Ben Caldwell’s Medea, a collage piece made on an animation stand and edited entirely in the camera, combines live action and rapidly edited still images of Africans and African Americans which function like flashes of history that the unborn child will inherit. Caldwell invokes Amiri Baraka’s poem “Part of the Doctrine” in this experimental meditation on art history, Black imagery, identity and heritage.
Direction
Edited IN CAMERA—pure mad scientist energy.
Editing
Rapid-fire stills feel like ancestral possession.
Director
Ben Caldwell
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of the L.A. Rebellion movement—Black filmmakers rejecting Hollywood entirely, building their own visual language from scratch.
Caldwell shot this on an animation stand meant for cartoons, not humans—hence that jerky, alive-but-not-alive quality.
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