Our Philadelphia
- Nora Gross
- Graduate School of Education, School of Arts & Sciences
- Student Arts Innovation Grant
Nora Gross and the students she’s been collaborating with on this project have about 15 hours of footage related to the way gun violence has impacted one school community. Last year, one of these students joined Gross in filming a lengthy interview with the three mothers of the boys who had been killed. On her own, Gross also filmed two memorial events dedicated to these losses. This image is a still from the footage captured.
Nora Gross will complete a collaborative film, related to the themes of her ethnographic dissertation research, which examines the experiences of Black adolescent boys who have lost friends to gun violence: broadly examining the way students cope with these losses and how the school context supports, and in some cases constrains, students’ experiences of grieving and healing. Gross will hire three student community members to work with her in storyboarding the film, shooting any remaining footage or gathering any archival footage, and direct the editor in completing a final product that can be screened for multiple audiences at Penn, the surrounding community, and the school the boys attend(ed).
Nora Gross and her collaborators premiered the film online, on July 11, 2020:
The film was followed by a Q&A over Zoom: