Fejos Postdoctoral Fellow: Sarah Franzen

I consider this project to be like a quilt, a quilt made of found pieces. Like a quilt, each small piece of fabric, like each filmed scene, has a story to tell that is rich and unique. But the impact of the Federation, like the impact of a quilt, happens when the pieces are intricately sewn into a pattern that then shows something new, something beyond any individual piece. Theoretically, this framing relates to some of the recent turns to topology to describe social relations. The idea of topology is that the pattern is not bounded to specifics, or, in mathematical terms, to a Euclidian plane. The shape can morph, bend, grow, shrink. It is dynamic. Yet there remains something identifiable within the pattern. Extrapolated to a social organization, I see the Federation consisting of topological patterns that persist, yet mutate, bend, and change materially over time. The films present specific moments in time, specifics that include my influence as a researcher, and as a researcher with a camera. These moments are formed from unique particulars and cannot be replicated. By the time of this writing they have already changed. But there are patterns of relations among the farmers and organizers that persist. The Federation is produced over and over again, and each time, it is produced differently. But these patterns of relations give it the shape that keeps it identifiable.

Filmmakers have different ways of approaching their work; some begin with a script or idea; some seek to illustrate or elucidate their already completed research. But this project was built around using film as a form of inquiry. My camera was a part of how I engaged with participants from the beginning, and the final vision of the films was unknown. Not only was I, as a researcher, open to exploring how the process of filming might emerge and shape my research, but I also invited participants to actively direct and engage with the camera by selecting key moments to film and suggesting how pieces should be put together. This open-ended exploratory process produced exciting insights and knowledge about the on-the-ground efforts of the Federation. But it also resulted in an abundance of footage.

My process of editing was to similarly start from the ground up by first dwelling with my collected moments and building them into scenes. Each scene needed to have an inherent coherency and then fit together. The resulting films were not meant to be narrative, nor expositional. Rather, they are meant to be experiential, to offer these moments for the aesthetic, sensorial, and affective qualities. This is not to say that these moments can give the viewer the feeling of “being there.” Being there is filled with both more stimuli, and a slower tempo which will create a vastly different experience. These are curated moments selected specifically for their significance and edited for impact, yet they still are meant to create experiences, albeit curated experiences.

During the fellowship I had three goals. First, to finish editing the last of the films. Second, to figure out how the films should be organized within the digital gallery. Third, to create the interactive interface of the digital gallery. One possibility was to organize the footage based on the farm activities themselves. But this would flatten the material and rather than seeing the multi-layered forming of a networked organization, such thematic ordering would simply show disparate activities common of farming in general. I also considered including the filmed scenes that I will be used in my book. This way, the film project and book project would mirror each other. But this is where the difference between writing and filmmaking became most apparent. Within the context of writing, in which I theoretically lay out my arguments and jump around space and time, single scenes can serve as ethnographic examples (much as extended quotations do) within the text. The text itself serves as a scaffolding. For the film project, however, the filmed moments had their own inherent relationship to each other. It became clear the film project needed its own organizational scaffolding based on the nature of the footage itself. Ultimately, my organization of the footage within films, and the films within categories reflected my theoretical underpinning within my book, but in a different way. The book and the films are organized to reflect different topological shapes. Within the film project, these became categories to organize the films. Each category represents a pattern of relations but shows the variation within the category.

The first category contains the most filmed material and is perhaps the anchor of the project: Cooperatives. The first piece, Portrait of a Cooperative, argues that a cooperative exists through ongoing practices done in its name. The most active cooperative members invited me to film regular farm activities throughout the year. I alternately farmed and filmed and walked and chatted with people as they performed for the camera. The second piece, Attala County, which was revised and reedited during the fellowship, was the outcome of a vision of the cooperative members who wanted to collect the stories of each member. It is put together as a grid through which viewers can jump from member to member. As a whole, these films show the cooperative as a collection of individuals, all who buy into the idea of a the cooperative while also connected to their individual farms. The third cooperative piece, The Promise of Goats, was edited during the fellowship period. I was the least sure about this piece. I was invited to film many things related to this goat cooperative, but the pieces didn’t seem to line up. I realized that this footage was telling a different story, but one that was still important for cooperative development among the Federation – the role of the Federation organizers themselves in helping establish a cooperative.

The second category of films looks at farmer-to-farmer events. Certain events stood out as key spaces of learning and affirming not just technical farm information, but more importantly, an understanding of how to be and what it means to be a Black farmer in the US South. Each also shows the formation of collective spaces that build coherence among the farmers. The first short film, Beginning Farmer Reality Tour, follows a Federation sponsored event in which new and beginning farmers learn from established farmers. The second film, Goat Workshop, shows a farmer organized training which the Federation organizers supported. The third, Pass-On Day is not a direct training, but rather the activity through which farmers within a cooperative pass on new heifers to other members as a way to grow each member’s herd. This film however, like the others, does show a process of training and affirming among the participants as younger and newer farmers and encouraged and brought into the process of animal management. Each of these show how these spaces affectively address issues of race and identity as well as pass on technical, logistical, and political information necessary for farmers to build successful farm businesses.

The third category, Land Tours, reflects an interesting form of filming that emerged through my research. Many of the participants engaged with the camera by giving me tours of places of importance, most commonly their farms. This way of “show-and-tell” while traversing places of significance brought forth a layered way of understanding participants’ sense of place as well as their own relation to place. Land tours were a common way people wanted to be filmed, and I ended up collecting quite a number of filmed moments this way, included the vignettes with each individual member of Attala County Cooperative. But for this category I chose three different vignettes which represent the range of ways people relate to their land. One land tour is of a woman who claims the land as ancestral but has no rights to that land. The second is a farmer who rents the land on which he farms and is facing the end of his rental agreement. The third is a farmer who inherited the land through an ancestor who originally bought the land from his former enslaver. Together these pieces show the ties people have to land even with varying legal connections to these places.

The hardest part of this project was creating the interface for the digital gallery. Technically, this was not difficult to do. I had access to photoshop and Klynt, and through these tools was able to create a working set of pages through which users could navigate the gallery and select films. The problem was that my first attempt was adequate, but when workshopping the interface users found it not very user friendly or appealing. I ended up working with the design school at LSU. The design department was able to help me develop better pages to host my films. Also, due to their vast experience in working on websites, they were able to advise on how to create a more user-friendly experience.