Hi Katie, This is Keche. So I’m a senior at Towson University, my major is Theatre studies with a minor in film. I mainly do playwriting and a bit of screenwriting and my main passions are intersectional feminism and social justice type things. I’m taking the ART X RESISTANCE class with Hannah and we’re focusing a lot about different artists and how they use their art to spark social change or resistance.

My name is Katie Petitt. I live in Baltimore not too far from Hannah, but I’ve now lived in DC for six years and I’m an organizer, currently an organizer for a collective called Money Talks, which is a project organized for Black Lives DC. Before the pandemic I was organizing Black Lives Matter DC for a little over three years and I have a company called Current Movements. We use film and art to connect a grassroots movement and really highlight the work that they’re doing and provide the voices of community members and the issues and solutions that they’re working on, and hopefully bring awareness to more of those things and allow people to get involved.

Before that I was doing international development work in my undergrad. And then I was studying and traveling abroad and then before that I was at a refugee settlement for 5 years. I guess I’ve always been very socially engaged as well as creative. Working in the non profit organizational projects, there’s not a lot of space for creativity. And I think that’s intentional. I think it’s a part of this white supremacist culture. The root of art is openly learning about change and imagination and thinking about what else is possible. In the way that nonprofits are structured, they don’t want to systematically change. So I got really frustrated with my work in nonprofits. But in my studies abroad, there’s less of that mentality. And that’s where I learned that grassroots communities are where it’s at.

Communities that are experiencing their own issues ultimately know their own problems and know how to solve them. It’s usually that larger systemic issues are the problems. As a Black woman who’s been able to have a lot of education, how can I fit into that and be supportive of it. So when I left I was pretty set on using film as a way to elevate and highlight and create change. So yeah, that’s me.

Yeah that’s all really interesting to me! Can you talk to me on why you think film and media is important to social justice work, especially with the Black Lives Matter Movement resurfacing? Hannah did also tell me you’re a part of Black Lives Matter DC, so if you want to delve into that, that's fine with me.

Film, because it’s really democratic and accessible. I’m dyslexic and I love to read, but it’s also very hard, and with film you don’t need to read to understand high concepts. And it’s one of the more popular art forms that we consume. Then I saw what social media could do and seeing the power of community groups sharing their power and getting attention and eyes, that globally allows for them to tackle governments. And I was really inspired by that. Every six months I’m like “This is when imperialism will fall”, but it still hasn’t come yet. Then when I went to grad school, the United Nations group had a trip to Costa Rica and my advisor was a prolific writer and at my university, all my teachers are also practitioners, so they’re not only academic. So she was a really great writer and she started looking at more creative types of storytelling. So a lot of the classes she had us take were around storytelling. My fellowship was in Ethiopia doing film and audio storytelling, and just being able to share those stories with my own friends and family on social media was really powerful.

People just have no concept of what is happening outside of their own lives. Just being able to educate in that way was powerful. From there I created an organization where organizations themselves could upload their stories to social media. Then I was trying to figure out how to do that project and service communities, and that was four years ago. And now there’s a lot of public killings of Black men, shooting at the Pulse NightClub, and there was also the Standing Rock Protest, and not just the pipeline going through people’s land, but tainting their water. And so my best friend told me about this protest in DC because we were both living there and there was a call for people to take a bigger stance so the government would say something about it. But my friend couldn’t go because she worked for the government, so there was a conflict of interests, so I asked if there were people at Standing Rock that I could meet up with and then the founder of BLM reached out to me and encouraged me to go.

BLM is structured so there’s a national umbrella and then 26 BLM chapters around the country. And because I had quit my job and had all this time on my hands, I joined BLM National and The Standing Rock Organization to support Black and Tribal relationships. While I was there I got in touch with elders and how to help these Tribal movements. But I was really drawn to the story evolving in the media around Standing Rock and there was no national media unless a celebrity was attached. But there were a lot of filmmakers there! There’s such a huge gap between art and movements and what’s being shown to the public vs what’s really happening. Not all non profit organizations understand aesthetics and getting the word out through film and other types of art.

I wanted to give context on what I’m specifically interviewing you for since you are the founder of Current Movements, I’m just going to read off of what is on your website: “A non-profit DC based organization with a mission to connect activists and movements around the world using art and technology”. So I wanted to ask how the recent BLM and call for inclusivity has impacted how you curate your screenings. Like how Black stories aren’t always written by Black people and how that can skew the image of Black people, so there’s a call for more inclusivity onscreen and offscreen.

Before COVID we would do film screenings for social justice films and then have a panel of activists from the DMV area to talk about “This is what you saw in the film and this is how we’re going to address this issue right now. This is the work we’re doing and this is how you can get involved with this work.” And then we’d have a happy hour to get to know the community after that. And we’d have those screenings about once or twice a month. We’d also do film festivals and workshops because feeling balanced is really important to our workshops.

Now we’re working with aspiring filmmakers to build a community of support. So that’s something that we’re building to be able to tell our own stories. We do have those conversations about how to give attention to queer people, women, POC, etc when there are films being made typically by white men. And now that it’s pandemic time, we’ve done one screening and one festival. Now that’s it’s pandemic time we’re doing more research into mutual aid and how can we help people right now, directly?

And now we’ve just launched a podcast about artists of color who are working on radical art. We’ve pivoted to be virtual, but still have that community feel. Our audience is typically people who are social justice minded, fellow filmmakers, and liberal people wanting to get involved in grassroots projects.

I do think what you’re doing is really impactful and that you’re putting a lot of thought into this. We don’t want to just repeat cycles, but I can tell you want to create change and not just give movies to white directors and white writers.

There’s always more we can learn from political education since we have a large range of people who have been in movements throughout decades. They can all have a deeper education from where they are at. I think DC lacked the understanding for arts and culture education, but now we’ve been able to achieve success with that in the last few years through grassroot organizations.

To dive into my last few questions and to broaden it to more mainstream and Hollywood type filmmaking, what hopes do you have for the film industry in regards to what we tell and why these stories now?

A few years ago, people might have pushed back the idea of more BIPOC stories and I think the uprising has shown that isn’t true. We don’t have the spaces and resources we need to do that and there is an understanding in the mainstream that we need these things. I think that’s hugely due to Black Lives Matter. My hope is that we can boost these projects to see more of the screenplays and films we want. We won’t go back to thinking “Your group has enough stories.”

I agree on that point. Growing up I had a weird relationship with movies revolving around Black pain and I never wanted to see it and now we are at more of a shift where we are tired of seeing Black pain in movies. I’m excited that we’re stepping away from that and just see different types of Black filmmaking happen. To go into my last question, I just wanted to know if you have any film recommendations?

I read a lot of articles on Black indie films, so I’d recommend Medicine for Melancholy. It’s about a hipster, young, Black couple finding something together in San Francisco and it’s just so refreshing to see a couple that’s normal and not surrounded by pain. I just want to have a long list of films from artists of color to recommend to you as we build and become better artists.

I’ll check out the stuff you recommended and I appreciate the time you took out to do this interview.

I’d love to follow up with you as your career progresses too!

Thank you, I’ll keep in touch!