With an agrarian lineage, Brittany Shyne always knew she wanted to make a film about Black land ownership, so she made “Seeds,” her doc feature debut that premieres Jan. 25 in the U.S Documentary Competition at Sundance. Shyne originally developed the subject as her MFA thesis film, “Seeds” follows the everyday life of Black generational farmers, and explores the legacy of the declining community in the American South.
Shot fully in black and white, “Seeds” weaves together vignettes of farm life for multiple aging farmers and their families — depicting the slow pace and communal beauty of agricultural living, but also the deep economic injustice black farmers have historically faced and continue to today.
“Black farm life is often thought of as a place of strife or discord,” says Shyne. “But I wanted to illustrate that it’s also something that’s harmonious through the generations of these farming family members. I wanted to show the fact that these black farmers have been adaptive and resourceful for all their lives, even with historical barriers in place. I wanted to highlight a community that was always empowered in their own way, but one that didn’t always have the accessibility to speak their truth, their history.”
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Throughout the documentary, Shyne’s intentionality as director and cinematographer — the latter previously seen in films like Academy award-winning documentary “American Factory” — is manifested in visually arresting scenes of acres of farmland, tractors moving glacially on cotton fields, but also moments of family celebration and intimate glimpses into the mundanity of elderly farmers’ life indoors.
Indeed, it is Shyne’s artistic vision and ability to “capture the beauty and meaning in everyday moments” that drew both her producers to the film, says Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, the first producer attached to the film. Adds producer Danielle Varga, who joined later on, “Just the relevance of the film’s subject, the fact that it’s very underrepresented and Brittany’s unique perspective made us immediately excited about it.”
Despite her producers’ confidence, Shyne wasn’t always sure about her film’s trajectory. Working numerous roles — director, cinematographer, sound operator and field producer at times — Shyne says, “There were many years in this process where there was a lot of ‘unknownness’. And the difficulty was also in the multitasking.” However, her belief in the material and telling the story of the farmers she spent years with kept the filmmaker going.
“I knew that it meant something to me, and it meant something for these farmers as well — I just felt immensely grateful that they were able to share a piece of their story with me, which also allowed me to lean into all my creative choices naturally. To do the film in black and white to not just to show the idea of nostalgia, but also preserve their cyclical way of life that is often taken for granted”
With the film’s debut at Sundance, Shyne knows many of her subjects won’t be able to see it — they’re too old to travel or have passed away. But at heart that is why she made the film and hopes that “it honors them, their heritage, their lives, and is a reflection of their contributions to society and to this specific agricultural landscape.”
For her next projects, Shyne says she wants to continue merging direction and cinematography, both in documentary and narrative fiction. “I like both forms, but something I really want to focus on are stories that I find meaningful — especially when there are so many stories about the black experience that haven’t been brought to light yet,” she says.