Standard disclaimer! I am incapable of doing this type of thing without some use of spoilers. You have been warned.
The Pan African Film Festival website can be found here. It is not dial-up friendly, and there's nothing you can do to stop that irritating song from launching every single time you click a page. Make your peace with that before you clicky.
The definition of terms can be found here.
The no blogging on weekends anymore rule is suspended during film festivals.
Film Banished
Director Marco Williams
Editors Kathryn Bamier, Sandra Christie
Principles Elliot Jaspin, the Strickland family, the Cobb family, Phil Bettis, the coroner in Pierce City, a few others but I can't remember the names.
Awards None that I could find, but it just came out.
Genre: Documentary, history
Country: USA
While weeding the landscaping at 6:30 in the morning y'day, the thought hit that this film got out at around 2:30 p.m. and the next one I was to see didn't start until 3:50 p.m. That left a 50-minute window, plenty of time to run out of the theater, zoom over to Esowon and catch Walter Mosley's appearance! And that is just what I did, except for the part where I then managed to make it back to see Pieces d'Identites, because I didn't. What happened was I realized during the Esowon talk that something was wrong, and that was because the last time I had eaten was 5 in the morning. So I went back home to eat (I couldn't take one more day of mall food) thinking I'll just grab something out of the fridge and just be a little bit late for the next movie. But when I got home I also sat down on the couch for some reason, and that was all she wrote. Next thing I knew it was 11:45 a.m. on Sunday morning and the cat was sitting on my chest yowling for me to get up and feed him. So there will be no reports on Pieces d'Identites or on Nailed. Sorry. Though I've picked the three movies I wanted to see today, as of this moment I must admit to exhaustion. Chances are very good I'm not going to leave the house for any Sunday screenings.
The first thing to say is so far this is the best movie I've seen at PAFF. When it hits your local PBS station, you MUST tune in. When the dvd comes out, you must buy it and when you have people over for dinner you must make them watch it, too. If you are in LA you have one more chance to see this at PAFF on Feb. 19, 11 a.m., theater #2. You should go.
The next thing to say is one of the reporters in this movie, Elliot "Pulitzer" Jaspin, has a book coming out about this topic sometime this year. When Buried in the Bitter Waters, The Hidden History of Racial Cleansings in America, comes out, you have to buy it and read it.
The topic! In America, there's Public History and then they're Everybody Else's History. (Last year, when rambling about another topic, I touched a bit on that here.) Public history is centered on Ye Founding Fathers and on the various waves of European immigrants who came after that first Mayflower Invasion. Everybody Else's History is centered on the brown people in America (be they black, indigenous, Mexican or Asian) who were also here from day one (or day two), but their stories are not woven into the base historical narrative. A lot of people have to discover EHH details by accident, or by making a deliberate effort to go find it.
Black Americans have the biggest EEH because of the whole slavery thing. The fallout all goes back to that first shipment in 1619 and frankly I don't care how much others would like for us to stop bringing that up. One element of the black American EEH centers on the forced removal of black people from settlements and cities throughout the nation, which happened through the collusion of our legal, legislative and law enforcement systems more than willing to turn a blind eye to acts of violence against blacks that result in white people/Power coming out of the tragedies with more than they had. Media was also a part of the deliberate effort to obscure these facts. Though a lot of black people know these things happened, (and are still happening in less violent ways), most of the general public never even heard of these events until Rosewood came out.
(And here is something that was way too long which I redacted right before I pushed 'publish post', mainly because it drifted a wee bit off point from the film, though it is related to issues brought up by the film. I think I want to come back to it down the road somehow in a more thoughtful way. I'm keeping this here to remind myself to attempt to do so. Maybe.)
"Banished" also generated a few contenders for the BGF Central Best Quote of the Festival: How do you make reconciliation to people not there? and I thought of this in terms of money being asked to do what money can't do. and Even the best people in town had the N-word in their vocabulary. There was also a great quote about land and what it means down through the generations when land is stolen, but it was too long for me to remember the whole thing and replicate here.
The approach! Williams focuses on three all white areas - Pierce City in Missouri, Forsyth County in Georgia and Harrison County in Arkansas. For two of the spots he uses the experiences of two black families as narrative. One was tracking back how land that is now extremely valuable came to be out of the family's ownership and the possession of white people This family knew of the the forced removal of their ancestors, primarily because the grandmother, who lived through it and talked about it to her family. The other group is trying to locate the grave of their great grandfather in the graveyard of an all white town in order to relocate those remains to a graveyard elsewhere in the state where the family is now based. This family had no clue of the violence that was at the root of the family's relocation because their ancestors never talked about it. For the third narrative Williams focuses on the fallout from an event, an MLK brotherhood march that goes horribly awry (predictably so to all but the guy who put it together).
The overall approach is tightly focused. Personal journeys blend with talking heads of lawyers & academics & religious persons who provide context. There is news footage, and a good use of clips from early era newspapers reporting on the expulsions when they happened. The current-day reporters at the center of each of the three revelations discuss not only their discovery of the hidden history of their communities, but how dealing with this information made them feel personally. We also get a sense of how much crap these reporters had to deal with for their act of race betrayal. (See, part of the PH/EEH is that the white person who talks about EHH has committed a crime against the tribe. That person and/or that person's institution often gets turned upon by the group.)
The good stuff! I could go on and on and on, but let me try to hold myself to just the highlights. The candor of pretty much everyone interviewed in this film is jaw-droppingly wonderful, and I doubt I can emphasize enough that impact. I'm not talking about the KKK guy, but other people, the regular folks who are not members of supremacist groups. For example, Williams interviews an east-coast retiree who explains that he picked that community to settle in mainly because it doesn't have any black people. Williams goes to some sort of community center to talk folks about the history of their town. They freely talk about it, but at the same time, over and again these people trip up when they would normally say "nigger," but won't say that because the switch in their head flipped just in time for them to remember that there's a black guy with a camera interviewing them. The levels of verbal stumbling they do until they do TO A PERSON before they settle on 'colored' is hilarious. (Obtaining candor in cross-racial interviewing can be difficult. When dealing with topics of race it's not easy to get the interviewee to share what they actually think as opposed to what they think they should say. That's one of the reasons Two Towns of Jasper, made by the same guy, used two crews - one black and one white. This applies to a lot of cross-whatever interviewing, but that's a topic you can learn more about elsewhere.)
The audience I was with was very much engaged, laughing, applauding, hissing and talking back at the screen. (For those who asked, this is the main reason one goes to see certain movies at Magic's theater.)
The way Williams constructs the film one feels actual suspense in some of the narratives, something unusual in a documentary.
The opening credits rocked, using a mock early-era newspaper layout interspersed with b/w drawings of expulsions. Throughout the entire film we get to see lots and lots of photos of black people from the era under examination. (I'm always tickled looking at pictures of black people in Edwardian clothes. I have no idea why this is.)
None of the talking head experts are dull, managing to convey needed information and context without the Drone Effect. They all have some bit of personality and/or passion that comes through.
Loved the grandmother in the Strickland family, and the young man who did most of the talking for that family. Very much liked each of the reporters, and the sequence where Jaspin calmly lays out the paperwork in front of Bettis while asking him very pointed and uncomfortable questions, I wanted to cheer. I'm not going to the full details around that moment here in part because this entry is probably long enough already, but mostly because you need to experience the full punch of the Bettis/Strickland/governor's commission arc for yourself. Trust me, it'll be fun!
The coroner in Pierce City struck me quite a bit. He was the *only* official who got that what the Cobbs were asking for came down to it being about the family's heart needs, and not about the city's reputational needs. The moment he makes that leap is captured right there on film when he's looking at the printout of the actual newspaper article from the time of the incident. There's a sequence after everything is done where where his raw "I don't know" honesty can almost wipe you out. And the moment where he realizes the Cobb family has done a number on him, where for a second his expression is one of regretting everything he did to help them, is also poignant. To me, the Cobb brothers did to that man was absolutely wrong. As I type I doubt I'm going to articulate this well on the fly, but what the hell. What the Cobbs did to that coroner was shit. The one white guy in a position of power, the one who Gets It decides to use the authority of his office to make it easier for the Cobbs to recover their grandfather's remains, got put in a terrible position because of the Cobbs' inability/refusal to recognize the import of his actions. That man put himself on the line in a way. No other white person in that entire town got what the Cobbs effort was truly about, or frankly, gave a fuck. The others were only concerned about the town's money and the town's reputation. I understand why the Cobbs had a high level of distrust, particularly in light of what the cemetery officials did to them when they first showed up, and what that ridiculous woman seeking 'compromise' and appeasement said and did. But the coroner was the only person who was not their enemy (so to speak) the only one who used the system to do the right thing instead of looking for a way to use the system for delay and barricade. I don't think it's a stretch to say that if the coroner had not stepped up, to this day the Cobb family might still be fighting for the right to access those remains.
The plot holes! This space intentionally left blank. Really, I got nothin' here.
The music! I know there was music. Had I written this up y'day I'd probably remember what it was. Perhaps that means it didn't irritate or impress me enough to remember the impact of the score the next day.
Application of the First Rule: High
Application of the Sledgehammer Rule: Low. Asking the KKK guy for his opinion if Williams built a house next door was a bit SR. It is possible one could view the brief scene where Williams is at an outdoor market buying food and the camera shows white people staring at him with confusion as they walk by, as hammer-y. I don't.
Reaction of 13-year-old boy who is my inner essence: If I had written this up yesterday I could answer that. This category is very much dependent on instant response. Too much time has passed for me to be able to give an unfiltered response.
Application of Julia Phillips rule: Low. Television or dvd is fine.
Die Whitey index: High. See above, but let me add this bit in here, too...
There's a wonderful part where a consultant brought in to work with the town's commission is trying to explain to them why they cannot blame their image problems on the Klan. He flat-out tells them that white supremacist
groups do not operate openly and above ground in communities where they
know they are not welcome. An unsettling silence falls over the table,
and the meeting is adjourned. (And here is the second time we remove something that was way too long and drifty right before pushing 'publish post'.)
The movie ends with text-overs pointing out that German government has paid reparations to Holocaust victims who lost lives and property during WWII; the American government set up a federal commission to look into the facts surrounding Japanese Americans who lost property during WWII, resulting in survivors and descendants being paid reparations; the US court system dismissed a reparations case to the descendants of the black survivors and descendants of the Tulsa, Okla. riots; and that in 15 years of trying (at the time the documentary was finished that is, we're up to Year 18 now) H.R. 40, federal legislation which would set up a commission to look at the impact of slavery on the political, economic and social fabric of the American landscape has failed to be approved by Congress.
Eighteen years, and the House and Senate refuses to even look at the data. Funny old world.
Hotness index: N/A
Additional PAFF screenings: Feb. 19, 11 a.m. GO.
Was Quentin there? Nope
Random tidbit: I should have told Walter Mosley to tell Betsy Mitchell I said hi next time he talked to her, but because he was trying to remember where he had met me before - and I was trying VERY HARD to distract him from recalling the details of that incident - I forgot. I just got my books signed and shook his hand and gushed and fled. Wuss, thy name is BGF!! (I had him sign Dark Matter II for me, Cinnamon Kiss for the landlord and 47 for the children of the sibling.)
