film mission

‘bearing witness’ is a short documentary film that weaves together the historical legacy of state violence and resistance protests in Minneapolis with the narratives of community members engaged in the fight for justice. By blending archival footage from community uprisings dating back to the 1960s and interviews of current Twin Cities residents, this film records the inciting decades behind the 2020 uprising by centering Black Minnesotans.

Elders, youth, organizers, artists, and scholars from Minneapolis serve as the film’s central narrators, grounding the story in lived experience and community knowledge. Their voices trace how resistance has been practiced, taught, and inherited across time, revealing how moments of unrest are not anomalies but recurring responses to conditions that communities have long named and resisted.

Drawing on archival footage from past decades alongside images from the summer of 2020, the film weaves together materials from public archives, libraries, and personal and social media collections. These fragments, paired with firsthand testimony, form a counter-archive that documents not only harm, but resilience and the ongoing work of remembering.

We are interested in where Minneapolis has been, how communities met the moment of 2020, and what it means to document the present with an eye toward the future. At its core, the film is an act of witnessing: preserving histories that have too often been erased, and honoring the people who continue to shape what comes next.