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The Dark Knot at the Center

Director

Inês Pedrosa e Melo

Set against the landscapes of the Southwestern United States and moving through towns in Texas, Arizona, and California, THE DARK KNOT AT THE CENTER is a road movie that attempts to reimagine the clandestine journeys that American women undertook from across the country to towns on the US-Mexico border to access abortion care at underground clinics. Straddling past and present, the film reconstructs these invisible experiences from hundreds of personal letters written to the Society for Humane Abortion/Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (SHA/ARAL), a San Francisco-based organization active in the 1960s that advocated for the right to safe abortion in the years before Roe v. Wade. From details on the material and logistical aspects of their travels, to intimate reflections on reproductive agency and moments of feminist awakening, the stories revoiced in THE DARK KNOT AT THE CENTER shed light on the past of abortion travel and evoke the current realities of reproductive health access in America today.

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Inês Pedrosa e Melo

Director, The Dark Knot at the Center

Inês Pedrosa e Melo (Coimbra, 1994) is a documentary filmmaker based between Lisbon and San Francisco. Her work engages speculative approaches to the archive, exploring the materiality of history and memory. She also works as a researcher, educator, editor, and archival producer.

She holds a B.A. in Communication Sciences and an M.A. in Anthropology from NOVA University Lisbon, and is a graduate of Stanford University’s Documentary Film and Video MFA program. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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