Former RRD student research collaborators, Paige Taul (Col ’18) and Erik Patton-Sharpe (Col ’20) screened their short films at the 2020 Virginia Film Festival.

Paige Taul’s Reid’s Records documents the impact of gentrification upon black-owned businesses and neighborhoods such as Reid’s Records, a gospel music store in Berkeley, California. Her film was produced in partnership with Professor and Chair of UVA’s History Department, Claudrena Harold. Paige Taul is an Oakland, CA native who received her B.A. in Studio Art with a concentration in cinematography from the University of Virginia and her M.F.A in Moving Image from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She currently resides in Chicago, IL.

https://paigetaul.com/home.html

Erik Patton-Sharpe’s Strange Fruit: The Necroecology of Black Subsistence Farming documents how Black citizens of Conetoe, North Carolina have worked to overcome the impact of American colonial ecology and continuing food apartheid by creating their own community farm. Patton-Sharpe received guidance from faculty mentor Professor Kwame Otu, and funding from the Jefferson Trust. Erik Patton-Sharpe was born and raised in Wilson, North Carolina. He graduated from UVA with a double major in Black Studies and Environmental Science, and a minor in Religious Studies. He enjoys studying the many shared connections between African spirituality and environmentalism, including ethnobotany, food sovereignty, and ecospirituality.