DOCUMENTARY Art Informs Humanity in Black in America 2020 Journalist Alahna Lark takes on the hate and the hope of a year in infamy By Ca ro l Bada r acco Padge t t
Alahna Lark
I don’t understand how you can be so angered by a broken window… but you’re not angry about a black or brown body on the ground. ” – Justus Steele, Atlanta protester
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O n May 26, 2020, one day after the killing of George Floyd by mechanical asphyxiation under a police officer’s knee during an arrest in Minneapolis, a series of protests erupted across the United States and around the world. Atlanta-born resident, journalist, and filmmaker Alahna Lark will never forget that day when she and her crew began filming her docuseries, Black in America 2020 , for GPB Knowledge Network. “We marched from Centennial Olympic Park to the Capitol and back again,” and as she captured the event and the exchange between those marching, the police, and National Guard members, she could make out a voice in the crowd. “I heard this young man, Justus Steele—a gay influencer, a black man, and a beautiful human being— having this intense conversation with a black police officer. He was asking the officer why he was on that side and why he didn’t take off his uniform and stand with his people,” Lark recounts. “To see the passion and fire he had, speaking to the police officer who wouldn’t look him in the eye,” she describes. “To capture that moment and speak to Justus afterwards as he was still full of emotions … It was inspiring because he was brave enough to ask the questions we all want answered.” The landscape was even richer as one considers concurrent events: Racial tensions in the U.S. had already
neared an apex in the wake of two other killings before Floyd’s—the deadly lynching of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in rural Georgia in February 2020 and the fatal police shooting of black medical worker Breonna Taylor in her Louisville, Kentucky home in March. “Everyone was unpacking the weight of what this year has been like,” Lark states. “I knew I had to put a lens to this experience.” The climate fueled her passion to tirelessly capture the Black Lives Matter protests in Atlanta that culminated in Black in America 2020 . The six-part docuseries aired on GPP Knowledge, beginning with Part I that aired Nov. 15, 2020. “The system has failed to protect innocent lives and kills them without any repercussion and any reform. All that the protesters were trying to say is that black lives matter—not that they’re the most important thing in the whole world, just MATTER,” Lark stresses. “And that’s what this documentary will portray.” She notes the weight of the police killing of Rayshard Brooks in June 2020, “…right here in Atlanta, right on the heels of us taking to the streets every day.” For Lark, there was no other story to tell at this critical juncture in history. “I couldn’t self-actualize without telling it,” she notes. She was raw, a woman struggling in the backlash of the pandemic. “I was grieving the lives that had been lost, and although I felt like isolating myself, I still had to face the camera and put into words this grave moment in history.” The daughter of a CNN producer, who “begged me not to go into journalism, but here I am,” Lark has taken
on subjects such as human trafficking. She was working on a project on that topic just before the pandemic hit and stalled production. And she had personally felt the reality of this grave, often overlooked human injustice when she first started out her career as a young actress, intuiting an element of sketchiness and unsafeness as she went to certain auditions. In her quest to make a difference through documentary filmmaking, she has traveled to shoot in Ecuador, Liberia, and Sweden, where she worked as a cinematographer capturing the yearlong MLK Exhibit A Right to Freedom , at the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm. She is currently serving as programming director of human.tv, a platform for marginalized content creators, such as members of the LGBTQ community, women, and people with disabilities. “These voices have authentic stories that need to be told,” she notes. Black in America 2020 , too, will appear on the human.tv platform after it airs on GPB Knowledge. Despite the nearly insurmountable challenges of this time in history, Lark finds, “People are still waking up.” Her words of wisdom for others, as a black woman, filmmaker, and preserver of history: “Give yourself grace. We’re all going through this and none of us have a directory. Allow yourself to feel it. You’re not alone, and we’ll get through it.”
alahnalark.com | @eastalahna
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