No More Films About Us, Without Us: For Filmmakers, Programmers, and Funders
Challenging our Documentary Community to Inevitable Change
At the end of February 2019, as part of NeXt Doc, a fellowship that seeks to empower 20-to-24-year-old documentary filmmakers of color, I attended the True/False Documentary Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri through its Jumpstarter Program.
As a graduating senior at UNC-Chapel Hill and lead producer of a film called “Silence Sam,” a student-led documentary about the systemic suppression of student activism around “Silent Sam,” the Confederate monument whose pedestal until January 2019 stood at the entrance of our campus, I was interested in watching a documentary I saw was screening at the festival called “The Commons” about protests surrounding “Silent Sam.”
Made by two filmmakers living in Chapel Hill, the film used verite footage of protests in two public spaces on campus surrounding the removal of Silent Sam; the Pit and the quad around Silent Sam’s territory. Three student activists “emerged as characters” (In the words of the filmmakers during the first Q & A) in the film; Maya Little, Michelle Brown and Angum Check.
Having been involved in the movement, I knew the context of the protests unfolding on screen. The calls from the police “Move Back” made me clutch my knees in the theater seat. I choked when I heard the coughs of my peers, remembering the way police pepper sprayed a crowd of students peacefully protesting after officers escorted pro-Confederate supporters to their cars. And, I held my breath each time I saw my dear friends Maya, Michelle, and Angum, former and current student organizers on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus, appeared on screen.
I discovered the next morning that neither Maya, Michelle nor Angum had any idea their images had been appropriated in a documentary shown at a film festival they had never even heard of.
On Saturday, in the midst of heavy consultation and support from allies and all of the NeXt Doc Fellows, I co-wrote a statement with current and former student organizers of UNC-Chapel Hill, including Maya, Michelle and Angum, detailing the filmmakers’ extractive practices, and the harm and injustices perpetrated both in the creation of the film and in the portrayal of our movement.
On Sunday, while NeXt Doc Fellows held up signs reading #decolonizedocs, I read that statement on stage beside the two filmmakers of “The Commons” (Full Q & A here).
At the end of the statement, Jenny Jay, also a 2019 NeXt Doc fellow, led a call-and-response with other NeXt Doc fellows in the audience, addressing the field and asserting our collective responsibility — as filmmakers, programmers, funders, and audience members — to eradicating extractive practices from our field.
The makers of “The Commons” committed many injustices.
Without the knowledge of Maya, Michelle and Angum, the student organizers who were featured heavily in the film, and without the consultation of our campus community, the filmmakers were given platforms to show their work and speak at both Big Sky Film Festival and True/False Film Festival. They were lauded for their efforts, profiting off past conflict and continuing persecution student organizers face on UNC-Chapel Hill campus.
Regardless of the filmmakers’ intention (The filmmakers said they did not seek context for their film), showing our protests without the context of the other work our campus organizers have consistently engaged in presented a stereotypical narrative of students and people of color unable or unwilling to engage “civilly” to reach our aims for safety and equity.
Their narrative undermines those most directly affected by the school organized-police infiltrations of peaceful student sit-ins, blatant overreach of university and city police forces, and the struggles of students of color who have had to be reminded, nearly a century and a half after the Civil War, their University’s administrators continue to prioritize a symbol of black intimidation, of trauma and blood, a symbol of proudly “horse-whipping a negro wench” over their own black students and other students of color.
The lack of context in this scenario dehumanized those students and people of color. That dehumanization is part of colonization, the continued colonization within our nation and our field. Colonizing includes erasing the humanness of certain groups, so that their “strangeness” or “uniqueness” becomes an excuse not to value their rights or to even acknowledge those groups have rights.
The filmmakers’ injustices feed into a system of injustices which has made these practices excusable in our field.
It is 2019, y’all.
In 2019, there is no excuse for not demanding every documentary film made about systemically silenced communities have members of that community in a position of decision-making before, during, and after making the film. In 2019, there is no excuse for programmers to program films or for funding agencies to fund films that cannot pass this requirement, understanding that involving those community members should go deeper than consultations until the community ultimately has the power to make the most-important decisions even if you disagree.
The purpose of documentary is not the documentarian. It is not the filmmaker. It is holding power accountable and showing the truth of who we are and who we were at a certain time, and recognizing it is those truths which help us learn, heal and build solidarity with each other.
If the community is not present to check those mainstream identities, how can we, as documentarians expect to film and edit truth, as close as we can get to it? If programmers do not interrogate, how can the programmers know if they are programming truth or re-asserting a dangerous stereotype? No film festival is just a film festival. It is also an awards ceremony, each screening applauding the patterns of work an institution wants to see continued. You hold the responsibility to watch the patterns you applaud to be continued. As many others have, I believe we have the ability to sort out the weeds ourselves.
We have to change the typical. Changing the typical means pulling at the colonial roots of our field; white supremacy, ableism, ageism, American cultural imperialism, unchecked power. Those roots must be ripped out. I realize how scary that call is to some people. Those systems are part of the reason why many exist where there are today. Decolonizing our field requires those in positions of potential reach to intentionally share that influence with those communities historically left out of that influence. The betterment of our field requires making that sharing typical, remembering once again the field is not about you.
In 2019, our decolonizing work needs to extend beyond panels and discussions. Let equity be the fire to your fuel. Then, challenge the rules until the heat of that fire scares you. Be honest when change means you lose your seat at the table and that potential loss sparks fear.
There is a future of documentary. Many of our future are here now. We are filmmakers, programmers, radical onlookers and supporters — young people. Bring us in. “Nothing about us without us is for us” applies here too. Nothing about the future of documentary without the future of documentary is for the future of documentary.
What happened at True/False has always been about more than this film and my campus. It has always been about the industry and our community. All of you, all of us are included in the responsibility to make sure these practices do not continue. Not in 2019. Not in 2020 or any year after. Never again.
