Radical Tenderness: The Politic of Through the Night
A Letter from the AlumNest by Loira Limbal
Loira Limbal is the director of Chicken & Egg Pictures (Egg)celerator Lab granted film Through the Night and a 2021 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient.
Chicken & Egg Pictures has supported 340+ women and gender nonconforming nonfiction directors from all around the world, and that number continues to grow each year. Letters from the AlumNest is a blog series from the perspective of some of our Nest-supported filmmakers.
“Much contemporary creative work by or about women of color, strived so hard to be political and purposeful that characters sometimes came out stilted, and humanness, whimsy and interiority got left behind.”
— Danielle Jackson
On our very first day of production, I witnessed a toddler clumsily climb into a chair and nestle himself underneath his mother’s arm. His mother — without even looking at him — reached into her purse, pulled out a small bottle of lotion, and began rubbing his little legs and feet. The moment was deeply tender, intimate, and so ‘routine’ that nobody else noticed it. For me, it was the moment I realized that tenderness would be both the politic of Through the Night and its aesthetic.
Documentaries are known for their in depth examinations of the human condition. Often that means dedicating years to stories that reveal deep injustices in our world. Many documentaries follow everyday people in order to put a “human face on a social problem.” This is probably done with the best of intentions. The goal is to make abstract social structures visible. The unintended consequence, however, is that poor and working class Black, Indigenous, and people of color get reduced to our oppression.
Our bodies become the site of everything that is wrong in society. Every story is about the criminal justice system that incarcerates us, the educational system that fails us, the police officers who kill us. Our stories only matter when we are in an acute crisis. There is nothing in between. No everyday life. No feelings. No humor, doubts, or poetry. No hopes, fears, or dreams. Our whole existence is tied to a struggle which ultimately strips us of our complexity, our humanity. Dehumanization creates the conditions that make real world violence possible. And while the violence we suffer is undeniable, we are more than what ails and kills us.
That’s why I made Through the Night, a cinema vérité portrait of three working mothers whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center: a mother working the overnight shift as an essential worker at a hospital, another holding down three jobs just to support her family, and a woman who for over two decades has cared for the children of parents with nowhere else to turn. The film is unapologetically subtle, it is intimate, it dwells in the day to day. There are no spectacles, no statistics, no outside experts.
I wanted to offer the people in my film something they rarely get: a patient and curious gaze that illuminates who they are and how they feel — not just what they’re going through. I have known how important the film’s protagonists are my whole life. My own mother was a caregiver who raised us making minimum wage, working the night shift. She had very little support and was forced to make impossible decisions on a regular basis. I remember the criticism she faced from neighbors, schools systems, employers. I often wonder how she felt.
“The last place a colonizer leaves is your mind.” — Hari Kondabolu
Documentarians hope that their films will change hearts and minds and by extension change the world. The unspoken assumption, however, is that the hearts and minds that matter are the ones of people unfamiliar with or least impacted by a particular problem. The point is to reach the “world,” which is often code for liberal, educated, middle class white people who are unaware of the experience being portrayed.
I definitely made Through the Night to change hearts and minds but not of those who are removed from our experience. I made this film for our hearts and minds, because we are wounded by every institution in this country and then made to believe that something is wrong with our flesh when the wound becomes a scar.
To mother when you are Black, poor, queer, trans, immigrant, Indigenous, or undocumented is to insist on the value of our lives in a society that tells us we are worthless. Mothering — in our communities — is radical and visionary. It extends far beyond the biological. In Through the Night, we see Nunu care for the children but we also see her mother the mothers. It is a practice of care that has kept us alive in the face of unspeakable violence.
The multiple pandemics we are living through have made it painfully clear that the US views communities of color as disposable. So if nothing else, I hope Through the Night reminds us—as Robert Jones, Jr. says—that “everything they say about us is a projection. They are telling us about themselves.” The shame is not ours to carry.
Our lives matter because we say they do. I hope the film serves as a mirror and a cleansing. I hope it offers us a different lens to see ourselves through. We are valuable, we are worthy, and we are more than essential.
Loira Limbal is an Afro-Dominican filmmaker and DJ interested in the creation of art that is nuanced and revelatory for communities of color. She is the Senior Vice President of Programs at Firelight Media. Her first film, Estilo Hip Hop, was a co-production of ITVS and aired on PBS in 2009. Loira co-produces and helms the popular Brooklyn monthly #APartyCalledRosiePerez. Limbal received a BA in History from Brown University and is a graduate of Third World Newsreel’s Film and Video Production Training Program. Limbal is a Sundance Institute Momentum Fellow, DOC NYC Documentary New Leader, and a former Rockwood JustFilms Fellow. She lives in the Bronx with her two children.
Loira’s documentary Through the Night participated in Chicken & Egg Pictures 2018 (Egg)celerator Lab, and she is a 2021 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient.
