Directed, Written & Produced by Kalima Young
21.5 min | English | USA
Friday, September 19th, 2025 | 8:00PM Screening
Neighborhood House at Christ Church
20 N. American Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106
If trauma lives in our DNA, why can’t resilience? The Periscopic Gaze is anchored by the personal reflections of three sisters’ memories of the spoken and unspoken wisdoms gleaned from their deceased mother. A visual rumination on memory, family lore, embodied knowledge and the history embedded in our DNA, The Periscopic Gaze uses one family’s story as the entry point to illuminate questions of inherited memory, inherited trauma, and inherited resilience. In doing so, it sheds light on Black women’s embodied knowledge, validating their reality and giving others a glimpse into Black female interiority.
Director’s Bio
Kalima Young
Director/Writer/Producer
Dr. Kalima Young is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Media and Film at Towson University. She received her PhD in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research explores the impact of race and gender-based trauma on Black identity, media, and cultural production. A Baltimore native, videographer, and activist, Dr. Young is also a member of Rooted, a Black LGBTQ healing collective. Her most recent work includes The Periscopic Gaze, a speculative documentary exploring Black women’s ancestral survival strategies, and Damn Y’all Fine, a journey into Black queer aesthetics in Baltimore. She is a 2022 Saul Zaents Innovation Fund Fellow and a 2023 Docs in Progress Legacy Fellow. Her manuscript, Mediated Misogynoir: The Erasure of Black Women’s and Girls’ Innocence in the Public Imagination, was released by Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Books in 2022.
“If you obey all the rules,
you miss all the fun.”
Katherine Hepburn
Actor
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