SINCE I BEEN DOWN presents stories of a community held captive by racist policies targeting gangs and drugs, sacrifices their youth for a false sense of justice, and safety. Nearly forty years later, a true path to justice and healing is led from inside prison walls transforming lives, communities, and our humanity while exposing how we treat children and what we can do to redeem and practice justice. A documentary told by those who live in these conditions.
Gilda Sheppard is an award winning who has screened her short documentaries throughout the USA, internationally at Film Afrique at Cannes, in Ghana, West Africa, and in Berlin Germany at the International Black Film Festival. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow for documentary film and a 2019 recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship. Since I Been Down (2020) is her first feature and first film accepted to major film festivals. Sheppard’s films offer healing, inspire hope and spotlight the triumph of the human spirit from people most vulnerable to the tests of time. Her shorts include stories of resilience of Liberian women and children refugees in Ghana; three generations of Black families in an urban neighborhood; and a film ethnography of stories from folklore started by Zora Neale Hurston in Alabama's AfricaTown.
