It's been seven years since I was followed by a racist vigilante down back roads in rural Canada.
During that time, I have sought to document — at first, unwittingly — the emergence of the versions of myself that were born on that day and in the weeks, months, and years afterward.
As I return to Canada to find answers, I begin to question whether it is only me who has returned, and if "we" only want answers or something else?
NIGHT FIGHT is a hybrid documentary—nonfiction wrapped in fiction—which charts my attempt to find answers to those questions and, ultimately, how to communicate these experiences and their meaning to my children.
KHARY SAEED JONES engages film projects that explore the tensions between fiction, memory, and everyday life. His films and collaborations have screened at Sundance, SXSW, MoMA (NY), CIFF (ME), Full Frame (NC), ICA Boston, and many other festivals and venues. As a writer-director, his work includes the short films Hug, Three and a Half Thoughts, Chrysalis, and the forthcoming feature-length films Night Fight and Gumbo. Jones has also served on the editorial teams behind the documentary features: Where the Pavement Ends (PBS WORLD Channel/America ReFramed), Black Memorabilia (PBS/Independent Lens), Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart (PBS/American Masters), He Named Me Malala (Fox Searchlight), Sembene! (Kino Lorber), and The World According to Dick Cheney (Showtime).
Born and raised in Camden, New Jersey, Jones is the recipient of awards, grants, and fellowships from AFI Dallas, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Mass Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, the Points North Institute, and the Telly Awards. He studied at Columbia University (MA, MFA) and Morehouse College (BA), and he is currently a Professor of the Practice in Drama and Film at Tufts University where he teaches storytelling for the screen and advises students developing both scripted and documentary projects from inception to edit. He is a recent recipient of grants from the Sundance Documentary Film Fund and Firelight Media's William Greaves Fund and fellowships from the Harvard Film Study Center and the Tufts Center for the Humanities.
KENDRA TAIRA FIELD (Producer & Historical Consultant) is a writer and historian at Tufts University. Field is the author of Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War (Yale, 2018), which traces her ancestors’ migratory lives after the Civil War. Her current book project, The Stories We Tell, is about the African American genealogical quest from the Middle Passage to the present. Field also abridged David Levering Lewis' W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography (Henry Holt, 2009). Field is director of Tufts’ Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and is the co-founder of both The Du Bois Forum and the African American Trail Project.