SHARDS OF BETRAYAL

Prologue

Let me tell you about Seth. He made films on a shoestring and I mean the thinnest shoestring you’ve ever seen. No fancy studios for Seth Carter—he shot in friends’ houses, abandoned offices, anywhere he could get decent lighting for free. There’s this staircase in some buddy’s house where he filmed half of Soul Redemption. Why? Best light angles in town.

Seth rented his equipment by the day because that’s all he could afford. No retakes, minimal editing. Those flubbed lines and misspelled credits you see in his films? They stayed in because every penny counted.

His wife, Grace Lewis-Carter, was his leading lady in most films—and she had real star quality. Together, they made a fine team. One morning Seth dragged Grace out to some fancy white neighborhood when nobody was home, just to get footage of her in front of an elegant house. Another time, he borrowed some society lady’s fur coat while she was in a meeting—had Grace wear it for a quick scene. That was Seth all over—resourceful to the bone.

The man taught himself everything about filmmaking—each shot captured in stolen moments, each scene a patchwork of ingenuity and improvisation. He had a knack for making it all work somehow. He was always hustling, always thinking three moves ahead. But what he really understood was people. He’d go door to door selling his vision, just like he used to peddle his novels to white farmers and black communities down South. When he needed money for a film, he’d show up at theaters with his actors in tow, have them act out scenes right there in the manager’s office. Hard to say no to that kind of showmanship.

Seth was pure electricity in person. Could charm the shoes off your feet while you were still wearing them. Sure, his company was always running on fumes financially, but his personality and nonstop hustle kept things afloat. He had to take money from white theater owners and investors—“angels,” they called themselves—but Seth never lost control of his stories.

The stories themselves? That’s where Seth and his younger half-brother, Clay, really shined. Clay Harper had a way with words, could spin out scripts that kept audiences on the edge of their seats. Between Clay’s writing and Seth’s vision, they tackled issues other filmmakers wouldn’t touch—lynching, racial passing, prostitution, addiction. They wove current events and controversial topics into plots that felt real, felt urgent.

Seth showed the complicated, messy stuff that sets Black against Black, the ironies and painful truths others avoided. His films weren’t always pretty, but they were honest. While everyone else was trying to put on a good face, Seth was holding up a mirror to reality. Sometimes that mirror showed things people didn’t want to see, but Seth never flinched. That was his power.

In the end, it turned out to be his curse too.