This is awesome. It’s a short documentary film called “The Wait,” about a mural of the same name by Nekisha Durrett on the facade of the Mothership, the now closed restaurant on Georgia. However, it’s really more about Park View and how cities change.
The film is really well done, with great camerawork, sound and narration with interviews with local folks. It’s a really thoughtful and touching look at the Park View neighborhood. It was filmed and directed by Lorie Shaull and edited by Durrett, an artist who teaches at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in town.
The mural itself shows a spaceship landing in the woods among some children and friendly-looking monsters, which Durrett says is an open-ended and ambiguous story where people can add their own narrative (or themselves), and about how people feel about that change. I like that idea.
To me, it’s a take on new businesses and new residents and businesses coming into the area — the spaceship reminds me of Parliament-Funkadelic’s own Mothership, it’s something new and strange landing among long-time and very different residents, and those residents are curious but hesitant, watching from behind the trees. But that’s just my interpretation.
It’s also extra meaningful in that the business the mural is on, the Mothership, has sadly closed — more change. I hope the mural stays — like Kent Boese says in the film, Georgia Avenue continuously reinvents itself, and the mural can show people in 20 years what was here now.
The mural was designed by Durrett and painted by two firms, Colossal Media’s Sky High Murals, funded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Durrett also brought along some of her photography students to document the work in progress.
Boese, who writes the Park View DC blog and is chair of ANC1A in the Park View area, let me know about the film.
The mural was also on Fox 5 News a few months ago; a nice piece, but not nearly as impressive as the documentary.
