ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A documentary about an Allentown mother keeping her son’s memory alive after he was shot and killed in the city in 2017 will have its hometown premiere Nov. 6-8 at the Civic Theatre of Allentown.
Shalon Buskirk, the mother, directed “in love, in memory” with filmmaker Drew Swedberg. They say they worked on it in Allentown for seven years. In that time, Buskirk lost a second son to gun violence, and the last of three men charged in that killing was sentenced Tuesday, one month before the film comes home.
The film will be shown three times at Civic’s Theatre514. Each screening will be followed by a conversation with the filmmakers and community members who appear in it, according to the filmmakers’ announcement. Showtimes and prices have not been posted. The announcement says tickets will be sold through Civic’s website.
“As we share our film with the world, my hope is that it opens doors,” Buskirk said in the announcement, “for conversation, for compassion and for the kind of change that begins with being seen.”
The 90-minute film arrives after an August festival run in three states, where it won the jury award for best documentary feature at the Indie Street Film Festival in Red Bank, N.J.
It centers on Buskirk’s firstborn son, Parris Jerome Lane, who was 19 when he was killed on Nov. 8, 2017. The filmmakers say it is not a true-crime film. Instead, they say, it follows the family through what came after: a first day of school, a surprise birthday party and a visit to the house Lane was building with YouthBuild Allentown. Spoken word poet Justice Davis writes a poem about Lane along the way.
“Making this film in opposition to true crime has been challenging, worthwhile work,” Swedberg said in the announcement, “and we hope our film ignites conversations about the harm this genre has done to our ways of seeing the world, and the possibilities of resistance from artists and audiences.”
The film also ties the family’s loss to Allentown’s housing history, the filmmakers say. Historian Roberta Meek and activist Deloris Marshall recall Black residents of the Little Lehigh neighborhood resisting the city’s attempt to break up their community in the 1960s. The filmmakers connect that history to what they call gentrification in the Neighborhood Improvement Zone today.
Both killings ended in prison sentences.
In Parris Lane’s case, Joshwynn Garcia, then 21, was charged days after the shooting. Lehigh County court records show he pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in March 2019 and was sentenced to 12 to 25 years in state prison.
Najeer Tyrone Lane, Buskirk’s second-oldest son, was 22 when he was shot and killed in Allentown on Aug. 31, 2022. The film was being edited at the time, according to the announcement. All three men charged in his death have now been sentenced. The last received 15 to 30 years in state prison.
Najeer Lane appears in the film, according to its credits. The filmmakers’ materials do not say whether the film addresses his death.
Buskirk founded the Parris J. Lane Memorial Foundation after her first son’s death. She and Swedberg met through community organizing in Allentown and became co-directors in 2019, they wrote in a directors’ statement. Swedberg has taught film at Lafayette College, and producer Nandini Sikand is a film and media studies professor there.
After Allentown, the film is scheduled to screen Nov. 20 at the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, N.C.