By Lucy Isaacs ’25
Staff Writer
On March 29, the department of film, media and theater hosted a screening of the film “Where the Pavement Ends,” followed by a student-moderated discussion with filmmakers Jane Gillooly and Khary Saeed Jones. The film explores the town of Kinloch, Missouri, which borders Ferguson, where Michael Brown was fatally shot by police in 2014. Describing the documentary, Gillooly’s website writes, “The history of Ferguson, a formerly whites-only ‘sundown town,’ and the neighboring black town of Kinloch, now semi-abandoned, is not well known. Incorporating reflections of residents of Kinloch and Ferguson (including Gillooly, who grew up in Ferguson), this film explores the relationship between these two towns. Beginning with a 1960s roadblock that divided then-white Ferguson from black Kinloch, the film depicts a micro-history of race relations in America.”
The film has garnered critical praise, described by The Boston Globe as “A powerful, impressionistic meditation on the persistence of racial injustice.” A longer version of the documentary has been featured at a number of film festivals, including MoMA DocFortnight, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and Camden International Film Festival. The edited version of the film, which was screened at this event, has been featured as part of the PBS World Channel’s America ReFramed series.
After the film was shown, Gillooly and Jones were joined by Mount Holyoke student Taiwo Demola ’24, who moderated a conversation that spanned a wide range of topics, prompting Gillooly and Jones to detail the complex, years-long process of completing the documentary. Members of the audience were subsequently invited to join the conversation, sharing comments and questions.
Gillooly, who directed, co-wrote and co-edited the film, is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a professor of the practice emeritus in media arts at Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Gillooly has directed a number of other documentary films, and is described by her website as “committed to the art of the narrative, how it can be constructed, and how complex and often hidden histories can be made accessible.” Having grown up in Ferguson, Gillooly reflected on her own proximity to the community of Kinloch, describing a shared “memory of place” between herself and the people that she interviewed. Gillooly explained that the project was initially intended to be an animated piece focused specifically on protests of the 1960s to remove the roadblock between Kinloch and Furgeson. Gillooly recalled that after the murder of Michael Brown, she felt she could not make a film detailing these events in the wake of such an immediate tragedy. However, upon returning home to Missouri, Gillooly was compelled to record footage of protests and memorials that would eventually make their way into the re-conceptualized film.
Jones, who co-edited and co-wrote the film alongside Gillooly, has had a similarly expansive career and is a recipient of the Firelight Media’s 2021 Williams Fund, and a 2022-2023 fellow of the Harvard Film Study Center and the Tufts Center for Humanities. He currently serves as a professor of the practice in theatre, dance and performance studies at Tufts University. Jones reflected on his experience editing and writing film, discussing how the piece was intended to demonstrate how the past and present are very much in conversation. Jones specifically highlighted his experience selecting certain visuals and footage as means of achieving this goal. “The cinematography was beautiful and complimented the dialogue of the documentary well,” Katharine Kurdziel ’25 said.
“The cinematography was beautiful and complimented the dialogue of the documentary well.”
This event, which was co-sponsored by the Weissman Center, the department of critical race political economy, department of gender studies, critical social thought and culture, health and science, is part of Mount Holyoke College’s partnership with New Day Films. The organization describes itself as a “[f]ilmmaker-distributor of educational documentaries,” and offers Mount Holyoke students yearly summer internships. “Where the Pavement Ends”is available for streaming free of charge on the American Documentary website.