A RECKONING IN BOSTON MEET THE MAKERS STEPHEN MCCARTHY, AARON BOUCHARD, SOUND RECORDIST: CINEMATOGRAPHER: I first worked with James on the doc back in April of While following Kafi 2014 when it was just it was just him, a cameraman, and Dixon around the vacant I rolling through south Boston in my beat up PT Cruiser. lot on Mission Hill - truly I worked with James on many more shoot days until the a “mission” for Kafi - I film was finished in 2020. Over the years I developed a couldn’t stop thinking of sentimental investment in the lives of Kafi & Carl so see- my late friend John Car- roll. John was a neighbor ing the film for the first time was very moving. It is a rare of in nearby Jamaica experience to work on a project like A Reckoning in Bos- Plain - an African-Amer- ton and it is one I am very proud to have been a part of. ican Vietnam vet with a wondrous green thumb. Our many years of friendship began through early morning encounters in a former horse stable which I helped him cultivate with flowers, herbs and small plots of veg- etables. Like Kafi, John had a quiet mission to spread positivity through agriculture in a dense urban setting. In John’s case, the endeavor resulted in a permanent community garden that now serves as the hub of a thriv- ing (and desirable) neighborhood. There is a monument to John at the garden’s entrance. The less inspiring side of this story is that John’s work likely helped price him out of the very neighborhood in which he had become a true fixture. Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHnOZNQ_A-o Stephen McCarthy is a director of photography whose Aaron Bouchard has been working in New England as a thirty-five year career has spanned the width and breadth sound mixer for the last ten years. His work includes ev- of non-fiction filmmaking. His work appears regularly in erything from sports & live events to TV & feature films. prime time documentary series including PBS’s American Aaron also enjoys traditional New England activities such Experience, American Masters, Frontline, Nova and P.O.V. as shoveling snow and complaining about humidity. as well as HBO, Netflix and Apple TV. NATE MAY, COMPOSER LISSA DEONARAIN, ASSOCIATE PRODUCER The first music I wrote for the film is the tune that plays In the summer of 2018, I had just graduated college and when the credits arrive at the end. I wrote it on a little was working as an intern on A Reckoning in Boston. upright piano in the mountains of New Hampshire after After spending time assisting in the editing room, I first seeing clips from the film. In particular I was thinking met Kafi in about Thompson’s Island and Kafi’s relationship to it. In the person on a spaces between the phrases I felt some memory of childhood visit to the --a soft sense of the waves crashing on the shore. urban farm while students Nate May is a composer and performer whose interest in from Tuskegee human ecosystems has driven explorations into sounds were visiting and interactions. Raised in West Virginia, much of his for the sum- work stems from a deep engagement with the art and mer. On one culture of Appalachia.This includes his oratorio State, a of the visits, Kafi pulled me aside with the young women from the Tuskegee group and we stood in a circle. Kafi talked about the different types of pain people hold. In that moment, I felt seen in a way I never expected. For her to go out of her way to bring me, the only woman of color on crew, together with other women of color was a moment of vulnerability, honesty and love that I cherish to this day. Her motherly caring combined with her playful spirit made me feel at home in a place I had never been. Wherever Kafi is, you can feel her energy, which is one of strength, resilience, determination, authenticity and love. Lissa Deonarain is a Guyanese-American documentary setting of interviews Nate conducted with Appalachian filmmaker, producer and activist from Omaha, Nebraska. migrants while on a fellowship from the Berea Sound She received her B.A. from Emerson College in Media Archives. Nate is an accomplished keyboardist and Arts Production with a concentration in Documentary improviser as well as an electronic musician and producer. Film Making & He has collaborated with Paris-based choreographer Producing, and a Wanjiru Kamuyu on the world-touring work Spiral. While minor in Global & in South Africa on a Reese Miller scholarship from the Postcolonial Studies. Telluride Association, he worked with the indigenous Her films explore experimental trio Khoi Khonnexion on their debut social justice issues album Kalahari Waits. His work has been performed by and themes such as world-renowned ensembles, including International identity, belonging, Contemporary Ensemble and Ensemble Dal Niente. He is community and memory, a teaching artist with the American Composers Orchestra largely inspired by her and is on faculty at Montclair State University. He is also own experiences as a on faculty at the Walden School where he was awarded disabled, multiracial the 2018 Arno and Ruth Drucker Faculty Chair. woman and daughter of an immigrant. 2 A RECKONING IN BOSTON - MEET THE MAKERS MOLLY SCHWARTZ, ANIMATOR HEATHER MERRILL, COORDINATING PRODUCER: Before animating, we listened to Kafi and Carl’s readings, James brought me on to this film six years ago. Although over and over, learning the flow of their spoken rhythms the story was still unfolding, even early on, he had a and the soundtrack. We wanted the typography animation strong poetic vision for the film. It was my challenge to reflect their presentation of each word and sentence. and my pleasure to understand and support that vision, James selected beautiful footage as a backplate for the animated text, a mix of seeing Kafi and Carl move through their day cut with abstract footage, capturing the light and motion of the city. We experimented with the movement and drift of the words, how they mixed with the audio and the motion in the background footage, letting each sequence guide the composition. Using delicate typography let the the words be airy and light as the sounds passing. As an animator, you get to know the characters in the film as they were for a brief moment in time-- we see them live these small moments repeatedly. We learn so much as Kafi and Carl thoughtfully tell their own stories. through conversations, questions, research, and handling logistics. In the end, James, Kafi and Carl produced a beautiful and powerful film, and I’m so proud to have worked on it. Viewers sometimes ask about what gets left out of the final version of a film. We did a lot of research about displacement, and working to understand the housing situation in Boston, and studying development and gentrification. It’s heartbreaking to have learned in detail that many other cities are struggling with these issues as well, but in the end we focused on our city and what was unique about how this is all playing out here. Heather Merrill has worked in archival research Molly Schwartz is the founder and director of PHLEA for more than 10 years. Her production credits include TV studio, creating art, animation, design, and code for work on the PBS series American Experience, American installations and documentary film. Her work on Watchers Masters, and NOVA, programs on Discovery, Showtime, of the Sky won a Sundance Special Jury Award for Animation. and the WORLD Channel, and numerous independent Film credits include: Above & Beyond: NASA’s Journey documentary films. She has also conducted research for to Tomorrow, Worlds of Ursula K LeGuin, Black Panthers: publications, recently for books on Theodore Roosevelt Vanguard of the Revolution, Cancer: Emperor of All and immigration laws of the 1920s. Some of her favorite Maladies, Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & topics have included women wrestlers, the roots of the Anderson Cooper, Rancher Farmer Fisherman, CODE: modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and disaster studies. Debugging the Gender Gap, Rachel Carson, Words from A Bear, Hemingway, and My Name is Pauli Murray. phlea.tv A RECKONING IN BOSTON - MEET THE MAKERS 3 LLEW SMITH, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: ANNE MARIE STEIN, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: James had fears I met James about bringing over thirty years himself into this ago through the story, as any Mass Council on sensitive, sensible the Arts and documentarian Humanities where would. The film I was a program was not supposed coordinator for to be about him. works in prog- And yet how can ress by Massa- you tell a story about race in a city like Boston, without chusetts artists interrogating how racism defy insinuates itself into housing and then through the Boston Film/Video Foundation where policy, economic development, land use and so many I became Executive Director. I am a huge fan of James’ well-meaning white lives? So many of the city’s white work and have always stayed in touch with him and residents have never acknowledged or thought to challenge what he is doing. I think of James’ films as journeys into the economic violence and oppressive governmental corners of the world that are too often invisible to too actions committed in their name against others who are many-- from the film on the farm crisis to the pentecostal poor, who are people of color. Is it because it’s always preachers to the parish in Lowell and now to the Clemente been that way, racism masquerading as the unavoidable Project and the participants.