The Kitchen

Filmmaker Alile Sharon Larkin visualizes a mental ward as a possible equivalent to prison incarceration for women of color.  The cause of a woman’s nervous breakdown here is personal and political, namely hair, a trauma for many Black women that has engaged the attention of African American filmmakers on both coasts. The Kitchen also bears another message, one of compassion for children who are physically abused by their parents. Alile Sharon Larkin would brilliantly capture a child’s perspective in her next film, Your Children Come Back to You (1979).  —Jan-Christopher Horak