GIVE explores Roland Gordon’s motivations to create a monumental visual archive displaying centuries of black agency and achievements, in the United States and beyond.
Roland’s collage, ‘Cloud of Witnesses’, is comprised of thousands of photographic portraits, newspapers, and magazines cutouts, presenting an alternative visual history to empower the Black community. The film speaks about collective representations of history, memory, and culture; where pasts, presents, and futures are modeled by the blending of imagination, facts, and love.
A film with Roland Gordon
Directed and Edited: David de Rozas
Producers: Kevin Sherman and David de Rozas
Cinematography: Glenn Aquino, Andres Gallegos, and David de Rozas
Camera Assistants: Glenn Aquino, Sreang "C" Hok, and Daniel Chein
Sound: Carolina Caycedo and Wiley John Wright II
Colorist: Mark Sterne
Sound Editor: Molly Fitzjarrald
Sound Mixing: Dan Olmsted
AWARDS
- Best Short Film. Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Durham, NC
- Best Experimental Film. Inaugural Smithsonian African American Film Festival, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC
- Best Short Documentary. Brooklyn Film Festival
- Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism Award. Brooklyn Film Festival, NY
- ICDOCS IOWA Documentary Festival Award
- Best Experimental Film (Silver). DOCLA, Los Angeles, CA
- Mention spéciale. DOC en COURTS 18e Édition, Nyon, France
SCREENINGS
2022
- MoMA Film Series, Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas, NY, US
- FLEX, Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival, Tampa, Florida, US
2020
- Come to Your Census: Who Counts In America? Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
- CALAFIA (el fin del paraíso). The MexiCal Biennial. Mexicali, Baja California, MX
- Two Journeys. Film Program. Cincinnati, Ohio
- Dumbo Film Festival, NY, US
2019
- Full Frame Documentary Film Festival // 2019 Official Selection. Durham, NC, US
- Big Sky Documentary Film Festival // 2019 Official Selection. Missoula, MT, US
- Mur Murs, a Film Series. RedCat, Los Angeles, CA, US
- ReFrame Film Festival, Ontario, CA
- Two Journeys. Film Program. Vienna, Austria
- Mexicali Biennial. Armory Center for the Arts. Pasadena, CA, US
- F.T.P. SOMARTS. San Francisco, CA, US
- Two Journeys. Film Program. Los Angeles, CA, US
- Visible Evidence XXVI. University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, US
- Dumbo Film Festival, New York, NY, US
- Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem. Double Exposure Film Series, NY
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. Loyola University, New Orleans, LA
- Diaspora Festival of Black and Independent Film, UNC-Chapel Hill, NC, US
- Blerd City Con. St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NYC, US
2018
- Visions du Reel // 2018 Official Selection. Nyon, Switzerland
- True/False Film Festival // 2018 Official Selection. Columbia, MO
- Sheffield Doc Fest// 2018 Official Selection. Sheffield, UK
- 35th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Kassel, Germany
- AFI Docs// 2018 Official Selection. Washington DC, MD
- DOXA Documentary Film Festival. Official Selection. Vancouver, Canada
- 16th Tirana International Film Festival // 2018 Official Selection. Tirana, Albania
- Aesthetica Film Festival. London, UK
- Smithsonian African American Film Festival. Washington, D.C
- Brooklyn Film Festival. Official Selection.
- Experiments in Cinema. Official Selection. Albunquerque, NM
- Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin
- 18th Escales Documentaires - International Festival of Creative Documentary.
Official Selection, La Rochelle, France
- Doc en Courts 18th edition, Nyon, France
- ICDOCS, Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, IA
- San Francisco Documentary Festival // Official Selection. San Francisco, CA
- Double Exposure: Portraits and Parallels Across the Diaspora, Creatively
Speaking Film Series Program, New York, NY
- Tacoma Film Festival // 2018 Official Selection
- ARKIPEL. Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival.
Yakarta, Indonesia
- 4th Tulsa American Film Festival (TAFF) // 2018 Official Selection, Tulsa, OK
- Psycho-Geographies, Other Cinema. Artist Television Access, San Francisco, CA
- The Unseen Festival. Counterpath. Denver, CO
- Union Cinema . University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, WI
- LACA Los Angeles Contemporary Archive. Los Angeles, CA
- @SEA, Poetic Research Bureau in Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA, US
- DOCLA. Official Selection