The extraordinary Deloris “Nunu” Hogan and her daycare center are profiled in intimate documentary Through the Night
THROUGH THE NIGHT (Loira Limbal, 2020)
maysles documentary center virtual cinema
December 11-24, $10
www.maysles.org
www.throughthenightfilm.com
The pandemic has revealed one of the most complicated issues at the heart of American family and economic life: the problem of safe, affordable child care, especially for single and working-class mothers. Loira Limbal’s intimate and heartfelt documentary, Through the Night, shares the moving story of Deloris “Nunu” Hogan and Patrick “Pop Pop” Hogan, who have run Dee’s Tots daycare out of their New Rochelle home since 1985. The film, which was shot prior to the coronavirus crisis, focuses on Nunu and PopPop in addition to two women whose children they care for, Marisol Valencia, who is struggling to make ends meet even with three jobs, and pediatric ER nurse Shanona Tate, both of whom often work overnight shifts. The Hogans operate their “day” care twenty-four/seven and never seem to take a break; they have two young children of their own as well.
“It’s not just a job. This is really our life,” NuNu says. “My children, ever since they were the age of two years old, they had to share me with other children. I remember my children saying, ‘Mommy, why do they have to come first?’ Sometimes my children didn’t get what I had to give to the other kids.”
What NuNu gives to these other kids is love and affection; to their parents, she gives them a much-needed lifeline: the ability to hold a job. Dee’s Tots is like one big extended family; there’s a lot of laughing and a lot of crying, and the Hogans make personal sacrifices: Not only are they worried about their own children, but they limit the time they see each other, sleeping at different times so there’s always someone watching the kids.
The film also reveals a problem at the heart of working-class poverty and the American economy without hammering at it: The mothers of the children the Hogans take care of are primarily women of color who work what would be deemed essential jobs even before Covid-19 and who don’t have the option of corporate or expensive independent daycare. They are barely making enough money to keep their children at Dee’s, which has also felt the impact of the lockdown. In July 2020, Awesome without Borders, which awards grants to initiatives and projects “that increase representation and inclusion in age, class, race, gender, sexuality, religion, and/or ability,” gave a grant to Dee’s, explaining that “the Hogans are frontline heroes in their own right. They make it possible for essential workers to leave their children in good hands and do essential work.” Meanwhile, NuNu notes on the film’s official website, “We are staying open until they shut us down because our parents need us. It is a little bit scary because every person who walks in could bring in Covid-19.”
Afro-Dominican director and DJ Limbal (Estilo Hip Hop, #APartyCalledRosiePerez), a single mother of two living in the Bronx who holds a full-time job, says in her director’s statement: “I was raised by an amazing cast of Black and Latinx women who performed miraculous acts of resilience, creativity, and subversion on a daily basis. Unfortunately, when I look around at our popular culture these women are rarely seen and when they do appear, they are represented in reductive ways that often amount to caricatures. My vision as a filmmaker is to flood our popular culture with beautifully complex portrayals of the lives of working-class women of color so that we have new gazes and new ways of seeing ourselves.”
Limbal filmed at Dee’s from 2016 to 2018, showing Nunu and/or PopPop making arts and crafts with the kids, flipping through a family album, marching in a parade, preparing children for overnight stays, dancing at a party, teaching gardening, and playfully auctioning off goodies. It is a love story not only between the Hogans and the children but between the Hogans themselves. “We kinda feed off of each other. We need our spirits lifted up too in order to be the people that we are,” NuNu says. Through the Night, which is screening virtually December 11-24 at the maysles documentary center, will lift viewers’ spirits as well while also opening their eyes.