11:30am SATURDAY, September 28th
(Documentary, United States, 75 min)
What does it mean to be young, Black, and Democrat in the Southern Republican state of South Carolina? Through experiences of politician Bakari Sellers, WHILE I BREATHE, I HOPE unravels that question. Our film follows Sellers on his 2014 bid for Lieutenant Governor, through the Charleston Shootings and removal of the Confederate flag in 2015, and to the present as he takes on a national role as a CNN political commentator and considers his future in Trump’s America.
RATING: Intended for Teen Audiences or older (for some language).
Director: Emily Harrold
Emily Harrold, Director/Producer, is a documentary filmmaker from Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her films have screened at such festivals as the Tribeca Film Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the Telluride Film Festival. Harrold produced the documentary feature, Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators, which premiered at the LA Film Festival in June 2017 and won the Documentary Audience Award at Nantucket Film Festival in June 2017. The film is distributed by The Orchard. Harrold collaborated with Tribeca Digital Studios to produce and direct a short documentary film, La Cocinera, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and before an online release in June. The film has over 100,000 views online. Harrold’s film Reporting on The Times: The New York Times and The Holocaust received a Student Directors Guild of America Award, was a Documentary Finalist in the 2012 Student Academy Awards, and received a Special Jury Mention from the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. The film opened theatrically in San Francisco, California and is distributed by Filmakers Library. Harrold has worked for Zero Point Zero, Partisan Pictures, BBC2, Gigantic Pictures, The Futuro Media Group, and Insignia Films. Her recent credits include CNN’s The End: The Last Days of the Obama White House, PBS’s The White House: Inside Story, and PBS’s America By The Numbers with Maria Hinojosa. Harrold is a graduate of New York University, where she earned honors majoring in Film Production and US History.