An African American filmmaker and swimmer, Tracy Heather Strain, dives into personal memories and historical narratives to deconstruct centuries of Black people’s fraught, complex, and joyous relationships to swimming and water.
Feature documentary SURVIVAL FLOATING addresses the often asked question, "Why don't Black people swim?" in a nuanced and poetic meditation on African-descended peoples’ diverse relationships to swimming and water. Alarmed by the statistics that show signficantly higher drowning rates for Black people, filmmaker and lifelong swimmer Tracy Heather Strain narrates a storyline of subjugation as she describes how centuries-worth of racial discrimination kept significant numbers of Black peoples from water-based recreation. The film also crucially plots powerful expressions of Black agency, detailing civil rights protests at segregated pools and beaches, as well as the development of historic Black resorts and other welcoming spaces for Black people to learn to swim and enjoy the water. Combining personal experiences, writings of Black scholars and poets, a compelling audio chorus of Black swimming stories, and rich, cinematic visuals and sounds, the film illuminates how histories and practices—and the absence of both—become internalized and embodied. Titled after a water safety technique used to conserve energy when stranded, also known as “dead-man’s float,” the film illustrates the precarious nature of Black lives lived in “the wake” of the transatlantic slave trade. In the end, Strain calls for a liberatory mindset that reclaims and restores water as Black culture.
Tracy Heather Strain, a two-time Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmaker, explores stories about the ways diverse peoples have experienced life in the U.S. Her latest directing project was Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space (2023) for American Experience. A 2022 recipient of the Chicken & Egg Award, Strain won an NAACP Image Award for Motion Picture Directing for “Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and subsequently aired on American Masters. Her directing debut, “Bright Like a Sun” and “The Dream Keepers,” in Blackside’s series I’ll Make Me a World: A Century of African American Arts, “leaps off the screen” noted The New York Times, and The Hollywood Reporter praised her first film for American Experience, “Building the Alaska Highway,” as “dynamic” and “truly great storytelling.” Other credits include Race: The Power of an Illusion and duPont Award-winning Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?. Strain, who also teaches documentary filmmaking at Wesleyan University, is president of The Film Posse, which she co-founded with Randall MacLowry. The pair is presently developing several independent projects including Survival Floating, a hybrid personal meditation on African-descended peoples’ relationships with swimming and water, and John Henry: Unmasking America's Real First Black Superhero.
Producer - Robin Hessman
Producer - Randall MacLowry
Consulting Producer - Yvonne Welbon
