China Galland
Producer / Writer
Author, lecturer and former wilderness guide whose book inspired the film.
A documentary feature
Resurrecting Love
Can an ongoing struggle in East Texas help heal a nation?
The Film
A locked gate. A buried history.
Two women, one Black and one white, rally a community to reclaim the right to visit their ancestors.
Love Cemetery in East Texas is nearly two hundred years old. For decades, the road to it has been padlocked, and the families who bury their dead there have been turned away.
Resurrecting Love follows the long fight to open that gate, and asks what it means to honor the dead in a country still reckoning with its past. It is a story of race, reconciliation, and the young people who are choosing to carry it forward.
200Years old, the cemetery
2½Miles of locked road
60Year struggle for access
2009Texas changes its law
Watch
Trailer and clips
Recognition
Awards and festivals
Finalist, Documentary Feature Film Competition
Golden Lion Geneva Awards
Finalist, Documentary Feature Film Competition. Geneva, Switzerland.
Best Feature Documentary
Award winner.
Oakland International Film Festival
Official selection. Screening at Mills College, Oakland, CA.
BAM Film Fest
Screening in Oakland, CA.
Global Peace Film Festival
Winter Park, FL.
Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival
World premiere. Atlanta, GA.
First public screening
Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, CA.
The Treatment
From a book to a movement
In 2003, two community leaders, Mrs. Nuthel Britton and Mrs. Doris Vittatoe, asked author China Galland to help them regain access to Love Cemetery. Her 2007 book, Love Cemetery, led to statewide hearings, and in 2009 Texas changed its law to penalize those who deny access to burial grounds.
The film picks up there. Students from Wiley College and Prairie View A&M clear the overgrowth. The community celebrates, then finds itself locked out again. Their story becomes a way into a larger one: the cotton wealth built on enslaved labor, and the unfinished work of repair.
“The riveting story of a remarkable effort to resurrect the dead.”Bill Moyers, on the book Love Cemetery
The Team
The people behind the film
Ben Galland
Director / Editor
Award-winning director behind Oceanic Productions in the Bay Area.
Alexis Yancey
Co-Producer
Award-winning television producer and owner of Alexis Yancey Productions, Dallas.
Aldo Billingslea
Co-Producer
Actor, director and professor of theatre at Santa Clara University.
Barry Opper
Producer
Peace and civil rights activist who has produced eleven feature films.
Lillian Benson
Consulting Editor
Editor of two episodes of Eyes on the Prize II; Motion Picture Editors Guild honoree.
Latest
News from the road
- Prairie View A&M University screeningA weekend of screenings, discussion and cemetery visits near Houston.
- Town Council screening, December 3Requested by the local council, with the mayor and county officials invited.
- San Francisco Theological SeminaryA partnership to use the film in dialogues, courses and community programs.
The Newsletter
Follow the journey
Monthly updates on screenings, festivals and how to bring Resurrecting Love to your community.
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