In this episode of Documentary First, host Christian Taylor interviews acclaimed documentary filmmaker, writer, photographer, and cultural documentarian Alan Govenar—a storyteller with a 44-year career devoted to preserving overlooked American lives and histories.

The conversation centers on Govenar’s powerful film Quiet Voices in a Noisy World, which examines the struggle for change in Jasper, Texas, and the long shadow of racial violence on a community searching for truth, healing, and forward movement.

Govenaris the president of Documentary Arts, a nonprofit media production company. He and Christian explore what it means to document communities with integrity—earning trust, listening deeply, and building narratives that uplifts the voices of others.

Links:

Documentary Arts: Documentary Arts, Inc. > Home

Cigarette Blues: Cigarette Blues (Short 1985) ⭐ 6.8 | Short, Documentary

Stoney Knows How: Stoney Knows How (Short 1981) ⭐ 7.8 | Documentary, Short

Truth In Photography: TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Quiet Voices in A Noisy World: Quiet Voices in a Noisy World (2025) | Documentary , Quiet Voices in a Noisy World

DocuView Déjà Vu

“Night & Fog, 1956, 32 mins, French Short, Watch on HBO MAX, IMDB Link: Night and Fog (Short 1956) ⭐ 8.6 | Documentary, Short, History

Time Codes

00:00 — Meet Alan Govenar + why his work matters

02:49 — How Alan found documentary storytelling

05:26 — The evolution of documentary arts (film, photo, writing, music)

08:08 — Mentorship, networking, and learning the craft

10:48 — Distribution realities filmmakers don’t talk about enough

13:23 — Documentary arts as community impact

16:14 — Preserving African-American history in Texas

19:01 — Community, photography, and who gets seen

21:42 — Juneteenth, local history, and cultural memory

24:30 — Personal reflections on race and community

27:04 — Storytelling as cultural dialogue

30:11 — Upcoming projects + what’s next

34:03 — Jasper and the legacy of racial violence

40:13 — The art of documentary storytelling (craft + ethics)

41:51 — Hope and resilience as a creative engine

45:38 — The power of music in documentaries

51:06 — Community connection and cultural preservation

57:33 — DocuView Déjà Vu Recommendation

Sponsor: Virgil Films http://www.virgilfilms.com/

Support us by buying merch or watching our films: https://documentaryfirst.com/

Hi everybody, welcome to Documentary First.

2

This is Christian Taylor.

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I am a documentary filmmaker and this is the podcast where we like to talk about all

things documentary filmmaking.

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And today I'm super happy to have an incredibly talented documentary filmmaker with me

today who has a long and distinguished career in this field, over 44 years actually.

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And his name is

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uh Alan and he is with us all the way from where are you Alan?

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currently in Texas.

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Texas.

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He's established himself as an award-winning filmmaker and photographer known for

elevating overlooked American stories through films, books and exhibitions.

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His upcoming slate is really exceptional and includes the world premiere of Seeing

Progress, The Struggle for Change in Jasper, Texas.

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And that's one thing we're going to talk about today.

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New book releases like Maude Stevens Wagner, The Mona Lisa of American Tattoo and the

major exhibition Everyday Culture.

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seven projects of documentary arts.

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Alan is also a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow with more than 20 documentary films, over 40

published works of fiction and nonfiction, and an artistic reach spanning stage works and

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pivotal archives of African-American photography.

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What makes him stand out is not just the breadth of his work, but is a dedication to

capturing stories often pushed to the margins.

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His initiatives like the museum street culture and documentary arts continue to inspire

dialogue and community engagement.

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He's also connected to a vibrant audience of film and photography enthusiasts, historians

and art professionals, nearly 500 strong across his network.

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And so here, think uh this is a retrospective, this is a film, a retrospective week at

cinema village.

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Is that coming up or has that already happened?

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Now it's coming up November 14th to 20th and this will be the world premiere.

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The title of the film that you reference, Seeing Progress, the title has evolved as the

concept has grown and the film is now called Quiet Voices in a Noisy World, The Struggle

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for Change in Jasper, Texas.

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And the title for this film,

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was one that was generated through my ideas and through the dialogues of the people I was

documenting.

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And ultimately, since it was about them, I wanted them to have a kind of veto power on

what the title became.

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And this current title has great appeal because they are people with quiet voices who are

making a huge difference in their world.

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Yes.

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All right, everybody welcome, Allen Governor.

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ah Allen, thank you so much for all the work that you have been doing.

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Can you talk to me a little bit about your, you know, entree into this field, to this work

and how you started a little bit?

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Our audience really does, uh is interested in how to get going in this business and how to

uh make a career of working in documentary films.

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So talk to us a little bit about how you got started.

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For me, over the years, my work has grown organically.

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And documentary, for me, has a multifaceted meaning and meanings.

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So the arc of my growth begins when I was a teenager.

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When I was 17, I started writing poetry.

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When I was 18, I started my first book.

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At the time it was a poem, became a story, and finally it was published as a novel this

last spring, 52 years later.

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And it's a novel called Come Round Right.

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And it's a novel that's based on true events.

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It's set in the fictional past of 1970 and the fictional present of 1971.

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to coming of age story.

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Well, so never give up on what you've started.

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It's the moral there.

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And so for me, experience is documentary.

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What we live every day is in some sense, documentary.

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It's filtering our experience into different media.

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So my first media was poetry, stories, fiction.

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I later started writing plays.

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The joy for me is in the making.

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And I love exploring different media, not just for the sake of the medium, but as a

response to what I'm experiencing.

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And so the choice of medium has always been driven by the subject matter.

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And while I take great pleasure in inventing stories,

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I love hearing other people's and so much of my work, whether it be oral histories or

works that I do in musical theater.

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films, photographs, that's what I'm trying to bring forth.

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So it is this view, in some sense it's like a kaleidoscope.

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And so how were you able to get to a place where you could uh make a living off of this,

you know, passion and art that you were drawn to and called to?

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Well, I did a lot of different things along the way.

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initially, I started writing magazine articles and newspaper articles.

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And as my ambitions and aspirations grew, um I needed to find a way to travel.

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So I started writing travel articles.

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I also started working in radio.

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Okay.

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and doing little radio shows.

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And I pursued a career with the thought that I was going to become a college professor.

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So I had been a teacher in university and junior colleges.

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And I eventually was able to get a PhD in 1984.

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By then, my first book was published, Stony Knows How Life as a Tattoo Artist, and my

first film premiered at Film Forum in New York City.

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It was a film that I made while I was teaching at an art college in Ohio, and I received

my first NEA grant.

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So how did you go from just writing into, okay, I'm just gonna make this into a film?

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That's not often the jump that you make, know, just from, okay, I'm gonna make a film

without having the knowledge of how to do that.

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Well, I went through, I will say, different film crews, because I really didn't know how

to do it.

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When I was getting my master's degree in Austin in 1974, 75, there was a sociology

professor who had one of these Sony Porta Packs.

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And, you know, it was portable, but it weighed about 50 pounds.

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It was in a huge backpack.

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And I had been writing about tattooing, working on this book about this hunchback dwarf

tattoo artist, Stoney Sinclair.

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And I was in a graduate seminar and I got the, you know, talked to this professor and he

let me borrow this equipment.

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And I took it to San Antonio.

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and I did my first little movie.

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In a way, it was like an actuality movie because I didn't move around much.

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It didn't have much of a tripod and was not.

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It was a little unwieldy.

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I made a little video about Honest Charlie.

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So it was interested in the form.

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And then.

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By the time I decided I wanted to make.

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oh a more complete film, I was teaching part-time at an art college.

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I was teaching humanities to art students.

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And the college, because of the nature of the subject matter, was skeptical about being

involved.

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And they agreed to be the fiscal agent for my grant on the condition that they never

receive a credit in the final film.

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Wow.

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So after several missteps in trying to make the movie, I decided I wanted to go the route

of maybe someone who I really admire will want to get involved.

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And that person for me was Les Blank.

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And I met another filmmaker, Pacio Lane in Austin, who had worked with Les on his Chulas

Fronteras movie.

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and Les was interested in this.

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Les became my mentor in filmmaking.

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Yes, networking and mentoring, find whenever I ask filmmakers these questions, it often

comes back to that.

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And Les not only shot the film, it was edited by Paccio, ah but Les also lent me the money

to finish it.

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And then he premiered it with two of his movies at Film Forum in 1981.

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And Vincent Camby, reviewing this whole trio of movies, gave an amazing paragraph about

this film, Stony Knows How.

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In the following spring, it was

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shown as part of the new director series at MoMA.

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And Les continued to be an advocate for the film.

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And we continued to know each other for the rest of his life.

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And his son, Howard Blank, now distributes my short films.

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Les was very special.

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Les and I also made another short film together called Cigarette Blues.

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It just a six minute film that was commissioned by the Dallas Museum of Art.

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And so I was fortunate that I was able to meet someone, and particularly someone I totally

admired.

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When I was in graduate school in Austin, I remembered seeing his films in unconventional

places.

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soap Greek saloon, other places, outdoor screenings, smell around events.

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Les was one of a kind and he was a mentor, a colleague and a dear friend.

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That is an incredible blessing.

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There is no question about that for sure.

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Now you mentioned this distributor for your short films.

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What is that company called?

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Because a lot of people ask me where they can distribute short films and I don't have a

good answer for them.

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Well, it's Les Blank films and it's run by Howard Blank, but I'm not sure to the extent to

which he distributes other films than Les's films.

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you know, he distributes mine because I worked with Les.

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So I really don't know that much about that, but it is, it's very difficult to get your

work into distribution.

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em And even with the making of that first film,

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I ended up giving up all ownership of that film for 10 years.

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10 years later, I was able to pay back the money to get 50 % ownership in this movie.

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And so it was challenging.

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But flash forward, that film has been in distribution now for 40 years.

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The book that I did on Stony was just published in its 40th anniversary edition.

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ah

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It was worth all the effort, for sure.

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sounds like it.

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So, and the hopes for your works when you think about, um you know, what you hope people

will take away just from all of the things that you've done.

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You had a huge breadth of works, be it written or visual.

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um You know, is it, is there a monetary hope for return?

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Is it a change in culture?

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What are your main goals for the works that you do?

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Well, that's also evolved organically.

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And so I've made a living doing a number of different things.

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And so in part, I learned that from Les.

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I mean, Les, you know, had all kinds of merchandise and posters and t-shirts and mugs.

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you know, he understood his audience.

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But as he told me, probably from a financial standpoint, he

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did the best when he was doing personal appearances, to some extent.

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And I've had broadcast documentaries and in 1985, I started an organ, the nonprofit called

Documentary Arts.

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And Documentary Arts was founded to present

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new perspectives on historical issues, diverse cultures, to broaden public knowledge and

appreciation of the arts of different cultures and all media.

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So documentary arts became an umbrella for my work and I was able to apply for grants.

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By design, I was never a full-time executive director.

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of Documentary Arts, which continues today.

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I, like everyone else who works for Documentary Arts as a contract employee, and our

projects ebb and flow.

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And I've done projects, multimedia projects.

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I did two 52-part radio series that back in the day, in 91 and 92, were on over 150

stations across the country.

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and was very much into community radio.

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So obviously that world has evolved.

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Now we have the podcast, which is total, which is in a sense radio, but it's more in the

also I think can be less perhaps, but it's something new for me.

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ah So it was always very balanced.

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I didn't want to be in conflict.

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you know, and I didn't want to have being conflict of interest to myself.

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And so films that I got grants to make through documentary arts are, you know, are

copyrighted to documentary arts.

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I want to perpetuate this in many ways.

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I hope that documentary arts can be a model for sustainable model of nonprofit management.

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Yeah, I was very curious about it because it was actually mentioned uh in the film that I

watched, Quiet Voices.

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uh As I recall, there was a woman in there that talked about uh the photography that was

not documented until documentary arts had come along and began doing that.

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And I didn't understand who that was.

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And as I then began researching you, I was trying to put two and two together and it

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then I wondered, were you the first person that had come through there and began

documenting their history there?

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Well, that movie covers 30 years of work.

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I noticed that.

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Is that 30 years of your work?

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Primarily, yes.

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But, you know, in the context of, you know, the intense tragedy that happened in Jasper,

Texas, but the earlier history of virulent racial violence in that area juxtaposed to

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these people in their 70s and 80s who were volunteers trying to reclaim their own history.

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I went to Jasper for the first time in 1996.

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And backing up a bit further, when I started documentary arts in 1985, in part, I had a

mission to document the work of African-American photographers in Texas.

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I had gotten a commission in 1984, year earlier, from the Dallas Museum of Art to do a

project called Living Texas Blues.

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that included three short films, one of which I did with Les, Cigarette Blues, and a small

book and an anthology of cassette.

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At the same time, there was a two-volume history of Texas photography being published.

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And I talked to these curators who were from major institutions in the state, and they

said that they didn't have any black photographers in their books because they only had

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time to look through

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existing collections, which meant that in 1984 there were no known black photographers in

an existing public collection in Texas.

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And so I started tracking down black photographers through business directories and it

became a major project of documentary arts.

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And our first major touring exhibition was called the Early Years of Rhythm and Blues, the

photographs of Benny Joseph.

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and that toured over six years to 29 different venues around the United States and was

presented in Europe and France and England.

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And it really thrust documentary arts forward.

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And the collection continued to grow.

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In 1995, after meeting with a committee of people who

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on the Documentary Arts Board and other professionals, it became clear that there wasn't

really an institution that could really handle and process and make accessible these

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collections, which were endangered, that I'd been identified and that had been gifted to

the nonprofit.

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My wife, artist Kalida Doolin and I founded the Texas African American Photography Archive

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Hmm.

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We, uh over subsequent years, were one of the only independent archives in the United

States to be funded by the National Archives in Washington.

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And so we had three and a half years funding.

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And the last phase of it was our archivist, John Slate, working in historically Black

colleges.

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There was a black history professor at Wiley College, the oldest black college west of the

Mississippi, whose wife was from Jasper, Texas.

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And she knew of a widow of the local photographer who'd been her photographer, Alonzo

Jordan.

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And a storm, he had died in the 80s and a storm had ripped off the roof of his barber

shop.

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was also a barber.

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I mean, he's part of the subject of this movie.

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And

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I met with her and

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she gifted the collections to documentary arts.

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And we have over the years, we've preserved them, but just this year, we are now giving

back these digitized photographs to the community of Jasper.

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I think in the movie I heard it's like over 60,000.

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Is that what you said?

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60,000 images in the Texas African-American Photography Archive.

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And so, I mean, ultimately the goal of this collection is to place it in an institution

that will make it accessible to the public.

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This is all about visual literacy.

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Yeah.

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And to be clear, what I learned from your film was his purpose was to um capture the

African-American experience, the African-American life.

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And at that time, particularly in that area, there were no other oh photographers that

were capturing this African-American experience.

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And so it's very, very rare to have that kind of enormous collection.

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And he would do the basic things like school photography and basketball groups and things

like that.

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But I also saw you put in there just so many other just regular life photographs and they

were really good.

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He was an excellent photographer.

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He was an excellent photographer.

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uh I've written extensively about the idea of community photography, not only in terms of

content, but in terms of the life of the photographer and his role or her role in

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community.

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So he was an elder in the church.

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His wife was very active in the church.

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He was a Prince Hall Mason.

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He was a community person.

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And so, and he understood the importance of photography as a way of bolstering the

self-esteem.

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Over the years, there were exhibitions that I organized of his work.

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In 2010, 2011, there was a major exhibition at the International Center of Photography in

New York.

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And there was a book that was published that I did called Jasper Texas, the Community

Photographs of Alonzo Jordan.

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That year I also received the Guggenheim Fellowship to continue my work.

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And so for me, I'm just so grateful to have this long-term association for me with this

community.

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And the most recent filming that we did was Juneteenth this year.

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Right, and I did wonder when you started the filming, because I mean, I noticed there were

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filming from 2025.

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So.

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from 1996.

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Yes.

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So when did this actually, when was the film conceived and when it must have clearly was,

I think you wrapped it in like June, maybe.

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Well, the film was conceived in conjunction with, there's a 40 year survey of the work of

documentary arts called Everyday Culture, seven projects of documentary arts.

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It's the Center for Photography Woodstock that opened September 20th and runs through

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and I was doing a lot of work related to Jasper.

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There's also a book that's being published by Aperture called Kinship and Community,

selection from the Texas African American Photography Archive that will be out the end of

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this year and the beginning of next.

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So there's a lot of attention.

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The archive in part is the photographs from the archive are also currently in an

exhibition.

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on black photojournalism at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.

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So there's a lot of interest about this.

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And when I first went to Jasper and I met with Mrs.

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Jordan, she was losing her eyesight and she had her goddaughter, Emma Adams, there.

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And I was glad because I was concerned about

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I wanted to help, but I also didn't want to intrude.

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didn't.

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And so having Emma there was great.

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And so most recently when we were filming at Juneteenth, Emma was there.

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But her, I think it might be her brother-in-law, George Adams, who's someone I've gotten

to know over the last few years.

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And George and his group.

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uh volunteers are totally amazing.

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And when I saw what they were doing, I mean, I kept telling people this is a national

story.

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This is an amazing story of a group of people, African Americans who've come out of this

very tough world and place became successful going back to the community where they all,

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many claim ancestry from

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uh You know, the slaves of that period, there's a clear sense of kinship that people feel

and they're doing all these different quiet things.

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They're putting up roadside markers.

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They're building memorials to the segregated school.

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mean, where the Juneteenth celebration was held was the site of the Beech Grove Elementary

School, which was a segregated elementary school in Jasper, which

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Like many segregated schools were torn down by the city and the land was sold to someone

who was white.

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Well, this one African-American who had done well came back to Jasper and he and a few

people bought it back to the black community.

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And they feel that their quiet voices, they know they live in a complicated world and what

they're doing on a local level for me.

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as a model for America, particularly during these difficult times.

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Well, in some sense, um so I am so honored in a sense and admire what you're doing.

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I grew up in the segregated South.

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I grew up in South Mississippi and I um grew up when schools were segregated.

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I remember colored and white bathrooms.

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But then when I was 13,

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I went to a boarding school in New York where things were very integrated and I got a very

different education and a view of life and was able to look back at sort of my roots and

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have been mourning ever since what's been happening, what happened and what was happening

where I grew up.

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And it has been very difficult for me to figure out what can I do?

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And truthfully, what I see you doing is uh elevating, empowering, shining a light on what

the community is doing on their own, which truthfully ah is the most powerful thing that

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can happen um for them to take ownership of their history so that nothing can happen to

it.

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It won't be forgotten no matter what another oppressive community does.

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um they will have that.

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And that's what I was encouraged about by seeing your film was, you you have these, m you

know, gentlemen who went to this high school that they absolutely loved and they don't

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want it to be forgotten.

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So they built the entrance and the memorial.

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And, you know, it crushed me to hear that the service members that served in World War II

or in Vietnam names weren't even on the other wall, you know, memorial wall.

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So they had to build their own wall and put the African-American names that served on that

wall.

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mean, it's just, to me, it's just egregious.

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um And so I love what you're doing.

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I do wonder how did this become a passion for you?

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um What was it and when was it, did this begin?

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Well, have always grown up in a mixed world.

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I grew up in the inner city of Boston.

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I grew up in Dorchester.

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living in that community, which was largely Eastern European, Ukrainian, Russian.

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It took me years until going to Europe to realize that I was living in a European kind of

neighborhood where people spoke Yiddish on the street.

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And it was during the 1950s and there was lots of change happening in that era.

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There were lots of blacks moving up from the South.

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There was lots of racial tension that was brewing in this neighborhood.

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And during the course of my growing up, there was intense racial violence.

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And however, for me, I was fortunate.

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I was blessed to have parents who were socially progressive.

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And so I may have felt this undertone.

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of racism among some of my relatives, never with my parents.

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My father had aspired to be a writer and he was very active in interfaith work.

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He was a volunteer, a tireless volunteer, community volunteer.

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wanted to, he was very into helping first time kids who were criminal offenders.

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He was, you know, very much

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about that.

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And he loved jazz music.

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So the first, you know, I had a little, you know, the first portable record player we had,

Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, those, that was the sound I grew up with.

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So, you know, I've written a number of books about blues and jazz over the years, but it

also affected my attitude toward wanting to know the other.

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and how do we get to know people who are different from us and have a meaningful dialogue?

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Because I saw how terrible things became in the neighborhood where I grew up.

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It was unconscionable acts of violence on both sides, all sides.

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And a lot of my work has explored that.

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There's a musical that I wrote called Texas in Paris, which was based on a concert that I

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And it's essentially as a musical, which became an off-Broadway show that starred

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the Tony Award winner, Lilius White, and then we did it in Paris, is basically about two

elderly people.

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One, an old black woman from the South who sings acapella spirituals, never been on an

airplane before.

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And this other person who's about her age, a white cowboy who has a little ranch in West

Texas.

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These were the real people I brought in 89, but then played by actors years later.

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And it's basically, wrote it after Ferguson, and it was basically about people, the racism

that exists among people who live in isolation of one another.

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And so this, these two elderly people who are very polite to each other.

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Yes, Ms.

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Mays.

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Yes, Mr.

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John.

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They perform on stage together, but they can't really understand what the French people

are saying even when they speak English.

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And so they're forced to have a dialogue and they end up talking about race, which is

something they never ever thought they probably would ever talk about.

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And they bump heads and they realize the preconceptions that they've had of each other.

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And they finally, in the end, come together.

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But that's the messaging of much of my work.

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I have a new musical now called Stomping at the Savoy that's based uh on a children's book

of mine.

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The other musical, Texas in Paris, The Old Black Woman, is the subject of a children's

book that I did called Oceola, Memories of a Sharecropper's Daughter.

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Oceola was also the subject of a movie.

330

So often people I meet appear in different

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forms of expression because I know them for so many years.

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em So my current musical, which is called Stompin' the Savoy is based on another

children's book of mine uh called Stompin' at the Savoy, the Story of Norma Miller.

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And it's about Norma Miller, who was one of the first generation of whitey's Lindy hoppers

at the Savoy Ballroom.

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And the

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book is about this girl coming of age and the musical focuses on

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Norma at age 16 and three months of her life.

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The book for the musical has been written by me and fader Michelle Scott, the young

African American playwright who really has helped bring this to a bigger presence, but it

338

had its world premiere in April, May at Delaware theater company and we're hoping to do it

in New York next year.

339

Wow, congratulations.

340

That's incredible.

341

But once again, the story relates to aspects of history that a lot of people, perhaps for

whatever reason, aren't aware of.

342

So Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, the hallmark of the Savoy, was that it was the only dance

hall in New York City and maybe the nation where blacks, whites, and anybody could dance.

343

together on the dance floor.

344

I didn't know that.

345

And so it's an important message, but it's also the message of it's the love of the art,

the love of the dance.

346

It's the girl becoming a young woman and actualizing her dream.

347

That sounds beautiful.

348

I'd love to see that.

349

I want to get back to the film that we're talking about and one of the things that stuck

with me so prominently, know, talking about things that a lot of people do not know.

350

um One of the things that put Jasper, Texas on the map was a particularly gruesome murder

uh of a young black man, James Byrd, is that his name?

351

James Byrd?

352

Byrd Jr.

353

in 1998.

354

Right.

355

And, um, he was just randomly picked up by three white guys and, um, chained to the back

of a truck and driven through the woods until he was decapitated and killed and left by a

356

cemetery.

357

Correct?

358

Am I right?

359

And, um, and, you know, it was, it put Jasper on the map as what Jasper that's Jasper.

360

And I think, you know, now they are Jasper's trying to demonstrate that it is more than

that.

361

but it does have a big stamp on the town.

362

one of, one of the things that stuck with me is you have a, I'm not sure what his role is.

363

You'll have to remind me, but he seems like, a historian or, you, you use him in that

role.

364

He talks about a photograph that was sent to him of four young black men who were being

hung.

365

And it was the real photograph, but it was also a photograph that was put five.

366

African-American men in a dogwood tree.

367

And the person, there's a poem associated with this.

368

And I'd like to read it.

369

It's called The Dogwood Tree.

370

This is only the branch of a dogwood tree, an emblem of white supremacy, a lesson once

taught in the pioneer school that this is a land of white man's rule.

371

The red man once in an early day was told by the whites to mend his way.

372

The Negro now by eternal grace must learn to stay in the Negro's place.

373

In the sunny South, the land of the free, let the white supreme forever be.

374

Let this a warning to all Negroes be, or they'll suffer the fate of the dogwood tree." And

this was what year.

375

This was in 1907.

376

And what's remarkable about this postcard coming to light, I mean, it's published in my

377

But in the film, it sets the context of this history of virulent racial violence.

378

And...

379

The person who tells the story of receiving the card, Bob Ray Sanders, was a pioneering

African American journalist in Dallas and Fort Worth.

380

He was started as an NPR reporter.

381

He had his own new show on PBS.

382

And at that time that he received this card, uh he was a columnist for the Fort Worth

Star-Telegram.

383

And there was an elderly white woman who called him.

384

and said that she had found this card in her belongings, the mother's belongings.

385

And she remembered that her mother had given it to her as a child.

386

And she was horrified, clearly, this realization that clearly, I don't know anything about

her.

387

I don't think Bob Ray knows anything about her, but she did the responsible thing.

388

She felt compelled to bring this to a black journalist because it needed to be made

public.

389

That is the context out of which James Byrd's lynching happens many years later.

390

So it makes for, you know, the movie in the end is hopeful because it's about this amazing

resilience.

391

of the people who live there who are really spearheading something very important in terms

of their dignity, the dignity of their community.

392

And they really want to Jasper to a point where meaningful social change can occur.

393

And in the movie, you see that this is happening.

394

Given all this context, the white

395

You know, the County Museum in the center of Jasper now has an exhibition about the

killing of James Byrd.

396

They have a section on photographs from my book about Lonzo Jordan.

397

They have another section on freedom colonies.

398

So it's a step forward.

399

And not only are they doing this related to social and historical awareness, they started

a scholarship fund.

400

They've given

401

$200,000 or more to black kids from this area to go to college.

402

Yeah, that was amazing.

403

That was amazing.

404

I just, I agree with you.

405

I even the mother of James Byrd who you interviewed, she's such a strong figure.

406

You can hear.

407

incredible in the way the family created this foundation for racial healing.

408

Yeah, you see her strength.

409

mean, you she talks about how the

410

the headstone or the grave of her son was defaced three times after his death.

411

And ultimately they had to put a gate or a fence just around his grave.

412

But she's not feeling sorry for herself or in, you know, just demoralized.

413

She's strong and realizing that this cannot defeat us.

414

We must continue to work for.

415

reconciliation.

416

Exactly.

417

And that point of view is echoed 15 years later.

418

And the other person who recounts what happened on that night and his telling of the story

is chilling.

419

But at the same time where he ends up is that very he's his commitment to going forward.

420

You know, these are people who have endured a lot and unconscionable trauma.

421

Yeah.

422

Let me.

423

and they are very forward thinking.

424

Let me ask you a little bit about the, um just the way you made the film.

425

So your movie, you made a conscious decision, um obviously, um not to have it narrated at

all.

426

The people themselves told the story.

427

It's just, um you interviewed them and you wove it together with their interviews.

428

There's really no talking heads.

429

um Talk to me about those decisions.

430

um

431

and why you chose to make the film the way you did.

432

Well, my principal collaborator in making the movie is my editor, Jason Johnson Spinos.

433

And Jason and I have worked on several features together.

434

Plus, Jason's edited many of my...

435

short films.

436

Interesting enough, Jason was born the year I started documentary arts.

437

But he is, we have an active and fluid dialogue.

438

So in a sense, we're writing the film together.

439

And I think we feel that way because it's a sequencing and Jason is immensely talented

that way.

440

And this film was

441

has many different layers to it and to weave them together to not lose its emotive power.

442

Because while I've made television documentaries, and maybe this gets shown on television,

but I'm not sure, ah it's not a conventional documentary because

443

it's not.

444

And I was wondering what your hope was going to be for this film because I was struggling

to see where this would fit in uh or, know, because for me, it's so focused on Jasper and

445

the experience of Jasper.

446

I can see it being for Jasper, you know, and, you know, in a historical society.

447

um or like a historical museum or something like that.

448

um What is your hope for?

449

Where do you see it fitting in?

450

Well, for me, it comes at a very important time.

451

And I mean, for me, the film...

452

I'm hoping we'll have some indie theater life, which many of my movies have over the

years.

453

And so um it's a movie that...

454

is about what we're living through right now.

455

And it takes a very proactive view on what's possible.

456

So what I would like is to see people watch the movie and to come away feeling hope.

457

And that's, I think, a very important message in today's world.

458

So.

459

As time has gone on in the making of movies and with documentary arts, I make very low

budget movies, relatively speaking.

460

mean, this a lot of this was shot with my iPhone and, you know, I did have a cameraman who

I've worked with in France.

461

came for Juneteenth.

462

But other than that, and then there's another local cameraman that I've worked with for

many years.

463

But ah my last three features.

464

have been largely shot with my iPhone.

465

And it works well for me.

466

And it's a way it's not too intrusive.

467

The pictorial quality is great.

468

It can't do smartphone cinema if done well, understands the limitations of what it is.

469

You can only go so far with it.

470

So I make it, you know, it's interesting.

471

think a lot about these days about the actuality movies of Lumiere and Edison, because I,

you know, I'm constantly shooting little 10, 15 second, and then sometimes, you know, if

472

it becomes an interview or a conversation, but it becomes more conversation.

473

So for me, at this point in my life,

474

I love me, you know, I've made higher budget documentaries, but I love making lower budget

documentaries that we'll see.

475

I'm hoping it becomes, you know, an indie favorite.

476

I have no idea.

477

And I don't really think about that other than I know there are people who will enjoy

watching it or want to watch it.

478

So for me, I'm in it for the long term.

479

It's like my first film on Stoney.

480

It's 40.

481

some years later, 44 years later, and it's still in distribution.

482

People still want it.

483

And ironically, people still want it as a DVD.

484

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm finding my film, you know, it does appeal to older generations and

they do still have DVD players.

485

So I am selling a lot of DVDs.

486

So yeah, huh.

487

So my film is called The Girl Who Wore Freedom.

488

It's the story of D-Day, but from the perspective of the French.

489

And so it's a very different uh take about, um you know, a D-Day and what they lived

through on that day.

490

Sounds good.

491

I've worked a lot in France.

492

I am because I'm my next feature is about Anne Morgan, who was the youngest daughter of JP

Morgan, but she's not as well known in this country, but she was the World War One era.

493

He was a major humanitarian and I've got a book about her and I'm it's hard to make a

movie about her.

494

And so once you get into those realms of history, because we live in a world that doesn't

pay a lot of attention to history.

495

So how does that work?

496

You know, for me, a breakthrough in this movie is the music.

497

mean, when I discovered that John Lomax had done these recordings in Jasper, it just, the

music is what that's

498

I mean, what we're talking about sounds like a really serious movie, but the counterpoint

of this music to what you're seeing and the way we're using cataloging cards and then, I

499

mean, the music just takes it to another realm.

500

that that was my favorite part.

501

And just to give a little bit of, um you know, explanation about that, John Lomax, and you

know, he was a white man.

502

He was a white man that decided what years did he go back there?

503

uh

504

mean, there's a long story there about John Lomax.

505

mean, he was, he had been a banker.

506

He loved black music because he grew up around it.

507

And, you know, when he was a kid, but then the stock market crash came.

508

He's a major figure.

509

A lot to discuss about John Lomax.

510

He was from, he was from Texas and he did these recordings.

511

He was collecting.

512

around to find soul music.

513

Lomax, is more well known than him.

514

But in any case, John Lomax made these recordings in East Texas, which mirror the life and

places that the movie's about.

515

so it just became, that's what really, when I discovered this songbook, because a lot of

my musicals and other things that I do, this is a songbook that is largely unknown.

516

Yeah.

517

Yeah.

518

a remarkable array of music and it just, it carries you through.

519

And so it creates what I want in these movies.

520

What makes them art for me is when you create this kind of tension between fact and

feeling, you know, that I want people to feel something.

521

This isn't just, this is not an information movie in a conventional sense.

522

I mean, you learn about this, but

523

you're carried in different places because then the music runs longer so that, you know,

it affects you that way.

524

Well, and what I loved was you were able to find descendants of the slaves that sang the

music that was in the Library of Congress and the photograph of those people that sang the

525

song.

526

I mean, that to me just was a beautiful marriage of, I mean, just it was.

527

I'm glad you like that.

528

For me, that's what really makes it into.

529

that was genius.

530

That and the fact that John Lomax, I mean, I just couldn't believe that he, how amazing it

was that he would go around and record those lost songs that no one would ever know

531

existed.

532

Just what brilliance to do that.

533

And, you know, I loved that you exposed those.

534

I would have never known they existed.

535

I want to know more.

536

I want to hear more.

537

I think my question about that,

538

you know, I went back in one of my films, I, there's a French woman who made a

539

nothing.

540

And, you know, ended up having to pay money to have this song in my film.

541

Did you have to pay anything for these or was it all fair use because it was in the

Library of Congress?

542

these are uh the Library of Congress.

543

I mean, they're available.

544

They were intended to be such.

545

I mean, I'm very interested in obscure song books.

546

My musical, Stomp of the Savoy, has some musical surprises in it.

547

My movie, Down in Dallas Town, uh about the 60th anniversary of the

548

assassination of JFK is full of music and a lot of it.

549

And my musical Texas in Paris that I've been talking about is not a single song in that

550

So I like going into sheet music and I like finding recordings like this because they are

so emotive.

551

So I'm really, I'm so delighted we're talking about that because I feel like it's

552

It's all been very serious.

553

And this is something about this music that's playful.

554

And that's what creates that emotional energy.

555

I just, it's amazing to me.

556

It had to be that they needed that kind of lift in their life to.

557

the people who recorded knew nothing about recording.

558

Maybe they'd heard the radio, you know, those recordings where people just.

559

But they had the songs prior.

560

These were songs you knew they were art.

561

were heir to these musical traditions.

562

Yes.

563

they had been singing them in the fields when they were working.

564

They had made up these songs, I'm sure of it.

565

And they, I think it was to keep them going, you know, or to entertain themselves and

their families in the evening.

566

And you can hear that this is, you know, and music to the black community is life.

567

It brings them life.

568

I mean, I've worshiped in their churches and I...

569

I've become so close to that community and I've seen uh how important music is to them.

570

Right now I'm in Chicago, but I spend so much time in South Mississippi.

571

That's where all my family is.

572

um And so I just, I could just hear the joy in their voices as they sang those songs.

573

I'm sure they were delighted to be recorded.

574

there is that joy, you know, and it, drives home further.

575

This whole message of what these people are doing in today's world.

576

It's like they're doing it because they believe in it.

577

And that's, you know.

578

And these people were happy to show you everything that they did, know, every building,

every museum, every, you know, they were all wearing their t-shirts.

579

ongoing relationship.

580

I there's still, you know, when I was making the movie, were times it was some of this

group and I would joke with them, I'm 73, but George is 86.

581

And it was the oldest film crew that I'd ever had.

582

These wonderful people.

583

And we have, you know, it's an ongoing dialogue.

584

So this has really been.

585

Terrific.

586

I've really enjoyed talking with you.

587

I think we could talk for hours.

588

But please let me know when you're going to edit this in some shape or form.

589

Oh, not really.

590

We put it all out there just like it is.

591

So the last question I have for you before I let you go is I always ask my filmmakers, is

there anything that I haven't asked you or that people haven't asked you that you really

592

would love to share?

593

I'm sure there are other things, but I've enjoyed sharing what I have today.

594

And let's make the best of the moment.

595

Let's hope for a better world.

596

is there any way, I mean, have uh been such a prolific um artist and you have so much out

there.

597

If people are interested in finding any of the things that you've talked about, how can

they find more of your work?

598

Well, the best place to go is documentaryarts.org.

599

There's also an online magazine that we do called truth in photography.org.

600

And then the film, Quiet Voices in a Noisy World has a website that is

quietvoicesinnoisyworld.org.

601

And the film ah is going to premiere at Cinema Village in New York City.

602

November 14th, alongside a retrospective of 12 of my other movies, between the 14th and

the 20th.

603

But there'll be several screenings of Quiet Voices.

604

So I'm hoping your listenership will want to come see the movie.

605

And if not, I'm sure it will be available online at some point in the future.

606

Well, I will say we have listeners in New York, absolutely.

607

And I will tell you, my favorite distributor of all listens to this podcast.

608

He's actually a sponsor of this podcast.

609

It's Virgil Films.

610

They distribute my film, The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and uh they are a phenomenal

distributor.

611

And I recommend you reaching out to them for sure and giving them a shot and making sure

that you talk with them.

612

I recommend everyone does.

613

So yeah, it's been a delight talking with you.

614

distributor too, for my features, first run features in New York.

615

And so that's great.

616

And I really appreciate being on your show today.

617

Yeah, thank you.

618

Last thing, we have this segment called DocuVu Deja Vu.

619

And we always ask people, do you have a documentary film that you would like to recommend

our viewers watch?

620

Well, for me, it's not a new film, but I think a must see is uh Night and Fog, Alan Renee,

Alan Renee.

621

And how did we find it?

622

let me check and tell you, I'll just look real quickly.

623

It's on, I think it's on Amazon Prime, but it's ah on a lot of different streaming

channels.

624

yeah, you can look on Just Watch.

625

Just Watch is an app that I have.

626

Yeah.

627

it's a 1956 film.

628

It was controversial when it's made.

629

I ah think if you watch that movie, which is basically a Holocaust survivor taking you

through a death camp without the vestiges, the remains of a death camp.

630

But the monologue.

631

that he delivers is so powerful.

632

And in some sense, it's had a great impact on me as a filmmaker because it showed the

power of the interplay between words and pictures.

633

And it's a very important movie, particularly as we're living in a time where we must

fight the politics of erasure.

634

Well, thank you.

635

appreciate that recommendation tremendously.

636

I appreciate your time.

637

I appreciate your breadth of your career and sharing that with us.

638

And we'd to have you breath.

639

appreciate you.

640

Take care that.

641

We're gonna stop recording, but please do not close your computer.

642

So we don't wanna lose what's happening now.

643

Okay.

644

All right, everybody.

645

Thank you so much for listening to documentary first where we believe everybody has a

story to tell and you can be the one to tell it.

646

Bye everybody.