5 Questions #2: Joe Brewster & Michèle Stephenson
The directors/producers of "Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project" reveal the answers
"Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project" is an inspiring phantasamagoria of image, sound, and thought, anchored by the incredible presence of Nikki herself — a prickly, funny, wise, and immensely challenging individual. From one of the initial confrontations when she tells the filmmakers she won’t give them the answer they want to her even more radical poetry, you know what you are getting won’t have a filter. Michele and Joe unleash a bold and inspiring cinematic language far removed from their previous observational style. That the film takes us to such a hopeful place, speaks volumes about the transformational power of art to heal and connect. It is a must see and makes you wonder why we don’t have more movies like this.
The portrait of an artist, of a hero, is a staple of doc form. Going to Mars avoids the traps in itsunflinching portrait of an artist, not deifying the subject but finding the form to match the content — and it is bold, bold like Nikki Giovanni. Despite the wide breadth of recent history, it feels so fresh, so timely, so necessary. As much as I love her prickliness and orneriness. I can imagine execs being afraid of revealing it, but Michele and Joe don’t shy away. You don’t have to agree with Nikki — she surely won’t agree with you! — but she is a hero for our time, for all time, and we are lucky she’s in our world, and the subject of this movie.
Do you have a creative practice or process? Why have you embraced it (or not)? Please explain it a bit for us.
This is a tricky question partially because asking us to define something that has grown out of a few decades of experience cannot be described in one hundred words or less. Our practice is multifaceted and nimble. It changes over time and adapts to the economic, political, and social environment of the time. However, a few pillars of the creative process remain unchanged. As descendants of enslaved Africans, we prioritize their stories and, more specifically, expand on the history, creativity and the agency of the voices of the Black Atlantic. We also prioritize a growth mindset at every stage of the creative process. This means that mistakes don’t really exist – that we are committed to learning and expanding our skill sets from every experience, but we are also intentional in the celebration of failure as well as our successes. Criticism is painful but seen as the potential for something beautiful to come out of it. Criticism of primarily white reviewers of our documentary film, American Promise, allowed us to tailor our outreach campaign and better understand and be committed to who our audience truly was - which ultimately led to the prestigious PUMA PRIZE/Doc Society Prize for Impact and was named the best documentary outreach campaign worldwide in 2014. Understanding that our rejection by a fraction of our audience allowed us to promote American Promise to an audience who eagerly advocated for Black students and an implicit basis in the classroom nationwide was like a call we responded to that made our work unapologetically better, clarifying our vision and intent while not cow-towing to others’ perceptions of what we were creating.
I like to call our practice or approach a communal call and response Black Atlantic practice. We also make space for the individual to shine within the collective and we respond to those individual bursts of creativity. It’s been unconscious in some cases and we often analyze that process after the fact, as we complete certain elements of the creative work.
What does that approach look like? It’s kind of like jazz or hip hop, we encourage one person to get in the circle – sometimes it’s Joe or me, the editor, our producer or associate producer – they express or work on something they share. We respond through feedback or through figuring out how we get the “draft’ to the next level. Communal discussion and consensus are key, and the result is always a powerful remix. It’s about respecting the circle of the creative process, allowing for some individuality to express itself while building on that expression with a collective eye. This is applied to everything we do.
What is one small operational improvement you’d like to see for the film industry that is executable but hasn’t been done? Why do you think it hasn’t been done?
We’d like to see 1% of all film budgets go to a fund that supports storytellers/filmmakers as artists regardless of their projects, including documentary films, narrative films, and the immersive arts. We clearly understand the advantages of the storyteller. They offer insights into universal life experiences and understand differences and reveal commonalities of other cultures and promote healing, agency, and validation. It would be a win-win for the nation and the artists involved. This is done in many countries; however, here in this country, this important training is left up to the good graces of philanthropists, corporations and commercial entities that support (via workshops and residencies) makers who are encouraged to create a product that serves their interests. Do we need another superhero maker? Or would we benefit from makers who could delve into and express our complex world?
Want to add a second thought. Alternate modes of distribution that encompasses a framework that is larger than what we term “impact” are alos key. Perhaps 1% of all documentary budgets should go towards a fund that opens the possibility to book theaters or community spaces and allows for partnerships with local organizations. We need to close that ecosystem circle where the creative production of films/docs where engaging and being in conversation with audiences becomes a logical part of the ecosystem, without it necessarily being led by the filmmaker. It’s more than just impact – it’s about thinking wholistically about the life of a film where the entire circle is part of one vision with a strong team. Impact feels limiting as a concept. We need to reframe how we envision the journey of a film and who we engage with in conversation with audiences and communities. We can think, for example, of pop-ups, or community galleries as references for sites for a film’s life.
What do you do to stay committed and lift work higher?
For us, filmmaking and storytelling is a healing process of self-discovery. The goal is to challenge ourselves creatively at every project while remaining true to our politics and sense of purpose. So, yes that challenge we embrace means several things - pushing the creative envelope while embracing a practice and process that is communal and collective – in the making and in the screening of our films.
Even though we may not always succeed, building personal communal relationships with our team is crucial. This involves getting to know our team members, including their personal and professional goals. It's a two-way street that requires vulnerability, as we must also be willing to share. This process is powerful because it creates a supportive community within the workspace, where crew members are more connected and have greater agency. We have multiple examples where team members have left our service and gifted us with their support years later. Yes, personal connectedness is the “gift that keeps on giving.” It also allows us to heal and be sensitive to individual trauma in the process of creating work that is meaningful.
We also recognize that we can't solely rely on the same team members year after year. Therefore, we intentionally move beyond our comfort zone to bring in new members, thereby growing our Rada filmmaking community. This is also an opportunity to diversify our community, which needs more Black, Brown, and female representation to remain relevant.
What is the best or favorite advice you’ve received?
This is a piece of advice that we’ve heard in various iterations – the process of creation is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s the notion that time is an essential asset in filmmaking. The more time we have available to us as filmmakers, the better the potential for the creative, manifested in several ways. Time is also something money seems to be allergic to. Often in these capitalist models more money is thrown at a project to get it done faster and “better” – is the idea or assumption. The notion that you can throw more people at it to get it done quick and out there quicker. But that’s not how independent film necessarily works. We’ve tried to flip the model a bit and keep true to the meaning of “independence” – valuing the time we have without the funding to ruminate and experiment as we continue to go after that dollar bill to complete our independent projects. There are certain things you cannot rush or throw money at to find the beauty or to unlock the creative key – especially if you try to stay true to being unapologetic about your vision.
Time allows us to see filmmaking more complexly and ultimately flip the daily obstacles that we face as makers into opportunities to explore, excavate and unlock. Time allows for better preparation, more experimentation, and the building of trust between the creative team and our participants. For example, when faced with a work slowdown during the COVID-19 crisis, we believe the quality of the finished products improved exponentially in creativity and efficiency because we were able to use the additional time to our advantage while working, mitigating that time's cost.
Was there a moment where things changed or improved for you professionally? Can you unpack that? Why do you think it worked?
Winning top prestigious awards in the documentary space can maybe seem on their face as pinnacles that shift our careers dramatically and permanently. But we like to believe otherwise in terms of what truly shapes us and our work. Those career zeniths have not been as impactful as the nadirs that preceded the triumphs. Those are the moments that made us. Those are the moments that force us to question our goals and values. Those moments have forced us to answer critical life questions. Why is the film or career important? How do I feed my child,...my soul? The answers to those questions come in various forms. I remember in 1994, we were broke, struggling both emotionally and financially to complete our first narrative feature film. Giancarlo Esposito, our lead actor, appeared at our doorstep with two hundred dollars cash, a two-foot-tall Christmas tree, and a lecture about the personal importance of our no-budget film, THE KEEPER, and the potential impact it could have on the Black community. That moment - that act of generosity from a friend who saw us down - changed our lives and taught us about true community, patience, and perseverance of purpose. Interestingly, Giancarlo later offered us funding to save the production. That was a critical moment in our journey as makers.
I had the good fortune of getting to moderate a brief discussion of the film with Joe and Michele, but also the producer Tommy Oliver. It was a pretty damn good conversation if I do say so myself! Check it out here: https://www.hbomaxfyc.com/title/going-to-mars-the-nikki-giovanni-project
The film debuts on HBO January 8th. Check out the trailer here:
Joe Brewster | Director and Producer
Joe Brewster is a Harvard trained psychiatrist who uses his training as the foundation in approaching the social issues he tackles as an artist and filmmaker. Brewster wrote and directed his first film, The Keeper (1995), after a two year-long stint as a prison psychiatrist at the notorious Brooklyn House of Detention. The Keeper was screened at the Edinburg, Toronto, and Sundance Festivals; receiving numerous awards. For his first work Brewster was Spirit Award nominee and has never looked back. In the past three decades, Brewster has produced and directed narrative, documentary films, and immersive media. His feature documentary, American Promise, was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. In 2022, Brewster produced the O-DOGG: An Angeleno Take on Othello, featuring Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His groundbreaking room-scale production premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received a jury prize at the Tribeca Festival in 2021 for Best Immersive Experience. Brewster has produced and directed documentary works on PBS, Netflix, Amazon, Aljazeera, Vice, the Sundance Channel, Comcast, Disney, and the World Channel. He is a recipient of fellowships and grants from the Sundance Institute, the Tribeca Film Institute, BAVC, MacArthur Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Rada Studio is currently in post-production on projects with MRC, CBC and ESPN. Brewster is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and a four-time Emmy nominee. He has two children and resides in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and cat, Tama.
Michèle Stephenson | Director and Producer
Filmmaker, artist and author, Michèle Stephenson, pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots and experience as a scuocial justice lawyer to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. She tells emotionally driven personal stories of resistance and identity that center the lived experiences of communities of color in the Americas and the Black diaspora. Grounded in a Black Atlantic lens, Stephenson tells stories that intentionally reimagine and provoke thought about how we engage with and dismantle the internalized impact of systemic oppression. She draws on fiction, immersive and hybrid forms of storytelling to build her worlds and narratives. Her feature documentary, American Promise, was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Her work, Stateless, was nominated for a Canadian Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Most recently, Stephenson collaborated as co-director on the magical realist virtual reality trilogy series on racial terror, The Changing Same, which was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Interactive Media Innovative category and premiered at Sundance Film Festival. It also won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Immersive Narrative at the Tribeca Film Festival. Along with her writing partners, Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, Stephenson won an NAACP Image Award for Excellence in a Literary Work for their book, Promises Kept. Currently, Stephenson is in post-production on a feature on the death of Freddie Gray, an ESPN story on Black girls’ hand-games, and a program for the CBC on the Black Power movement in Canada.
She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, a Guggenheim Artist Fellow, a Creative Capital Artist awardee.