Camille Billops, deceased in 2019, devoted her entire life to illuminating Black Diaspora in the visual arts with her partner James V. Hatch. Billops’ Family Film series including Suzanne, Suzanne, featuring her sister Billie and her daughter Suzanne, and Finding Christa (1991), which deals with the reunion with her daughter who she gave up for adoption 20 years ago, builds a common memory of the African-American community, not only recording individual women’s life history. Billops distributed most of her films through Third World Newsreel.
Since the filmmakers who protested against the Vietnam War established Newsreel in late 1967, Third World Newsreel has been providing media literacy education, distribution of independent films, and auteurs by making films that investigate North American women’s movements and diaspora and support the Black Panther Party. Suzanne, Suzanne records the current situation of Suzanne, an Afro-American female survivor of domestic violence and drug addiction. The film finally emancipates Suzanne from the film grammar of shot–reverse shot, which (re)produces the status of the visual subject and object. This is how the film allows her to communicate with her mother, who aided and abetted the violence against Suzanne but was also another victim. [SHIN Eun-shil]