Mercy

“The hands of the dancers are the hands of my mother and sister, the hands of our grandmother, the hands of their mothers.” These words by Cornelius Eady, a renowned American poet, lie at the heart of the short film Miséricorde, which combines poetry, imagery, gestures, movements, and voices to create a rich and delicate meditation on Black womanhood. Eady’s cycle of poems is inspired by Phillis Wheatley, the first enslaved woman to publish a poetry collection in America.

This poetic film, directed by Philip Szporer, delves into themes of ethnicity, identity, place, and the dual discourse of a specific Black literary tradition, one that grapples with the reality of enslaved people learning the language of their captors.