Black America Again

REkOGNIZE is a three-channel video installation and a meditation on photography, memory, and movement. Artist and Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young (Selma, Arrival) finds inspiration in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood, a site of the early 20th-century Great Migration. During this time, millions of African Americans moved from the rural southern United States to cities in the north and west. The Hill District saw a flourishing of culture during these years and was a site of artistic development for luminaries such as August Wilson, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Errol Garner, and many others. REkOGNIZE takes its visual cues from the Pittsburgh landscape, especially the city’s tunnels, which serve not only as literal entry points into the city, but also as metaphors for this movement of people and culture.

Inspired by some of the greatest musical recordings and performances 'behind bars', Young imagines a time and place where jails and prisons are no longer filled with bodies but are ruins of a time of isolation, pain and absence. A film about our collective redemption. About second chances, forgiving mistakes, rehabilitation, love and exoneration.

The cosmic journey of sacred youth, during which pain, pleasure, and sublimation are nonnegotiable.