Change in American Cinema


By Morgan R. Stiff (producer of Mississippi Damned)
(from Slamdance 2009)

On November 4, 2008, many of us were glued to our television sets with tears in our eyes as we proclaimed, "Yes, we can!" The election of our 44th president, Barack Obama, signified our country's growth and was a statement that change is possible if there is a vision, determination and willingness to work hard and work together. In the wake of this historic episode, I find myself wondering about what it takes to create change, rally the disenfranchised and unite those of disparate backgrounds, goals and aspirations. And, although I have examined these issues as they relate to my family and my community, as a film producer I am particularly concerned about how these issues affect the film industry and my place in it as a young black filmmaker seeking to tell the stories of marginalized people.

In 2007, Tina Mabry, Lee V. Stiff and I founded Morgan's Mark, an independent production company dedicated to taking stories that have been marginalized in American film and crafting them to help redefine mainstream American cinema. One year later, after hard work and sleepless nights, the talents of many dedicated artists and craftsmen, and much-needed assistance from those who saw our potential, we are proud to have produced our first fiction feature film, Mississippi Damned. The story was extremely personal to our writer/director, Tina Mabry. Drawing on her life experiences, she tells the story of three poor, black kids in rural Mississippi struggling to escape their family's cycle of abuse, addiction and violence. Creating a world that is often suffocating in its bleak reality, Mabry reveals the struggles of breaking free from familial bonds that can hold us back from ever transcending a destructive existence. During the course of writing and subsequently making the film, Mabry found that her story, her life, quickly became an avenue to explore universal themes of survival and courage. While facing her own demons on a daily basis during the filming, she found that the completion of Mississippi Damned made her stronger and revealed that which unites all of our stories - our humanity.

Isn't that what great films do? Aren't the stories that stay with us the ones that provide us entree into someone else's world? Don't we grow from tales that allow us to glean information from their telling and apply them to our own lives? That is what we sought to do with Mississippi Damned. And we believe we were able to maintain the integrity and honesty of Mabry's vision because of the team of collaborators who maintained that same sense of integrity and honesty both in front of and behind the camera.

I now realize that it is time for us to move beyond the vision and realize the dream. The dream that Gay, Black, Asian, Latino and Women's cinema (just to name a few) will be heartily embraced as important vibrant threads in the fabric of American cinema. It is now time to embrace the stories of the disenfranchised as they wish to tell them. This is change we should embrace, we must embrace, and we can embrace. Because, in reality, their struggles are the labors of us all, their flaws are the imperfections we all share, and their demons are the evils we all must endure. And yet their redemption may be the salvation of us all.

What Obama has demonstrated is that, while those of us of disparate backgrounds, goals, and aspirations have much that is different, there is far more that we share. Our stories, found in the margins, must be brought to the mainstream to punctuate a new reality: We can see our world through the lenses of all its people.

During the course of making the film, we were often told we would not be able to make Mississippi Damned because we were too inexperienced, too young, too idealistic and not well-connected enough, and that the project was just too ambitious. It was our belief in the story and its need to be told that helped us maintain our drive and pushed us toward the finish line. It was a community of dreamers that armed us with their trust and gave us the tools to turn our dream into a reality.

With the film now complete, we are happy to be premiering it in competition at the 15th annual Slamdance Film Festival. And this is just the beginning. We hope to fill a void we see in the current film industry by providing a voice to those often unheard. We hope to show that the stories of those in the margins are just as profound and entertaining as any now considered mainstream.

We do this amid "fortune tellers" who narrowly believe that the stories of "others" will not be embraced by everyone. We embark on our journey with the faith and trust that Obama's America can be One America with many stories to tell...for all to hear...welcomed by all! Can we really take stories from the margins and have them be embraced by mainstream America? Yes, we can. -MPM

Photos courtesy of the filmmaker.