Alexis Chikaeze as Kai in Miss Juneteenth.
By Dana Kendall
Editor's Note: It's been five years since Channing Godfrey Peoples's powerful debut, Miss Juneteenth, hit screens across the country following its Sundance Film Festival premiere. Now, the film is available to stream on these platforms.
Peoples's film highlights the community, beauty, and complexity surrounding Juneteenth, an Independence Day for Black Americans. Below, read about Miss Juneteenth and Peoples's storytelling process. To learn more on the history and the significance of Juneteenth, check out Penguin Random House's Juneteenth reading list. To support organizations that support the Black community, consider donating today to one of the following mutual aids.
The Black Resilience Fund
ACLU
National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI)
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Law Firm Antiracism Alliance (LFAA)
Black Queer & Intersectional Collective (BQIC)
National Black Justice Coalition
Center for Black Equity
After premiering at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Channing Godfrey Peoples's debut feature is hitting digital platforms this Juneteenth - the day for which the film is named and which is very close to the director's heart. I feel like I've been living Miss Juneteenth my whole life, she says.
The June 19 holiday - which commemorates the day slavery was finally abolished in Texas (more than two years after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was issued) - is celebrated in her hometown of Fort Worth with a deep sense of reverence and community, with barbecues, a parade, and a scholarship pageant for young Black women.
These pageants made a lasting impression on Peoples from a young age. I saw these beautiful young African American women on stage that looked like me, she says. I saw them in their beauty, in their intelligence, in their talent - and what struck me the most was that they were hopeful. I always wondered what happened to those women.
Miss Juneteenth centers around Turquoise (Nicole Beharie), a former pageant queen and now single mom who struggles to make ends meet. As she works toward a better life, she pours renewed hopes into her daughter Kai's chance at becoming the next pageant winner, and eventually Turquoise rekindles her own deferred dreams in a new way.
This beautifully nuanced, delicate story was supported through Sundance Institute's Screenwriting Intensive, Creative Producing Program, and Women's Financing Intensive before premiering at the Festival. We connected with Peoples ahead of the film's release for her thoughts on the journey of this debut feature and the importance of amplifying Black stories.
At the center of this film is a mother-daughter relationship. Was that inspired at all by your own life?
I had this really tough-love version of Turquoise on paper, because I wrote it from the perspective of being a daughter. But we [got financing] right around the time I found out I was pregnant. And after having my daughter, it changed my perspective a bit about having hopes and dreams for another human being and wanting to protect them no matter what. And so it changed my direction in the sense that I was now looking for the joy as well. I thought, no matter what we do, we have to find the joy in Turquoise's love for Kai.
Juneteenth is not just a backdrop for the story; you draw a parallel between the history of the holiday and the journey of the main character. Can you share your thought process on that?
Commemorating Juneteenth is about our ancestors who were slaves in Texas finally getting their freedom two and a half years after everyone else, and I wanted to portray that in Turquoise's journey in finding her own sense of freedom by coming to terms with the past even though she finds it later in life. Her dreams were rerouted, but they end up being reshaped into a new dream.
It's interesting because [the enslaved people] were told they were free and there was a sense of What's next for us? What does freedom mean? Turquoise is also navigating the what's next in her life - not only for herself but for her daughter. The Miss Juneteenth pageant is something she sees as vital in her life. She's holding on to it with both her hands because it's a chance for her daughter to have a sense of what Turquoise perceives as freedom in this society that is not a place that can be supportive of young Black women.
You and your cast members have talked about how this story and its characters are both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. What does that mean to you?
I see the beauty in these stories of ordinary folks. They're extraordinary to me because they're the people that I grew up with. They're who have affirmed me and lifted me up and supported me and been pivotal in me being able to have the freedom to become a filmmaker. Because I see the beauty in the community I grew up in and these Black stories, those are the stories that I want to tell and I feel like haven't been seen very much and should be told.
One of the movies that's been a constant inspiration to me is Killer of Sheep by Charles Burnett because we get to see nuanced life in a story that has ordinary Black folks. We get to see the beauty and we get to see them loving each other, and having ordinary experiences that lead to extraordinary experiences.
Speaking of inspiration, what other filmmakers or artists have inspired you?
I also love My Brother's Wedding from Charles Burnett because it's another story that's about the ordinary becoming extraordinary. I love Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, which was formative for me.
A big part of my cinematic education started in the literary world because there wasn't a big infrastructure for young Black women in Texas for cinema. So I r
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Alexis Chikaeze as Kai in Miss Juneteenth.
