Art House Extra | A Grandfather’s Death, A Granddaughter’s Reckoning

Imagine a death — actually, a murder — in the family.

Now, imagine making a film about it.

That’s exactly what Catherine Hoffman, community and culture reporter for Kansas City PBS, set out to do in “46 Years,” a film about the death of her grandfather in 1967.

The film delves deeply into frayed family dynamics and internecine conflict within the Nation of Islam, and how a granddaughter attempts to process those losses nearly a half-century later.

“What I want people to come away with is a deeper understanding of the vast variety of the Black experience,” Hoffman said. “Black people are not a monolith. … I want people to walk away with a bit of a richer understanding of Black history. There’s so much more than the single narrative that you see in the media a lot of the time, and so much more than what we were taught in history class.”

You can get a taste of “46 Years” in the attached video. And you can see the full film April 12-18 during the Kansas City FilmFest International, which has selected the film in the short documentary category.