Crocodile Conspiracy, Compensation | Zeinabu irene Davis

please join me in welcoming to the stage our moderator for this evening Caroline Collins [Applause] and our special guest who you know we could draw some more attention to because it was also her birthday on Thursday so please join me in welcoming our birthday guest and filmmaker zainaboo Irene Davies [Applause] all right hello everyone welcome again thank you for staying with us at this Making Waves event that's again all about featuring these contemporary filmmakers of color whose work odd audiences when they premiered and continue to cause a ripple today and that's certainly the case with tonight's filmmaker who I'm just proud to call a mentor and a friend and a fellow Bruin Irene Davis it's such a pleasure to be joining you with this q a tonight so first I have to start with this just on a visceral purely experiential level how did it watching these two films produced early in your career as you sit here now as this experience and highly influential filmmaker one word but it's it's very cool and special to be able to show the film to and it looks so good it looks better than it did as a film so it's like oh my gosh restoration yeah that's the thing so um and I'm just like really pleased because my family's here and um they Jean Gary and Valerie um they were the kids that were in the Watts Towers and now they have kids that are old enough to see them I heard that Owen was laughing at you going Gary the whole time you want to wave so people see you thank you thank you for believing way back then thank you Valerie I'm sorry Valley I'm out in you you got cut he was in the very first scene and he wouldn't listen when I was directing him so he didn't get asked to be back in the last scene which is the kids going around so sorry bro but you are in that first scene and I think is Max here Jerome Max here oh there he is yep he's here he played the the mean boss of Vince's Vince so thank you Max for being here yay so um it's really interesting to see the two of them together because it really that was my it's my third film but it was my first narrative effort and it only got made I I talked a little bit about the obstacle of it before we started but it really only got made because of the efforts of the folks who were here who were part of the LA Rebellion so Charles Burnett whose film played last night killer of sheep Charles was my cinematographer and Julie Dash and Arthur Jaffa were my next door neighbors and Julie did makeup for me and AJ did grip and gaffing work for me so it was only through them that I could actually deal with getting through it the LA Rebellion ethos was all about creating a community so that we had each other to make these films and so that ethos of using our communities to make our films because we don't have the Hollywood funding we don't have the big bucks but we have each other and so that's what helped me to make both compensation and crocodile conspiracy so it started way back then and it continued to you know through the feature film too you know I'd love for us to kind of go back to that particular beginning as you mentioned I know you had made some films before but this first narrative effort crocodile conspiracy can you take us back to that that time you mentioned again you're at the tail end of the LA Rebellion you know it's 86 you hear it girl you almost talk about you because people keep saying it's the tail end it is not to tell okay so yeah the tail is still continuing hello okay yes that's the first unpack yeah yeah let's unpack that yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah really important for us to understand that the LA Rebellion continues and it's alive because the makers are still making works and if it doesn't work at UCLA anymore maybe that ethos actually traveled over to USC God forbid but maybe it did yeah facts yeah yeah yeah okay so um so it's 86 you're you're in the midst of this this movement what kind of filmmaker did you think that you were at the time and and why was it important for you to tell that story at that time in that particular way okay um I think it was particularly important for me because I was doing activist work outside of school I was involved in the Vince Ramos Brigade and I had traveled to Cuba probably in 84 or 85 no it had to be 84 because I shot this film at 85 so it was after I had come back from that trip and Mark had already gone a couple times before and my other good friends Doris awanda who sings in compensation and Pierre Desir who shot um compensation and Cycles they had all gone so it was important for me to use whatever media vehicles that I could to kind of illustrate this tension that you couldn't really go to Cuba unless you got invited through a special invitation or you're there to go to do research or you went through an educational group like the Vincent Ramos Brigade and so I wanted to talk about that or at least illustrate that in some sort of like form of media representation because we don't have those media representations we didn't then we just really kind of starting to have media reputation media representations of afro-latino women now so this is 38 years ago so yeah I mean I'd like to talk a bit about that it seems to me that some of your films are really dealing with black women and intersectionality even before that was you know in the cultural zeitgeist you know you have a compensation you've got black women who are deaf as you mentioned you have an afro-latina in in crocodile conspiracy was that something that you were really cognizant of that you wanted to make sure that you were portraying black women in all of these complexities or released just simply the narratives that you felt called to tell or was there some complex intertwining of those stances I think it was more of a complex intertwining of those stanzas because the mission was always to make representations of black women that you didn't see before and so that was important to me I did I in the 80s when I started out I did not see black women in the films other than Whoopi Goldberg you know that was that was pretty much it um so I wanted to keep making representations of women that we might see in everyday life the quotidian and that was what I wanted to really try to focus on I never saw people look like my grandmothers or my aunties or whoever and so that was important to me but I wasn't working in a vacuum I was working I'm seeing the work of other black women filmmakers for some reason I don't know what's going on in Philly but there's a number of us who come out of Philly Tanya Hamilton there's a bunch of us from Philly that just like also decided to pick up the mantle of filmmaking so I have fellow hard-headed women in my lineage my extended family lineage so I'm speaking of that community of hard-headed women I know that there is all kinds of folks here tonight who are influenced by you and your work could you speak more to the folks who were influencing you you know whose work was speaking to you in particular ways or what discussions were really motivating you what what was inspiring you as a filmmaker unfortunately it wasn't other film makers because we were still kind of like coming up at that time it was more other black women who were in The Arts so I was like really influenced by women writers my favorite writer or favorite writers would be people like well my heart is going to always be with Tony K Bambara but Alice Walker Toni Morrison you know and then we would also look at like performers as well you know so like dancers like Catherine Dunham or you know whoever women who were in The Arts that also you know spoke you know color girls that was like major you know for many of us so it was went barring from other women that were in different fields to kind of influence the work that we wanted to produce and and and make were there folks who weren't professional storytellers who were also influencing you in ways where um did you come from a family that was telling stories and in certain ways or yeah I think so I mean now that I look back at it now yeah definitely my grandmothers on both sides of my family um were storytellers uh and very good storytellers my father was oh my goodness he was definitely you know Supreme Storyteller and my my father's Brothers also you know my uncle pootie was the mayor of north Philly The Unofficial mayor of north Philly because he would Regale people with stories and he knew everybody on the street so on and so forth and you know if he packed a gun in his side and somebody was on the street that wasn't supposed to be on the street or doing something wrong with you like and they'd be straight we moved from that Community to the community here at UCLA you mentioned some about all the folks who were helping to to make your some of your first films but what was that process like how how are y'all working with limited budgets limited resources to make these films that have had such staying power we did whatever we needed to do I mean Mark is here my husband screenwriter Mark Cherry Mark where are you right there uh notice his daughter moves away from him like trying to get away from Daddy no it's not gonna work um but like his mom I loved his mom Nelly appear she cooked all this food for me that was her house in crocodile conspiracy they let us take over their house I mean it's like you know when you have a film crew in your house don't do it um because this you know it's pretty disruptive but they you know she was cool with it she just rolled with it and you know we took over the house for a few days and I was like Wow and then other filmmakers um Bernard Nicholas that's the the house that we shot the the bedroom for uh Vince and his daughter that was that was something that was another filmmaker's house so those were the kinds of things use the resources that you have to make the things that you you know you want to do the stories you want to tell where have you been seen um San Pedro and Santa Monica that's wonderful um moving on up to compensation so we're 13 years between the two films okay I'm not good at math that's why I'm a filmmaker so it wouldn't seem different and then likewise though what did you carry with you from from your earlier films into producing that one I think the thing that carried with me was again the desire to kind of show women that we hadn't seen before so Michelle Banks deaf actress Supreme actress Supreme first deaf actress second and you know once you I said we Mark and I saw Michelle perform at the northern sign theater theater in St Paul Minnesota Market already written the script but once we saw Michelle perform it was like uh-uh we gotta go back and you know we both Eggheads um so we did the research and we did the work of like taking American sign language classes learning the history really kind of like delving marks and our Mark uh is also an archivist so going to the archives and like getting those photographs those photographs are so precious to me as a filmmaker because at that time um you some you could not find some of those photographs now it's so easy because you just click on the internet and you can't find them but I had to spend weeks in archives to uncover some of those photographs and for instance the photographs that are in the beginning of the film when you learn about the malindi character that's true that's not fiction the Kendall school was integrated and then it was segregated and all those little kids that are in that picture is basically black and Indigenous kids who are no longer able to have an education so you know that was something that we wanted to make sure and then you know when we were at UCLA my buddy Carlos from UCLA film schools here where are you Carlos right here another amazing filmmaker we both have short films I'm looking forward to his is called The Killing Floor when's going to be screened next here July LA Live see this man's film he's a master filmmaker right so just having those these kinds of films is so important because we are telling stories of people we know or stories that I'm sorry I'm God distracted because I just have to talk about your film publicly I saw his film like a month ago at the San Diego Latino Film Festival the one thing this brother has done for the last 30 years his characters are so genuine and gentle the way he tells stories hopefully is the same way we tell stories too there's something about that intimacy that you ain't getting in the Hollywood films I'm sorry you know you get it in our films the independent films and I think that's really valuable and people need to remember that this is where you can see the soul of Cinema yeah we push and stuff baby yeah you know yeah [Applause] you know speaking of that intimacy you know we've just seen it on the the screen how did it play on the page from Mark's script and and how did that first come to you did did he already know that it was something he was going to be asking you to direct did y'all know from the very beginning that he was going to be writing it he'd tell us a bit of the origin story of compensation you should be answering this question not me but he's up there so he ain't gonna come down here so uh he gave it to me as a gift I was away and then all of a sudden I came back and there was a script laying on my side of the bed so maybe it was was it a birthday gift I don't know but I don't remember exactly how it came to be but yeah I mean the intimacy that you see there I mean you see that when you see my other films too powerful thing is saying kind of thing he also wrote that as well so it's part of what we do you know we want to see black people loving each other Hello whoa what a concept you know it's still a concept for people now so it's like 40 years later still the same thing or thing yeah you don't see it the way that I wish we would see it we don't see it as often as I wish we would see it when you all were doing that initial research and going into the archives were you doing historical research for you know production design I mean I saw you know you had the crisis there and costumes or did you also know that you were going to use those images narratively to actually be part of the film Mark wrote a 28-page script that turned into a 90 minute movie and it it moved that way because of those photographs those photographs really were like another like unsung character um that actually came to life as I did research in the archives because the arc the research and archives I was teaching at Northwestern at the time so I was really doing archival work and again this is not not when there's the internet so you have to physically go to the archives so I was doing that during the summer months you know going to library Congress going to the National Archives um just to kind of like find that work and it was because I wanted to recuperate our images from the turn of the century because I had been bludgeoned at UCLA film school and finally got back to where I was going Carlos you know we had to watch that piece of garbage you know um the DW Griffith movie Birth of a Nation yeah I see I didn't even want to say the title right but we got bludgeoned with that in film school and if professors would be showing it and it's like oh this is the greatest film ever made blah blah blah and it's like no it's not Griffith did better films why are y'all putting this one up and then y'all don't even talk about the race issues in the film what is that so you I mean we're traumatized by watching that film why so it was like okay well let me do my version of a black silent film so I mean building from that so much of your work seems to deal with these Notions of time you know with the two that we saw tonight you know Willis both looking back to her Cuban Heritage and looking forward to the possibility of visiting her father's Homeland and a possible socialist Utopia here in America and of course all the interplay with time that you have in compensation why is it that your work seems to be drawn to thinking about past present and future hmm I don't know I honestly don't know that's a good question I really have to think about that more but yeah I mean it's more about communication for me like the idea of how we communicate with each other and and maybe that is because it's about being frozen in time or not being frozen in time and then how can we communicate across different you know different places different times different dimensions you know like I feel my my mother is really with me tonight it's like hey mom what's up you know so it's like you know she passed away 39 years ago but I feel her really strongly today so I know she's communicating with me because Amanda said Davies which was the way her name was said you know so I was like okay boom you know so I think time is kind of like it's a construct but like what is it really you know and how do we how do we imagine it so I think that's partly what is influencing my work in some way shape or form as well that's really beautiful and I'm glad she's here with us tonight yes yeah and thinking about past and present and now future what's on the horizon for you what's what's up what's next really excited did you ask that question um I'm very happy to tell you that after 20 three plus years more than that I don't know remember what it is I don't do math really well um I finally have another narrative film it's a short I can't afford a feature um but it is called pandemic bread and it will um it's written by is a story by a Filipino author based in San Diego Mario V Sullivan Mark adapted into a screenplay and my producer one of my producers Nikki evangelisti is here and my one of my actresses Becca godinez is here and she sings and performs in the film so pandemic bread is the new film and it will be screening um at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival next month roll premiere Thursday May 11th 8 o'clock L.A Regal okay so I'm really operating on a very small amount of sleep because we have to finish the color correction oh my colorist Adrian where are you Adrian he has the drive so we have to finish working tomorrow so yeah so can we show yeah we we have a special treat for you y'all are the very first audience to see the trailer which we finished last night at nine o'clock so we're gonna see the trailer for pandemic bread which is one minute and then we'll see the first couple of minutes of um behind the scenes um documentary about the making of the film thank you if you could roll it please Jim foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] I'm about to speak with production her name is 78 years old and she has covet pneumonia [Music] [Applause] my job really was to figure out how we were going to fund this so that xenover had the chance to make as beautiful as film as she wanted zainaboo's film has brought together so many things and we shot at Scripps institution of oceanography which is the original UC San Diego I thought I was coming onto set as a PA so I was like okay I'm ready to do the grunt work make me run around whatever and then they were like no I think you should be like one of like the producers I was like okay what do they do and then they kind of walked me through everything Mickey took me under her wig and then retook me under her Wing as we were figuring everything out I'm forever grateful to Christina and to Selena because when we were hiring other people they made sure that whoever we had on board was like really knew who I was and knew about the LA rebellion filmmakers and knew about what our ethos was in terms of how we were going to produce and how we're going to go through production well when I think about xanderboos directorship you know running a cast and crew in a set I think about afrofuturism because Lawanda Richmond who is the founder of the afro Futures Lounge here at Comic-Con is also here at UC San Diego and she says afrofuturism is not the is not just like the mirror image of white supremacy right it is actually an inclusive vision for the future and I think that that is the black radical tradition when we were you know location scouting um I was just kind of like filming and I just you know I was just asking questions because I wanted to learn and I was just curious about things um I guess I asked about specifically like the colors of different rooms and I'd say I guess because I don't even remember like I was just genuinely curious about everything that's when Rey saw that like like you know she kind of whispered to Z she was like Mariah should be art director um and then he re-emailed me and was like like hey like what do you think and I'm just like yes I mean I don't even know what that is but like yes huge props to Z just for opening this opportunity to students it's so dominated in the industry by you know so being given the opportunity to work with this many like POC and women and women in power is just insane for me I [Applause] right with our lights back up I was so exciting that we were able to see that together do you have any um initial comments about what we just saw before we kind of open up some of the the questions to the audience they look good yeah it looked good Becca you look beautiful I can't wait for you to see it yeah me too well we'd love to open it up to any audience questions and I already see some hands going up okay there are folks circulating with mics okay there you go appreciate it um so I know intellectually we think of the archive as the sort of maybe far off space or sort of like capital T capital A and so much of what's important about the archive I think is what's not in the archive and I'm wondering how you navigated that in storytelling um I'm particularly thinking about compensation I think the archival bit was so strong and present there I'm wondering what was important to you in terms of what you found in the archives but also what you didn't find wow that's a great question you must be a graduate student right yeah I know um I think was not in the archive is enough of like our everyday worlds we still don't have enough of that I mean I think it's getting better um I think that there are more people that are understanding the power of preserving their family images and making sure that it's available for other people like obviously it's important for your own family but I also think it's important for our communities in general so you have amazing people like um Jacqueline Stewart who's now the head of the academy Museum starting things like you know um home video projects and um even Thomas Alan Harris his family talking pictures you know going around collecting stories and photographs from people you know it means so easy now because we have these little powerful things in our pockets called Phones cell phones and they can take pretty doggone good images you can make a film on your cell phone if you really wanted to and so that makes the importance of documenting Who We Are what we did and where we were even more important is we need to like hold on to those things and make sure that they get preserved properly so we can't access them um does that answer your question there any other questions that were here oh look at those quick knees I wish I had those quick memes thank you I love your sister um you've been initiated are you ready nifa no I'm not initiated but I do practice IFA um I was just thinking um before the film started you kind of challenged us to take a look at then and now and um particularly interesting of your archival your historical um I was answering the question for you regarding the past present and future it's entirely possible that your knowledge of Eva uh because there's no no difference no distinction and uh very meaningful to see this at a time uh when we seem to be going retro ignorance uh and uh to see your film requires quite a bit of knowledge of History and that knowledge of disease knowledge of spiritualism and I don't think you could have gotten a whiter Jesus on that Cross by the front door you noticed that huh we've got one right here Ife [Music] but I just want to tell you I love you here's my auntie yeah and this is my this is my niece extended family niece her dad is one of the LA Rebellion filmmakers Iverson white or odd day and she's also a filmmaker in her own writer very powerful ethnographic filmmaker yeah thank you sister yeah so I just want to say you've been an inspiration to me and so like you said the LA Rebellion continues and I appreciate you and I love seeing your work it's awesome thank you thank you the LA Rebellion continues through you it ain't dead it ain't over and that's why I gotta keep correcting these scholar types of reviews probation is a historical one I I just realized I'm a little bit ignorant um and it's really about the actor so we have the that main actor who shows up in both films which I think is just really interesting and my first question is just what was that experience like of working with him over a decade and so that's one but there was a historical question here um in the first film I'm old let me please answer that one and you can ask the other one because I will forget by the time thank you let's start okay and plus I love talking about John Earl jokes I love General jokes I love General jokes period full stop that he's my muse if I could cast him in every movie that I do he would be in it I love that band he's such a powerful actor his performances he just Nails them on the first take 90 of the time he is um amazing with working with people who are not actors in compensation the guy who plays his best friend is that I don't know if you can tell that's the lighter version of me that's my brother um Kevin so John like was um supposed to be coaching Kevin to do his scenes and then Kevin just came on and said nailed them and that's the only time I've ever seen John not be able to remember his lines because Kevin nailed the scene on the First Take but and John is usually the one who's like you know like this was Michelle's second film and she hadn't been in a feature film before but but John like learned sign language spent a lot of time with Michelle getting her ready for understanding how she was going to have to be on camera he was very um cognizant of making sure that he didn't block her signs when she was signing with her hands um and you know he has been unfortunately under utilized in film you don't see him as much as you should um but he's been in all I think um at least five of this the um ten cycle plays of August Wilson so if you've seen Gem of the ocean or piano lesson or all the others he's in there um is Jamal here Jamal Jamal jokes are you here no um what was hopeful that one of his sons might come and see the film tonight but John is in New York and he regrets not being able to be here with us and Michelle is in DC um she has a group called um voices of creative voices of the creative arts which is a company a theater company that's specifically dealing with um providing opportunities for Deaf Talent she was here she got a she got a few roles she was on girlfriends and a couple TV shows but as usual work dried up and so she went back to her initial love which is theater so she has her Theater Company based out of Washington DC and John goes back and forth between doing TV shows and um um theater so last year he was on Broadway in birthday candles he's doing something now but he ain't saying what it is so I think it's like you know non-disclosure agreement can't talk about it yet so but he's doing something but I'm hopeful that this summer um I will be reuniting John and Michelle I have a new project that I'm doing called stars of the northern sky and um Michelle would play Sojourner Truth and I think John is probably going to play um a Union soldier who has a has a friendship it's not going to be a romance it's just be a friendship with Sojourner because we don't know much about Sojourner all we know is I you know ain't I a woman but guess what she didn't really say that um which is why I want to do Sojourner um because I want to talk about the things that she did do that we don't know about and how much she did influence American culture and history she sued um she sued the United States uh government three times and one of the times was to get her son Peter back from slavery he had been enslaved illegally because Sojourner is not from the south she's from the north she's from New York and um this the another time that she sued was to get Union soldiers who fought black Union soldiers who fought on the side of you know the union to get their um to get their pensions and rights that they were supposed to get that they didn't get after the Civil War was over so she did a lot of stuff that people don't really know about but she powerful and we need to know more and who's more powerful as the actors than Michelle Banks I'm sorry hello okay okay what's your other question that's great um I I do want to know I think I mean it was obviously very quiet it's a film but that one scene where he says like let's bake bread together if a pen could have dropped I feel like that was when it dropped in the theater and I love the intimacy between them I've noticed that the kiss seemed like a real kiss but not a Hollywood kiss like a full-on like tongue in your face and I appreciated it because I'm like I just never I feel like I never see that really on screen and definitely not with black people um the second question is actually about history he was so vehemently against his mom going to Cuba and he himself then is like part Cuban and I just wondered like why was he so angry I felt like there was something happening at that time that had to be so specific that I just didn't really have context for and so I was wondering if you would speak on that no I think he's you know detention that like existed in a society like you know Cuba is this like you know it's a place that's forbidden you can't really talk about it and you know unfortunately there are folks here in the United States that are very you know protective of the Cuba before um Castro and so I think I was trying to allude to some of that like we have these complex identities but yet we might not accept them in certain ways so I wanted to show that the mother was kind of embracing that but that the son was like uh-uh I'm not going there and then plus he's working for Northrop which is military so you know he can't be doing but so much so there was a reason for that you know and Martha was right down there in Inglewood so like and I lived in inglewoods it's like so I'm seeing all this stuff at the same time so I'm making these like commentaries on stuff and more kind of subtle ways so thank you for picking up on it we have time for one more question hello thank you for coming out uh my name is Matthew Morris I'm also from North Philly so it's awesome to see you know North Philly in the house but uh I'm also here with my organization uh black filmmaker Rebellion inspired by the LA Rebellion so you guys yes you guys are the folks from Loyola yes we are yay thank you for coming he doesn't need a microphone yeah I can see it's a pleasure being here um we just I just uh wrapped on my grad thesis so I'm fresh in the uh oh thank you uh you know you guys you make films that are very intentional they have a lot of commentary I try to do that I'm wondering with time does your perspective change on the commentary you have or does it remain the same kind of and just build upon that dang you ain't playing they sure ain't playing dang oh dang bro I don't know what to say um no of course I know something to say um no if I'm being honest they do change it does change over time because I like there's stuff that you do that you don't see that you did like I was cracking up because like I've seen compensation three times in the last couple months um and like I was like oh wow I had her making bread back then I got this bread thing going on pandemic bread oh my God like you know it just never dawned on me and so I was like whoa you know and then it's like the next film is about kovitz it's another pandemic it's like girl please can you do a romantic comedy or something because like why you why all your movies got to be about pandemics what is that doing what is that talking about so like there's some things that yeah I don't necessarily know but I'm doing a lot you know we La Rebellion filmmakers we make films that are not popcorn movies we make films that are cappuccino movies so we want you to talk about them afterwards I don't make films that often I'm putting every dang on thing and I can into this sucker so I want it to be layered as possible you know because I don't know when I'm gonna get a chance to do it again took me more than 25 years to make a narrative so it's like am I gonna get to make one again before I'm 80. I don't know maybe not but I'm trying to just put as much as I can into the work I'm going to reflect the times and the situation that I see before me in the work and you know as you as you get farther from it yes there's other things that make you think about like with compensation at that time was really important for me to talk about um HIV AIDS among black women because in Chicago in the 90s there were a lot of sisters who were passing away and we just weren't talking about it and so this was a way to kind of at least hopefully be Gan that conversation or at least bring it up if not actually do it so that so things like that were intentional but now that doesn't seem quite as like the thing that I need to talk about when I'm talking about audience with audiences now is different so it's just it's just the films kind of reflect the times that they were also made into as well that was a wonderful question an answer to end on it's been quite a night we want to just thank everyone for coming out thank you to Amanda Salazar and everyone at UCLA film and television archive much gratitude to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and of course a huge thanks to tonight's filmmaker zainaboo Irene Davis thank you for sharing yourself and your work with us in ways that continue to make ways thank you everyone and have a wonderful night please come back and see the other films I'm asking this from you as a birthday present please come out and watch Independent films in the audience and not just on your phone not just on your computer I love listening to you all when you were here in the audience reacting to the films we as independent filmmakers need you to do that so please please please please come see films in person thank you [Applause]