The Spirit of Libra
Winnie comes from a long line of Libras, blessed with a supernatural power to resolve conflict. Feeling fed up with the responsibility of her inheritance, she petitions the cosmos to change her astrological sign.
I can’t convince anyone to believe in the meaning of the stars, all I can do is love them for what they have given me, which is a scrutiny over my destiny, a responsibility to live out a purpose.
—Kara Jackson (Libra Sun | Guest Editor, Jupiter Issue 008: Libra Methodology)
—Kara Jackson (Libra Sun | Guest Editor, Jupiter Issue 008: Libra Methodology)
The Spirit of Libra, like a birth chart, is a folktale, a portrait of a moment. Winnie is on a rite of passage toward understanding how to balance stewarding her gifts for communal healing, while remaining present with her individual desire for delight, love, wonder, and heartbreak.
On this quest she learns about her astrological inheritance not as a burden, but a tool for strengthening and sustaining the clarity, ritual, and bravery required to fight the attempted erasure of her ancestral identity. Where the lies of colonialism and white supremacy are trying to pull apart the mind, heart, and body, Winnie is trying to find a way back to herself, whole. That, to me, is what astrology offers: reintegration with oneself. Affirmation of what you’re “pretending not to know” (word to Toni Cade Bambara). Practice in deep listening to what hurts, and where the medicine for that hurt might live inside of you. Where one could find their power, inspiration, and love for existing in this very complicated world in order to transmute it into a terrain where we can access a sweeter relationship with time.
The film venerates the luminaries that soothe ancestral wounds, the aunties who carry their wisdom in their hands and curate their homes into communal havens. It was created in deep collaboration with my late Aquarian grandmother, Lucy Mae Frazier, friends, family, film professionals, and Black Chicagoans. It is informed entirely by their faith and love. What I love most about this film is its representation of Libra’s mystery and ambiguity, leaving space for audiences to place their own relational questions onto the film, and balance them by proxy.
—jellystone robinson (Director, Writer and Editor, The Spirit of Libra)
On this quest she learns about her astrological inheritance not as a burden, but a tool for strengthening and sustaining the clarity, ritual, and bravery required to fight the attempted erasure of her ancestral identity. Where the lies of colonialism and white supremacy are trying to pull apart the mind, heart, and body, Winnie is trying to find a way back to herself, whole. That, to me, is what astrology offers: reintegration with oneself. Affirmation of what you’re “pretending not to know” (word to Toni Cade Bambara). Practice in deep listening to what hurts, and where the medicine for that hurt might live inside of you. Where one could find their power, inspiration, and love for existing in this very complicated world in order to transmute it into a terrain where we can access a sweeter relationship with time.
The film venerates the luminaries that soothe ancestral wounds, the aunties who carry their wisdom in their hands and curate their homes into communal havens. It was created in deep collaboration with my late Aquarian grandmother, Lucy Mae Frazier, friends, family, film professionals, and Black Chicagoans. It is informed entirely by their faith and love. What I love most about this film is its representation of Libra’s mystery and ambiguity, leaving space for audiences to place their own relational questions onto the film, and balance them by proxy.
—jellystone robinson (Director, Writer and Editor, The Spirit of Libra)
jellystone robinson (b. 1998, Chicago, IL) is a Black filmmaker, writer, curator, and historian. In their creative practice, they retrieve ancestral memory, self-actualization, and prescriptions for communal healing through diligent research, ancestral veneration, and collective gathering. jellystone’s work has lived in the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Black Harvest Film Festival, Open Television, the Chicago Reader, Blanc Gallery, Facets Theater, the National Public Housing Museum, and elsewhere. jellystone is a 2025 Filmmaker’s Mixtape fellow and holds a Bachelor of Arts in film and television from Columbia College Chicago.
Photo by Oya Wynne Large
Photo by Oya Wynne Large
