S. Pearl Sharp has been a foundational presence in the Los Angeles film and video community over the past 45 years. This program of five films celebrates Sharp’s creative lives as both a filmmaker and a poet.

Sharp’s film The Healing Passage: Voices from the Water (2004) poses the question: “How can we receive our own healing while we begrudge someone else theirs?” This arc of healing and the deep messy well of humanness characterize Sharp’s nonfiction portraits of Black art, history, and life. Sharp exists both inside and out of the frame of these films, as friend, peer, and fellow traveler, in search of beauty, care, and community alongside her film’s subjects. Other films reflect her role as poet and truth teller in Blood Bank (2022); as storyteller in Life Is a Saxophone (1985), as cultural historian in Voices from the Water (2004), and as witness in Back Inside Herself (1984/2009). 

This program features a conversation with film programmer Jheanelle Brown and S. Pearl Sharp.

Presented in English and French with subtitles.