Bay Bottom News

A good stew needs continual stirring to keep the bottom from sticking.

That about sums up my efforts – started in 1989, continued until 2008 – to find funding for and finish my film, JUMP AT THE SUN, about the great Florida writer Zora Neale Hurston. In 2008, the film was one of five in that years PBS’ American Masters series, winning a primetime EMMY for Outstanding Nonfiction Series. I encountered opposition every step of the way, but eventually, with perseverance and tenacity, I raised the money needed, brought in prestigious collaborators and top name talent, and breathed a sigh of relief.

At the time, I thought that was a gargantuan feat. But just this week, a book by Hurston which she wrote in 1928, was finally published – a span of 90 years had passed! The document had languished in the Howard University archive in Washington, D.C. until those who held sway over Hurston’s literary estate were able to bring the book to the public. Setting aside copyright issues and the usual bickering that undermines consensus, Barracoon was finally published. There was no more need to scrape the bottom of the pan!

Cudjo Lewis was the last surviving slave – human chattle – to have made the journey of the Middle Passage from Africa to Alabama. When Hurston interviewed Lewis in 1928, he was 88 and would die seven years later, a remarkable 95 year-old. Despite leading a slave’s life, Cudjo lived into his 90’s. Zora also took 16mm film footage of Lewis, which I included in the credits of my film.

Hurston is as remarkable, although she only lived until 1960, just as the Black Arts and Black Is Beautiful movements began to gather steam. She would have been in her element during those times, a chronicler of cultural race pride at a time when blacks were trying to assimilate and shake off the culture that made them distinctive. Her 1934 book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, also languished for years, until it was brought back into publication in the 1970s. Today it is part of the American literary canon, and is taught in high schools and colleges as standard fare.

This is a short book, a quick read, but it will leave you thinking about its content for a long time thereafter. For more on Cudjoe Lewis, click the link.

This posts’ first home was on my artist blog for Creative Pinellas, the local arts agency for Pinellas County and St. Petersburg (and other cities), in the Tampa Bay area.

I’m working on a film right now about HIV.  You might remember HIV by another name. We used to call it AIDS.

If you were alive in the 1980s, you knew the grim statistics. Someone you knew had it. And if you did not know someone, then you knew someone who knew someone. And they all died.

Today, those with HIV are called long-term survivors and they are living long lives, thanks to anti-rhetroviral drugs that stop the HIV virus from replicating. The HIV virus is an evil and opportunistic scavenger – a ripoff artist. Upon entering the host body, it attaches itself to a cell, stealing the cells own DNA identity, then deceiving the host cell into believing that it is just another friendly cell, a cell just like the host. This clone of the host cell then replicates and this process of duplication repeats itself – not once, but over and over and over.

Here’s what HIV looks like. It is hard to imagine something as pretty as a flower can do so much damage.

This was a postcard from 2015, back when I started this film through funding from the University of South Florida and the University of South Florida Saint Petersburg. I screened the work-in-progress at the Studio@620 venue in downtown St. Petersburg. The long-term survivors were there to speak after the film. They were all in their early thirties, they were born with HIV, mostly to moms who were no longer alive. Growing up with HIV was not the easiest life for our long-term survivors but they were thrilled to finally share their hidden lives with others. They each said that by appearing on camera, and by talking to the audience about their experiences, they felt like they had been set free from HIV. They were no longer victims of the stigma of HIV.

I have received additional funding from The Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and now this artists’ grant from Creative Pinellas. The film is not yet finished. It’s at the top of my list of projects to complete before the 2018 school year starts (yes, I have a short list of three).

One thing that is no different now than it was in 2015: HIV rates are rising. In fact, Florida has the highest rate of HIV infection in the nation.

Florida, we have a problem. Wake up.

In the American South, HIV rates are rising rapidly compared to regions whose cities were once the epicenters of the HIV epidemic – New York and California – but have since fallen dramatically.  Scientific American magazine cites poverty, lack of health care, and cultural and religious attitudes against homosexuality in the Deep South – the former cotton Belt – as reasons HIV goes untreated and then spreads.

There is no geographic or deeply-ingrained cultural reason why Florida – not a Deep South state – has the most HIV-related deaths. There is no lack of health care. Cultural and religious attitudes are not as conservative as in the rural Deep South, they run the gamut from conservative to liberal. But the state remains high on the HIV list.

And Florida is doing very little to outreach to young people.

In 2014, Florida ranked number one in the United States (U.S.) for the number of HIV cases reported, with at least one HIV infection case diagnosed in all but six counties, and at least one AIDS case diagnosed in all but nine counties.

I continually encounter people who have no idea that Florida’s rates of HIV are so large, and are rising.

As a filmmaker, as an artist, I can do something. It’s my goal to spread the word.

This posts’ first home was on my artist blog for Creative Pinellas, the local arts agency for Pinellas County and St. Petersburg (and other cities), in the Tampa Bay area.

As I head up Hwy 985 North from Atlanta in bumper to bumper traffic, I have no mental image of Gainesville, nor Gainesville State College where my film “Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun” will be screening. Although the city is very close to Lake Sidney Lanier, a lake that could easily house the entire city of Atlanta, its boundaries are not the water but rather the highways and newly blacktopped roads that have created the suburb of Oakwood. The college looks like others that have answered the call of commuter students, and the Continuing Ed building is a new one. The Arts Council, Inc. has sponsored me and they are the sort of entity that The Southern Circuit was made for. Gladys Wyant, the Ex. Dir, has heavily promoted the event and the Council relishes the opportunity to have the film and a filmmaker in their little community. There is a videotaped sit-down interview following the screening with Professor Jeff Marker, an opportunity for their Communications Department to create programming, with students operating cameras, under the caring guidance of another Prof. Dave Smith. Loved it! Now, on to Indianola to the BB King Museum. Goodbye, Georgia.

I’m so happy to be in Madison, Georgia, a city fully in bloom. Dogwoods, azaleas, camellias, tulip trees. What’s not to like about this? Do the people of Madison have any idea how beautiful their city is, as they drive casually through their hood? The trees are trumped by the homes, some selling for millions of dollars, before the crash, still beyond my reach now. Had Scarlett and Rhett had great-grandchildren, they’d now be ensconced in one of these antebellum homes in Madison, Georgia.

The Madison-Morgan Cultural Center is a gem of a building, built in 1893 as a school. It sits back from the road, a sculpture garden gracing the lawn. My screening is in the old auditorium, a theatre in the round with wood walls and floors, old padded theatre chairs. The Sister’s – a group of black women who live in Madison – are there in full. A book group has told its members to attend. And there are many locals. They all know each other and the reception is lively.

I always listen to hear whether the audience laughs at the places in the film where I want them to laugh. This Southern group laughs alot – they like to enjoy themselves. And here in Madison they are particularly fond of one line in the film: “Langston Hughes said he’d rather be a lamppost in Harlem than the Mayor of a town in Georgia”.

Today, if Langston were alive he might change his mind. I can see him sitting on one of those antebellum porches in a rocker. And I can imagine Zora zipping through town in her red convertible. She would have felt right at home with her Sister’s in Madison, Georgia, attending the screening, looking fine.

On March 14, I began a tour of southern cities, sponsored by South Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. As part of that tour, I blog about the events. Here is my first blog after my screening at Carson-Newman College in Tennessee. By the way, I’m still looking for that pair of shoes so whoever finds them in Jefferson City, please send them my way.

This small college in Jefferson City is surprisingly ranked one of the best Liberal Arts Colleges by US News & World Reports – surprising only because the college, with its quaint campus and brick buildings, is in a town that barely boasts a hotel. Its big city neighbor is Knoxville, less than an hour from woodsy Jefferson City (unless you mistakenly misread Johnson City as Jefferson and head 50 miles out of town before realizing your error – doh!). My host, Mark Borchert, has turned the Henderson Humanities theatre on the campus into a film screening room with an audio system that surpassed many where I’ve screened in newer more modern venues. They just don’t make buildings like they used to. In fact, the screening was flawless. The students ranged from Communications to Theatre to English majors, the faculty reflected the same, and it appeared there were some civilians in the audience. I had a feeling that this was new information to these students, that they had not pondered the Harlem Renaissance to any degree. But I’m sure Dr. Bethany White will make sure that what they learned about Zora Neale Hurston stays with them.