Hi, I’m Malcolm Washington, co-writer and director of “The Piano Lesson.” So here this scene is the climax of the film. So all spoilers ahead. In the film, Bernice, played by Daniel DeWyler, has a complicated relationship with the piano and is afraid to play it because, in her words, she does not want to awaken the spirit that the piano evokes. Makes magic. His brother, Boy Willie, who has been trying to sell pianos throughout the film, has a mortal battle with a ghost upstairs as he faces a kind of spiritual reckoning within himself. So at that moment, Daniel’s Bernice decided that she had to face the thing and put her hand in and play the piano for the first time. It was a sequence that we spent a lot of time talking about the process of shooting and then cutting. All our themes are here together. The idea of shadow and light, of truth and secrets, and traversing the deepest parts of the self. And beyond. Call them, Bernice, call them. I love what Danielle does here. She goes elsewhere, indeed. And I think if you talk to him about that sequence now, he won’t even remember shooting it. This here. We wanted to tell a story of black spirituality in America. So, in our spiritual practice, these are two different traditions, rooted in the Black Southern Christian tradition and West African spiritual practice. And we are concerned here with both of them in recognizing the iconography of some West African spiritual practice in Bernice’s white dress. The idea that you can call upon your ancestors and that there is an infinite connection between the living and the dead. So here she is conjuring the spirits of her ancestors, chanting their names. “I want you to help me, I want you to help me, I want you to help me Mama Bernice, I want you to help me.” Declaring your identity and finding strength in it. So as the scene builds, you’ll see the rhythm of the cuts get faster, the light gets faster as she conjures these spirits in an attempt to drive away this ghost. Avery also represents our Christian spiritual practice there. And he opens the portal for all of them. In this moment of sound, you will hear the rumble of the house, the drums of Africa, followed by the voices of a choir representing our ancestors and the beauty they carry with them. . This whole movie is haunting all around and was scary at points. But here we see that it is powerful in beauty. I always love this picture here because it’s a family picture. I was looking, there’s a Japanese photographer named Masahisa Fukase, and he did this family portrait series that really inspired the family frames here. And when they come in, she’s finally able to exorcise the ghost and clear the family’s past trauma as they all lay hands on her and the flame flares. Peace is restored. Families are connected to each other and to the ancestors before them. And there is beauty.