Amber Love
Amber Love is a filmmaker, festival programmer, and documentary editor based in Chicago, IL. She got her start in documentary as an intern for Kartemquin Films, and since then her own films have premiered at the Camden International Film Festival, received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, and have been supported by the Tribeca Film Institute.
In 2019 she was selected as a NeXt Doc fellow for her work as an emerging filmmaker, and in 2020 she was selected as a fellow for the Sundance Institute’s inaugural Art of Editing Fellowship. As an editor, Amber has worked on a number of feature-length films including REPRESENT and UNAPOLOGETIC, and recently wrapped work on a 3-part docu-series for PBS.
Afrofuturism is so much more than an aesthetic. As a lived experience, it is a reclaiming of historical narratives and the creation of different possible futures for Black communities outside of current systems of oppression. In the context of American history, that is a revolutionary act. The community leaders featured in this film were so gracious with their time, and I'm proud to be able to show audiences even just a small part of their work. Afrofuturism is a space of possibility, imagination, and power, and I hope that this film pushes you to look a little deeper at the way Afrofuturism lives and breathes all around us.
A Galaxy Sits in the Cracks
A GALAXY SITS IN THE CRACKS is a short experimental documentary exploring the ways Black communities in Chicago, Detroit, and Durham use Afrofuturism as a tool to inspire young people, organize politically and economically, and reimagine the spaces around them. In a series of short movements the film spotlights an Afrofuturist youth center in Durham, NC, reimagines a historic university on Chicago's south side, deconstructs race as a technology at a Wakanda-inspired Afrofuturism convention, and explores Afrofuturism’s political and technological implications for the future of Detroit.
The majority of this film was shot in Chicago, and it features two pillars of Chicago's Black artist community: Ytasha Womack and Sheridan Tucker Anderson. Afrofuturism is so important to how many of Chicago's Black communities are imagining new possibilities for ourselves, and I would love to see this film play in parks here to spark further conversation.
A GALAXY SITS IN THE CRACKS presents an introduction to Afrofuturism and the many thinkers, writers, creators and doers working across the country to imagine and manifest different Black futures. Investigate the ideas presented in this film by checking out the Prairie Garden at Chicago State University and Blackspace in Durham, NC.
Learn more about Amber Love, and see more of her work, at https://www.amberlove.org/.
