Water the Roots: The Fluidity of Blackness and Time

This project is a meditation on Blackness, life, death, loss, and spirituality. Although this thesis was executed in hopes of fulfilling an academic requirement, each frame provides insight into my experiences as a low-income Black and Native Hawaiian woman living under the structural oppression instituted by the United States. Blackness, geography, ancestry, and modernity all come into conversation within this film through the breaking of commercial cinema conventions like narrative continuity and linear time. I chose to create this piece without the use of popular Hollywood cinematic conventions to demonstrate the fact that experimental film has a greater capacity for social commentary than commercial film. With this thesis, I hope to call attention to the ways in which commercial endeavors are restrictive for progressive thought and to demonstrate the emotional impact and societal critiques that can blossom when filmmakers are not bogged down by expectations to generate box office success.