40°N, 73°W
Director: Sandy Williams IV
Country of Origin: United States
Synopsis: 40°N, 73°W documents a multilayered public performance that took place in the sky above Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Juneteenth 2023. A skywriter traced the borders of the historic Weeksville community—an area 492.72 acres in total—in the sky to honor the legacy of one of the first recognized free Black communities in the country, which occupied the location from 1838 to around 1930. This skywriting pays homage to the memory of Freedmen communities and acknowledges histories and social oppressions that are often unseen and paved over, by connecting current national inequities to the failures of Reconstruction in the United States after the Civil War.