Open CallEviction Notice: Rough Cut Review
1. Pitch | 2. Rate Pitches | 3. Produce | 4. Rough Cuts | 5. Completed Productions
You’ve entered the WGBH Lab screening room, where our Open Call producers are ready to screen their works in progress. Re-explore our five filmmakers’ pitches, read their bios, and follow the progress of each film by using the links beside each video. Then join in post-production by adding your thoughts and opinions (via the comments link) to our virtual screening room!
Swim
Taxi
Reparation Blues
Bi-Racial Hair
The Rough Cuts:
Thug SchoolSwim
Taxi
Reparation Blues
Bi-Racial Hair
| The Ghosts of John Jay High |
Pitched by:
Sarah Gonser - Brooklyn, NY Lance Kruger - Brooklyn, NY John Jay High School is in Park Slope, Brooklyn home to multi-million dollar brownstones and bleeding-heart peacenik liberals. Nearby is P.S. 321 – one of New York’s finest elementary schools full of mostly white students with near-perfect test scores. And yet, John Jay’s bussed-in students are primarily black and poor. I plan to give one bright student there a camera with the assignment to shoot whatever stands out about the experience of being one of the few hopefuls in a failing school that, in 2008, remains an insular, almost all-black island in its community. Rate + Review > |
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| Bi-Racial Hair |
Pitched by:
Lisa Russell - Brooklyn, NY Thirteen year-old Zora’s poem “Bi-racial Hair” serves as the thread for this satirical look at the racism young African Americans of mixed ethnic background face. Weaving fictional re-enactments with candid interviews conducted by Zora, the film illustrates everything from Zora’s comedic rant about styling her hair to more serious issues of identity and belonging 150 years after the abolishment of slavery. Rate + Review > |
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| Taxi (2008) |
Pitched by:
Javan Cornelius - Huntsville, AL Talkative cab drivers are in every major U.S. city. They entertain and provoke and forge relationships with repeat customers. Leveraging these bonds, we intend to select the most popular cabbie in Huntsville, Alabama and ask him to start a conversation about how Americans should deal with the effects of past racism, expulsion, and reparation issues. We hope to hear many opinions from the young and old from different backgrounds. Shot in black and white using a two-camera set up, the film will be punctuated by a score reflecting the mood of the interviews. Rate + Review > |
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| Swim |
Pitched by:
Jon Goldman - Woods Hole, MA Chip Moore - Cambridge, MA For many people the idea of an “out of the way” beach means an idyllic surrounding separated from the realities of the world; for African American fisheries biologist Jearld Ambrose, swimming as a child at segregated Atlantic Beach, South Carolina was his only option. SWIM is an animated short about Jearld’s memories of family trips to the sea. The film explores the subject using hand-drawn and computer-based animation with archival footage both aural and visual. Rate + Review > |
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| Reparation Blues |
Pitched by:
Alfred Santana - Brooklyn, NY At the United Nations’ World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001, talks over reparations for the trans Atlantic slave trade became so contentious that the U.S. delegation staged a dramatic walk out. I propose to shoot a performance piece revolving around “Reparation Blues,” a poem by artist Ghail Rhodes-Benjamin. This hybrid film will juxtapose performance of the verse with verité footage of the U.S. walk out and the response of African American activists in order to highlight the struggle to have the issues of reparation heard around the world. Rate + Review > |
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