Black words matter

“My son doesn’t walk the same path as yours… and I can tell you I have feared for my son’s life,” Great Guns director Meena Ayittey has created a short film with a high impact by juxtaposing footage of racial violence with an impassioned speech made by US Senator Stephanie Flowers protesting against Arkansas gun laws. 

The development for the film is best described by Ayittey herself. “There are no words that can describe that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I watched George Floyd being murdered on camera. I was driven by disbelief and anger when I conceived the idea for this project.

"The footage that we see of regular shootings of unarmed black men in the USA was more powerful than anything that I could film myself, so I wanted to make that the main focus. We have seen these police shootings so many times that it can be almost easy to become immune to the grotesque brutality embedded in these images.

"I wanted to catalogue the murders of these innocent people in a way that doesn't shirk away from the real violence that people in our society are experiencing. The fury and of the speech by senator Flowers held the exact level of intensity I wanted. Her words expressing her anguish for her son's life had a profound impact on me.”

Ayittey has also created a documentary, Black Creative: Race and the Advertising Industry, featuring a collective of black voices revealing their experiences of working in a predominantly white industry.