USA 1998 | Director: Camille Billops | Voices: Issa Ba, Seydou Doukanse | Production assistant: Rico Anderson | Comissioned by: The 1998 National Black Arts Festival, INC. | Colour | DCP | 11 min | english OV | Third World Newsreel

„My take on slavery: When the Africans boarded the ships bound for America, they carried in their bags all their memories of home. When they arrived in the New World, their bags had been switched, and in them they found n*****, beast, slave,... Many generations later, the children of these Africans toured the Museum of Modern Art to see the sculptures and art of Picasso, Braque and Matisse. Lo! There were the beautiful icons of their ancestors, the images that had been stolen from their bags.“ (Camille Billops)

Content Notes

USA 1991 | Director, screenplay, production: Camille Billops, James Hatch | Camera: Dion Hatch, Shaun Wheeler | Editing: Paula Heredia | Sound: Ray McCutcheon | Colour | DCP | 55 min | english OV | Third World Newsreel

FINDING CHRISTA explores a radical decision made by artist and filmmaker Camille Billops: "I unmothered myself." She meets her daughter Christa again as an adult, 20 years after having given her up for adoption. Through interviews with friends and relatives, Billops sheds light on the dilemma of a single Black mother and artist. A manifesto for the alteration of traditional family models and relationships and for the democratisation of care work: "They need to really get that clear. Everybody ain’t mommy. Why they got to – every man ain’t no daddy. They don’t do that to men. They let men just go hi de hi, hi de ho, silver and go anyplace they want to. They walk away from the family, walk away from the dead mama, walk away from anything they want to, and they don’t necessarily bear the responsibility of it. But when mommy walks away, ooh. Now, who put those rules down, God the father?" (Camille Billops cited in Ryan Nhu: „Break Yourself a Home“, Feminist Media Histories, Vol. 11/1, 2025)