Writer-director Savanah Leaf makes an impressive and distinctive debut with "Earth Mama", a feature inspired by the filmmaker's earlier documentary short on the ordeals of Black mothers with children in the American foster-care system. The film that "Earth Mama" most immediately reminded me of was Ken Loach's "I, Daniel Blake" in that both are portraits of worlds dominated by bureaucracies, criminal at least as much for their incompetence and blindness as for their cruelty. In Leaf's work, more than that of Loach's, this bureaucracy is dominated, indeed defined by, power that is identified by its subjects as "other", in this case as "white".
Both Loach and Leaf leave some room for hope in their respective worlds. For Loach's more identity-empowered (white male) protagonist hope takes the form of rebellion, of finding one's agency, even if that agency cannot alter one's fate. Leaf, in fact, leaves more room for the possibility of survival and an eventual "happy ending" than does Loach. However, this hope is only reached by way of the fatalistic acceptance of one's own subjection to a system that even the African-Americans who work within it acknowledge is designed to harm Black lives. (For the other oppressed by white supremacy, survival IS rebellion.).
While this is a feature, Leaf does not abandon her documentarian instincts. In a style reminiscent of that of Alexander Kluge, Leaf has her performers momentarily and without announcement break from character to interview actual Black survivors of the foster care system, as well as mothers with children within it. The result is some movingly intimate, confessional cinema.
However much this film deals with real-life issues and occasionally with real life people, Leaf reveals herself to be a bit of a metaphysician. She finds beauty and hope in a pre-oppression "nature" (that may or may not be a world of pure imagination). Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes finds magic and meaning in the natural landscapes and water-scapes of the Bay Area. The film is extremely musical, with Kelsey Lu's haunting score quietly permeating almost every scene. Alternating from bluesy to sublime, Lu's work reflects that of Leaf's with a sense of beauty in a world bereft of much freedom, but not of hope.
Both Loach and Leaf leave some room for hope in their respective worlds. For Loach's more identity-empowered (white male) protagonist hope takes the form of rebellion, of finding one's agency, even if that agency cannot alter one's fate. Leaf, in fact, leaves more room for the possibility of survival and an eventual "happy ending" than does Loach. However, this hope is only reached by way of the fatalistic acceptance of one's own subjection to a system that even the African-Americans who work within it acknowledge is designed to harm Black lives. (For the other oppressed by white supremacy, survival IS rebellion.).
While this is a feature, Leaf does not abandon her documentarian instincts. In a style reminiscent of that of Alexander Kluge, Leaf has her performers momentarily and without announcement break from character to interview actual Black survivors of the foster care system, as well as mothers with children within it. The result is some movingly intimate, confessional cinema.
However much this film deals with real-life issues and occasionally with real life people, Leaf reveals herself to be a bit of a metaphysician. She finds beauty and hope in a pre-oppression "nature" (that may or may not be a world of pure imagination). Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes finds magic and meaning in the natural landscapes and water-scapes of the Bay Area. The film is extremely musical, with Kelsey Lu's haunting score quietly permeating almost every scene. Alternating from bluesy to sublime, Lu's work reflects that of Leaf's with a sense of beauty in a world bereft of much freedom, but not of hope.