Synopsis
Meanwhile is a docu-poem in six verses about artists breathing through chaos. In dynamic collaboration, Jacqueline Woodson (text), Meshell Ndegeocello (soundscape), Erika Dilday (support), M. Trevino (structure), and Catherine Gund (direction), combine artists’ expressions with historical and observational footage to unveil a rare cinematic mediation about identity, race, racism and resistance as they shape our shared breath.
Centering breath as a symbol of resilience Meanwhile captures raw, unfinished moments— dancers in rehearsal, artists midway through their work—focusing on the act of creation. Rooted in the upheavals of 2020, the film uses breath as its through-line to symbolize collective survival. It invites viewers to witness the process of liberation and be present in the “meanwhile”—a moment of creation, struggle, and hope that transcends fixed identities.
Interview
Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower recently interviewed director Catherine Gund about her new documentary feature, Meanwhile. The film began limited screenings in theaters nationwide starting on March 14, 2025.
Lightly edited for content and clarity.
Glen Dower:
Ms. Gund, how are you, Ma’am?
Catherine Gund:
I’m very well, Glen, thank you.
Glen Dower:
When I read the synopsis for Meanwhile, at first I thought, “Wow this is beautiful. A docu-poem…I’m in.” Can you tell me what your inspirations were, across the ninety-minutes we have six different creators, all so individual, all so disparate, and all so charismatic in their own very different way. You would never put them together in a million years. How did you do that?
Catherine Gund:
That’s beautiful. I think of artists as the people who hold our vision and our hope, like our ability to imagine change. As a lifelong activist and artist, I think those are the same things, that it’s imagining something that doesn’t exist and believing it can and that it should and working towards that goal. And so artists have always made up all of my community. In June of 2020, it became very clear that breath was the dominant, both literal and figurative, thematic of the time as George Floyd was strangled to death. People were sharing this air that was making some people very sick and many people died.
And a very close friend of mine was in her third to fourth year of having emphysema and being homebound using oxygen to keep herself breathing and alive. Jackie and I have worked together a lot, with Jacqueline Woodson, who wrote the narration, and the text, and we’ve worked together in many different ways than just even in our own lives. But we’re sort of collaborative beings, but she’s very word-based and I’m very image-based.
And so we thought, how could we put some of these ideas and conversations that we’re having, as well as with all the people in it because they’re all friends and people who are in my community, some many, many decades old relationships that have evolved along these kinds of conversations. And so she would write, I would send her some footage I shot on my phone, she would write some more. We started cutting it together.
Catherine Gund:
We were editing Meanwhile with Mar Trevino throughout, because obviously, it’s that kind of a film, it didn’t have a script. So there was no, he was very much working with us in that collaboration. And then with Michelle and Deggie Uccello, we would send her scenes and she would record the feelings and the sounds.
She kept saying, you know, silence is a sound. And we would work with this kind of soundscape idea. And so it evolved as a way to make sense of not only that we’re here, which is the basis of the breath, but what are we going to do about it given what exists in real time that, you know, we don’t live in nor can imagine or aim for a place of ease, a place of no relations, a place of no stress or tension or homogeneity, a place that is entirely patterns.
We need patterns to make sense of chaos, but we’re never going to lose the chaos. And so it was, as Natalie Diaz so beautifully says, “How do we actually, as Natalie Diaz, I think so beautifully says,” I’ve tried to stay still in the chaos. And I realized that maybe our goal isn’t to be at rest.
Glen Dower:
You make your reality, and make your way of dealing with chaos, whether it be through routine or whether it be through creating or being inspired by the chaos as well around you. One of the lines I loved was ‘breathing and the breath you give out creates a circle of fear and that fear can lead to division.’ I thought, wow, we haven’t changed. And I wanted to ask you about that. We see people in their face masks and we’re reminded here and there that it’s 2010. Now we’re in 2025. Were you surprised that the documentary has not become a moment in time, but turned out to be a swing of the pendulum because we’re with that president again and we’re having those divisions again?
Catherine Gund:
Oh, wow. That makes me like, literally almost want to cry. I mean, I think in that sense, I feel like to me, it just feels even more important if we can say we were doing something and now it proves to be a blueprint for what we need to be doing now that maybe there were too few of us who understood that way of seeing, you know, it comes up in all the George Floyd was killed in 2020. What’s happening now is this idea of them erasing history. So they were erasing people. But now they’re saying you can’t even know that we erase people or that what you like trying to rewrite the script.
I think we need to be more in contact with each other, that the antidote is community and care. And that we could have used and many did use five years ago. But now I think everybody knows if they want to get through this, that that is going to be the way to do it. And we have to meet with each other. We have to look each other in the eyes. We have to listen to each other. And we have to love each other and learn how people think and what they imagine can be better. Because what I hate right now is in the news, people saying, reasonable people saying, well, I understand why he’s doing it. And I do too, but I don’t even want to hear that sentence.
Catherine Gund:
And then they say, but it’s how he’s doing it. So, I think we need to change how we talk about race, how we talk about gender. And we are going to get there. I mean, we were starting to get there and there was a bit of a pendulum, but I don’t, that one doesn’t work for me so well, because I do feel like it may not be a straight road, but we’re on one line and it is not about reversing course. It’s about, I don’t like to say it’s necessarily forward. I don’t think there’s a front and a back, but I think we need to think about, you know, we need to do what we say we believe.
They’re reinforcing this idea that every leadership position, every media anchor, everybody, every government, every person, the only people we can trust or believe in or know are smart are going to be white guys. And you see that in these 40 words, they just said that you can’t say on, you saw this on the government websites or in any materials, they said, you know, some obvious ones like a gendered male at birth, you’re not allowed to say, but you can’t say equity, you can’t say women, you can’t say belonging, you can’t say like, you can’t say disability.
Glen Dower:
For sure and we come back to community and creativity. Those in power unknowingly are reinforcing communities by pushing them together as outsiders or not, like you say, away from the ‘divine race’, whatever. So it’s nonsensical, but you have so many different creators that you’ve found. We had six. Was there any point you had more or less that some people were more in there now?
Catherine Gund:
I mean, I did record with a few people, I would say three, maybe four people who didn’t make it into the end, because somehow a couple of them were newer friends. And, we hadn’t been in this kind of dynamic of a conversation for as long. So we weren’t maybe using all the same language. That was true in a couple of instances. But also, it was very important to me that people do not describe things, and that people do not make statements. And you’ll notice, I believe, in the entire film, people don’t say that things are certain things.
They won’t explain that no one ever explains anything. They’re just being, they’re having, you know, which has been interesting, because after the film, some of the screenings, when we do Q&As, people beforehand will say, are there any special questions you’d like me to be sure to ask to prompt so that you can, and my feeling, the revelation after the very first one was that normally a Q&A, not an interview, I don’t count this among them, but normally a Q&A is an opportunity for a filmmaker and an audience to make sure that the message of the film got across. And what clarification do they want? Or what additional information would they want?
Catherine Gund:
And I don’t feel that there is like a message for Meanwhile. I think that all the ways people respond, which are to just start thinking about these ideas, to start thinking about this way of being in the world, to create a community of creativity, that becomes more important for me. And then it’s really that I want to hear their thoughts.
Also, I want to hear what people took away from it, and what scene sticks with them, or the line you said about fear and division, which is Jackie’s line, and then she says derision. And it’s also how she says it. But, you know, a line like that, that comes to somebody, they’re all different lines for all the people that watch it.
Glen Dower:
And what are the artists’ reactions?
Catherine Gund:
They understand how deeply engaged in an important conversation about healing, transformation, and catharsis they’re in. It’s more than just only beauty, which is how art often gets spoken about. But we include beauty too. We need that too. It provides a way, a portal. Art is a portal. And that’s invaluable. Whether it’s in the schools where it allows students to say what they think about something as opposed to just providing an answer.
When we say we want people to be critical thinkers, I don’t think anybody knows what that means. But what I mean by that is we want people to be able to think for themselves and to have some access, a space, and a language for it. I think we don’t use language very well. We don’t allow ourselves to learn how to express ourselves. People say, does it look like a horse when I draw it? My kids changed around five. But until then, they would make a painting and say, it’s a horse. And you’re like, a horse? Where’s the horse? And they point it out and you’re like, that’s a horse.
Then, six months later, they’ll be like, I can’t draw, it doesn’t look like a horse. And I think it’s that we’ve lost the ability to say, no, this is what I think a horse should look like. This is my understanding of horses. I think we need to keep that conversation going. And a lot of the artists have been participating in Q&As and stuff. And they say beautiful things and they appreciate each other’s work. In a way, they’re allowed to see each other’s work in specific, but also in even the genre of work.
Glen Dower:
And what’s next for you? Do you think there’ll be a follow-up in a few years time?
Catherine Gund:
Right now I’m working on a short film that’s somewhat related a little bit in style, but it’s related to the archives of Ivy Young, my friend, who had the breathing tubes and died of lung cancer a year and a half ago. She left me all of her archives, journals, photographs, records, and fishing equipment because we both fish. I’ve been working to place her archives. But also, I’m curious about what an archive means to someone else. Like what it means if we just take paper and say, OK, you never met me, but here. This is Catherine.
And so it’s about a woman, a young person who started as an intern at my office and got very involved in the archive of Ivy and she had never met Ivy. But it became very clear this was a person where an archive became the mentor. And I think that’s fascinating.
So it’s a short film, but it has some of these same ideas where I am committed to being as honest as we can be, never putting in a line of me or Mariah or Ivy, because we have so much audio. I videotaped and filmed with and audiotaped her so much during our last couple of years together. And but I never want someone saying what something means if that doesn’t ring true. So I’m glad I’ve started on this little short so that I know that I can still make other movies.
Glen Dower:
You still got it. That’s great. Well, I wish we had more time Ms. Gund. It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you so much.
Catherine Gund:
Thank you so much, Glen, take care.
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