Race, Gender and Narrative / Defining Justice

so I I have a confession to make I watched the film I think is the reason for us really being here what is the 13th obviously also but a dramatic film that is the reason for us being here middle of nowhere and I just watched it yesterday and I actually had an event last night and it was a serious mistake to watch that film before the event I already told Ava dhis death film is remarkable it's one of greatest I like the scene and I was not right for the rest of the day you know I went to school with the cinematographer and I'm gonna stop raving in a second I'm gonna let you talk let you finish but I went to school with a Bradford Young who was a similar target for the film and I'm just yeah where I was great and I was texting him like all the way through you know what I mean about just how remarkable this this piece wasn't so even when we were behind says you were beginning to talk about the process of actually writing it and it actually sounded like journalism to me like like it was active journalism can you just maybe just talk a little bit about that for us yes well thank you I'm so excited to be here with this one the genius in D so literally he's saying he watched my family like you but yeah middle of nowhere is a film that I made before Selma a lot of folks think I came out of the womb with like dr. King on my mind before Selma and is about the invisible victims of incarceration the women the mothers the daughters our sisters the wives and so it follows you know a woman who is struggling with her husband's incarceration in her life it really you really are not in the prison you never go inside the facility beyond where she goes and you basically are with her through her day to day in her experience and and yeah so I I wanted to know what that was so talk to several hundred women over the course of three years writing the script and the stories broke my heart and made me they were like can I pause you right there for a minute what was that conversation like like do you just go hey I'm making a phone about this would you just talk to me about yes okay yeah yeah yeah well I want to get it right I'm making a film about you you know what I mean of women like you and I want to get that right and not just read about it but really know so you're just incredible stories of fortitude and faith and and a connectedness that the women really took on the burden of keeping that connection and I thought that was remarkable and it's you know in the reality and and what it is but also remarkable that we don't comment on it enough and unpack it enough in terms of what women mostly women of color are doing to maintain the bonds to our loved ones behind bars when we think about incarceration in this country obviously there's a lot of focus on african-american men african-american you know not to slight you know the incarceration experience of african-american women and women of color at large but african-american I think just because they comprised such a outside number and there's less focus a on you know women of color who are incarcerated but also the the weight of the effects of incarceration and how it rebounds outwards towards families and how it affects families and I wonder where the impetus for you came to as you said not necessarily put the focus on the prisons but to talk about the effects outside yeah well I've been trying to in different work address the overall prison industrial complex and its effects so with middle of nowhere it was on scene the families who are left behind 13th did a certain thing Queens sugar is a show where the lead character is a formerly incarcerated man and so you see the effects on his family in particular his child and they're just trying to find different ways to bring this conversation into the culture beyond prison it's a place where bad people go but to just create some nuance there in terms of the long lasting impact and ripple effects and echoes that it has not only on communities of color but within families and you know the community at large how much it is came out of well let me let me back up a little bit as a young person and particularly as a child so let's say up do you know like age 18 what was your interaction like with the costal state what was your understanding of how much of middle of nowhere came out questions that maybe you either saw or in your in your own sphere yeah well grew up in Compton and I always Oh what's up cpt that's up what's up let's gonna do it here cuz we could do the whole thing but I always was was was fascinated by two things growing up the homeless and the people behind bars I would be driving around with my mom around around the city and I would just say to her and I remember it and she reminds me I would say if I was homeless I would put my you know stuff in there right or like oh if I was homeless you know there's they're giving like free samples samplers over here so I go get some food here right I was always trying to figure out for some reason how I would survive in the world if I was homeless and also I was constantly and totally preoccupied with people who were just missing in my community people who one day I saw and then the next day they were gone and where they went and so these were people on my block these were brothers and fathers of good friends that just disappeared and so what did you understand as a black person that this was happening in a way that was different than in other communities in other places not as a child I grew up in a Compton that was very it was Samoan Latino Thai black wasn't just black Compton on the edge right near Lynwood and so it was effect and everybody so I didn't I didn't really equate it with communities of color or black people or anything I just knew as a child people were disappearing and I was told that they were going to jail and I would see I grew up in a place where the ghetto bird was common do you all have get over it and and in New York so we're you know just that sound of them coming so low overhead was so common so when I look back and I see the ways in which I would see harassment and process that and process people you know kind of disappearing and being locked up it'd just be Anna's preoccupation that I began to study as I got older and the preoccupation that has never left me ya know it's fascinating like the things it's like when you grow up like that the thing is you take to be every day I grew up in West Baltimore born in 75 and as a young child probably before 10 I just thought the helicopter came out every night like I just thought that was a thing that happened like in everywhere across America you know he's gonna get a bird out you know what I mean I mean I even had that terminology but I just thought it happened you know what I mean and it's it's interesting to me and I and I just learned more about I mean of course reading your your your books but also he and I were both featured on this show called finding your roots a couple of weeks ago and I was learning more about your father was was were these issues like talked about where there was a definition given to what you were hearing because that never happened for me like in my house there wasn't like not like like black now she's not black nationalist but nobody was defining what that was it was just an experience that was washing over us did you get that kind of instruction first of all I see how you flipped it on me interview is conversation with conversation together beep dad I did he - yeah it was I mean you know my dad had she do not think about what finding he was just about like the things that did not make it on the show right and one of the things like it's so interesting because for my families basically two lines and on one line was this kinda Stryver's black story you know coming out of you know black experience you know oldest ancestor had been free in like 1820 and other side which they did not really show was like what people refer to and I just want to be clear I don't refer to it this way but the kind of the poster board for what people would call black pathology so it was like my great-grandfather died in like a meatpacking plant you know it's like crushed to death I didn't know any of this like I just I found this on the show grandfather was homeless and tried to bum a cigarette off of somebody on the street I do punch them he hit the ground just died you know so there was this accumulation of traumas and these were folks unlike my mom's family who had come out of Virginia never really had anything and I perceived the difference between those two sides of the family as a child you know even though my mom had growing up in the projects my mom used to say they were a different kind of poor you know its levels you know what I mean even within poverty is levels you know and my dad I always thought like he was reacting to that you know he's really gonna to these accumulation of traumas by going into the Panther Party and becoming a sports so by the time I was born in 75 yeah it was names on everything I mean I often got the names before I actually got the experience like I can remember I don't know if you had this but like being a child and like my dad and all the black people saying like the white man white man won't let you have that white man going through this my man and I used to like is like that is their actual white white man you know I mean who's doing busy right he's busy you know he's really cuddly very busy so yeah I mean I I had I had the concepts you know before I move forward that the thing that's always interesting for me though is for people who don't necessarily grow up like that what's the moment where you begin to say okay these cats who a disappearing have some sort of relationship to a broader political conversation as we would say wisdom what was the moment of consciousness for you if you had it's a college and started started reading more you know you professor once told me you're going to go through your red black and green phase red phase you're gonna be so angry boiling just angry black phase everything's black and if it's not black it's not right in the greenways where you just kind of mellow out then you take the knowledge and you stay on edge but not enraged and if you can find that place that's that's the the place where we have the greatest chance of survival is the way that it was explained to me so I always kind of think think about that but um but I still one day I wake up in the black race one day I wake up in a red phase these days thought it was like your progress but you know I lived there which one somewhere between red and black I don't think it's a great I don't you know I don't get less I'm out here the weather's nice and obviously when you're California you can you know you on the East Coast man you're not I'm saying you stay in that you know what I mean just on ten you know totally totally on ten sorry one of the things like people ask me is I get these questions or as I say well you know time I see writing needs to sort away you know these issues what do you do for self-care what's their self-care routine I said myself care is writing like I'm funneling actually all of that you know that that raged into the writing and then once I'm writing I'm okay and I'm wondering it is this like does the art exist in the same relation to you to you is it like um like what if you couldn't say these things what if you couldn't make you know tell these stories what have you knew them what if you had all the imagination that your work clearly shows you have but you did not have the opportunity to make that manifest what does that world look like for you I mean that's that's pain that's that's painful so I'm grateful that I've been able to find my way through that before anybody was looking like we talked about middle of nowhere nobody's seen that movie but um few people this room this is this last night so you know it didn't it didn't reach any kind of critical mass and yet it was it's just as meaningful to me the experience of making it what it means in the world we're over the place it's it's within me is the same as you know a huge hundred thirty million dollar Disney movie if not more you know it's it's everything that I make I try to choose things that is that my name on it I don't have children I don't have I don't plan to have children these things are my children this is what I leave behind this is what I want to say I did with my time here and so so yeah no I don't I don't so much think about how it's going to resonate or live in the world it keeps me it's my survival I mean it would be pain if I wasn't able to do it so when I think of you know the women artists and people of color artists and people who are marginalized who aren't allowed and I say allowed because the filmmaking medium requires more than some of the other mediums that are much more free and flexible like writing to make a film you need more than yourself you know in your pen and paper or you need any resources right you need even simple things you need a few things to get started and those have traditionally been withheld so it's a beautiful time in terms of technology and the way that things are moving that were able to have more access we sit here at this event that's that's part of you know the Google the Google ecosystem and and all of that technology and access it makes a difference and it means something so more of us can take that pain and make it into something beautiful like it's a very prominent you know african-american woman in film and at this point you know doing the kind of movies that certainly thirty years ago twenty ten years ago like you didn't really see black people let alone black women like really doing can you like just put yourself on the couch for a minute and talk about what did you have and I don't mean talent like obviously you're extremely talented extremely intelligent but I'm thinking more like approach attitude like what what accounts for you well see like I think like just let me let me let me tell me about you you could be on the couch tell me the answer to the question so ok like if I thought about myself right I would say that writers in my field of nonfiction are always thinking about how can i shape this narrative to address white people not because they're white but because they don't majority of the readers this is what I have to talk to you because actually how you you know where you went earlier about how I came up right because of the household I came up in because of the politics of that household even you know as I grew and kind of matured out of some of the politics the basic notion that you ain't got a right for them like your world is valid you know what I mean and if you end up you know telling that story just to a roomful of five people that's fine that's fine just because they control stuff doesn't mean that they actually know stuff those are two different things but see you have to give resources it's different it's different like I could you know what I mean do my writing print it out and then you know distribute it it's a much it's a much lower threshold in order to do it and so like when you have to go in the go sheet and get people to really invest right it's a different thing yeah I mean well I mean lower threshold I see it as more of a freer form because anyone can enter in I think you know in film I started in the in the in the independent film seen the black independent film scene I was lucky that I was able to come up on the heels of highway Karima and Julie - and Charles Burnett and all the people who said you know the the mainstream did not allow them that did not the you know the Academy the any of the the traditional institutions kept these people out they did not acknowledge their work they did not think the images that they were making in the stories that they were telling were valid I work in an industry built upon the foundation laid by the film Birth of a Nation like this is the context for the very work that I'm doing and so there's you know other ways that were always found to make these images and tell these stories outside of that if you look at highly into Howard you know what Haile has done and and so when I started with making films for $5,000 in $100,000 and $200,000 and cobbling it together I was more than satisfied to take these films on the black film festival circuit I was like this is fantastic I'm gonna make my little films and I'm gonna take it to rooms like this and I did that for four years and it was all I wanted it was all I wanted and I still think of those times and I still goes back to those festivals every time every chance that I get at least once a year in between everything else I go to the black wait can you can you go back in the same way no because you know because you never yeah because you never have those first films again that you're so afraid to show but and you and you you're still afraid to show them all the time but just just the not knowing if you could even do it I remember those times but what I remember more than anything is the audiences I think what you're speaking of brings up the idea of audience who are we writing for who are we making our films for and the value of audience and who is out there in the dark you know who's reading it and who's out there and who's placing value on it and those are all things that come out in the wash of making it for me I got to stay very recently a bit got a bit schizophrenic in terms of who I'm making the thing for because I had a very clear idea in my head of who I was making Selma for it's making some before my father and black people in Lowndes County and Alabama making sure that they saw themselves and I want everybody to enter into that but it was for a specific same with middle you know what I mean same with I will follow the films before that but wrinkle in time is different you know what I mean I mean wrinkle in time is the first time that I'm playing with a knight even Queen sugar it's very specific I love it when all kinds of people tell me they love it but I have a target the wrinkle tart I mean the the wrinkle and time target is my for the first time my target is it's like all those lights up there there are all these colors trying to hit everybody and when I say everybody that doesn't mean you know just the larger of white world like it was on a reservation last year and it's like if you think black people have a bad in terms of representation or Latino people like when's the last time you saw a native family doing anything you know what I mean so it's like in this I'm trying to make it so that anyone that watches this film anyone sees a little bit of themselves in it you know our lead little boy who in the book is a little he's like a little red-haired boy is a Filipino American actor you know storm read the main girl is you know a black african-american actress one of the mrs. these ethereal beings that come to guide guide the little girl through the universe as a Southeast Asian woman Mindy Kaling I mean Disney did great by allowing me to try to hit all those targets and they want to hear all those targets too that's a different muscle for me because I never have been that let me do you feel like when you are writing for your books are different than do you feel like your books are different from no it's always the same it's what you writing for I think of when I was say young and in college and I was at Howard University and I was you know in to go see a film like Sankofa I was at how when I came out you were surrounded by so much intellect and not the same kind of intellect like different you know ways of seeing the world your brothel was there and like that was not represented out in the broader world at that time in any you know real sort of way and feeling having feelings about the world based on that and wondering am I crazy because because this is not representative in any sort of you know mainstream you know outlet or or again you know I think about writing to say that personnel you're not crazy you're not the things you feel like when I wrote like like when I did the case for reference when I when I wrote that the feeling was yes you've been robbed you knew it the whole time you were right you know like that sneaking feeling you had it was you know when the hairs went up on your back you were right and here's the math to you know actually show yeah so you saying you're writing for people I am yeah I am but I don't obviously you know I don't know a single writer or a single you know filmmaker get over say you know I I don't want people to come and see exclusion yeah absolutely not no no it's your voice in your mind's eye and your creative mind's eye that sits in the back when you're engaged in this and you're writing you know you were writing to inform and to validate and to a blip like what you said no you're exactly right you're exactly right but these are the people I knew you know what I mean when I was being formed and so it's very hard to think of it in any sort of way I have to actually some and if you don't want to answer I completely understand but you know I'm thinking about it and it's slightly off topic how have you processed this news around Harvey Weinstein this was the women and children behind bars and I'm so sorry we haven't talked very much about that but I if you don't want to I well no I'm happy to answer it it wasn't shocking not in the instance of him I mean some of the revelations have been really like well the stories are dropping I always knew him around town you know the word is that he was gruff you know what I mean aggressive did anything to get his way but I don't find that to be different from a lot of you know the people in power in in Hollywood so I never you know I never really defined that as differently as how so many of the others work I didn't have any I've not had any context as a black woman in the industry being approached in that kind of aggressive sexual manner by white men in power and now black men in power are differently and and so that's like completely foreign to me hearing the stories of those women experiencing that I think for me it's a larger question of and what I've really been talking to friends about is what have we allowed in the industry to happen and sale that that's just the way it is you know I started this as a black woman filmmaker making films for less than $100,000 right in a in the independency in the black independent scene then you move in kind of the white independent scene the Sundance and stuff and then they start liking your stuff then you move in you find yourself working with studios and you gradually are moving through it then you find yourself in rooms with folks that you hear these stories about and what are you whatever what are you to do this is the way it is you hear that this is the way it is and I am having to unpack that and say I walked into it and accepted that that's the way it was and just kind of got in line with look I work in a den of sharks like you know of all these sharks and I just have to try to find a way to get my work through and squeeze it out but that perhaps there's more that we need to be doing there's more that we can be saying I'm really interrogating the idea of silence and when we are quiet because the only thing that we have are our voices especially now when the very things that we hold dear are slipping off of their foundation in the society and so I feel like at any point when you say something that's wrong what this has shown me weinstein Trump all of this is I just gotta say something over my mouth and say something in whatever way through my work through a tweet in talking with someone just not let things slide even the little things cuz the little fissures becomes crap become cracks and divides so that's what it's really meant to me I mean yes the women they're horrible stories and I stand in solidarity with the women and you know but even further than that I feel like some of the things that are being done in terms of the stripping of his memberships and affiliations are cosmetic and they're making everybody feel good like we did this but she really didn't do anything you know and so until we as an industry decide that we're really going to do something I say we because I participate in it then I feel like it's a lot of a lot of cover as opposed to two real foundational work I think one of the really revealing things about this for me is how structural it was so guy has like spies who are investigating the journalists you know I'm out like yesterday yeah yeah exactly they're people who are setting up the meetings there's a structure to it there's not just one guy you know going around groping people you know it's an entire you know icon around it yes yes yes yes of power and I think you know just further to your point here people have difficulty with structure they have no right as you say stripping away membership this is a bad guy but I just you know and I'm not from here I wonder what is the architecture of a town that allows for the construction or something like that over a number of years so I'm really interested because you know live in live live here work here everyday and interested in how people on the outside of it looking in are seeing it I mean I don't think it's dissimilar to kind of the structure of of anything of when we're talking about you know the cross the state and incarceration and all that goes around it you know it's it's so over there right that that people are able to kind of look at it and comment on it and feel bad about it and donate something and watch 13th and be like that is horrible I it moved me so much and God bless you and I and and usually my question is so you know it was made to activate it was made to trigger it was made to you know ask you to face yourself and to ask how you are participating in this in so many ways and it is made to make it clear you can no longer say you didn't know you can't say you didn't know anymore because now you know and so if you now decide not to do anything then that is clearly and squarely on you and you were on the wrong side of history with this it's it's as if you know during slavery you know you're sitting over here and people could say I didn't know all those bad things were going on I just didn't know about it but we've now said it's very clear you know I put it on Netflix so it has the you just platform it can have in terms of it was released in 190 countries on the same day I can see who watched it I know who how many people have watched it and where and where they live and it's all they've watched it and so what are we doing now and what I regret is that I feel like we got to talk about Trump you got to say something about him everybody wants to hear you say something but I feel like we were on an edge like we were on a especially around this issue the bipartisan support that we explore and kind of interrogate and try to get underneath and see what that really was and and really just showing what was happening on the grassroots level and academic level and historically around this championing the voices like Angela Davis who have been out in front of this for decades decades and decades and and and the great work of Michelle Alexander just everyone has been doing and then it just feels like like when I watched 13th now I think I made in such a place of a hope that there would be a forward movement and it seems like even things that are in the film now it's a backslide from even that moment and it wasn't even a year ago the film didn't even come out a year ago it always felt like an illusion to me not the 13th but the notion that there was this moment of bipartisan hope around this stuff and it always felt like an illusion because the carceral state came out of deep biases and preferences within bone-deep stuff stuff that goes back to the founding of the country and notion that folks would suddenly get religion questions about we asked those questions and trying to figure out what's under that whole bipartisan piece of it but the bottom line is you need whatever they were it's just like like Hollywood stripping memberships and doing all these all the surface things you you that that are kind of the first step to maybe some real foundational work that stuff was happening the cursory stuff was happening and what the structure the structure was juncture could move in that place not even having the cursory stuff now you're backsliding on that I mean you got to think about like the size it is like you know that like when I think from the report okay so I think we are at roughly 750 per 100,000 that's our cost alright this is you know as I'm sure everybody in this room knows that's you know the highest cost roll rate in the world we have significantly less people than China we incarcerate significantly more people than China and this period you know began right after the civil rights movement which I'm so it's just a coincidence there's no reason why that what happened this is sociologist DV page and she did this research and if you like if we D car serrated back to the level where we were in the early 70s which is about two hundred four hundred thousand which is where the rest of the rest of Western world is the number of people who would be out in the world is more than you could fill all the fast food jobs in America five times over with those people you're talking about warehousing I'm not being rhetorical you really are you're talking about labor problems you're talking about white people in you know these rural areas who do not have jobs and so you can truck the basically a jobs program you know you're talking about black people who you don't want to give jobs to so you ship them away you know out of the neighborhoods that sounds extreme and I would have thought that was extreme you know some years ago but it's quite a bit of you know research on this to show how do you wind that back man you know how I mean this is like this is what these people are here to figure yeah I mean this is what we all have to figure out you know and especially in this in this time and space that we're in so much to hold on to by way of someone just tweeted the other day that social media and our access to technology has done more to advance the images of black people positive images of black people than 120 years of the film industry right just us in this moment being able to share ourselves with one another right our thoughts freely unencumbered by you know the mechanism by which we usually had to go through to speak in film in literature and what have you you know self-publishing independent films social media we there's more of us out there authored by us which is so important and so I feel like that's going to be the key it's the voice the voices being asserted dynamically independently boldly bravely and by any means necessary in any way that we can well as Ava said not letting anything slide a vein lettin nothing slide so you not either thank you we could do this all day but thank the sane times are kicking us off 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Channel: AtlanticLIVE

Views: 16,915

Rating: 4.8494625 out of 5

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Id: WtM7B5_D4e0

Length: 33min 43sec (2023 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2017