Summer Headstones
Channel: Bitter Southerner
Date: 2020-08-19

Summer Headstones is an ongoing film project which explores the urban decay of municipal swimming pools in the Southern United States, due to their closure and abandonment by white officials after desegregation was instituted in America. Forced into allowing African American families into these public pools, officials chose instead to not allow anyone to swim in the hot summer months. Seeing no other alternative, they simply closed the doors and drained the water. These pools were then either paved over, buried and forgotten or they were left to rot in the southern sun, the vegetation taking over and serving as stark reminders of the race relations in the Southern United States. My hope through this project is that by showcasing these lost monuments to racism, through film, that real conversations about race relations can be had. The frightening thing is that while these pools were closed near desegregation, this issue is still relevant today, with private pools closing down instead of opening the doors to lower income families.

Directed By Hamilton Ward: Hamilton Young Ward is a filmmaker and photographer based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Ward's work explores the preservation of folk tales in the old south along with the decay of oral storytelling in the modern age. Ward uses both photographic and experimental film techniques to address these issues in his work, which has been shown across the Southeastern United States. He's a Cinema Carolina Award winner as well as having been awarded the Southern Documentary Fund grant.