71

SYNOPSIS

71 is about the sensibilities of the black middle class as observed by Jessica Taul and Pamela Patterson, the filmmaker's mother and aunt, respectively. They discuss their differing tastes, definitions of class, frogs, and other qualifiers they consider in their evaluation of the space that they live in: a suburban-like outcropping of identical housing units. Through direct quotation and phenomenological relation to Bill Greaves’ seminal film, Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class (1968), 71 navigates the temporal gaps in conformity and respectability politics between 1968 and 2022.