Sr., father of Michael Brown, who was killed in Ferguson, Mo. by a police officer at age 18, has appeared in his fair share of documentaries and recorded countless interviews since his son’s death in 2014. But there was something about “Ferguson Rises,” filmmaker Mobolaji Olambiwonnu’s take on the Brown family’s story, that felt different.to discuss the new doc.
“It’s very rare to see a Black father at the center of his pain and progress through the circumstances that so many have found themselves in,” Oyelowo says. “I’m really, really proud of the film, and it’s a massive honor for us to be part of telling a story that I think needed to be told in its totality, in a more comprehensive way, than was able to be told, six or seven years ago.”
“This journey I had been through as an actor, as a man, and as someone who likes to think of themselves as an activist also,” he says of the offer. “It just felt like this was something, that I not only couldn’t escape — and I didn’t particularly want to escape — but somehow, there is a divine calling to be a part of continuing to showcase this injustice.”
So, as a father-to-be, Olambiwonnu decided to paint a new narrative for his son about what the future could look like for Black people. The documentarian gets choked up as he recalls what it was like filming with the Browns. “I get really emotionally moved because I just can’t imagine what what the family has gone through,” he explains, near tears. “And for them, to say, ‘Hey, you can spend time with us. You can come inside our house.’ That they let me film them in the midst of all that, was really moving to me and a precious gift. It’s something that I don’t take lightly.
“The only thing that seems to move the needle is a consistent insistence that people take another look and an actual insight into our humanity,” he explains. “And the only way I can do that is on the Selma bridge, for Dr. King and his cohorts to orchestrate cameras being there at the ready to see the brutalization of us as Black people. For the cameras to happen to be on when George Floyd is being murdered.
“Humanizing ourselves is what got the Voting Rights Act passed soon after the incident on the Edmund Pettus Bridge,” he goes on. “Humanizing ourselves through those nine plus minutes of seeing George Floyd murdered is what got Derek Chauvin convicted. It took that video and a global pandemic where the Earth is brought to its knees — the entire globe — for us to see justice in the kind of case where we never see justice. And Mike Brown, Jr.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: seventeen - 🏆 412. / 53 Read more »
Source: NYMag - 🏆 111. / 63 Read more »
Source: billboard - 🏆 112. / 63 Read more »
Source: BuzzFeed - 🏆 730. / 51 Read more »