KAOS Network Hosts Thuh 2022 Juneteenth Film Festival
In Donald Byrd’s 1971 record “Stepping Into Tomorrow,” there is a burgeoning sense of optimism that refuses to let up on its five-minute odyssey.
Byrd’s song served as a standard for the curation of films at Thuh 2022 Juneteenth Film Festival in Leimert Park. “It’s not a destination, it’s a state of mind,” said founder of the festival and Thuh Film Club Jacob Gray.
He proudly wears an unwavering smile when he imagines bringing independent films to audiences. “It’s a perspective that has expressions with less conditions,” he said. “To me, that screams authenticity.”
Using Black history and Black imagination, the lineup of films informs what freedom looks like in the present. In each film lies a glimpse of the various phases of the pursuit of freedom, relishing in nuance in a way that does not romanticize these Black lives, but portrays them.
Gray opted for a completely curated experience with a diverse selection of African and Western independent cinema, unlike last year’s discovery festival treatment.
Proceeds for short films like “Negro’s 6,” “T” and “I Snuck Off The Slave Ship” were donated to PRTND Studios, a Crenshaw creative animation hub in the process of rebuilding after a studio fire, while proceeds for “Faya Dayi” were donated to the Tigray Action Committee to help fight and recover from genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia.
“Faya Dayi,” along with “Killer of Sheep” and “Compensation,” were the three feature films that were screened for Leimert Park.
The founder then expanded on the institutional aspect of his DIY festivals with an addition of the Black Soundtrack Party with Senay Kenfe, a celebration of author and historian DeMarco Smith’s latest work with the Maintain the Mystery Collective and panel with LA Rebellion members Ben Caldwell and Charles Burnett.
“It was a no-brainer,” said Gray’s co-director and Be Reel Black Cinema Club founder Stephanye Watts. “If Jacob is like, ‘Yo, we’re doing a film festival on the Moon,’ I’d be like, ‘Bet.’”
The foundation of Gray’s and Watts’ clubs rests on the belief that movies bridge connections between different communities, bearing all the trappings for important conversation — it’s one of the core values of this festival. “It’s also about being Black film nerds and knowing that there’s more of us out there,” Gray said.
The founder is mindful of the highbrow stigma attached to independent and foreign cinema, but he uses the current state of cinema to his advantage, stoically turning audiences onto the wide scope of what is discerned as a limited and exclusive medium.
“I think when I started getting hip to African cinema, I was like, ‘I think a lot of the homies would like this,’ because it’s a deviation from the stories we’re all getting annoyed with and the collective dissatisfaction with Western storytelling,” Gray said. “People are dissatisfied with the repetition, the predictability, the air of inauthenticity and I feel that’s in the zeitgeist of why there’s not as much faith in movies.”
Gray finds the likeness between the independent film and fine arts scenes in that the works are rare in possession and the worlds are made for those who seek things out. However, for Gray, there is the resounding reminder of one’s personal hardships or complex locale when it comes to inaccessibility.
Growing up, Gray’s co-director Daniel De Boulay was able to contextualize a broad history of cinema with the help of his father and a library card. With adulthood came the understanding that many Black characters of the Hollywood machine weren’t written like Noah Baumbach’s, where characters live under relatively normal circumstances and conflicts.
“Spike Lee is also one of those people who’s a singular genius,” De Boulay said. “People like him are not the norm in Hollywood and the opportunities they get are not the norm in Hollywood.”
In college, a dean told De Boulay, a once aspiring director, that becoming a producer in a world where everyone aspired to be a director would enable opportunities for greater influence.
After the latter, and some self-actualization, this led to De Bouley’s day job as a Sony aquisionist executive.
There is a figurative wall that sits firmly in between Black people and Black films, Watts says, and she collaborates with Black curators and filmmakers like Gray and De Boulay to dismantle the blockade.
“Why are these films locked away?” Watts said. “You could only watch them if you’re a white film critic at Sundance or Tribeca, and that’s not where most Black people are.”
Boxing owner of creative hub KAOS Network Ben Caldwell in walls of definition is impossible — one may just run out of walls. His community champions his commitment to Afrofuturism, collaborating on various ambitious projects and creating free public services from Leimert to Ghana, and, of course, his role in the LA Rebellion film movement in the early ‘70s.
To Caldwell, cinema is the most influential means to communicate with people. It holds healing properties when used properly. His films, including the festival’s slate, are often labeled as experimental by audiences, which he rejects.
“I think it’s only seen as experimental because it’s African Americans doing it,” Caldwell said. “Everything we do is experimental compared to Western culture.”
Behind the viewfinder of “Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation,” Charles Burnett was able to foster a more breathable film language in South Africa, a contrast to the West’s stringent and economic shooting structure, he says.
Like all great film institutions, UCLA’s film school and cinemas like the Landmark’s Nuart bred discovery and wonder for Burnett in the ’70s, leading to one of his’s first encounters with Western deviation and its profound awareness and authenticity: the New Wave and Asian cinema of Yasujirō Ozu and Satyajit Ray.
The ability to tell a story from a Black person’s perspective helps America and the world understand their community, Burnett finds. He saw this in real time after a screening of his film “To Sleep With Anger” at a film festival in Hawaii.
An audience member stood up and told Burnett that she didn’t know that Black people had washing machines.
“It’s like, ‘Yeah, what’s wrong with her?’” Burnett said. “But before that, that’s all the images she’d gotten, these images produced by Hollywood.”
Today, Burnett doesn’t look forward to going to the movies like he used to, underscoring that new studio releases typically don’t relate to his circumstances or environment. But the American neorealist continues championing the works of independent filmmakers and curators.
“This country hasn’t solved its race problems yet,” Burnett said. “They’re still in a sense trying to keep us undercover, or don’t want to hear our voices and it’s control of the images and profit in the hands of a few.”
