Remembering Kearneytown: race, place and collective memory in collaborative filmmaking

This paper reflects on a collaborative project by the co-authors, investigating how filmmaking may intervene into the racialised politics of place and the practices of memory. Warren County, North Carolina is credited as the birthplace of the US environmental justice movement for 1982 landmark protests linking environmental concerns with civil rights organising. Our 2012 short film, Remembering Kearneytown, looks at this significant environmental history through the perspective of co-author Rev. Kearney, assistant pastor at a church nearby Warren County's iconic former toxic landfill. In the film, Rev. Kearney calls for his community to reclaim their legacy of environmental justice and re-imagine Warren County as a model of health rather than waste. This article proposes that collaborative filmmaking can serve as a technology of liberatory praxis, to intervene in dominant racial narratives. Our approach conceives of filmmaking geographically, using visual methodologies to engage with the meanings and transformative capacities of place.