A Reckoning in Boston

White, suburban filmmaker James Rutenbeck went to Dorchester, Massachusetts, arguably Boston’s most diverse neighborhood, to document students’ engagement with the Clemente Course in the Humanities—a program that offers free college courses for adults facing economic hardship and adverse circumstances. What began as an academic inquiry became a collaborative, interpersonal experience between James and two students enrolled in the course, Kafi and Carl.

Kafi Dixon is a Boston bus driver and urban farmer who seeks equity for low-income women of color who have experienced trauma and disenfranchisement. At 44, she is sharp, witty, and restless, having dropped out of school at 15. She had her first baby a year later and two more soon after. Kafi grapples with rejection in her hometown, a community swept up in the allure of development and gentrification, while battling to secure land for under-resourced women of color to access organically grown food. Carl Chandler wants to tell his family's story to the wider world. At 65 years old, Carl lives on a small pension and disability payment in one of Boston’s most dangerous neighborhoods. He began the Clemente Course with a profound interest in learning, but little faith in educational institutions. As James spends time with Kafi and Carl, he’s awakened to the violence, racism, and gentrification that threaten their very place in the city. Over time, he is forced to come to terms with a flawed film premise and his own complicity in racist structures. He wants to remain a witness and allow Carl and Kafi to tell their own stories, but James comes to understand the film cannot be fully realized until he speaks up too.