Fermenting Our Place

Filmmaker’s Statement

I made this film out of curiosity about space — who gets to occupy it with ease, and who is asked to justify their presence. As an urban geographer doing work in and on the Midwest, I’ve long been interested in how industries that shape a city’s image also shape its racial boundaries. Beer is one of those industries.

Despite Black people’s deep historical ties to brewing, agriculture, and fermentation, the contemporary beer industry has been constructed as white — through policy, labor practices, and the environments in which beer is produced and consumed. Black people are often imagined as consumers rather than makers, and the consequences of that imagination are embedded in workplaces, neighborhoods, and cultural spaces.

This film emerged from a fellowship that supports Black people studying Black life in the Midwest. I chose to focus on Bri Smith, a friend and the first Black woman head brewer in Minnesota, not as a symbol or exception, but as a working brewer whose presence disrupts long-standing assumptions about who belongs in this industry.

Rather than offering a comprehensive history, the film lingers with Bri’s words, gestures, and practice. It asks what it means to make something intentional in a space that has rarely imagined Black people as creators — and how race, environment, and labor continue to shape one another in the Midwest.

References

Chapman, N. G., & Brunsma, D. L. (2020). Beer and racism : how beer became white, why it matters, and the movements to change it. Bristol University Press.

Gordone, C. (1969). No Place To Be Somebody: A Black-Black Comedy In Three Acts. Bobbs-Merrill.

Mendoza, M. E., Voyles, T. B., Limerick, P., & JSTOR. (2025). Not just green, not just white : race, justice, and environmental history (M. E. Mendoza & T. B. Voyles, Eds.). University of Nebraska Press.

Merced, J. Z., & Scarborough, S. (2025). De‐Pale the Ale: Preserving Black Brewing Culture Through Beer Festivals. Geography Compass, 19(6), Article 70036. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.70036

Williamson, T. L., & EBSCOhost. (2020). Black In The Middle : An Anthology Of The Black Midwest (T. L. Williamson, Ed.). Belt Publishing.

Wright, W. J. (2021). As Above, So Below: Anti‐Black Violence as Environmental Racism. Antipode, 53(3), 791–809. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12425