LUV: A Provocative Coming of Age Film Opens January 18, 2013

By Amal Buford, Age 15

Have you ever had a role model? Luv, a movie being released on the 18th of January, is a riveting story of a boy’s day with his recently pardoned uncle in the streets of Baltimore. Over the course of the day, Woody (played by actor Michael Rainy Jr.) learns many valuable lessons about manhood from his Uncle Vincent (played by Common). These lessons, however, clash with the fact that Vincent is forced to contend with people with less noble ideals. Caught in the midst of the situation, Woody is tasked with choosing between following his uncle, or becoming his own person.

After watching a preview of the movie, I had the chance to go to a round table with the two leading actors, Common and Michael Rainy Jr., as well as two supporting actors: Dennis Haysbert and Charles Dutton. The experience was both exciting and interesting because in addition to learning about how the actors felt about the movie, I also learned a lot about acting itself. When Michael revealed that he only read the script for the movie once, I was blown away. One of the questions I asked during the round table was: “Were any scenes in the movie harder to film than others, and if so, why?”  Common answered this question first, saying that the scene he chose was the hardest because the director told him before hand that it was a scene where Vincent hit an emotional milestone. He would have preferred to not have had any prior knowledge of the scene, so that he could simply act it out spontaneously. As well as gaining insights into the art of acting, I also learned about the actors themselves. Sheldon Candis (the director), Charles Dutton, and Dennis Haysbert all had a connection with the city of Baltimore, where the movie takes place. The movie was shot in Candis’ old neighborhood, and was based off his own relationship with his uncle. It turns out that Candis’ uncle went to reform school and then prison with Dutton. Candis says that while his uncle did do some bad things, without him, he would not be the same person. He states that he took only the greatness from his uncle, and that that was a major theme in the movie. I would definitely recommend this movie to everyone because even though I grew up in a situation different from Woody, I find myself able to relate to him and I think that you will too.

After the roundtable interview I had the opportunity to chat with Michael Rainy Jr. for a few minutes.  Check out the video:

Dear Mr. President – Teens Speak Project – Say it LOUD!

“Some of the issues that are happening in our country include health insurance, the educational system, international affairs, the educational system, war, and most importantly, the layoff of jobs.  These are the issues that are affecting us the most in this country and I, as a teen, feel they need to be fixed…before it’s too late!”

Dear Mr. President 2012: The Second Installation

A Film by Delphine Fawundu & Kayinde Harris

Produced by: Mammiyoko Productions

Shot & Edited By: Crush Boone

Music By: Darren Yeadon

 

Dear Mr. President is the first documentary project from Mammiyoko Incorporated, the production company founded by Say it LOUD! Magazine  founders, Delphine Fawundu and Kayinde Harris.

 

A two part series, Dear Mr. President explores the powerful and moving concerns of the youth. Creating a necessary outlet for teens, Dear Mr. President, an honest video diary to the next president of the United States, expresses the thoughts and feelings of the youth on the issues that are affecting them the most: unemployment, health insurance, racial profiling and discrimination, and the educational system.

Tweets by @DearMrPresFilm  Like Our Page on Facebook @ Dear Mr. President

Copyright © 2012 Dear Mr. President by Delphine Fawundu-Buford and Kayinde Harris under Mammiyoko Incorporated. Dear Mr. President is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

One on One with Gabrielle Dennis

Gabrielle Dennis has been on her grind! You’ve seen her as “Janay” on CW’s The Game, and she now stars with Christina Milian as Lina Cruz’s humorous and spunky  best friend, “Treyvonetta, in the  the popular teen film, Bring it On: Fight to the Finish. Gabrielle took a moment to kick it one on one with SIL’s Alia Williams about being on the set of her latest film, cheerleading, and acting.

Alia: What was it like growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio and how did you transition from there to Hollywood?

Gabrielle Dennis: Cincinnati is a very conservative city, so there’s not too much to do there. It’s a great place to raise kids though, so I felt like I had a good balance between right and wrong, in that I went to a performing arts high school and that kind of kept me busy with rehearsals and doing plays. My family is there too, but I didn’t realize how boring it was until I got to experience a real, major city.

Adjusting to Hollywood was fairly easy because right before that I lived in Washington, D.C., which I absolutely adore. I was debating between New York and Los Angeles to pursue my career full time, but L.A. won out because of the weather. Plus, I did the east coast thing and knew nobody in New York, so it kind of intimidated me.

Alia: How long have you been pursuing a career in acting, and what inspired you to start?

GD: I’ve always been a ham, actually. At my older cousins birthday parties or slumber parties, they would always have me singing or performing because I was so much younger. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but the only way that I could stay was if I performed for free [laughs]. I started out in the 4^th grade and I started dancing when I was four, so I was always introduced to that. My mom used to sing and was involved in local plays, so it was always around me. I had a lot of older cousins that went to the same performing arts high school I went to. Watching movies like the Wizard of Oz and The Wiz inspired me to do it. I thought Diana Ross was the BOMB in The Wiz, and I kind of looked up to those triple threats that could do everything; that’s how we were trained in my high school. Technically, as a full time career, I guess you could say that I’ve been pursuing being a professional actress for like four years, as long as I’ve been in Hollywood, but prior to that it was between being in school and trying to do it on the side. Now that’s all I do.

Alia: …and you like it.

GD: I love it! I mean it has its ups and downs, just like everything else that you would do, but whenever you have a passion for something, that’s really what it boils down to. Being able to work and do something that you love, it really doesn’t matter what it is. I feel blessed that I found something that I really like to do and can make a living out of it.

Alia: How did you enjoy working on the set of Bring it On: Fight to the Finish?

GD: Let me tell you, this was probably one of the more exciting experiences that I’ve had. It was all girls, so I got to be really girly. So many of us had birthdays within the same month. There were like four birthdays when we were shooting including myself, and Christina Milian. There were cute things that we would do like surprise each other, and decorate each other’s dressing rooms. We did a cheer for Christina for her birthday. We did all kinds of stuff, and it was great to be around a group of females who really supported each other. It was a really great mix of personalities where we all really liked each other and had a lot of fun together. It was like high school, in a sense, all over again and when I went to my performing arts high school. Then there was the dancing, and the amount of dancers that were on set. Dancers just have their own great energy and a great vibe. Everyone from the choreographer and the director was just really fun. I enjoyed that experience.

Alia: What made you choose the role of “Treyvonetta”?

GD: It was interesting because I was supposed to do another film before this one, but because I was doing CW’s The Game, there was a problem with my schedule and I couldn’t do this other film. This opportunity came along and it actually happened to work out where the shooting was between a break for The Game. I just like to stay busy and it was a good opportunity for me to do something different. I’ve never done a movie like this before, so I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to test a different side of my acting skills, as well as try to beef up my dancing that I haven’t done in a few years. I just wanted to challenge myself and I had a really great time. The character that I got to play was really fun and sassy. She was definitely a lot of fun to play.

Alia: Do you have any similarities to the character that you play in the movie?

GD: I would say that our closest similarity, I mean we’re nothing alike, but I would say that she’s very supportive and protective of her friends, and that would be me. If something were to go down, or if somebody needed my advice or needed my help with something, I would be there without question and without thinking about it twice to kind of help my friends. She loves her friends and would do pretty much anything for them and I think we definitely have that in common.

Alia: What made you choose the role of “Treyvonetta”?

GD: It was interesting because I was supposed to do another film before this one, but because I was doing CW’s The Game, there was a problem with my schedule and I couldn’t do this other film. This opportunity came along and it actually happened to work out where the shooting was between a break for The Game. I just like to stay busy and it was a good opportunity for me to do something different. I’ve never done a movie like this before, so I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to test a different side of my acting skills, as well as try to beef up my dancing that I haven’t done in a few years. I just wanted to challenge myself and I had a really great time. The character that I got to play was really fun and sassy. She was definitely a lot of fun to play.

Alia: Do you have any similarities to the character that you play in the movie?

GD: I would say that our closest similarity, I mean we’re nothing alike, but I would say that she’s very supportive and protective of her friends, and that would be me. If something were to go down, or if somebody needed my advice or needed my help with something, I would be there without question and without thinking about it twice to kind of help my friends. She loves her friends and would do pretty much anything for them and I think we definitely have that in common.

Alia: Have you ever been a cheerleader before?

GD: Yes! I was a cheerleader at Hughes High School, for the Hughes Big Red. I only cheered for about two years. We didn’t win very much, but it was fun. Not near the level of the experience, and talent, of the Bring it On franchise. The level of the different cheer teams that were in the movie, I mean these kids are amazing. The stunts they do, the energy that they had. I was just amazed by them. My school was just a little more downscale from that. We didn’t do a lot of stunts. I mean we cheered and some of us would do a few cartwheels, some round offs, and maybe a pyramid. In college I tried out and made it, but I didn’t have time to deal with that and school.

Alia: What kind of movies and actors did you look up to growing up, and what kind of actor do you aspire to become?

GD: Growing up I watched a lot of television and I liked over the top shows like Living Color and Martin, but then I’m a little bit of a dork and I love Little Mermaid. You know it’s funny, because a lot of actors who I looked up to were men. Jamie Fox because he did a little bit of everything that I’ve done, that I want to do, or that I kind of want to get better at because he’s done the whole sketch comedy thing, he’s done stand-up, blockbuster movies. His spectrum and his body of work is so diverse. He gets to sing, he has an album out, and he’s really good at everything that he’s done. The same with Will Smith, who started off with his music career and then had his own TV show, and then went on to being in blockbusters. I’ve done sketch shows and stand up comedies, but my goal is to have my own T.V. show and then from there start doing more movies and heavy roles, like documentary pieces. I would love to play Diana Ross or do something very interesting like that, and something that’s challenging and groundbreaking.

Alia: Would you do another movie similar to Bring it On, or would you branch off and do a different genre?

GD: I would like to keep my momentum going in as many different directions as possible so I don’t get typecast or pinned down. I try and go out and do different things in that it’s not the same exact type of character, or same type of energy and feel of this movie, just because it introduces you to different audiences and it introduces you, as an actor, to the different processes of getting that character and making that character believable. The same process and technique that I would use to make the “Treyvonetta” character in bring it on, would be a totally different process that I would do for maybe a very serious role in another type of film, depending on the director or the genre. I always like to challenge myself.

Alia: So will we be seeing you in any other movies this year?

GD: Ice Cube has a new movie coming out that I’m in called Janky Promoters, and I’m shooting a new show that will be coming out on Spike TV called Blue Mountain State. You can also catch me on The Game in syndication on BET.

Alia: Thanks for your time Gabrielle, and good luck to you.

GD: Thank you!

Swagga’ Like Theirs…The Bed-Stuy YMCA’s Brooklyn Piranhas

Brooklyn youth are doing it again!  Straight out of the YMCA’s Bedford-Stuyvesant branch are the Bedford Piranhas.  They’ve got swagger, a style, and are executing their aquatic skills for all to see.  Ranging from the ages of 7 to 17, these piranhas are taking no refuge, and are out full swing and taking the city by storm.

Say it LOUD! spent some time with the team.  Check out the video to get the 411:

On the Phone with Paul Wall by Xavier Douglas.

Xavier Douglas is a Sophmore at the Urban Assembly Academy of History & Citizenship for Young Men.

Xavier Douglas:  So what have you been up to?

Paul Wall: I’ve been on the road. I’m about to go back on the road with Slim Thug.

Xavier: I heard you have a new album Fast Life.
Paul: It comes out May 12th.

Xavier: What can we expect from that?
Paul: Well, we have a nice list of productions and collaborations. We have Travis Bakar, Plain Skillz.  On the collaboration side we have Too Short, Gorilla Zo,Yung Joc.   We have Trey Zero little Ki Ki. We have Akon on the album, Webby, Mouse, Baby Bash, Pitbull.  I have Chamillionaire, it’s almost like a compilation.

Xavier: That sounds cool.  I can’t wait for it to come out.
Paul: Thank you.

Xavier: Who inspired the album?
Paul: Well we call it the Fast Life because that’s the name of a store that my friend owns in L.A. It sells different clothing lines, one of my friends own a clothing line and I own a clothing line. I love the name the Fast Life.  It’s just that fast up-tempo lifestyle of grinding, non-stop hustling trying to achieve your goals.  For me it’s to support my family and ball out of control.  So, I’m grinding non-stop, from sun up to sun down. I’m trying to stack my paper up and the music is just a reflection of that.  It’s motivated by that same universal theme of grinding.

Xavier: What was it like for you as a teen growing up?
Paul: I had my fair share of hardships, but I try to focus on more of the positive things I had growing up.  My mother was a really big inspiration for me and I did a song about her on this album.  It’s kind of like a “Dear Mama” type of song. I don’t think there are enough songs about our mothers in hip-hop or just music in general.  There are only a few, so, I felt like doing one to show the love I have for my mother.

Like I said, I had my hardships growing up but I wouldn’t trade my childhood for nothing, because it helped make me who I am today.  If you don’t have sorrow you can’t appreciate the sweet. If I didn’t have those hardships I would take a lot of things for granted.

Xavier: What are your views on education?
Paul: When I graduated from high school I went straight to college, the University of Houston.  I went there for three years. I stopped going because my music was taking off for me.

I feel like you can only learn so much from books, I think we learn most on the job through experiences and other people.  But, at the same time you have to have the compromise of what you learn from the books too.  You can’t learn everything just from people. You have to learn from the books too.    You have to compromise because there are some people who put all their eggs in the book basket and some people who put all there eggs into learning from the streets basket or from other people.  You can’t do one or the other, you have to have that compromise of both in order to be well rounded enough to be successful.

Xavier: There is so much going on with Barack Obama being President and all. What is your advice to the younger generation?

Paul: It was so great seeing him get elected.  It’s just been a huge change in the atmosphere not only in the country, but, all around the world.  When George Bush was in office, everybody was depressed, everybody was complaining about everything, but know body wanted to do anything about it.   Everybody kind of just accepted where we were.  As soon as President Obama got put into office, elected, now people are motivated to go get it.  They are ready to grind and make a change for themselves instead of waiting for someone to do it.  To see people get off their butts and go grind is a beautiful thing.  Even I feel more motivated now.

Xavier: It’s good to hear you say that.  What things would you like to see change in the world?
Paul: Man, I support these troupes so much, I just hope that he can find a way to bring them home and create some type of peace. But, that’s a lot to ask, I’ve been over there and seen it first hand, doing tours with the U.S. soldiers.   It’s not something that’s likely to happen any time soon, or, even in our generation or the next.  These wars have been going on for years, so it’s kind of hard to ask somebody to do that.

Also, hopefully he can find a way to bring this country out of this recession.

Xavier: I heard you were doing another film with Raquel Cepeda.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah, with my boy, my partner Johnny Dang who I did Grills with.   He’s from Vietnam.  We already started doing a documentary on Vietnam and Iraq, about comparing the wars and the effects that the wars have on the people.  We went to Iraq a couple of times. We plan on going to Vietnam pretty soon.

Xavier: When do you expect it to be done?
Paul: I’m not sure.  It will take a while.  When we went to Sierra Leone, it was the same.  It took a long while for it to be done.   For this film we are going to focus on the war and the after effects and how things are going to be for the Veterans when they return from the war.   I think we have heroes fighting for our freedom and the freedom of others and we should respect our heroes.   But, when they return home they don’t get that same respect.

Xavier: In what ways do you give back to the community?

Paul: We always have something going on, whether it be with the Boys and Girls Club or  I do a lot with the Robert Clemens foundation here.  He does a lot for the youth in sports.  We stay busy doing things with the Make A Wish foundation, going into schools and speaking with the kids.  We just did something with the Grammy Foundation.  We went to a school in Galveston, Texas, a school that was hit by the hurricane.  They lost every single instrument in their music program.  So we did a big fundraiser where people donated their instruments.  We raised $50,000 in money and instruments.  Michelle Williams from Destiny’s Child was with this program too.   It was called the Grammy’s Giving Back to the Gulf.

Xavier: What are your goals in music in life?
Paul: In music,  my goal is to just become a better musician album after album.  My goal is not to put out platinum albums but to become a better musician.  In life, my goal has always been to just have a family that loves me.  I have the wife. I have the kids, so it just has been a wonderful thing for me.  My goal now is just to be able to spend time with them, support them and give them the things I didn’t have growing up.

Xavier: That’s cool.  Thanks for the interview.

Paul: Thank you.  Much Love and Respect.

One on One with American Violet’s Nicole Beharie

American Violet

In Theaters – April 17, 2009

Set across the landscape of a small Texas town, and on the eve of the 2000 presidential election, American Violet is the compelling story of Dee Roberts, a 24 year old single mother of four, who is wrongly accused and incarcerated during the Hearne Drug Raids.    Roberts  risks loosing it all, including her four young daughters, as her determination to clear her name from behind bars leads her to go against the norm by taking on the town’s district attorney, and the criminal justice system. With a strong cast that includes Academy Award® nominee, Alfre Woodard, and Xzibit, American Violet is a must see film.

SIL! had a chance to kick it one on one with American Violet’s leading lady, Nicole Behari, who gave us the 411 about discovering acting, and her experience with working on this phenomenal film.

SIL:   Where are you originally from, and what inspired you to become an actress?

Nicole Beharie:  I was born in West Palm Beach, Florida.  My father was in the foreign service, so I did a lot of moving to West Africa, Nigeria, Panama, London, and up and down the east coast.  After my parents divorced, I spent a great deal of time in Orangeburg, South Carolina, a really small town similar to the one in the film.  I was also in Atlanta and Maryland.  I don’t really have a home, so I’m going to say that Brooklyn is my home.  Home is whereever the family is.

SIL:  With moving around so frequently as a youth, what inspired you to become an actress?

NB: You kind of hit in on the head, because I think the moving around and the adaptations that happen with that has a lot to do with my choice to become an actor.  I also have an ear for different accents.  Every time I moved, which was like every three years,  I had to understand what it was like to be there, and just sort of fit in without getting beat up – bottom line!  With all of that moving around and  just to keep myself company, as a child, my little brother,  my neighbors and I would put on plays in the living room.

When I was in elementary school and middle school, I always thought that I would do something along the lines of my parents, either in mass communications or working in foreign affairs because that’s what my family did.  Ultimately along the way, everything that happened to me kept pushing me into this field.  Every time I shied away from it, things would happen.  I’d get a scholarship, or I auditioned for every theater school in high school, every theater school in the country, and I got into quite a few of them.  When I got into Juilliard, I was like you know what?  Maybe I can do this.  Maybe this can work out for me.   From there, things just started falling into place.  I feel that somebody upstairs is really  looking out for me.

SIL:  How did you land the role of Dee Roberts in American Violet?

NB: Well, my agency sent me a stack of scripts when I first joined them, and I think they were just sending them to me to give me an idea of what’s up the pike, just really keeping me busy and not really thinking this girl is going to go after anything.  I read them, but none of them were really that interesting, but this one stuck with me.  I read the script again and then I had a dream about it.  When you start dreaming about things, in my mind that means something.  I read the script and I was like I can’t be this woman.  She has four kids and she’s older than me, so I don’t have that life experience.  I called my agent and I asked where the audition was cast, so I said well let me just go in.  I went in for that part, and when I went back in for the call back, I met with the writer and the director and they told me about their involvement, and the fact that this was a real story.  When you actually meet the people who have met the people, you actually hear what they say and what they’ve seen; the hardships and the real courage it took.  I was like even with the least part, I just want to have some involvement in this, because I believe in it and I think it’s an important story. I will play the baby mama or play anyone else.    A few days later, I got a phone call while I was painting my apartment and it was one of the happiest phone calls that I’ve gotten, ever.

SIL:  This is a true story and you have to play a real character, someone who is present and existing now.  What kind of preparations did you have to make as an actor to portray this role?

NB: Bill Haney, the writer, did a documentary with the ACLU about the real Dee Roberts, the one who the story is written after.  I just saw footage of Dee and her family, the people in the town, the D.A., her daughters, as well as her brothers and all of the people who didn’t make it to the film who were involved.  I feel like that was the story,  and what made it real for me.  It made it undeniable and it made it a real responsibility that you can’t play around here.   It’s not like I’m doing a film about someone who can’t possibly show up one day.  This woman can show up one day.

The first time I saw the film was at a festival. I was seeing it for the first time with the audience, and the real Dee calls me over. She’s like, “Nicole, come sit besides me! You’ve got to watch this with me girl! Sit beside me!” I’m like look, I’ve  never had such a large part in a movie and  I hadn’t seen my face yet in this concept, so I was freaking out. I was afraid to see myself, and the little issues that you have with your face, or what you say, or your quirks. I love Dee, because we had been talking throughout the film.  When we were in New Orleans shooting, we actually hung out a few times and just kind of talked beyond work.  She was really excited about the movie, but when she called me over there I was like No!, No!, No!  Bill looked at me like, Nicole you’ve  got to go over there.  I sat down beside her and she held my hand throughout the whole entire film.  It was an experience that took me beyond myself.   I was like this woman is reliving something that I can only imagine and I got close to, but I don’t have the smell.  I don’t have the taste, or the other hours that aren’t captured in the film that she lived.  She was holding my hand and she was crying.    She seemed really pleased with the whole thing.

SIL:  How would you describe Dee Roberts?

NB: Brilliant, she has resilience, she has faith,  and a real sense of purpose.  One thing that she told me was that this situation changed her.  Before this happened, she was doing hair shows.  She’s a waitress, and  was just kind of enjoying life, but from there she ended up working with the ACLU, and just saw the world differently and this just broadened everything for her.  During the Jena Six trial, she drove out there during that whole thing.  That’s just the woman that she is.  She supports her four daughters, takes care of everything, and is still part of her community.  I don’t know if I could stay in a town where people are questioning my character all the time, especially in a small town.  Dee is resilient and she has faith and a real sense of purpose.  Working with the ACLU, she just started to see the world differently.

SIL:  How was the role for you emotionally, not only as an artist, but as a female?  On what levels were you able to connect to her character.  How much of that did you take on?

NB:  I felt that to be the best of my ability, the first thing I had to do was deal with her actual experience before she was falsely accused of selling drugs, and before the raid happened.  To actually get into the place where I actually have these four children, and to really love and understand what that means.  To have the family, have the community that she had with her church, with her mother, and the relationship that she had with her boyfriend, which was an abusive one, and then what it means to have four daughters that you’re raising on your own with the help of your family.  Going from there, just having that experience and then having an experience that takes you out of the civilian mentality, and understanding what that means, and how that checks you as an individual, as a citizen, as a young Black woman, as a mother, and what it means to be all of those things.

Seeing the real Dee and hearing her talk about the loss of trust, her environment, and what it meant to be isolated, not just by the white people, but the Black people, and also feeling like she isolated her children.  She had to make these decisions.  We make decisions that we don’t necessarily love,  but they’re not to the same degree.  We make decisions all day, and this really forced me to think about what I would have done.  Would I have taken the plea bargain? Or, would I have thought it out having these daughters, especially knowing what my babies father was like.  When I think about her, and her choices, that alone gave me the ammunition to get the experience and have the emotion.  It’s really not about the emotion, it’s about the situation.  Once you are in that dire situation, you’re just kind of calm and you’re not working for it.  What if that was me?  It could be, and that’s the thing that blows my mind about this story.  You look at it and it may seem isolated, but it’s not. It happens everywhere.

SIL:  I read that 2 million American’s are incarcerated, but 90% of the people just go ahead and take the plea bargain, even if they are innocent.  So the baic synopsis of the story is that you have Dee Roberts, single mother of four, and she’s set up during a drug raid?

NB: Well, the government has these raids, especially in this town, that they do periodically.  The raids are really there to fill a quota system, so that the government makes money.  It’s sort of like a war on drugs thing; you get a certain amount of people, you get a stipend for your budget.  Dee was just one of the people that the informant, who was by no means a legit informant, had given up and here she is in prison.  Of course she would be someone that people  would question because she has four kids, and the question would be how are you supporting these four children.  The same question arises in the community.

SIL:  Since this was around the time of the 2000 election, how much of this  do you think was based on politics, as opposed to 30 people being sent to jail?

NB: I think it’s mostly politics and the way that people are accustomed to seeing things run.  This man [Calvin Beckett] was still the D.A. after this trial happened, which says something about the community and about the power, even after everyone knows what happened.  I think the politics is that he’s looking for re-election and the people who are voting. This is what I think is one of the amazing things that happened in our recent election, because we have people voting who have never voted before, so maybe he won’t be re-elected in the elections coming up.  People will be energized getting out there, realizing that it does count.  But the people who were voting at that time where the people who felt protected by the status quo.  People felt that him putting young black people who live in the projects in jail, was the right way to do it.  That’s nothing but politic and him trying to make state power, which he’s been very successful at doing, unfortunately.

SIL:  What were your original thoughts about the script, and how did they change after you completed the film?

NB: I know more now about the case, and I also got to shoot in New Orleans, post Katrina.  I could also relate because I was raised by a single mother, so there are some connections there.  Sadly, this is a reality in the community.  I think the awareness of the idea that there are paths in our system that are in place in schools, life, politics, and in the confines of our neighborhoods, that push us to act against the norm.  Be aware!  Awareness is key!  I want people to know that there are options out there.  She [Dee Roberts] didn’t have much, but she had choices.

SIL:  You had the opportunity to work with a wonderful cast including Alfre Woodward and Xzibit.  What was that experience like?

NB: I loved working with Xzibit.  He just made it a lot of fun, but when it was time for us to do our scenes, he just got into it.  Working with Alfre Woodard is no small thing. She was great.  She would send me flowers and check in on me by writing me notes.

SIL:  What would you like to say to our SIL audience?

NB: Continue to be honest with yourself.  It’s a constant struggle, but always make sure that you are close to yourself and that you are working on developing who you are.

*Nicole Behari is currently working on a one woman show in Brooklyn, N.Y.

For more info about American Violet, visit www.americanviolet.com

Cedella Marley is on fire with Her Hot Clothing Line.

Story By Gabriel “Gabby” Crusado Age 17, Senior, LaGuardia High School, NYC

Hey, Fashion World!
This is your girl Gabby, The Fashionista. How many of you
have dreamt of being a part of the fashion world? You know,
designing for the biggest names in history, or even starting your own line? Well, this has been my dream for as long as I can remember. I was granted the opportunity of a lifetime to interview one of the best underground designers you can name. This woman has great charisma, not to mention a style that’s so artistic and creative. She goes by the name
of Cedella Marley [eldest child of the legendary Bob Marley]. For many years, she has strived to make this dream her reality
and let me tell you, this is not an easy job. Ms. Cedella gives us the scoop on what it’s like behind the scenes of the fashion world, the obstacles you have to face, and what it was like for
her growing up. I talked with Cedella for a while and some of
the information she gave to me was astonishing. This exclusive
interview will blow you away.
Gabby: What was your childhood like?
Cedella Marley: My childhood was pretty cool. We grew up on the beach. We lived in Bull Bay, a tiny house with three bedrooms, and one of the bedrooms was actually turned into the kitchen. Our dad used to make us jog all the time barefoot. We used to catch fish and eat them. We would dip them in the water after we roasted them on the fire
because it was salt water. Little things like that you just go wow, because I don’t think people even realize that it was like that, but it was what we knew.
We thought it was a ball and it still is. If we go back to Bull Bay right now, we go jogging on the beach, catch the fish, roast it, and then dip it back into the salt water, just to give it the flavor.
My parents toured a lot, so we went to boarding
school. I became an alter girl in the church, and Ziggy was an alter boy. When my parents came
back, they both got shot, so we stayed in the Bahamas for a while, just to kind of get out of the political climate. There was a lot fear, for us as
children, because we didn’t know which day they would come to the house. That was normal for us. We didn’t really move around a lot, but when
we had to, we did. It was nice. Even right now, all of my brothers and sisters live a block away from each other in Miami. Ziggy and my sister Karen live in California. We’re all very close. My father really instilled that in us. If I had a baby brother, he would bring the baby brother over and say he looks like you and that’s your brother. We all grew up together. We love each other and would die for each other.
Gabby: When did you realize that you wanted to follow your career and pursue a career in fashion?
Cedella: I wouldn’t really say it was a dream of mine, because I’ve been working since I was three years old, growing up and signing with my brothers and sisters. Of course growing up in that, the clothing becomes an important part of the overall performance, so it just came kind of naturally. What happened to me was that I had three months off and I started to do deconstructing of t-shirts, jeans and jackets, and pants. It really was more of a passion of being creative, than looking at it from a business sense. You’re born with the passion. It’s not something that just comes. It’s something that you are born with.

Gabby: As a musician, you’ve been able to travel the world. How has that exposure influenced the designs that you create for your line?
Cedella: I would say more in the fabrics, because when you travel to different parts of the world, the textile is just incredible. I mean, your talking about India for embroidery and beading, then you go
to Africa and you see the way that they treat the
cotton; from batik to mud cloth, to kente cloth – all of that. I have a love for fabric and texture, not so much what a skirt is cut like. I have a love for textiles.
Gabby: How did you choose the name “Catch a Fire” for your clothing line?
Cedella: When I chose the name, it was all about the image; the image that I love of dad on that album [Catch a Fire]. I loved the picture and then when I pulled out the album and saw the name I said, O.K…I like that!
Gabby: Whom is the line designed for?
Cedella: You. Kayinde, Delphine, my mom, my sisters. It’s designed for me. Some days I wake up and I’m twelve, and when I go to bed I’m twenty-one. I might wake up the next day and I’m fifty. I can still rock my Catch a Fire wear. I’ll still put on my t-shirt or my skirt, whatever, and I’ll feel sexy when I put it on.
Gabby: How does having the power to create your own line and being an entrepreneur make you feel?
Cedella: It makes me feel stressed! Very stressed out [laughs]. Anything goes wrong, it’s my fault, but you still have the freedom to kind of take a risk.
Gabby: Would you consider yourself to be a role model for young girls who are interested in pursuing a career in fashion, or starting their own company?
Cedella: If making mistakes and then just learning from them and taking it on as it comes and being told you can’t do it and you go, “Ok…alright. Watch this!” and you come back and do it the next day…well, yeah. Maybe I am.
Gabby: What would you say have been some of the challenges that you have faced in the industry?
Cedella: It just so happened that when we first started Catch a Fire, a lot of artists were coming out with their lines. It wasn’t difficult for me to be
accepted, but what I didn’t want to accept was people just thinking that all I did was go into a boardroom and look at something that I had no
part of in it being created, and just going, yes I like that, and then just walking out. That’s not my life. People kind of expected me to just put my name on this and then they send me a check afterwards, and that was not what I wanted to do. That’s not how we were brought up. My mom would always say, “If it don’t hurt you and if it’s not a struggle, it’s not going to last long.” You take the pain and you take the rejecting, because
they’re going to do that. They’re going to say, “Just give us a Bob Marley tee-shirt. We don’t want batik, cropped jacket. What’s that? What does it have to do with Marley?” I’m not Bob Marley. I’m Cedella. Sometimes, I just go by Cedella so that I can be accepted for that, and for nothing else! If you can’t accept my creativity, then don’t think you’re
going to get my name, because I’m not selling my name. I’m trying to sell this piece right here that I really worked hard on. It was not somebody who sat down somewhere else and came in and said, “Do you approve this?” That was my biggest challenge, really. Just having people take me seriously.
Gabby: Ok…so, what have been some of your rewarding moments?
Cedella: Two years ago, I did a fashion show in Jamaica. I think it was for Jamaican Fashion Week. I never did it before, because I was scared. I would send the clothes, but I would never go. This time, I knew the line was right and it was ready. It was like I went there to kill everyone. My brothers and I, we worked on the song for the fashion show and
we did a mix of Missy Elliott and Damian, he didhis thing, “A catch a fire dem come back.” It was crazy! To get a standing ovation from Jamaicans,
first of all, and all of the other designers that came to the show, was like they realized that I’m not some celebrity child/adult kid, whatever, trying to make a name off my father, but that I have something. And, guess what? We had an earthquake the same night. I just thought that it all had to do with Catch a Fire. Everything! The earth was shaking, the stage was rocking’. It was a fire! Everywhere! Even now when I think about it I get the little goose bumps and the hair rise up on my neck. For me, that was
something.

Gabby: In the beginning, was difficult to have to juggle between your career in music and fashion, while being a parent?
Cedella: No, I took everything with me. The sewing machines came with me, the kids came with me. Everything came with me until I realized, listen, they’re like five and they should be in school or something. I decided, well, what do I give up? Let me just give up the music, for now, because I really wanted to be a good parent. You know, my parents…they traveled. For all of our growing up, they were always on the road and it was something that I always said that when I have kids, I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to do this. Then I said, you know what, I’m not even going to have kids, because I love what I do. I had Soul Rebel, and he changed everything. I was like, “Whoa! Wait a minute” I took him on the road and realized that it was too hectic. You’re here one night, you’re there tomorrow, you’re gone to this place, and you come back. It’s just too hectic. So, you give and you take, and then you make a sacrifice. It’s good that I can still sing in the studio. I go to the studio if Steve is doing an album, or if Damian is doing an album. I go and I do whatever. If they’re doing a show and I’m around, I’ll go there and jump on stage and kill it, and then come off. That’s what I love. I don’t think I can really take how hectic it is
anymore; being on the road for like six months out of the year, not when I have three boys.
Gabby: What is a typical day like for you as a businesswoman in fashion?
Cedella: Well, I have a computer in every single room, including the bathroom. If I know that something is going on, then I’ll jump on there. I make sure that the kids are off. Basically, one of my jobs is that I approve all of my dad’s merchandise, so I’ll open the door and they’ll be boxes and boxes of stuff that I actually have to go through and go no, his face doesn’t look right here. I’m very technical too. I’ll see things here or there that we may have to take out. Going through liner notes for albums, and
all that kind of stuff. I’m also trying to sketch something out. I’ll jump on
the machine and I love to embroider. I have about sixteen needles and I program in my artwork, then the lawyer might call and is talking about some other kind of crap and he’s like, “Cedella, can you turn off the machine?” I’m like ok…just give me one minute. It’s crazy! The whole day is that you don’t do just one thing, you do a lot of things and at the end of the day, you’re wondering if anything that you did is actually correct. You wait for the phone to ring at ten o’clock at night, and if it doesn’t ring
you know that it went well.
Gabby: What would you say where your inspirations?
Cedella: My inspirations is just… you know, my mom, my dad, my family. Earth, Jamaica, Ethiopia. I was talking to this Ethiopian lady the other day, and was like the embroidery that you guys do over there is
all by hand. They always put this gold thread at the end of it, just to make it pop off. They would do this thing with the thread that would make the whole embroidery look amazing, so now I am into Ethiopia and the jewelry that they do, and how it’s done. All of these big designers are now moving into Ethiopia, because it really has the best leather. Weird, little things inspire me. I can get inspired by a song, and just sketch out pieces that go with that song. It comes everyday and it’s always new, and
sometimes very refreshing.
Gabby: So do you have any personal mantras that get you through the day?
Cedella: Judge not, unless you want to be judged. I would try to say, live, love, laugh, blah, blah. I think if a lot of people just got up and said well today I’m going to try to judge not, or let me try to not have an opinion about something or someone without actually knowing.
Gabby: How would you define your sense of style?
Cedella: I express myself in however I feel it’s going to make me feel, not what I think people are going to think. My sense of style is just freedom to do whatever I want to do.
Gabby: I just go with how I’m feeling for the day.
Cedella: Yeah! You can’t put yourself into a box and say I’m a bohemian Rasta. I am, but I don’t want to put myself into that box. Because I don’t
have locs people say, “You’re a bohemian, but what do you mean Rasta. Where are your locs?” Not knowing that to be a Rasta is not about your
hair, but about your religion and your belief. I don’t want to put myself into any box, so let’s just say I’m free.
Gabby: Are there any fashion Do’s and Dont’s that you would share with people?
Cedella: I would say do whatever, because who are we to judge?
Gabby: Do whatever?
Cedella: Yeah! Whatever you think will make you look right, you do it!
Gabby: Where do you see yourself with the development of your company in the next five years?
Cedella: Well, we’re branching out into kids with our line Three Little Birds. I definitely want to do a home collection, Marley Home. I want to be like Martha Stewart.

Gabby: Do you feel that you have any goals that you haven’t accomplished yet?
Cedella: Yes! I want to be a pilot. I want to be a pilot, because I don’t like to fly so I figure that if I start taking flying lessons, I will fly. I probably fly maybe two times out of the year. I would drive from here to L.A. a couple of years ago. I think I want to be an architect too. I want to do a little more in home design. I don’t think I can ever reach a plateau where I’m like this is it. I don’t have that type of personality. I’m always trying to do something else.

Teens That Mean Business

By Kadeem Fletcher, age 17, Boys and Girls High School, Brooklyn, N.Y.

My name is Kadeem Fletcher, I am 17 and I attend Boys and Girls High School. I worked at Flowerworks, a flower shop on Nostrand between Atlantic and Herkimer Street. Firstly, I must say that I really did not favor business before, but this program has opened my eyes to a different aspect of the business world and what it has to offer, that aspect being intriguing and motivating. The information I have received from this program has proven to be very useful and vital in my everyday life. I can now say that I have acquired a better understanding of how to be financially efficient and wiser in the decisions that I make daily. Everything that I have learned in this program has impacted me in more ways than one that I shall carry with me in my life to come.

Secondly, this program has blessed us with more than knowledge, but we have met many victorious people who have come far in life and have been very successful in their fields. I do not know about everyone else, but when I see a great number of adults that have met and exceeded their goals and have become very productive men and women, it just encourages me to pursue what I am aspiring to be. They all have given me a great boost of confidence and I am now determined more than ever to meet and exceed my goals as well.

I learned many lessons from this program for I have matured a lot from it, also from paying respect to all the speakers to coming in early every Monday. This program really helped me to develop more of my abilities that shall take me a long way in life. A typical day at my job involved cutting flowers, putting up balloons, typing up a paper, and cleaning around the shop. It was very tiring, but I understood what I was getting from it.
I appreciate everything that I have obtained from this experience and although this is my second year in this program, I cannot describe the intellect that I have gained. This year I really took full advantage of what this program offered and I am elated to say that I didn’t let it go to waste.

Spike Lee: Miracle at St. Anna Interview

Ngozi Romaine–Johnson: How were you introduced to Miracle at St. Anna, the novel by James McBride?

Spike: My wife, Tanya Lewis Lee, gave it to me. I had known about James’ first book, The Color of Water, which is about how his Jewish mother raised six kids as a single parent. I read this [Miracle at St. Anna] and said that it was a great book and had the potential to be a great film.

Ngosi: What specifically about the book inspired you to make it into a film?
Spike: Well, it was not the typical World War II story. It’s a mystery. You have a murder at the beginning and then a flashback. It’s unique, not unique, but a not often told story of Black soldiers who participated in World War II; the interaction between them and the Italian civilians, who themselves were going through a civil war. Fascism vs. democracy, and the
element of the Nazis. Then you have again, these Black men who are trying to achieve double victory, by that I mean victory overseas against the Fascists that were in Europe or in the Pacific, but also victory at home where Black people were still being treated as second class citizens.

Ngosi: Do you expect this film to affect the way that viewers relate to American history?
Spike: That is the hope, but you can’t really predict that type of stuff because you don’t really know how people can respond to the material. For example, I think one of the greatest things for me about the film Denzel and I did, Malcolm X, was that many people went back and not only read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but many other books about Malcolm X. They wanted to learn more about him because that film could not contain every element of his life. So, you hope that maybe other people can start
reading books about the Tuskegee Airmen, about the 76th first tank battalion, about the Black Marines, and the Red Bull Express, these are all great stories that haven’t really received a lot of attention.
Ngosi: Why do you think that many young people like myself, like I’ve never learned about this in school and it’s not in text books?
Spike: Well, they’re not teaching you either that the first presidents of the United States owned slaves, also. They’re leaving that out. George Washington had slaves, so they want to paint a rosy picture. If they taught that stuff then it would diminish and put into question the hypocrisy of the framers, or the founding fathers. This country was built upon slavery
and even genocide against Native Americans who really now, I mean… Black got it tough, but not even compared to Native Americans. I don’t even call them reservations, there more like concentration camps. You get a casino, but if you’re not in cahoots with the big chief then you are on a reservation, where they have the highest mortality rate, alcoholism, and all types of life expectancy rates. Native Americans, they got it bad. It’s like they don’t even exist anymore, they don’t even have a voice.

Ngosi: When you were filming in Tuscany, what was the response you got from the residents there?

Spike: They were happy to see us. A lot of them were elderly and were young during World War II and would tell me stories about the Black soldiers that helped them, gave them chocolate, food, and medicine. They were very excited.
Ngosi: Did you experience any conflict or tension when you were looking for funding for your film?
Spike: Yes. The bulk of the money for the film, the financing came from Europe—from Italy and France. The United States distributor is Disney Touchstone so they are the American distributors and they put money into it too, but the bulk of the money comes from Europe.
Ngosi: What can you tell us about the casting experience? How long did it take to decide who you wanted in this film?
Spike: The casting experience was different with this film then any other film because all the other
films, people were speaking English. In this film, I had to go to Rome to cast the Italian actors and I had to go to Berlin to cast the German actors. Most of the time when I cast somebody, I’m familiar with their work and the work that I’ve seen is an example of what they’ve done. That wasn’t really the case in casting it in Rome and Berlin.
Ngosi: Did this make the process more difficult?
Spike: Yes, because I don’t speak the language. I don’t speak German and I don’t speak Italian. There might have been films that they were in, but it made it more difficult. We still found the best people, but it
took longer.
Ngosi: Do you feel that the film could have been set in another time period, during more recent wars, and would’ve had the same affect?
Spike: It could. There was a great film by Kevin Jarre called Glory and it dealt with the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment who fought with
the Union against the Confederacy in the Civil War. There was a cable movie called The Tuskegee Airmen on HBO with Lawrence Fishburne. In the spring, George Lucas produced a film about the Tuskegee Airmen that’s going to be a movie.
Ngosi: If you could have, then why did you keep it in the same time period?
Spike: That was the time period that the novel was written in and I’m not going to change the novel. The novel was specifically World War II. If you look at Hollywood, war films have been made about World War II and World War I, the Civil War, Vietnam, and the Korean War, but World War II, it far exceeds any other war that films were made about.
Ngosi: Your films often address issues surrounding racial and economic diversity, and often serve as eye-openers for many who are uneducated about that conflict that ensues due to that diversity. When you made this film, was your objective to educate, inspire or uplift your audience?
Spike: I think that number one, what you want to do is tell a story. I’m not trying to just tell statistics, but just tell a story and when you tell the story other things come out. We felt that this was a great story; like I said before, when I read the novel I thought it would make a great film. There is stuff inherent about what happened there that brings about and illuminates
that stuff you call about learning. I’ll give you an example. James spoke to a lot of Buffalo Soldiers, World War II vets, these are men who are now in their middle eighties and they are very proud of fighting for this country. They consider themselves patriots, but even today, there is bitterness when they talk about the examples when they were made to feel less than human. It is not a generally known fact that thousands upon thousands of German prisoners of war were shipped back to the United States of America. Many of them were shipped down south and were placed on the same base where the Black troops were. So, imagine you are a young Black
man who is living in a country where he is a second class citizen. Despite that, you want to fight for the red, white, and blue and you’re being trained to kill and fight for this country. You are being trained to kill Nazis, you’re being trained to kill Japanese, and the people you are being trained to kill live right next to you, on the same camp. They are getting better housing, better food, and better medical care. Here you are, trained to kill them, and they are right there. That would make somebody go crazy. And these men, many, many years ago, that hurt. It’s also like a sense of betrayal, but despite that they still fight and even today, the majority of the armed forces, especially the army, is Hispanic and Black.
Ngosi: There’s a lot that I just don’t know that this story is bringing to my attention. It’s almost mindblowing.
Spike: Have you read the novel yet?
Ngosi: No.
Spike: You should read the novel.

Ngosi: I was just introduced to the Buffalo Soldiers hearing about this film.
Spike: Yeah, it’s not George Washington chopping down cherry trees [laughs]. “I can’t tell a lie!”, but they lied about me owning slaves, though.
Ngosi: How much research did you actually have to do on the Buffalo Soldiers?
Spike: Oh, a ton of research, but again, my job was made easier by James McBride who wrote the novel and had done the research and became friends with a lot of these guys. He just said Spike, speak to this guy, speak to this guy, speak to this guy. So I didn’t have to do like, detective work. He just said these are the people you need to speak to.
Ngosi: Did you have to do research at the Library of Congress?
Spike: No. James did. He actually had to move to Italy for about six months to get the side of the partisan, the Italian side too.
Ngosi: What was the most challenging part of creating Miracle at St. Anna?
Spike: Shooting the war scenes.
Ngosi: That’s different from what you’ve done before.
Spike: I’ve had people riot, but it was… we had to do our work. I’m going to try to get an essay for you from one of the guys, a Buffalo Soldier, William Perry.
Ngosi: So that was like a first. What else was a first for this film?
Spike: Well, we had shot a little bit of Malcolm X overseas, but not to that length, not to the duration that we did with this film. We shot all in Italy, except for two days in New York, two days in White Castle, Louisiana, two days in the Bahamas.
Ngosi: Did you consider using some of the same actors that you’ve used before for this film.
Spike: There’s some people used before. John Turturro makes a cameo performance. He’s been in like fourteen of my films. Kerry Washington has a cameo, John Leguizamo has a cameo, but other than that, everyone else is new. People I have not worked with before.
Ngosi: You took a lot of young men from here over to Italy as extras to play the Buffalo Soldiers. What was that experience like?
Spike: In doing our research, there are Black people in Italy, but they’re from Africa. We used those guys and put them in the background, but we needed a core group of Buffalo Soldiers, so we flew over 40 brothers over, from here in New York. Many of them didn’t have passports, so this was the first time many of them left the country.
Ngosi: How would you define the Buffalo Soldier?
Spike: Patriot! An American hero.
Ngosi: I listen to Bob Marley’s song [Buffalo Soldier], and I just found out about the Buffalo Soldiers that were fighting…
Spike: You heard the song before?
Ngosi: Yes.

Spike: What do you think the song is about?

Ngosi: Not about the same people, because I didn’t know about them, so now that I’m learning about it, I’m learning about the correlation. It’s disappointing that this information isn’t available to me when I’m at school.

Ngosi: How much effort was required when working with your cast to accurately portray the characters? Was there a connection that some of them had with the story already?

Spike: Omar Benson Miller, who plays “Train”, he read the novel before, and I think Michael Ealy, but the other actors had not. But during pre-production I gave them books, or we’d look at documentaries. So everybody did there own research. Plus, a lot of people had great uncles or grandfathers that fought in World War II, so they could ask them for information too.
Ngosi: What would you say to the Say it LOUD! audience in regards to going out and seeing the film?
Spike: I feel there’s a lot of history, not just with this film, but that they definitely need to know. You can’t use the excuse anymore that they didn’t teach you in school. Everybody has a computer, everyone has the Internet. The information is out there. You just have to the get up and get initiative to want to learn that stuff to educate your self. You got to’ have initiative
to educate your mind and get education every way you can. If your teachers aren’t giving it, you’re going to go somewhere else to get it. A lot of it is self-motivation and you have to be motivated.
Ngosi: Thank you for your time.
Spike: Oh, you’re welcome. Let me get you that.

Are You Ready for Spike’s New Joint?

Article by Ngozi Romain

When I learned that I was going to interview filmmaker Spike Lee, it was both exciting and terrifying. I was eager to take part in my first interview, but a little frightened by the idea of interviewing Spike Lee, whose work I respect and admire for its honesty. Films such as Do The Right Thing, and Malcolm X, have taught me lessons about life the way only a Spike Lee Joint could. For this reason, I wondered what sort of honesty I would encounter when I met Lee face-to-face? I certainly didn’t think that I was ready to find out just yet. First, I had some questions. One question outweighed the others by far; just what was I going to ask him about?
Learning that he had recently wrapped a film, Miracle at St. Anna, adapted from the novel by James McBride, relieved a small amount of my stress. I was also informed that the film would be about the 92nd Infantry Division, the Buffalo Soldiers, who fought in Italy during World War II. New questions raced to my head, but I focused on one, who were the Buffalo Soldiers? I recognized the name James McBride from his memoir, The Color of Water, which I recall seeing in my mother’s library. But my thinking back to the weeks when we covered WWII in school led me nowhere. I could barely remember the dates and names that had been drilled into my head for an exam, much less remember reading a small section in a textbook about the
Buffalo Soldiers, if in fact there was one. This is where my quest began. I knew that in order for me to have a successful interview, I would have to know more about the Buffalo Soldiers than their name, so I began to research.

Firstly, I found the name “Buffalo Soldiers” was a nickname given by the Native American tribes fought by the members of the U.S. 10th Calvary Regiment of the United States Army during the Civil War. The term eventually included the 9th, 27th, and 28th Cavalry and 24th & 25th Infantry Regiments. Congress in fact established the United States Colored Troops Regiments, or Buffalo Soldiers, as the first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular U.S. Army. Miracle at St. Anna focuses on the 92nd Infantry Division, which was the only African-American infantry division to see combat in Europe during WWII. With this in mind, I journeyed into the city for my interview, ready to learn more. I had questions prepared, but not many, as I had not yet seen the film. My mother Régine Romain (the photographer at the interview), Kayinde Harris (co-editor in chief of Say It Loud Magazine) and I entered DDB Studios. I was as prepared as I could be, but when we did see Lee, he asked that we
wait another 45 minutes to do the interview. Relieved that I had more time to collect myself, I followed the others back outside. The time seemed to pass at a snail’s pace and to fly by simultaneously. Although I did not want to be late for our interview, I did not want to look at the time either. Outside of the towering building on 59th street, we passed the time with conversation about almost everything but the film, or the interview. But when it was time again for us to enter the studios, I steeled myself for a cold or disagreeable person, since it is always best, in my opinion, to be prepared for the worst. But Lee was in fact quite pleasant, and eager to share his knowledge with us. During the interview, I asked Lee how he was introduced to the novel, why he chose to use the book for his script, about the hiring experience in the U.S. and in Italy, and more questions about the filming experience. The interview answered so many of my questions but I still wasn’t too sure on what exactly happened in the film. So I entered the next stage in my quest, going to the advanced
screening of Miracle at St. Anna.

Both educational, and inspirational in my eyes, Miracle at St. Anna is a film that takes its audience on a journey that will not only test their historical knowledge, but also their faith in their fellow man. This film takes the audience into a time and place where both faith and brotherhood are currencies. Without these currencies, one would be lost amongst the gunfire and the dismembered bodies of men from a brutal WWII scene. Miracle focuses on the path that four young Buffalo Soldiers seek
refuge on when they are separated from their camps and trapped behind German lines, but are determined to make it home. The film begins with the murder of a seemingly innocent man, and seizes your attention when it leaves you wondering who this man was, and why he was killed. You then travel back in time, to a battlefield amongst the Buffalo Soldiers of Fox and George Camps of the 92nd Infantry Division, and the story unfolds. The four soldiers portrayed by Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller, band together as brothers and make their main priority to return to their base, and make it home safely. Faced with many different conflicts and obstacles, the four find out the true value of the currency of faith and brotherhood.

When I researched the Buffalo Soldiers and began to understand for myself the importance of this project, I was disappointed that I had not learned this part of my history in more detail. I was disappointed because there is much that can be said about a people who fight for a country that has not been fighting for them. I was mainly disappointed in our public school system. In many cases, the parts of my history that I have learned tidbits about at home, are not explained in a significant way in school. I suppose that many parents and children of color alike are reliant upon what their schools can teach them about their people that will set an example of success and pride. However, this education that we, the youth, are supposedly getting is insufficient when it comes to a history of a strong, proud and powerful people of color. To the surprise of many, there is an enumerable amount of material, facts, names and dates that are excluded from the average textbook in the average K-12 public school. These books never relate in detail people of African descent have done for our country and what they are continuing to do. So, just how, may I ask, is the African-American youth of today expected to have pride in the history of their people, if they know only the tip of the iceberg? This is a problem because if we are not learning much about ourselves at a young age, when are we expected to learn our own basic history? Arewe even expected to learn this history at all? As a young woman of African descent, this troubles me. The behavioral problems I see in children of color, I relate directly to their lack of education about where they came from, and therefore a lack of pride in themselves and a lack of pride in their people.

These troubles were in my mind when I interviewed Omar Benson Miller, Michael Ealy and Laz Alonso, three stars from the film. After watching Miracle at St. Anna, I knew that this issue had to be addressed. Each person that I interviewed broadened my thoughts about the educating of youth because Miller, Ealy, Alonso and Lee all had something powerful to say to the young people of today in regards to their education. From each interview, I pulled together one message, a message that leaves the power to educate in the hands of the youth themselves. In this day and age, with technology advancing at the speed of light, it is important that we, as young people,
remember that the power to create change lies within our hands. The fact that we are not being taught all that we are entitled to learn about our history in school is no longer an excuse. We are living and thriving in the Information Age. There are no excuses as to why we, the people of tomorrow, are not actively showing respect to those who came before us. We have access to so much more than our ancestors did and we can achieve and do more today. If we are to ensure a positive future for ourselves, and our children to come, we must take advantage of what is at our fingertips, and set our goals higher than ever before. The journey of the Buffalo Soldiers, has given me a deeper understanding about the possibility of possibilities. I truly believe that they showed us that there are no barriers or obstacles that can stand in the way of our freedom, success or advancement. As Spike Lee stated in our interview, they are truly ‘American patriots.’ Are you?

Photo of Spike Lee by Regine Romain

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