“Harriet Tubman is gone. But her legacy lives on.”
The closing line for ‘The Aunties‘ drops just one of many pearls of wisdom from Donna Dear (she/her) and Paulette Greene (she/her), self-described Black gay women who are the focus of a six-minute feature from filmmakers Charlyn Griffith-Oro (honey/they) and Jeannine Kayembe-Oro (she/her).
Charlyn and Jeannine, who also happen to be married, first met the “Aunties” in 2015, and eventually, the duos became friends and bonded over their shared interests, which revolved a lot around a love for environmentalism and farming.
“They were becoming our friends and becoming our aunts at a time where I definitely was looking for eldership in my life. So my soul really yearned for this relationship as well as them being a reflection of us. I think it kept being more clear of wow…they’re really a blueprint of what it takes to love and love the land and love our families in a way,” explains Jeannine.
“I got a position at the Center for Cultural Power, and I needed a project to do. At that time, I was working in their Environmental Justice Department, and I thought it would be a great idea to have this campaign around what Black, gay—in my words—a queer perspective of what environmental justice looks like for us in the Black community. Because it might look different in other communities.”
Both Jeannine and Charlyn spent a lot of their time and careers in this space. The multimedia artists met through the arts community, as well as being involved in the urban farming and agriculture community in North Philadelphia.
Charlyn worked as the Educational Director at Marathon Farm (opened by the Marathon Grill family of restaurants) and also ran programs at Treehouse Books, a free bookstore located on Susquehanna Avenue. Jeannine co-founded Life Do Grow farm in North Philadelphia in 2009 and spent a decade making sure that space had creative framework.
“There was just a lot of parody between the idea of making access to food and access to education. We were in relationship and community with organizations that were talking about housing justice,” says Charlyn. They also worked with organizations like Mural Arts Philadelphia and an agricultural organization called Soil Generation.
Charlyn continued: “The work that we did created a lot of the current culture for how people look at the arts and land. With the Aunties, rural farming is in conversation with the city, usually from a producer and consumer standpoint. I think that what was unique about us meeting and building a relationship with them is that we have this urban practice and they have their rural practices that meet up in a way that we think about space, time and culture.”
Donna and Paulette met in 1974, and the film follows their work to teach sustainability and conservation while tending their land, Mt. Pleasant Acres Farms. The 111-acre space on the Eastern Shore of Maryland is the land where Harriet Tubman was enslaved and eventually took her family out of enslavement and into Philadelphia. It’s also said to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.
As Jeannine notes, there became a strong community of specifically Black farmers, both rural and urban, who were coming together at places like the Black Urban Gardeners Conference, and there was an immersion that happened between Black farmers on the Auntie’s land where young people were brought from the tri-state area down to camp at Mt. Pleasant for a few days.
Soon, the filmmakers realized there was a story here that was meant to be seen.
“I know folks want to do environmental justice as far as sustainability or energy, and there’s so many routes to it. But for me, understanding food systems and how that is really central to so many of the environmental justice issues that we have… they’re addressing ’em in a way that I thought was creative,” says Jeannine.
Fitting the Aunties (who are both in their 70s) legacy into a multi-minute film was a project and challenge that Jeannine and Charlyn wanted to tackle.
“Typically people wouldn’t talk about screenwriting as it relates to a documentary. But because I know them so well and I’m big on observation and listening, and when I listen to them, when I think about what I have heard from them, there are soundbites. Those are the things that are repeated often. And the way that I translated that was: If these are the things that someone says most often, this is how they want to be remembered,” Charlyn explains.
“We have memes, but they come from a time of parables. They come from a time of psalms and morals to the story. And we’re both artists… we’re both interested in the poetry of life and making storytelling and sharing life’s discomforts and joys in beautiful ways. I think we’re kindred in that we speak a really similar language and share an experience of loving life and wanting to leave something.”
The Ubuntu Climate Initiative-winning film was executive produced by the Center for Cultural Power and its distribution was supported by the Queer Women of Color in Media Arts Project. Jeannine and Charlyn also brought on an editing team, which included independent Philly filmmaker Bryan Oliver Green.
“The Aunties” premiered at the BlackStar Film Festival in 2023, and that’s where Black Public Media first saw it and decided to add it to their AfroPoP Digital Shorts program, which is available to stream now on their YouTube Channel at @BlackPublicMedia on Youtube.com.
“Because it was an environmental justice-themed film and as we were talking about its creation, we wanted folks who look like us, identify like us and identify like them to be inspired and say, wow, there actually is a future. [With the film] there is documentation of Black elders who are alive and well and resourced and happy,” finishes Jeannine.
“We need more farmers. And it is possible to have this beautiful life and to support your community by making an impact on the food system, whether it be local or on a larger scale. We need more Black and Brown communities to actually be supported in growing food that is organic food that is not going to harm our communities. And just seeing [in this film] that you can be in love and have a beautiful life as a farmer or stewarding land—I think that’s just a blueprint that we don’t often get to see.”
To learn more about The Aunties, visit theaunties.farm. To learn more about the Filmmakers (who were awarded the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative in 2023) and some of their other projects, like The Free Brunch Program in Southwest Philadelphia, visit wholistic.art
