Time / Alone

In 1997, Sibil and Rob Richardson committed a bank robbery out of sheer desperation after an investor pulled out of their streetwear shop and the unpaid bills kept piling up. While Rob sits out his sixty-year sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Sibil is released after three years to look after their six children. She gloriously re-boots herself as an indefatigable mother and outspoken activist for the Afro-American community, taking on the American justice system.

The weight and experience of time are central to Garrett Bradley’s second feature. Sibil shot intimate home movies over an eighteen-year period, which Bradley has elegantly edited together with lyrical black-and-white images of Sibil’s current life. Slowing down, zooming in and adding piano music with perfect timing allow Bradley to show how years of incarceration affect every member of the family. Watching them as they try not to lose themselves, and one another, is heartbreaking.

Garrett Bradley, subject of an exhibition in Eye, won the 2023 Eye Art & Film Prize.

Preceded by short film

In the award-winning documentary Alone (Garrett Bradley, US 2017, bw-w, 12’), Bradley follows Aloné Watts, a young Black woman whose partner Desmond is in pre-trial detention. Alone centres around the fact that African-Americans make up a disproportionately large section of the prison population in the US, which has far-reaching consequences for their social environment.

Conversation with Veronique Aicha

Veronique Aicha, who works at the intersection of art, justice, and philosophy, is a member of the activist movement RESCALED, advocating for abolitionism: a society without prisons. She advocates for small-scale (detention) houses as part of the city. Aicha has previously worked on criminal justice projects in regions including the Balkans, visited prisons and small-scale detention houses throughout Europe, and taught philosophy to incarcerated people. She is also active as a writer and moderator.

This screening is free of charge.