BAMcinématek’s New Voices in Black Cinema a chat with director Nefertite Nguvu (“In The Morning”)

Nefertite Nguvu’s “In The Morning”

Nefertite Nguvu’s “In The Morning” whose film just screened at Bam’s New Voices in Black Cinema, and expanding to cities this spring, had this to share about being a woman film-maker.

myNewYorkeye:  What do you love about being a storyteller?

Nefertite Nguvu: What I love most about being a storyteller is the opportunity it provides to connect deeply with other people. In light of all that's happening in the world, having the ability to tell stories that explore our humanity is not something I take for granted.

myNewYorkeye: What challenges did you face and overcome in making this feature film? 

Nefertite Nguvu: The first challenge was overcoming my own fear. I knew that making this film would be a huge undertaking, with so many possibilities to fail, and that was daunting. Instead of letting the fear paralyse me, I decided to let it fuel me.  Most of the other challenges were related to budget and time, trying not to let the limitation of either compromise the vision of the film. We shot our film in eight days, then it took me two years to complete. Truthfully, the hardest part was not giving up. Patience and tenacity were my greatest challenges/lessons.

myNewYorkeye:  What do you value most about being a director?

Nefertite Nguvu: What I value most about being a director is the process of collaborating with other artist. Writing is a tough and lonely part of the film-making process for me, but being on set, working with actors, and creating with my comrade, the incredible cinematographer, Arthur Jafa is just thrilling. Having collaborators that are as passionate about the work as you are is a tremendous gift. 

myNewYorkeye: Who are your top 3 influences and why?

Nefertite Nguvu: That's such a tough question!  My influences are vast and varied... From Ingmar Bergman to Toni Morrison with many things in between...  If I had to narrow it down to three, I'd say first and foremost, my parents. They made art and culture an essential part of my upbringing.

Home for me was immersed in a world of Alice Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Miriam Makeba records, and a typical family outing was an Amiri Baraka or Sonia Sanchez poetry reading.  My parents' love of jazz, literature and poetry became my love, and is an essential part of who I am.  They also instilled in me, early on the belief that culture is a weapon and that art has the ability to transform.  

That's always stayed with me. Outside of my parents I'd say my friend/mentor/hero/idol George C. Wolfe, the amazing playwright and director whom I love dearly, has had the biggest influence on me.

He is a brilliant artist with a Herculean body of work, who aside from that is just a very funny, generous and amazing human being. Being around him always makes me want to dream bigger, be better and do more. 

myNewYorkeye: In NYC where do you go to get re-energized?

Nefertite Nguvu: Nothing keeps me more energized than being inspired. There's never a shortage of that in NYC! My favorite source of inspiration to experience here is the theater.  The emotional power and kinetic energy that can be generated by a good piece of theater  is unparalleled. It invigorates me to no end.  

myNewYorkeye: What's next?

Nefertite Nguvu: Wider distribution plans are in the works for 'In The Morning' and I'm currently working on a short film project for hire that I'm really excited about. Good things are on the horizon!

For more on "In the Morning", visit :
www.inthemorning-thefilm.com
www.facebook.com/inthemorning.thefilm

#TFF Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscape: FREE BUT RESERVATIONS REQUIRED

It’s free but reservations are required.  This is an important detail, and one that could have you miss out of enjoying some of the most exciting elements of the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and that would be a shame, since it’s free.   

Let’s start with free Fridays (April 17 and 24th). During the 2015 with reservations and a few other "details," to be reviewed at the website - you can see festival films for free and that's made possible to #TFF AT&T sponsorship. 

Please check it out now -  https://filmforallnyc.att.com before the tickets fly away!

In other festival news, check out Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes, created in collaboration with BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® Gin.

Hey, culturally adventurous public  - join the story and the storytellers with  Storyscapes, a juried section at the Festival showcasing groundbreaking exhibits in technology and immersive storytelling.  

Storyscapes is located in the Festival’s new downtown creative hub, Tribeca Film Festival at Spring Studios (50 Varick Street), and is open to the public from Thursday, April 16 – Sunday, April 19, 2015.

Curated by the TFF Programming Team and Ingrid Kopp, Director of Interactive for the Tribeca Film Institute, Storyscapes will present five selections as public, interactive installations at the BOMBAY SAPPHIRE Storyscapes Exhibit and Custom Tonic Bar.  

This year’s projects celebrate a wide range of creative approaches to storytelling, empathy and immersion:

Enter the 6,000-square-foot labyrinth of 'Door Into the Dark’ and discover what it feels like when your senses are lost. Explore powerful virtual reality experiences with 'The Enemy' and ‘The Machine To Be Another'. Uncover how you are tracked online through the personalized storytelling in 'Do Not Track' or establish a digital friendship with ‘Karen', the life coach that wants to get to know you... a little too well. 

Storyscapes, which is free with an RSVP, now open for reservations at tribecafilm.com. 

One project will be awarded The BOMBAY SAPPHIRE®Storyscapes Award, which recognizes groundbreaking approaches in storytelling and technology. Descriptions for each project can be found beneath.

Merging technology and craft mixology, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE gin will debut a new “Custom Tonic Bar” that offers festival attendees the unique opportunity to design their own tonic -- based on their emotional profiles and flavor preferences—determined by an innovative “Tonic Journey”iPad app. Free and open to the public, the interactive “Custom Tonic Bar” will add another unique and immersive layer to this year’s #Storyscapes experience.

For the first time, Bombay’s North American Brand Ambassador Gary Hayward along with Nick Kosevich (founder of leading flavor science house Bittercube) will guide guests on a discovery of their personal taste profiles – adventurous vs tame, type of occasion, etc. 

Translating those profiles into a story of flavor using the exclusive Tonic Journey iPad app, guests will create one-of-a-kind Gin & Tonic formulas authentic to their palates. To conclude, guests will name their tonic, and even design and lay out their own bottle label, all using the app.

Within three weeks, a scaled-up version of their final product will be delivered to their home to create 40-45 of their signature gin and tonics.

STORYSCAPES 2015

The five Storyscapes interactive installations presented at this year’s Festival are listed below. Today, I experienced “The Enemy,” which was created by Karim Ben Khelifa.

During the virtual immersion experience, which felt utterly real, I was being photographed.  When I completed it, I was immediately rushed over to the creator and egged on with “tell him what you think, please…”  Turning, all I could manage was “wow.” 

“That’s what we want him (Karim) to hear, “ the virtual mask operators requested.  

So - that’s what I shared with him.  Karim looked at me and smiled, and taking my hand he said “thank you!!!"

The Enemy

Project Creator: Karim Ben Khelifa

Two combatants from opposite sides of a war observe each other. We are in the middle.

This project, at the crossroads of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and storytelling, takes us on an extraordinary odyssey through some of the most contested conflicts in the world. In the first chapter you are immersed in a virtual reality gallery, moving between an Israeli, and a Palestinian soldier. Creator, Karim Ben Khelifa is a conflict photographer who is pushing his work a step further with this creative investigation of the limits of empathy.

Do Not Track

Project Creator: Brett Gaylor 

To what extent are you being tracked? In this personalized documentary series about privacy and the web economy, creator Brett Gaylor will reveal what the web knows about you— that is if you share your data with him. From mobile phones to social networks, and personalized advertising to big data, this project shows how the modern web is increasingly a space where our movements, speech, and identities are being recorded.

Door Into the Dark

Project Creators: Anagram 

"This is a labyrinth.” Find out what it means to be lost in an age of infinite information.

Using groundbreaking locative technology, this immersive documentary combines captivating storytelling with a visceral physical experience: feel your way into the dark—blindfolded, shoeless, and alone— along a taut length of rope that leads to a vivid aural world of real people who have been profoundly lost. Your encounter with these characters takes you deep into their sensations, risks, and illusions. To find your way into the light you must surrender to the unknown.

Karen

Project Creator: Blast Theory, developed in partnership with National Theatre Wales.

Karen is an app that mixes together gaming, storytelling, and psychological profiling. Karen is a life coach and she’s happy to help you work through a few things in your life. As soon as you launch Karen, she will ask you some questions about your outlook on the world. As she becomes more and more curious, Karen starts to identify things about you that she shouldn’t know. Where exactly is this going to end? 

The Machine To Be Another - Embodied Narratives

Project Creator: BeAnotherLab

BeAnotherLab will be presenting a series of Embodied Narratives that will allow you to inhabit the body and life story of another person, while interacting with artefacts from their life. Imagine the possibility of creating stories that can be felt through your own body as something real. For three years BeAnotherLab has been working with an extended community of researchers, artists, activists, and members of the public to create performance-experiments related to the understanding of the other and of the self.

THE EYE OF RICO

The man on the right is director / producer / screenwriter / editor / composer Robert Rodriguez. The man on the right is photographer Rico Torres.

I respect the artist, on the left.  I love the artist on the right.

Mr. Torres and I go way, way back.  I was a unit publicist and he was the still photographer. We worked together on several movies and along the way we developed a friendship that endures.

He is talented and he is kind.  He is well respected and he is kind. He is innovative, adventurous, bold, passionate and one of the best listener’s that I’ve ever met, and he is kind.

Take a moment and check out his work in the link below.
http://www.domestika.org/es/courses/48-la-fotografia-de-sin-city-del-comic-a-la-pantalla/rico_torres

“Manos Sucias” directed by Josef Wladyka and executive produced by Spike Lee

Uploaded by Manos Sucias on 2015-03-19.

During the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, director and screenwriter Josef Wladyka’s, “Manos Sucias” won the Best New Narrative Director and an Audience Award at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.  The film has opened in New York. 

“Manos Sucias” was executive produced by Spike Lee, who was also Wladyka’s professor at NYU.

“Manos Sucias” is written by director Wladyka and Alan Blanco.  The taunt thriller explores the dangerous city of Buenaventura, Colombia, and is a harrowing tale of three men who embark on a journey over the dark murky waters of the Pacific. 

A set of mysterious coordinates is their guide, a fishing net is their cover, and a narco-torpedo filled with 100kg of cocaine is their cargo. 

Following estranged brothers as they risk everything for a chance at a better life, “Manos Sucias” takes a close look at life at the bottom of the food chain in the international drug trade. 

Wladyka cast tremendously gifted newcomers including Cristian James Advincula, Jarlin Martinez, Hadder Blandon, and Manuel David Riascos.

myNewYorkeye: What were the biggest challenges in making this movie?

Josef Kubota Wladyka: There were so many challenges to overcome while making this film, but one of the biggest was figuring out how to shoot in Buenaventura.   Buenaventura is a city on the Pacific Coast of Colombia plagued with many social/political issues.  Our core team, myself, Alan Blanco, Elena Greenlee, and Márcia Nunes, knew that if we were to make a film there we had to come in with the right attitude and a certain sensitivity in order to be welcomed.  There is no film infrastructure in Buenaventura so we encouraged the people in the community to act in and crew on the film. What at first seemed liked a challenge, turned into a beautiful collaboration with the people of Buenaventura.  As one of the most hot and humid areas in the world, the physical act of making this film was also another major obstacle.  Filming on boats, through thick jungles, and in other rough terrain taxed us emotionally and physically.

myNewYorkeye: Your producers are also from the NYU film program.  What’s it like, as a director, to work with a good producer?

Josef Kubota Wladyka: Good producers are such a crucial part of making a film. I had the privilege of working with Elena Greenlee and Márcia Nunes, two incredibly dedicated producers whose resilience in the face of challenges amazed me.  They brought so much to the project, especially from a creative standpoint. 

I always leaned on them not just for the logistical aspects of the film, but also collaborating with creative decisions.  They both have great taste and have an extremely important quality that I think all producers need… they are honest.  As a filmmaker you need people to be 100% honest with you all the time to keep you grounded.  So much of the success of this film is credited to the two of them.  They truly are badass. 

myNewYorkeye: How has your style changed since making the movie?

Josef Kubota Wladyka: I’m not sure if my style has changed because I haven’t made another movie yet, but I hope it doesn’t change too much.  I want to try to keep telling stories that are compelling, exciting, and emotionally moving.

myNewYorkeye: What are the central themes - to you – and why did you take such risks in telling this compelling story? 

Josef Kubota Wladyka: The main theme for me is the loss of innocence.  In Buenaventura there are so many young kids that get caught up in this cycle of the drug trade. I think at the end of the film it is clear that Delio is now forever a part of this world.  He lost his innocence by taking another life and in essence he is killing himself. Jacobo has been trapped in this cycle and at the end of the film, as he looks to his younger brother in the boat, he knows he is now trapped in it forever too.

We all took so many risks telling this story because we wanted to create an authentic and real film.  We wanted to show a part of the drug trade that people rarely see and we wanted to do it in the real place with the real people. Through making this film, we witnessed the resilience of the human spirit even when faced with hardship. We learned that the drug trade is a complex system that affects more than just the people directly involved in it.  We learned that those involved often times don't have a choice.  For us, it was worth all the risks. 

myNewYorkeye: What do you love best as a story teller?

Josef Kubota Wladyka: Being able to explore and learn about new worlds and show them to an audience.

myNewYorkeye: What’s the best advice that you’ve ever received, from anyone, that you apply to your life and work? 

Josef Kubota Wladyka: I often find that the best advice is the most simple.  For me, it came from Spike Lee… “Get it done, by any means necessary.” 

myNewYorkeye: What’s next, talented fellow? 

Josef Kubota Wladyka: Alan and I are working on various new projects, including writing for hired gigs as well as deciding what film we will make next.  I am also reading a lot of scripts hoping that one might grab me and be something I would want to direct.

New York, NY (Cinema Village)

Choque Clip:

https://vimeo.com/91757746