This article is a short analysis of Silvia Hamilton’s and Claire Prieto’s documentary, Black Mother Black Daughter (1989) produced during my final year at the University of Waterloo, undertaken as part of Professor Winfried Siemerling‘s Black Canadian Writing course.

In this article, I explore the role of the documentary as a ‘site of memory’, particularly in its reenactment of an overlooked segment of Black history in Nova Scotia. My analysis centers on the significance of generational narratives and the passage of time, along with the crucial role of storytelling in this context.

Central to my observation was the exploration of the efficiency of documentary filmmaking as a medium for dealing with subjects such as cultural identity. In evaluating Hamilton’s oeuvre, I recognized the absence of any theatricality, embellishments or Hollywoodian effects, resulting in a raw portrayal of reality. Nonetheless, I contended that both documentaries and other mediums serve their own purpose, audiences and approaches.

I want to focus on Hamilton’s narrative and filmmaking strategies, and particularly on her recurrent integration of music and her diverse selection of interviews and archival content. In Black Mother Black Daughter, music serves as an auditory testimony and experience, while the quartet works as a “witness” narrating stories of the Black diaspora. One song deals with the tragic life of Lydia Jackson and the way it is being performed, in a poignant a capella style, drives viewers’ attention more on the lyrics than on the visual aspect of the movie.

From a narrative standpoint, the multi-voicing process Hamilton uses, allows different voices and perspectives to be heard (her narration, the musical quartet, mothers and daughters). For example, the basket-weaving scene was a symbolic passage which featured a mise en abyme (placing a small copy of an image inside a larger one), as the group of intergenerational women in the collaborative act of weaving mirrored Hamilton’s process of “weaving” black women’s stories from the Nova Scotia’s community. The communal aspect of this passage underscores the documentary’s emphasis on historical facts – due to their limited means of production, early black settlers of the area had to rely on available materials and resources so they sold baskets or wood for money in city markets. Another scene in relation to history was the glimpse we get of what is left of Africville at the beginning of the documentary. Africville was a black settlement in the north end of Halifax, destroyed in the 1960s and supplanted by an empty park — it was seen as a “slum” and tore down to get rid of the black neighbors. On this communal aspect, it was indispensable to have a Baptist church to be part of a community, since the times of slavery.

Furthermore, while Hamilton incorporates dialogues with prominent figures of the black community (a black mayor woman and the first black judge of Nova Scotia), she also shed the spotlight on everyday individuals, such as her mother and a woman who raised many children. Apart from accentuating the democratic approach of this documentary, this process allows for the voices of marginalized groups like Black women to be heard, underscoring that these strong and loving women deserve to be shown, especially given their scarce representation in media during that period. It’s an interesting parallel to see how movies and documentaries from the 1980s all have a similar vein, a kind of “period genre”, when it comes to dealing with cultural communities.
Lastly, I’d like to argue that the documentary is very informative in a gentle and almost “polite” way, offering some perspectives of the black community of Nova Scotia.