Film & Community Re-Envisioned: From the South Bronx and Harlem with Love

Having taught for the past four years, and helped design the film and visual literacy foundation at the New Explorers High School for Film & Humanities (a small public school housed within South Bronx High School campus), I have been moved by the heartfelt impact film can often times have in changing both how teenagers see themselves and consequently how they re-envision their future horizons. The two Bronx sixteen-year-olds interviewed in the article have completed my film course and recently participated in a workshop where they had the opportunity to reflect on Harlem-based Producer/Director Lee Daniels’ words of love.

Starting out as a casting director on films like Purple Rain, Lee Daniels later produced the Oscar nominated Monster’s Ball (Best Actress & Original Screenplay), The Woodsman, Tennessee (in post-production), and recently directed Shadowboxer (2006). Daniels is passionately committed to film, community, and social change both on and off screen with local youth in getting out the vote and engaging them through film.

Billy Caliente: Why is your involvement with local teens uptown and in the South Bronx vital to your heart?
Lee Daniels: Because the students represent me and help me stay in touch with myself. These students are hungry for knowledge and I am hungry to combat the nepotism and often privileged world of the film business. Often in the film business, people are not supportive of other people of color. Ultimately, I want the kids to know that they don’t have to be the only ones.

BC: How is film a tool of love or a manifestation of your passion?
LD: Every frame is a part of me, part of my head, so I‘m living out my fantasies, my realities. True talent is born of true pain and trauma: expressing this is my “high.”

BC: How can film help community?
LD: If you start by loving yourself, then you can love and help others. Film changes lives. It’s a very powerful medium. Whether you’re happy or sad, film reveals deeper views; if used properly film can help to make changes.

BC: When you were a teenager did film hold any spell over you?
LD: Well, wow, as a four-year-old I remember my first Western with a white woman, maybe the first one that I had seen, breastfeeding in this horse and buggy. It blew my mind. There were some bad things that had happened to me, and by tapping into this world, it was transformative.

BC: How does seeing represent love?
LD: You have a choice in life: you can look at something from a positive
point-of-view or a negative point-of-view—it’s your choice.  You have to project love. If you see love, you will be loved. It’s what we live for.

BC: Which 3 films do you think inspire or were inspired by love and/or revolution?
LD: Although they may not be all that sophisticated as film, Sounder, Love Story, and Brian’s Song were revolutionary in heart and in candor.

BC: What was the message you wanted to resonate with high school students this past summer during your film workshop?

LD: Basically, the broader message I always leave students with is to never take no for an answer and to always love yourself.

Travis Davis, a Junior at New Explorers High School for Film & Humanities, and Sophmore, Brian Neris, speak with Billy Caliente.

Billy Caliente: What was the message you took away from Lee Daniels’ workshop this summer?
Travis: Color equals love, and to diversify film, is to keep love alive. Oh, and to always learn from your failures and keep on going. A man needs to be tenacious and persistent.

BC: How has the past year immersed in film and school helped you to find your voice, or helped you to put your passions in focus?
Brian: Before entering high school, I dreamt about being a video game programmer. Now my imagination is geared more for telling stories grounded in the real world, less fantasy, more reality, though we must dream to tell stories.

BC: What’s your favorite film POSITIVELY speaking?
Brian: Lean on Me because its theme is, “no matter who you are and where you are in life, you have a chance to make it.”

BC: Before and after falling in love with film full on since entering high school, how do you see your future?
Brian: Well, admittedly a year ago, I was exploring a more gothic, darker theme; nowadays my ideas are brighter with more of a focus on raising social consciousness, like in the short film I screened at Lincoln Center, The Last Gift, it’s basically a film with heart about police brutality and profiling.

BC: How can filmmaking bring about individual or social change within community?

Travis: It opens your eyes to things sometimes hidden below the surface and teaches empathy by showing what other people are going through.

Brian: And it can clean, or refresh, your imagination. Like seeing familiar things from the past with fresher eyes.

BC: Which three films talk about love and/or revolution?
Brian: John Waters’ Hairspray because it’s about a plus-size girl and racial integration told through a dance competition; King Kong (1932), and the most recent version of Romeo & Juliet with Clare Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.