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Carrie Hawks is a digital and video storyteller whose animated documentary, black enuf, just premiered at Verso Books in New York. Prior to filmmaking, Hawks concentrated on visual art and design. Their work addresses gender, sexuality, and race. The medium ranges from paintings, drawings, dolls, to video.
They have exhibited in New York, Atlanta, Kansas City, Toronto, and Tokyo. Their first animated documentary, Delilah, premiered at the Animation Block Party in 2012 and was awarded “Best Experimental Film” (Reel Sisters of the Film Festival) in October of 2012. Hawks has also worked for Al Jazeera America, Wired Magazine, Cartoon Network, the ACLU, and Publicis Modem.
Follow them on Twitter: @maroonhorizon.
Congrats on the film premiere! Can you tell us a little bit about black enuf?
The tagline is: A queer oddball seeks approval from black peers despite a serious lack of hip-hop credentials and a family that ‘talks white.’ The film is about 22 minutes, and there’s about five minutes of [live] footage, and the rest is animated. There’s one section where I talk about my great grandmother, and she wrote her own autobiography, so I animated photographs and her words. Or there are parts where I talk about my own experience and it’s an animated version of that. It’s real life things that happened but then an artistic representation of them.
I made the project in order to love myself more and to get into family history. I’ve done one other short film since I started black enuf, because I [originally] thought it was going to be about my whole family. I did a short documentary about a white cousin of mine who found our family after doing genealogical research after finding her family had been passing and lying to her for years.
What was it like working on a project that’s so deeply personal?
My parents liked it. Which I was nervous about. I came out to my father by making the film. I hadn't told him, and I sat my whole family down and had them watch the film just after Christmas. When they watched it, I felt like, OK now they’ve seen it so whatever happens happens.
When did you start working on it and what has the work entailed?
About five or six years ago. I’ve been working on various projects, freelance and full-time. Animation is not a fast moving medium. I started animating and then I talked to a friend about it, and he said, why don’t you write a script? So I wrote a script out about it, and then I started storyboarding what I thought would go in, then I did the voiceover, and then I workshopped it and worked with a group of filmmakers who were all working on projects. Then I enlisted some friends and other people to do voiceovers and bring it to life. Then I continued storyboarding, what happens when and what I want to draw when.
I started working with the Diverse Filmmakers Alliance and they gave me a lot of great feedback on how to make it better and tighter. And then I joined LASS (Ladies’ Animated Short Screening), so it was good to work people who had that training and how to lay out the story and keep track of the 80 different things you want to do. I also read some books on making animated film, and ways to use color pallette to convey meaning. The majority of my film has a lot of tans and browns and neutral colors, and then I have a breakout moment using hot pink. I also worked with a sound designer to add music and sound effects to it.
I got a grant from the Jerome Foundation in 2014, so that was a financial and ego boost, to know other people believed in the project. And it allowed me to pay people, which was great.
What are the next steps for the film?
It will play in LA this summer. And it should also be playing at the Brooklyn Museum this summer, and I will be part of a panel talking about black queer video artists. Ultimately, I’d love to have it in high schools and colleges to help people talk about identity and self acceptance and race relations. There is no real producer for these things, so I’m doing all of it. After having a great premiere, I’m excited to bring this to education institutions and students.
What else are you working on right now?
This is my biggest project outside of work, but I’m also involved in black women artists for black lives matter. We had a takeover of the New Museum on September 1. In March, we started a residency in Houston in a group of row houses. I worked with the performance group and we made a compilation of performances of people who could not be there in Houston, and I edited a lot of video pieces. I also have a show at BRIC and I’m working on collaborative projects with the Diverse Filmmakers Alliance, like one about people of color and healing.
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