Black Family Reunion

Black Family Reunion is a short documentary about longevity and the right to return in the West Philadelphia neighborhoods historically known as the Bottom. Current and former residents from the Top of the Bottom to the Black Bottom discuss displacement, shifting community dynamics, and nostalgia, as well as the desire to escape and the desire to reclaim.

Marie Alarcon is an experimental video artist trained in documentary filmmaking. Alarcon has screened at festivals and galleries including Blackstar Film Festival, Harlem International Film Festival, and the SF Urban Film Fest. Their practice is centered around personal, historical, and environmental landscapes that rely on cinema and its capacity as collective “rememory”. Much of their work is created through artist residencies, including Elsewhere, Greensboro, SensLab, Montreal, Good Hart, MI, Neighborhood Time Exchange, Philadelphia, and Icebox x Leeway.

This work was part of Power Map: Historic Mural Activations, a series of five commissioned events, performances and workshops activating murals created in Mural Arts Philadelphia’s first 20 years (1984-2003) that depict power and empowerment. Five diverse figurative murals served as the starting point for an exploration of the history of their creation and the neighborhood change that the murals have witnessed. They also offered a prompt for thinking about how power is depicted in public art today and in the recent past. Featured artists include Mark Strandquist & Courtney Bowles with Tripod, Studio 22 (Nasheli Juliana Ortiz, Marién Vélez and Lorna Mulero), Eva Wǒ, Marie Alarcon and Ken McFarlane. This project has been developed on the occasion of MAP’s 35th anniversary by guest curator-in-residence Daniel Tucker.

See Black Family Reunion as part of Mural Art Philadelphia’s Power Map: Historic Mural Activations