Films for the People: Bottled Spirits

50-something Louise is a native of West Oakland, California, a community once known as the Harlem of the West, and which gave birth to the Black Panther Party. Gentrification has turned her beloved community into unfriendly and unrecognizable territory and the weight of being Black in America now threatens to crush her. She straps on the daily armor of alcohol, cigarettes, and a sharp tongue to block out the constant ache of losing everything that ever mattered. On this day, however, a door she has been banging on for years magically opens, an ancestor arrives to help, and Louise battles her demons — and herself — in a desperate attempt to find the courage to walk the difficult path toward redemption.

Streams will be available with closed captioning. For immediate questions about accessibility, please contact Access Services by email at [email protected].

Stay tuned for the second installment in the series.

Black Lives Black Words International Project, led by Simeilia Hodge Dallaway and Reginald Edmund, partners with OSF to produce Films for the People, a series of solo short films by groundbreaking Black writers and creatives. Filmed in beloved Black-owned businesses in Oakland and Houston, this unprecedented project connects Black arts and the communities they serve to celebrate the talent, resilience, and presence of Black artists, leaders, and communities across America.

Black Lives Black Words – Films for the People Project has been kindly supported by the Black Seed Fund. The Black Seed is a first-ever national strategic plan to create impact and thrivability for Black theater institutions, unprecedentedly conceptualized and led by the Black theater field. The Black Seed is a force for systemic change in the arts and culture world: a national Think Tank of Black theater institutional leaders; a fund seeded by a collective of funders; National Leadership Circle for major donors to invest in Black theater institutions across the nation; The Black Seed Cohort, comprised of national networks and coalitions; and a national marketing campaign to tell the story of Black theater in America.

The Esther’s Orbit Room Cultural Revival Project is the pilot mixed-use project of East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC), a Black and POC-led multi-stakeholder land and housing investment cooperative that brings people and resources together to create power for the people, and empowers its members to steward real estate in community, for the community.

After being vacant for 10 years, EB PREC acquired this property in September 2021. Through an innovative community-driven development plan, Esther's Orbit Room & Cultural Arts Center will become a cultural and economic asset for Oakland and the Black Arts Community for generations to come.

To learn more about this project and to support this very important work please go to https://ebprec.org/donate or https://ebprec.org/esthers.

We are grateful to Community Ready Corps (CRC) and Mandela Grocery Co-op for their support.

Acknowledging the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation for their generous support of Director Elizabeth Carter's work at OSF through their SDCF Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artist Program. The Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency is a yearlong residency for mid-career BIPOC directors and choreographers interested in artistic leadership. Named for a legendary leader of the American Theatre, the goal is to forge new alliances between artists pursuing institutional leadership and forward-thinking Artistic Directors (AD). Host theatres are chosen based on the AD’s commitment to the evolution of their theater and its impact on both the local community and the overall industry.