Freshwater (2022)
dream hampton
Freshwater, dream hampton, USA, digital, 10 min, 2022
A disappearing Black city, flooded basements, and the fluid nature of memory.
Freshwater is a portrait of remembrance, and of maintaining connection in the wake of ongoing displacement, abandonment, and climate catastrophe. This film was meant to be small in every way—lingering shots that seem like photographs until the wind blows a leaf or a raindrop disturbs a puddle. Similarly the intentionally small production was meant to be healing. It was a retreat into a cadre of a like-minded community of Detroit artists after doing work on three projects that were at major studios. I made Freshwater to remind myself I’m an artist, but also to reinforce the organizing principle about the power of small, local organizing.
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with College for Creative Studies and Arts Council Windsor and Region.
Image credits: all artworks and stills courtesy of the artist © dream hampton. Portrait courtesy © Laylah Amatullah Barrayn.
About the artist
dream hampton (USA) is a filmmaker, producer, activist, and writer born in Detroit in 1972. Her collected output of films, essays, and criticism over three decades have sustained a thorough, incisive, and unparalleled engagement with hip-hop music and culture that have made her one of the most influential cultural figures of her generation. After graduating from Cass Tech High School, hampton relocated to New York, where she studied film at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and co-founded the New York chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Her films, including the Emmy-nominated Surviving R. Kelly series produced for Lifetime TV (2019), It’s A Hard Truth Ain’t It for HBO (2018), and Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop for Netflix (2023), have also screened at numerous festivals and venues such as Lincoln Center, Sundance Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and Museum of the African Diaspora, among many others. She is co-author of Jay-Z’s memoir Decoded (2010) and a frequent contributor to publications including Vibe, Essence, Harper’s Bazaar, The Village Voice, Detroit News, and Spin. She has received a Peabody Award (2019), a Kresge Artist Fellowship (2014), was a Visiting Artist at Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts (2020), was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world (2019), and in 2024 was named a Stuart Regen Visionary by the New Museum for “individuals who have made major contributions to art and culture and who are actively imagining a better future.” She lives and works on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.