What is the message of this movie?
Sometimes we see a story like this, but it’s set in a different time period and it gets dismissed. People look at it and feel that it’s no longer relevant, but I can tell you it’s always relevant. Michael Brown’s father is mourning him even as we talk. … I don’t know the brother personally. He could be in a sandwich shop or getting his hair cut, but I know somewhere in the back of his mind, he is mourning the fact that someone took his son and then told him that it was OK. I don’t know what the answers are, but we have to do something different. I truly believe healing comes from honest confrontation, and that’s the message of this film.
The main character, Lincoln Jefferson, is a veteran along with his comrades. Was it important for you to touch on the unfair treatment that veterans of color have to endure?
You see five generations of Black men in this story. Michael Warren is a fantastic actor. He represents the uncle, and you see him so proud of his military jacket. So many people in my family have served and would do it again, only to come home and not just be discarded, but often lynched or killed. We have given so much to this country, and it seems so odd that all we’re asking is to live. We’re not really asking for anything but to be left alone, to be allowed to raise our children and our households.
You seem passionate about these types of projects. Do you believe you are operating in your purpose?
I feel compelled to use my gifts from God to help move the conversation forward. I have children of my own. Art creates that intersection where art meets life and you have people willing to see it and hopefully be changed. If I stood on a soapbox and read this script, I don’t think people would care. [I’m] creating this from [the viewpoint of] a filmmaker, a Black man, a father; this is the America that I see. And you add to it the work that Black Lives Matter is doing and others are doing … [and] eventually you hope that the algorithm will change.
Story by Christal Jordan
Photography by Jennifer Cooper (@jencooperphoto)
