Film Image
Finding Christa
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1991
Color
55 minutes
US
English

Finding Christa

This documentary presents a moving yet unsentimental view of motherhood and adoption. It explores the feelings surrounding the reunion of a young woman with her natural mother 20 years after being given up for adoption. The reunion is between filmmaker Cmille Billops and her and her own daughter. Facing the re-encounter with mixed emotions, Billops interrogates her family and friends as well as her own motivations behind the decision. The result is an original and personal film that challenges societal biases about adoption and offers new insight on mother-daughter relationships.
Reviews
"Full of expressions of sponteneous emotion, it is terrifically artful" - Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES
"For Camille Billops, autobiography is a means to a new black documentary style." - B. Ruby Rich, Sight and Sound Magazine
"Loaded with real-life family drama... a brave film [which] raises questions, opens closets, and takes the viewer through the filmmaker's unchangeable past." - Donald Taylor, East Bay Guardian
In 1981, visual artist Billops reconnected with Christa, the daughter she gave up for adoption 20 years before. A decade after reuniting, Billops composed this rueful, docu-fictional examination of the difficult choices that define a life. - Matthew Eng, Tribeca News
"The films of Camille Billops are heartrending, fearlessly personal meditations on a range of emotionally charged subjects." - BAMcinematek
"This unusual film combines the most personal subject matter with documentary conventions and docu-drama techniques. The opennes of the personal revelation is inspiring, and despite the painful memoreis for all members of the family, that openness has produced a high-energy and high-spirited testimonial to the strength and joy that can come from taking such an enormous personal risk" - International Women's Film and Video Festival
"Finding Christa documents an attempted reparation, through the cinematic medium, of a mother/daughter relationship interrupted by adoption." - Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames
Awards

• Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival
• P.O.V. Documentary Series, PBS
• Best Docudrama, Atlanta Film Festival, 1992
• Best Docudrama, National Black Programming Consortium Film Festival, Columbus, 1991
Screenings
• One Way or Another: Black Women's Cinema, BAMcinematek, 2016
• We Wanted A Revolution, Brooklyn Museum, 2017
• African-American Women Behind the Camera series, Brooklyn Museum, 1993
• Cinema Rediscover, Bristol, 2022
• No Master Territories Exhibition, HWK, Berlin, 2022
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2003
• Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, 2010
• BAMCinematek. 2017
• Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2017
• BFI, London, 2017
• South Side Projections, Chicago, 2017
• Northwest Film Forum, Seattle, 2018
• Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, 2018
• Anthology Film Archives, New York, 2019
• Film Streams, Omaha, 2019
• Indigo Impact, San Francisco, 2020
• International Women's Film and Video Festival, 1992
• Whitney Biennal, 1993
• New Director/New Films, Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center, 1992
• Flaherty Seminar
• Toronto Film Festival
• Southern Circuit, South Carolina Arts Commission
• International Feature Project, 1991
• Black International Cinema, Indiana University
• Sandwiched In, Port Washignton, NY
• Black Cinema Series, Zeeland Film Festival, Middelburg, The Netherlands, 1992
• Sydney Film Festival, 1992
• Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, International House, 1992
• The Studio Museum of Harlem
• Non-Fiction Festival, Cornell Cinema, 1994
• Women in Film International Film Festival
• 25 Years of Women Callin the Shots Exhibition & Symposium, Lincoln Center, New York
• Black Women in Film and Television, Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Oakland, 1992
• Women in the Directors Chair, Chciago, 1992
• Cinema du Reel, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, 1992
• Pioneering Women in Cinema, Wellesley Colelge & MIT, 1992
• Black Talkies, Four Star Theater, Los Angeles
• Festival International Films de Femmes de Creteil, France
• South Florida Black Film Fesitval, Miami, 1992
More Films by Subject and Genre
African American Studies
African Diaspora
Documentaries
Experimental & Avant-garde Films
Family
Women's Studies
Youth Collection
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