Local filmmaker and Tufts professor explores racial trauma in new film

Celina Colby

Celina Colby is an arts and travel reporter with a fondness for Russian novels.... VIEW BIO

For long scenes in “Night Fight,” a film by Tufts University faculty member Khary Saeed Jones, a car drives along a quiet, wooded road at night. The viewer is situated inside the car and silence envelopes the scene. At times we see Jones in the driver’s seat. At others there is only the road.

These visuals represent the haunting event that led to the film’s creation. While on vacation with his family in Canada, Jones was followed on a road by a racist vigilante, fleeing on unfamiliar roads for 20 minutes before he was able to shake his pursuer.

A scene from the film “Night Fight.” PHOTO: COURTESY OF KHARY JONES

“Before there was a film, I was processing the experience in Canada through these video self-portraits that appear throughout the film,” said Jones, professor of the Practice, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. “I was staging variations of my emotional state, so I staged myself as a corpse, as a dead man; I staged myself fleeing or walking away from the scene of the incident unscathed; I staged myself seeking retribution.”

These powerful vignettes anchor this feature-length documentary in eerie stillness as Jones walks directly into the woods, lies still on a bed or stares directly into the camera. He describes these scenes as representations of all the different versions of him that were born from that incident. Surrounding these images, Jones interviews academics, artists and writers about the history of African American collective trauma and their own experiences with race-related violence and intimidation.

Though the film is very much rooted in Jones’ personal experience, it develops into a wider commentary about racial trauma and healing.

“There’s a long history of African Americans, Black folk, being pursued by police or by vigilantes,” said Jones. “I knew that I needed to reach out to other writers and artists to find out about what their experiences had been. What I found were stories that were on the spectrum of aggression, violence, assault and the most extreme and incisive forms of microaggressions.”

A scene from the film “Night Fight.” PHOTO: COURTESY OF KHARY JONES

The film showcases Jones’ extensive experience producing documentaries through the interviews and structured storytelling. But at the core, Jones is working through his own trauma and that is not a linear or logical process. Those central slices of the film representing his emotional state make it feel like a psychological thriller wrapped in a documentary.

“Night Fight” was recently shown at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals, known as SXSW, and Jones says it has received a positive reception on the festival circuit. The film will be screened at The Brattle in Harvard Square on April 28 as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston with support from the Roxbury International Film Festival.

Jones hopes the film will keep the dialogue about collective trauma open, to allow for processing through art and community.

“We remain in a very challenging period of time in this country,” said Jones. “Talking isn’t the only tool we have, but if we don’t keep talking, if we don’t keep voicing our own stories and our own realities and our experiences, then the silence is going to be its own kind of sedative.”