Meet Me in the Bottom: The Struggle to Reclaim Richmond's African Burial Ground
Directed by: Shawn Utsey
Documentary | 2009 | 44min 10sec
Arkansas

About the film:
The Burial Ground for Negroes (ca. 1750-1816) is located north of Broad Street, between 15th and 16th Streets. It is the oldest municipal cemetery for enslaved and free Blacks known to exist in the Richmond area. An 1810 map shows the Negro Burial Ground near Broad Street and Shockoe Creek. Today the Burial Ground for Negroes sits adjacent to a parking lot owned by Virginia Commonwealth University. In fact, there are questions as to whether the Burial Ground lies beneath the parking lot. Activist and other groups have protested what is seen by many as a desecration of sacred ground. This documentary tells the story of the community’s efforts to reclaim the Burial Ground as the final resting place of their ancestors.

Screening Times @ Victory Firehouse
5:00pm Friday 6/18
3:15pm Saturday 6/19

About the filmmaker:
Shawn Utsey was born and raised in Queens, NY, but moved to North Carolina when he was sixteen. He has always enjoyed watching documentary films, but never thought much about producing his own. As part of his work with a youth program that teaches kids from under-resourced communities to make documentaries, he attended a workshop at the South Side Film Festival in 2007. Since that time he has falling in love with documentary filmmaking and has several projects underway. His most recent work, Meet Me in the Bottom: The Struggle to Reclaim Richmond's African Burial Ground recently won Best Documentary and Audience Choice Award at the Virginia Independent Film Festival. Besides documentary filmmaking, Shawn enjoys spending time with his two sons - Sekou and Dawud.