If There Is No Struggle

The film commemorates poet Phillis Wheatley Peters, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and more, with voices including Angela Davis, Gordon Parks, and Nina Simone. I shot If There Is No Struggle with a 1965 Canon Scoopic 16mm camera in the neighborhood where I grew up and still live. The film title comes from an 1857 Frederick Douglass speech: “if there is no struggle, there is no progress”.