One of the films playing at the Tallahassee Film Festival this weekend is the Moths and the Flame, a documentary following the daily lives of Black fathers in Pahokee, FL.
Pahokee is a small, majority minority town located on the shore of Lake Okeechobee. 32% of the city lives below the poverty line, triple Florida’s rate. The documentary, directed by Kevin Contento, follows several Black fathers raising their children there.
Contento says the film depicts what he calls the “mosaic of their lives” from tender moments taking care of their children, to doing homemaking chores, and talking about their hopes and dreams for their children.
“When we talk the Hollywood version of that, it's very dramatized and hyper dramatized and almost like traumatic in many ways,” he said. “(The documentary) is a way of appreciating without being so pedantic trying to make their lives an argument for something that it shouldn't be. My goal was to show the beauty of what it is to live in Pahokee. I mean, of course, how hard it can be, but also to capture these rich tapestry kinds of like moments of life,” he said.
That plays into the name of the film: The Moths and the Flame is a reference to a Sufi parable that deals with the theme of self-sacrifice for a larger purpose.
“I think fatherhood and being a father myself is one of those things where you know once you're like in it and it's a daily part of your life, that's when you really start to realize, like, okay, what it is? What, what does it take? What's the sacrifice? How can I feel about this, or how can I describe it?” he said.
It’s not the first film Contento has had featured in the Tallahassee Film Festival. He says he’s glad his work is being featured again.
“I can't say enough good things about Tallahassee and how not only have they treated me, but how I see they treat all filmmakers,” he said.
The film festival is running today through Sunday at the Challenger Learning Center and other locations around Tallahassee.
