Making 'Aftershock', a documentary about black maternal mortality

Directors Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee discuss their journey making the documentary 'Aftershock,' which highlights a national health crisis.

"Black lives matter because black wombs matter!" Shawnee Benton Gibson sang from the stage at a National Action Network rally in Washington, DC, in 2020.

In October 2019, her daughter Shamony Gibson died just two weeks after giving birth. Her death, at age 30, was another grim emblem of a national crisis: the epidemic of black maternal mortality. The United States is the most dangerous industrialized country in which to give birth, with black women dying three times more than white women.

Soon after Shamony's death, his mother, along with her partner, Omari Maynard, hosted a celebration of his life which they called "Aftershock". Before that, Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee, the directors of a documentary that shares a title with this event, contacted them.

"We didn't know about them, but they were open for us to come and film," Lee said in an interview this month with Eiselt. "It really kicked off and gelled the movie as it is now."

Soon after, the directors met with Bruce McIntyre, who held a press conference to sound the alarm on maternal mortality and demand accountability for the death of his partner, Amber Rose Isaac , 26, who died after giving birth in April 2020.

Shamony and Amber present "Aftershock," which not only examines America's abysmal maternal mortality rates among black and brown women, but also follows the women's loved ones as they grapple with new grief and fight for a solution. Gathering many threads, the directors delve into the American medical system - illuminating the disparities in black and brown communities and the gross neglect that happens to them due to age-old systemic racism.

ImageOmari Maynard and Shamony Gibson in "Aftershock". Gibson died two weeks after giving birth to their child.Credit...Onyx Collective

"Story is everything," said Eiselt, who directed the documentary "93Queen" in 2018. about a female emergency response unit in Brooklyn. "Aftershock" is the directorial debut of Lee, who has produced films like "Monster" and the Netflix series "She's Gotta Have It" (by her husband, Spike Lee).

"It was really important for us to show how we got here," Eiselt said, "that this crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It's on a historical continuum that started from 1619, where black women were devalued and dehumanized. And here we are."

The film, streaming on Hulu, presents a litany of discordant facts...