IN NEED OF SEAWATER, directed by Richard Yeagley, unfolds as a deeply resonant poetic documentary that traces the emergence of writer and poet Mark Anthony Thomas’s creative voice while engaging in a broader reflection on Black identity, memory, and artistic resistance in America. Rather than following a conventional biographical structure, the film embraces a lyrical form, allowing poetry, performance, and archival history to interact organically, as if shaped by the rhythms of memory itself.

 

Yeagley’s direction is marked by restraint and sensitivity. His camera moves slowly around the characters, never imposing, observing with a delicate gaze and profound respect. This measured visual language creates a space in which vulnerability can exist without spectacle. The film’s original score—intense, intimate, and emotionally charged—mirrors the internal states of its subject, guiding the viewer through moments of loss, revelation, and quiet resolve without ever overpowering the spoken word.

 

At the core of the film lies Thomas’s first collection of poetry, a body of work he considers the most meaningful achievement of his life. These poems, born from the experience of a young Black man attempting to understand himself and his place within a fractured nation, serve as both personal testimony and collective mirror. The editing skillfully intercuts a live poetry reading with impressionistic visual fragments—faces, gestures, landscapes, fleeting memories—creating a visceral correspondence between language and image.

 

Particularly striking is the integration of historical archival footage, which situates Thomas’s individual journey within the larger narrative of Black American history. These images are not illustrative but dialogic, allowing the poems to resonate across generations and emphasizing how personal identity is inseparable from cultural and political context. The presence of the audience during the reading becomes essential: listeners are shown actively engaging, absorbing the words, and sharing in their emotional weight, reinforcing the communal power of spoken language.

 

Ziaire Mann delivers a compelling and restrained performance as the younger poet, grounding the film’s more abstract passages in embodied experience. His portrayal lends credibility and emotional continuity to the feature footage, bridging past and present with subtle intensity.

 

Ultimately, IN NEED OF SEAWATER is less concerned with chronology than with transformation. It is a meditation on how words can shape lives, construct identities, and build communities—how they can become acts of survival and tools for social change. In charting one artist’s search for truth, Yeagley’s film reflects America’s ongoing struggle for expression, dignity, and justice, leaving the viewer with a lingering sense that poetry, when listened to closely, remains one of the most powerful forms of collective memory.

 

Richard Yeagley is a director, editor, and producer with more than 12 years of experience in non-fiction film. His work spans documentary features, short films, and broadcast projects, with credits appearing on PBS, NPR, Vice TV, The New Yorker, Hulu, Tubi, and Amazon. As a freelance filmmaker, he has collaborated with numerous production companies to tell complex, human-centered stories with clarity, depth, and cinematic precision.