Black Documentary Films
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till /
The Murder of Emmett Till /
Four Little Girls /
When the Levees Broke
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Questions for Charles Burnett
By Dennis Leroy Moore
|
Early
2003 ChickenBones: A Journal received a note from
Mary Kemp Davis that a new film Nat Turner:
A Troublesome Property, directed by
Charles Burnett was ready for review. We were
looking forward to the film for we had read
Gerald Early's essay on the filming about a year
earlier. We discovered its white producer/director Frank
Christopher received nearly a million dollars from the
NEA and financial support from a number of foundations
to complete the project.
We
got in contact with Christopher, co-producer Kenneth S. Greenberg,
historian and scholar at Suffolk University, and Charles
Burnett, writer and director of well-known art films.
Greenberg had also edited a volume of essays on Turner,
Rebellion in History and Memory, which we also received for review.
The book is creditable scholarship and adds new
perspectives for those who have not kept up with
writings on Turner. We wished the film had relied more
on Greenberg's book.
ChickenBones:
A Journal, on request,
received a copy of the documentary and had some of its
writers to review it. We arranged for Dennis Leroy Moore,
a filmmaker and a critic and an admirer of Burnett's
work, to interview Burnett. The black director, however,
has yet to respond to the questions put to him. --
Editorial Note: RL |
March 3, 2003
Charles, take your time answering these questions and please
call me at your earliest convenience. Peace,
Dennis Leroy Moore
1. What exactly was the genesis behind "Nat
Turner: A Troublesome Property" and what made you decide to
make this film? Was this film a collaboration with the film's
producers? Who were they?
2. Have you always had an interest in Nat Turner?
3. How long did it take you to create the film?
Including pre-production.
4. Did you oversee the editing?
5. Do you feel comfortable working within the
non-fiction documentary format or do you prefer making narrative
features? In the end, which do you think has the greater
potential?
6. Can you suggest some documentary filmmakers who may
have influenced you in some way?
7. I am familiar with your picture
Nightjohn,
and I would like to know if you would ever consider delving
deeper into the institution of American slavery and the slave
revolts that took place by making a fictional film depicting
these events? Is that even something that would interest you?
8. What do you honestly think of
Hollywood's depiction of slavery in American-studio movies? Have
you seen the movie
Amistad?
9. Can you talk a little about Julie
Dash's tone-poem
Daughters of The Dust and Haile Gerima's
phantasmagoric meditation on slavery in
Sankofa?
Have you seen Stanley Nelson's recent documentary on Emmett
Till?
10. Why did you choose to include
"re-creation" or "imagined" sequences in Nat Turner: A
Troublesome Property.
11. Who was this documentary intended for? Did you
have a specific audience in mind?
12. Do you personally think that Nat Turner was a
madman?
13. Don't you agree that Nat Turner did what any sane,
rational man in an insane and irrational situation would do?
14. A great deal of the documentary seemed to support
William Styron's rationalization of why he depicted Turner the
way he did. Spiritually the film seems to adopt this view. Was
this on purpose or something that evolved?
15. In my first feature film "As an Act of
Protest" I spent a great deal of time trying to balance out
the documentary aspects of the film as well as the more
theatrical and surreal aspects of the picture. As a director, I
have always been fascinated between the marriage of these two
aesthetics, these energies...
Now, my question to you is: as a very warm and compassionate
director who has created some very complex works of cinema - how
do you feel your style has developed and/or changed over the
past thirty years? What influences your directorial decisions
and
how important or influential are paintings and music to you?
I ask this because Nat Turner: A Troublesome
Property seemed rather stilted, rushed, and dis-engaged
from its subject. I found the majority of the interviews rather
passionless, actually - regardless of whether I agreed with
their views or not. Were you conscious of this or were you
simply on a tight schedule?
16. What was the budget for the documentary and why
was it not feature-length?
17. What have been the responses so far?
18. Are you as the artist pleased with this
documentary?
19. Have you found a distributor for your delightful
romantic comedy "Annihilation of Fish"?
20. Will "Killer of Sheep" ever be available
on video? There are a number of black filmmakers, in specific,
who have never seen it and I think that is a shame.
21. What's next for Charles Burnett?
22. Can you say a few words of the state of current
Independent filmmaking in America? What about the new wave of
Black filmmakers on the fringe that are desperately trying to be
heard? Do you have any words of wisdom to offer us?
23. Do you believe in God? |
