Revisiting Afro-Dominican Filmmaker Loira Limbal

Afro-Dominican filmmaker Loira Limbal’s documentary Through the Night is an intimate look at one home-based 24-hour day-care center in New Rochelle, the couple who runs the center and the mothers and children who need it.  The film, which was co-produced and presented by the PBS program POV, examines the impossible situations workers who are single parents--primarily women and most particularly women of color-- can find themselves in a 24 hour-a -day economy. Limbal asks: “What happens when they don’t have family to pick up the slack?” And Through the Night goes a long way in answering that question.  In this 2020 podcast, we talk about the social and political conditions that lead to the need for 24 hour-day-care, the personal cost of our modern economy for working mothers and for the caretakers of their children. But we also talk about the film’s appreciation of the ways communities of color can answer these needs creatively and lovingly even as the film decries a system that demands this adjustment to survive. Limbal also talks about the making of the film, the women she met during filming and her responsibilities to them, the overlap and differences between journalism and art,  her determination to make Through the Night while raising two children and working full-time job, and bringing out a film during the pandemic.  We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at artworkspod@arts.gov.