Home

SYNOPSIS

RASSISME is a collection of monologues depicting the real life stories of racism experienced by five black women over the course of their lives. In 2019, filmmaker Jason Flakes conducted telephone interviews with five black women who each recounted their most affecting allegories of racism spanning childhood to their adult years.

Directed by Jason Flakes, RASSISME is an experimental short film of stand alone monologues that are narratively connected by a throughline that begins with the loss of a black mother during childbirth, and follows that motherless child as she grows. She shares her stories of bias in the school system, from a little girl in elementary school to a young girl in upper school, navigating both academic and social circles. As she grows into adulthood, she recounts the pain of mitigating microaggressions in the workplace, still facing the very same bigotry that has followed her for years.

RASSISME breaks the fourth wall, putting each character front and center in scenes that feature only a single actress portraying each woman, speaking to camera and the audience, as they move about in varying actions that humanize their existence.

SETTING

SYMBOLIC LOCATIONS

By placing each character in symbolic settings, each location becomes a substantial character in and of itself. The solitude of each character being alone, a direct correlation to the isolation and seclusion felt from discrimination.

Visuals of the intimately private and publicly shared spaces we inhabit tell the unspoken story of black women who have been met with prejudice within those walls. From a labor and delivery room to the emblematic desk and chair of an elementary classroom...the social corridors of high school all the way to college lecture halls that lead us to the conference rooms of corporate America, each setting holding meaning and significance.

The sacredness of a motherhood interrupted. The innocence of a childhood impacted. The vulnerability of placing our brilliance, expertise, and intelligence in front of a room of people only to risk being met with the judgement of white America.

CAST