In Brittany Shyne’s beautiful documentary “Seeds” the digicam usually captures components of her topics others may ignore.
Shyne, who additionally serves as cinematographer, focuses on arms, weathered with creases. She seems at hair, washed in a sink. She lovingly lingers on ash dangling off a cigarette and the worn toes of shoes. Shyne’s highly effective eye is likely one of the causes “Seeds,” a lyrical portrait of Black farmers within the American South, is likely one of the must-see documentaries at Sundance, and can proceed to be important as soon as launched for a broader viewers.
Captured in beautiful black and white, Shyne creates a transferring testomony to a dwindling inhabitants. The world of those landowners is threatened by discrimination and authorities ignorance. However “Seeds” will not be all that involved with statistics, although they’re shared in passing. Shyne makes a forceful argument by simply letting the viewers be absorbed with a lifestyle.
The small print do finally come into play. A key one, as an illustration, is the astonishing undeniable fact that within the early twentieth century Black farmers owned 16 million acres of land, and now they possess a mere 1 million. However this info will not be revealed by title playing cards or authoritative speaking heads. When the folks of Shyne’s movie do converse on to digicam they accomplish that much less as if they’re being interviewed and extra as if they’re speaking to an outdated pal.
Shyne, who was raised in Ohio, didn’t develop up on a farm, however her ancestors did: Her paternal nice grandfather owned 300 acres in Louisiana. And whereas she doesn’t state this within the movie, she finally alludes her personal intimacy with this group. Nonetheless, she herself stays on the outskirts of the story. The one glimpse of her we see is an outstretched hand, as if she’s reaching by her medium. And but her viewpoint turns into like a member of the family for the Kenativa-Williams clan, a gaggle with whom she embeds herself. They’re the house owners of one of many oldest Black farms given the designation “centennial,” an honorific conveying their deep historical past.
“Seeds” begins with each demise and life, capturing a household on the best way to a funeral. She finds grace within the smallest of gestures like a grandma sharing sweet from her purse along with her hungry grandchild whereas they talk about their lineage.
Characters emerge in Shyne’s telling, however they’re outlined not by their names, however by their actions. One such determine is Willie Head Jr., a great-grandpa, who dotes after his great-granddaughter, Alani, pulling out a portrait to indicate how a lot she resembles his late mom. He’s a logo of the generational pull of this land, but additionally the combat to maintain it. We observe him as he heads to Washington D.C. to demand justice for Black farmers, arguing on the cellphone with a consultant for the Division of Agriculture, bemoaning the guarantees that Joe Biden didn’t hold.
However for as a lot as Shyne is within the folks on this land, she can also be involved in how they work together with the land itself, and the way that interplay has developed. In one of the putting prolonged sequences she patiently observes an enormous machine because it picks cotton. The beast-like mechanism finally gathers every little thing it has plucked from the earth to kind an enormous wall of fabric. There is no such thing as a want for Shyne to overly verbalize the importance of those photographs: Black farmers cultivating land on which they have been as soon as enslaved, utilizing instruments that ease the burden of this job.
Not that this isn’t arduous work, particularly given the dearth of sources offered. However there may be additionally pleasure within the fairly literal fruits that emerge from the bottom. A watermelon harvest turns into one thing near a celebration. There’s an ineffable magnificence within the shot of a pecan being deshelled, the meat abruptly revealed.
The selection to movie in black and white makes “Seeds” elegiac in nature. It’s a medium related to historical past, and for as vibrant because the persons are in Shyne’s lens, there’s a bittersweet acknowledgment of the way it may quickly be gone. It’s why the sorrow of demise hovers over the frames, whether or not that’s the literal memorialization of our bodies or the deep wrinkles within the faces we see on display.
To counteract the depiction of age, there may be additionally a give attention to youth. You see who will finally inherit this land within the kids which can be pictured on display — the gurgling child and the woman doing cartwheels within the grass. They’re the residing examples of why these farms are so vital to those households. The soil is the legacy they cross all the way down to this youthful technology.
“Seeds” requires persistence. Clocking in at over two hours, Shyne takes her time. You need to orient your self to the sluggish rhythms of the piece, which encourage you to relish in these quiet moments. But it surely’s an extremely rewarding journey, a movie indebted to the previous that feels brilliantly alive.
Grade: A-
“Seeds” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. It’s presently looking for U.S. distribution.
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