Sarah is a documentary style video that explores the experience of a Black researcher feeling the weight of anti-Blackness in the present while trying to do the work of unsilencing anti-Blackness in the past. The story takes place in the researcher’s apartment where she sits at her computer researching the story of the Sarah, a slave ship constructed in Newfoundland while she is bombarded by present day media reports of Black people targetted by state violence. The story is narrated by an Afronaut from the future whose ancestors left earth in the twenty-first century when the planet had become unbearable for Black people. Now living in peace amongst the stars, their historians silenced the past to give them a fresh start. But silence is not seamless and the past haunts their dreams. The Afronaut travels back in time to 21st century earth to find out why their ancestors had left. Through watching what the researcher recovers and what she is experiencing in the present, the Afronaut learns the truth.

Performed by Camille Turner
Cinematography and editing by Esery Mondésir
Scored by Ravi Naimpally
Voiceover by Anyika Mark
Animation of slave ship, L'Aurore courtesy of slavevoyages.org
and the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship.”
Assisted by Alvin Loung