Sabiyha Prince

Take a left off of the Anacostia Freeway on to Firth Sterling Ave in Washington, DC - what do you see? You see empty fields. You see shiny new buildings just breaking ground. Construction equipment. Sweeping views of the capital. As one community member states in this film, if you are a developer, you see a gold mine. But these empty fields hold powerful memories. Enslaved people once worked this land. Later, during Reconstruction, the formerly enslaved purchased it, and built one of DC's first thriving Black communities.

On May 5th, 1991, people took to the streets of Washington D.C.’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood to protest the police shooting of Daniel Gómez, a young man from El Salvador. Through testimony, song, poetry, and street theatre, La Manplesa weaves together the collective memory of one of D.C.’s first barrios and dives into the roots of the ‘91 rebellion. As people across the world take to the streets to demand an end to police brutality, the film honors the largely untold stories that have come before us, and explores how artists prompt us to remember what we still have to fight for.