Kendra Monet
2021 HEAR US Awardee
Kendra Monet is a 22 year old filmmaker from Harlem, New York and a senior at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studies Film & TV. She creates personal portraits that center Black women who dare to use their voices and imaginations to find liberation. Her stories take place in Harlem, and move through time and space using Black archives to explore the complexities of childhood and family dynamics in order to blur the lines between fiction and documentary. Kendra previously had fellowships with Vice and the Emma Bowen Foundation, and internships at PBS and Firelight Media. Other than filmmaking, Kendra enjoys astrology, reading, and film criticism.
Project
Where I Begin
A finalist for The Future of Film is Female grant, "Where I Begin" is an experimental, meditative piece that moves through time to explore a grandmother’s past as she reunites with her granddaughter. A grandmother's old wounds are reopened and secrets are revealed through her granddaughter's tangled efforts to return home and repair the intimacies she can hardly live without. Memories from the grandmother’s childhood, captured on Super 8 footage, chronicle the beauty and struggle of everyday life, and the complex fractures within the family from the lens of an 11 year old during the 1960s. As a child, she uses her mind to reimagine an environment that is free from the restrictions of religion and notions of womanhood. In the present, the grandmother must reconcile with her childhood, in the company of a granddaughter that she has never met. The broken bonds of family become a source of healing. This meeting takes place over an afternoon of tea that stems from her granddaughter’s longing to connect with her family roots.
