BLACKBIRD

DIRECTORS STATEMENT

"When asked about Blackbird, I find myself at a loss for words. Producer Alexandra Miles and I often joke about how the film has been our child for the last year, a cliché with gravity I never believed would invoke emotion until it came time to think about its future. Now, as I slowly transition from the privacy of the editing suite to the astir halls of film festivals, I cannot help but reflect on the immense effort and determination the entire cast and crew demonstrated throughout production. The film’s central theme of love amidst personal hardship, highlighted in the context of eating disorders, resonated with everyone on the team and to my delight welcomed several individuals to share their own experiences with recovery. Hearing those stories helped me grow as a director while also maintaining the integrity of the film, which I hope offers an empathetic portrayal of BIPOC and LGBT+ individuals’ relationship with eating disorders.

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The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) asserts that American BIPOC and LGBT+ communities are more susceptible to eating disorders, with children as young as twelve years old displaying signs of bulimia and purging; yet during my research, conversations with several dietitians revealed that despite the high rate of US minorities currently struggling with eating disorders, the majority of their patients and clients are White, cisgender, adolescent girls. This disparity left me unsettled, so I turned to film and television. A few key searches across major streaming platforms solidified that the face of eating disorders in our popular entertainment is consistently Caucasian. It became increasingly clear that Blackbird needed to feature those very voices being left out of the conversation so I pulled from my own experiences as a bi-racial, bi-sexual individual and paired it with Alexandra’s experiences of treatment, to create a protagonist who encompasses sums of our truths.

Throughout the film, her continued silence encompasses the muted voices of underrepresented communities struggling through their own eating disorders, while her journey embodies depths of universality. While our film is not the first, I sincerely hope it is not the last to spark conversation about treatment and recovery. It means to the world that in the midst of emerging COVID-19 variations—with all of its fears, delays, and unpredictabilities for an independent production— that the cast and crew continuously chose Blackbird. I could not have made this film without their unwavering dedication and belief in what this film stands for, and it is to them that I remain forever thankful."