The film confronting grief, fatherhood & Black masculinity in America
Director Sol Guy tells us about the making of 'The Death of My Two Fathers' and screening such a personal project inside US prisons.
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One hundred of us are packed into the cold gym. Next to me, Marco* has written his name with a smiley face underneath it in preparation for a poetry exercise. “Close your eyes. Begin to train yourself emotionally. Ask yourself, what happens if I do come home? Because together we’re changing laws, and you are coming home.” This is Sabra Williams, co-founder of the social justice arts organization, Creative Acts. It’s a Sunday, and a group of us affiliated with various abolition and reform initiatives in “the free world” have come to visit the men incarcerated in a California state prison.
We’re there to screen The Death of My Two Fathers, a film by director Sol Guy. In the last year leading up to his death, Sol’s father sat in front of a camcorder recounting his life: his relationships with three mothers and five children, his journey from Kansas City to D.C. to Canada to Mexico, his deepest regrets and ultimate joys. Twenty years later, Sol revisited these tapes, documenting his own emotional and physical journey made possible by what (and who) his father left behind. (The second father referenced in the film’s title is Sol’s stepfather, “Freye,” who we see Sol look after following an ALS diagnosis).
The resulting documentary film is a raw look at Sol’s blended family across state and country lines, an exploration of Blackness in America, and an examination of how fatherhood, grief and forgiveness play a role in each of our lives. It debuted at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021— and just last Thursday premiered on PBS; but Sol had other plans before nationally streaming it. Having witnessed the power of the movie when it came to his own healing process, and given his experience with friends who had been locked up since he was in his early twenties, Sol was intent on bringing it into carceral facilities. “I think we need to fight to go into those spaces and share our work,” the director says.
There are two million people behind bars in the United States. Two million people who, by systematic design, have been hidden, and thus forgotten, by those of us that exist on the other side of those bars. “We miss out on those two million people and everything they could contribute to this natural resource we call culture,” says Richie Reseda, a music producer and abolitionist who spent seven years incarcerated. Invited by Sol that Sunday, Richie stands in front of the group to facilitate a Q&A following the film screening. Sporting his Free Angela [Davis] T-shirt, he starts with a simple but necessary acknowledgement before opening up the room for questions: “What’s happening to y’all in here is not right.” And on why he chose to say this, Richie later reflects that “to start anywhere else is to continue the dehumanization of incarcerated people.”
Richie begins to pass the microphone around to the ten or so men who have raised their hands to speak. One of them, the same man I had seen leave the room while crying toward the end of the film screening, stands up. He introduces himself, shares that he’ll be getting out of prison soon. He’s been feeling like a failure, feeling like he’s going home filled with shame. “We go through these cycles where we feel like we don’t have anything to offer,” he says candidly, “but today I’ve made a decision that I won’t accept that. And that’s a gift this [film] gave me.” The room erupts in applause.
Jon Boogz then takes the stage to perform a piece he’s previously filmed and choreographed to Kendrick Lamar’s Mother I Sober. Jon is known for works like “Am I A Man” and “Color of Reality” — both confront systemic violence against Black men in the US — but in this room, he is a man whose simultaneous movement and vulnerability bring most folks to tears. “The piece was about me going to therapy for the first time and how I’ve been able to unpack a lot of things,” he says to me over the phone a few days later. “And I felt like that’s what [Sunday] was about — unpacking, healing, tapping into the real version of yourself.”
We break out into six groups, a mix of outside visitors and men inside, facilitated by the Creative Acts team. Some men share how The Death of My Two Fathers felt like a reflection of themselves as they’ve navigated what exactly it means to be a present father when they’ve been incarcerated for years, decades even; others say that Jon’s dance allowed them to exhale, to release an anger they were holding for losses they’ve experienced while behind bars. “I knew the film would impact them because we’re dealing with low income communities of color where the men are extracted and incarcerated,” Sabra says. “It’s a high bar to ask, ‘What does it mean to be a father when, generationally, the men in their community have been taken away?’”
For Major Bunton, Creative Acts’ Director of Programming, the power of the screening was knowing that new relationships amongst the men inside were forming. Having been incarcerated for 29 years prior to his release, he knows this firsthand. “When you bring in a film, a performance and a flow like [Sunday], that space creates new relationships,” he says. “These guys now share common ground that has nothing to do with prison.” When the programming comes to a close, we create a circle nearly covering the gym’s perimeter. We’re prompted to each share one word we feel when we think of love in this moment. The words stand out to me: seen, accepted, human.
The screening is one of the most palpable experiences I’ve had with vulnerability — seemingly ironic, in a room of approximately 90 men. “So many of us want to be good men, but we don’t know what that even means,” Sol says. “Conversation around this film invites more emotional understanding and maturity in men, while widening the aperture of what it means to be a father.”
But while I witnessed such immense displays of connection and empathy amongst the participants in that gym, I can’t help but feel enraged. Every man I spoke to that day — the same men who shared poems about compassion, who excitedly shouted the words “hope!” and “courage!” in our group exercise — had been incarcerated for upwards of two decades. David*, who eagerly squeezed next to me in a group photo and disclosed how proud he was of his son, who would soon be graduating from college, has a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Because instead of confronting why people commit acts of violence, we have chosen to believe individuals are monsters and have consequently treated them as such. We have propped up slavery under the guise of safety. We have posted black squares to absolve ourselves of delivering justice or reparations. And this is why artists like Sol remain proximate to issues of mass incarceration. “In doing this, my dad got a chance to speak to men who looked like him 25 years after his death,” Sol says. “And you don't need a feature film — sit down, tell your story and share it with your people.”
Ultimately, our visit was a reminder that to dismantle something so subconscious in our society, we must face it head on. “Every time I go inside,” Richie says, “I do it so that these [prison] walls will come down. There was a time before them, and there will be a time after them.”
*Names of incarcerated individuals have been changed.