Black Lives Matter

People

PROTESTS BLM NEW YORK

JUNETEENTH
New York City
June 2020
HD 1080P
Reel Duration: 10’54”

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, a Union General traveled to Galveston, Texas, to announce that the Civil War had ended, and slaves had been freed.

 

Juneteenth marks a date of major significance in American history and shows us that freedom and racial equality have always been a hard-fought battle for Black Americans – a battle that continues to this day.

 

May 2020.
The name of George Floyd is set to enter the history books along with Rosa Parks and Emmett Till, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Eric Gardner and many others.
 These became the faces of a moment that fueled a movement.

And thus Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis was one that may have been added to the long tally of Black Americans who have died at the hands of police officer from Ferguson to Atlanta in Aug 2020.

It could have caused a brief, mostly local, flurry of attention before the world moved on.

But this time was different.

This time Floyd’s murder ignited a wave of national and then global protests, that was reminiscent of the 60’s Civil Rights movement in its intensity and purpose.
It was a wave that led to changes in symbols of racism – from flags to statues – in stances of corporations, in hopes of real police reform, and of overdue reparations to Black Americans.

VIDEO TAPES 2020 (archival purpose)

Unfortunately because of the Pandemic no interview face to face, (except for one with Gardea Christian https://patrickmorell.com/works/people/conversations/) were possible.
So these footage of protests (20) are left solely for archival purposes.

Here are a few samples:

June 2nd. Times Square/ Union Square. NYC

HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 6’58”

June 2nd. Night. SOHO Broadway

HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 6’58”

June 4th Union square
NYC

HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 6’15”

June 10th. Washington Sq - NY public Library

HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 6’34”

June 25th. City Hall- Brooklyn Communities associations

HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 7’04”

July 26th. Black Women March. Times Square- Upper Manhattan

HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 15’03”

Daunte Wright.

Daunte Wright. 20. shot and killed by police, on April 11 2021 in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota., about 10 miles from where Derek Chauvin was on trial in the killing of George Floyd.

 
“It is my belief that the officer had the intention to deploy her Taser but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet,” Chief Gannon said.
Really?

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
James Baldwin. 1965

James Baldwin in France and Switzerland

Project in development

James Baldwin’s first experience living abroad was in Paris, France, where he relocated in 1948, in the hopes that a new place and time away would help him finish his first novel, 
Go Tell It On The Mountain (1953) and draft his famous collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955).

At the age of twenty-four, Baldwin arrived in Paris with only forty dollars in his pocket.
He fell in love with the city, not only because of its beauty and culture but also because of the relief it provided from the racial and sexual discrimination he experienced in the United States.

The space to be himself freed Baldwin creatively.
It was here, and in Switzerland, that he completed much of the writing for Go Tell It On The Mountain.
Beyond a place to work, Paris also provided Baldwin with inspiration and even models for his fictional characters.
The city provided the backdrop for his second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956).

 

Baldwin lived in a series of cheap hotels throughout Paris, many in the Saint-Germain area, a neighborhood filled with artists and authors during the 1940s and ‘50s.
Here Baldwin found a place within a diverse community of creative types.
He often worked in the Café de Flore, where writing and socializing went hand-in-hand, and where he met famous French intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre.
The bars and nightclubs allowed the effusive Baldwin to dance, sing, laugh, and explore his sexuality in a supportive environment.

 

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within,”
Baldwin wrote in his best-selling 1963 novel The Fire next time.

 

 

 Löeche-les-Bains. James Baldwin's House in Switzerland. 1950=1953