can get something different out of, but for me, it was just great to see myself reflected in so many other people.

so yeah. this post was a bit full of feelings, but that's probably a stunning recommendation for a movie, no? see it. love it. check out their podcast. its great.