[announcer] This time on "Filmmaker."

[announcer] This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, on the web at arts.gov, and by Oolite Arts, what Miami is made of.

Hi, my name is Jeff Rusnak.

I'm the Director of Development at the Art and Culture Center Hollywood and the producer of Open Dialogues, Black Voices, Black Stories.

I'm Freddy Rodriguez.

I'm the director, DP and editor of Open Dialogues, Black Voices, Black Stories.

Open Dialogues, Black Voices, Black Stories is comprised of eight on camera interviews with individuals from Broward's Black community.

It includes artistic elements, music, poetry, spoken word that help elaborate and expand on the themes that are in the film.

We hope you enjoy.

I'm so tired of writing poems like these.

I'm good at it though.

At writing poems like these at pinning pain, making paint outta butt stains, charcoal remains become legacy on campus.

Paper and pen collide like black bodies and bullets, like black bodies and concrete, like black bodies and white imaginations.

Repetition must be the father of invention.

I've been writing poems like these in my dreams.

You would think that the resolution would be different, but it always remains the same.

Bleak, grainy.

The protagonist never prevails.

They done took another one.

Somebody's son, little girl, a body that don't claim either but can't help but claim black has been returned to the galaxy.

Become legacy on t-shirt.

Yeah, they done took another one.

They want it and they get it, in black bodies, in black tears.

In the black moments spent on the unnecessary worry moments spent on poems like these odes and sonnets haikus slipped into obituary inserts.

Church pew songs are turned into now.

Into Tupac verses now, into poems like these where we see...no changes.

My name is Dr. Venus Wilder.

I'm a musician, physician activist and I'm from Plantation, Florida.

I am from an African American family.

I grew up around my grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, cousins, et cetera.

My father's family is from Miami Dade.

My mother's family is from North Carolina.

There was a time that I went to the park and there was a group of kids I remember a brother and a sister, they were white.

And they were saying that my skin had chocolate on it.

And I couldn't understand what they were talking about.

And they came over and were touching my skin and they were trying to see if my skin or the color would go away and I couldn't understand like why they were doing that.

So I remember going to my mom and telling her about that experience.

And that was my first conversation about race with my mother.

That was about four years old.

There was a guy who name was Mike.

And Mike had invited everyone in our kindergarten class, all the boys.

And I was just geeked about being able to go.

I'm coming back home, I'm getting all my stuff packed and my sister asks, "Where are you going?"

And I said, "Mom said I can go to the slumber party."

And my sister goes, "Are you gonna be the only black kid there?"

And no real understanding of what that meant or why she was even asking me.

And so my sister, in doing, so was like, "I just need to know that you're gonna be okay.

I just need to know you're gonna be around people who, hopefully, look like you, can look out for you."

But it was that moment where I started to think about what does it mean to be the only person who looks like me in a space?

And does that make me safe or unsafe?

I'm Dr. Natacha Yacinthe.

I am from Haiti.

I am a Adjunct Professor at several universities throughout South Florida as well as the Planning Manager for Port Everglades.

When did I know I was black?

September, 1979.

And I say this because unfortunately, it is something that's still ingrained in me today.

As I was going to school for the very first time, someone shouted " !"

I had just came from Haiti.

Haiti, I never knew there was such a thing as a color.

So that's what I knew, in the United States, I was black.

Rudy Jean-Bart, born and raised in Miami, Florida.

I am an Associate Dean of Criminal Justice at Broward College.

I grew up in a neighborhood in Miami where my parents they were the second black family to move into that block.

I didn't even realize that we were black people living in this neighborhood.

I think for a lot of black people there isn't this understanding that you are black until whiteness is introduced.

And quite often because whiteness is making you aware of your blackness.

I went to this private school where it was very affluent.

It did not mirror the neighborhood in which I was from.

And I remember in third grade, a boy called me a .

Did not know what that meant.

And so looking back on it, you realize what role race played in all of those instances.

But as a kid, you're just processing it as otherness, really, more than anything.

My first understanding, I'll just say, the first time I noticed that I was black, I wasn't a woman, I was a little girl and I was attending Girl Scout Camp.

We went swimming and my hair curled up.

And so I realized that I was different my hair was different, the water on my skin was different.

And it was pointed out to me by some of the other girls in the camp.

I think that was really the first time that I really knew there was something going on here.

My name is Nicki Lopez.

I'm multidisciplinary visual artist, curator, activist and founder of What's Your Elephant?

When you're trying to talk to someone about what it is to be a black person in America and going through these things or talking to someone who, they're not black, but they see the side of the coin where they feel people who are talking about racism and injustice are being used to divide the country.

How do you move past that?

You know?

So when I was talking to a friend she wasn't coming from a negative space but she couldn't see where she was cutting me off.

So when you can't empathize with someone to say like, "You know what, I'm a white woman.

Let me try to understand, let me try to empathize and then where can we fill that, you know build that bridge?"

And so it was really kind of hurtful especially because it was coming from a friend and I know she wasn't trying to be hurtful, but it was.

And I had to tell her that.

I said, "Do you see, you're not allowing me to express myself?

Now imagine a larger picture where you're a stranger and I'm just a black person.

I applied for a job with the county, in Alachua County and had gone through interviews and you know they're great interviews and whatever.

I was looking at the final step, you know, they kept telling me, "Oh yeah, final step, you know we love you, da da da da, just bring in these papers."

So I'm going, bringing in papers and there's this guy walking out and I'm like, "Oh man, you look happy, man."

You know?

He's like, "Yeah, you know, I just got this job."

I'm like, "Cool man, That's great.

Congratulations.

What job?"

And then he told me his job.

And I'm like, "Okay, cool, that's awesome."

It was the exact same job that I was applying for.

And I was like, "Oh...well."

At the desk is an older black woman who I'd become kind of friendly with because I had been coming there so often and she says, You know, "Baby," like I already knew.

And she's like, you know, "Apparently, they say they liked him better, but you know what it is."

And she knew what it was and I knew what it was.

And that was it.

I was born in a small town called Live Oak where I experienced growing up as a black man, we picked cotton, we cropped tobacco.

About 10 years of age, I decided to go with my friends to load a tractor trailer, a semi-trailer.

And you had an assembly line that passed from one man to the next.

And I dropped a watermelon and it burst.

And the boss man was so infuriated.

My friends, I'm standing up there and they said "Why are you still standing there?

You better get your butt away from there.

Oh, he went to his truck to get his gun."

They managed to push me away and I had to walk home.

That was an experience I would never, ever forget.

It was just mind boggling.

We often are not as black folk, the arbiters of justice.

We're not a part of the conversations of laws.

We're not the part of the conversations on norms.

As America is formed, clearly black folk were enslaved.

And so what you end up having is a contract that is specifically benefiting white men and in particular white men with property, right?

And black people instead were seen as property itself.

And so when we're looking at injustice from that lens, it's just so interesting to see how we're not even apart of the construct of what justice looks like.

We have this continual or perpetual matter of black folk being the victims of injustice.

Because we were not considered human in the first place.

We were not part of the concept of what justice is going to look like in America, therefore, making it so easy for us to not have it in the first place.

You go to school, you get educated, just like everyone else.

You paid your dues, you should be able to have a seat at the table.

It should be that I should have fairness, equality, access based like everyone else.

But the injustice, when you don't have the access or the fairness is not there, the treatment is not the way it should be.

Doing my years of working, working up the ladder there are those who have been offered a lot more money salary-wise, income-wise than I have.

And that's tough.

I don't understand why we're still in this space.

I really do not understand why.

I'm very proud to be the PhD in Public Administration and Policy.

But the fact that those policies are sometimes used to hurt others, that also hurts me.

'Cause I'm thinking we could do so much better.

Why don't we have better policies to those who just looking to enhance the quality of life.

Injustice is our current reality.

Injustice is as soon as you walk into a room people notice who you are, how you look, evaluate you based on that.

And you're lucky if you get through the door.

I went to represent my company at a fellows specialist office and went in order to conduct business, to introduce ourselves as a company.

And I went with my office manager who is a Latino woman, but appears as white.

And when I came in, I purposely wore my white coat walked in front, held my hand out and a white male doctor looked at me and looked past me and looked at the office manager and said, "Hi, Dr.

Wilder."

And I looked at him and with my hand handout and I was like, "I'm Dr.

Wilder."

In some ways it can kind of be humiliating.

It's like drops of poison that make you either question yourself or question your your existence in the space, whether or not you're worthy of being in that space.

Yes.

I've seen lots of injustices.

Injustices in how the law is applied.

Injustices into how the law is discussed.

Injustice by not having everybody who is affected by the law in the room.

There's this scene in the color purple that my staff knows that I say daily, "All my life I had to fight."

And that's what injustice is like to me.

It's a daily...what you make or how much you make, doesn't matter.

All that person is seeing is that they see the color of your skin.

My son has been cherished by people of different races, genders, sexual orientations and ethnicities.

Some would think that, that would make me a proud dad but I am haunted by the fact that this adulation has a shelf life.

This black male child will then become a black male teenager.

And after that, a grown black man.

My dad worked for a correctional institution.

And so his version of the talk was more along the lines of showing me what are the consequences of not understanding your own power?

What are the consequences of minimizing your own education?

What are the consequences of not valuing yourself enough to continue to strive for the things that you say that you want?

The talk for me was less formal.

It was more my uncles and my older cousins telling me, "Boy, when you do this, make sure you do this."

When I first started learning how to drive, my mother was extremely adamant about not having too many people in the car, driving with the music down, making sure I didn't speed, like follow every single rule in the book.

She was adamant about those things.

And I'm a teenager, so I'm like, "Mom, like, you know me.

I'm not a bad kid."

She was like, "It's not about you, it's about them."

And for her, it was just making sure that that her son came home.

That's it.

Just wanted make sure her son came home.

The talk with the daughters are different than the talk with the son.

We were coming from church one night and we stopped at a light.

He is 16, my daughters were in the back of the car and they were eight.

He looked, we were at the stop sign.

He said, "Hey mom, there's a carnival coming up next week."

A truck next to him, they looked at him and said, "What the hell you looking at ?"

I took a back and I said, "Oh, my."

I said, "What did he, what did they say?"

He said, "Mom, they called me a ."

So, we had that talk that night.

I said, "You know, it's gonna happen again.

So here's what you need to do.

Whether it's the cops, whether it's people like that who are just stupid, you need to compose yourself and know who you are."

In America, I don't think the white counterparts I don't think they realize there's two talks in the black families, there's two talks.

Black men are often bombarded with messages that not only are our lives seen as worthless but are often pre scripted.

The expectation is at some point you will become more threat than human.

For so many to be a black man is a battle for survival.

Your body and your very essence can be attacked at any moment.

There is something gut wrenching about knowing that who you are can make you suspect.

I'm a big black man.

6'2 and 1/2, 220 pounds, dark skin, wild hair.

Those things by themselves cost fear in people.

Have people doubt me, place me in certain boxes and then I open my mouth and it's like, "Oh...well, who does he think he is?"

I think that there is this illusion of power that comes with embracing something that minimizes and limits everybody else.

That the pushback, the drive to minimize eliminate, degregate people comes from this concept of white fear.

And it manifests in anger.

It manifests in hatred.

It manifests in ways that says that you must be subjugated.

Now, we're at odds.

We don't feel that we can depend on each other.

It prevents us from reaching the height of human excellence because it's put in a false sense of competition and exclusion that's detrimental to mankind.

Why does individuals feel uncomfortable when they see police pull up behind them?

It's because of the past.

It's because of what they have seen and experienced.

Then you wonder why they care less about law enforcement that's supposed to patrol their neighborhood.

There's no communication with the community other than crime time.

And the things that really work.

You cut them out.

Why?

You know, historically, we know that, you know the police in this country were based on slave catchers.

And I think that is at the root of what we see in policing.

And today when it comes to black communities I think property is more important than this person.

And that these people in fact are property.

And if fear is your supreme motivation in how you interact with people, if there's that fear or lack of value for that other life then the way you treat them is gonna come out.

And so these people who are given a license to kill often either do so with impunity or pushed very close to the line.

I am fortunate to be a father of a black boy and I find unspeakable joy when I am with him.

Should my son grow into a man and eventually old age?

And should I be able to witness this?

A part of me will think that I did a good job raising him but another part of it will be accredited to something else.

Luck.

Everything about who I am is about being strong.

I have worked very hard to make sure that I live up to that because I wouldn't be able to survive otherwise.

You have to be strong for your children.

You have to be strong for yourself.

You gotta be strong for your man.

And you have to be there to work to help bring home the bacon so your family can eat.

And it is quite a burden for a lot of black women.

And we are having those discussions.

I pray that my daughter, in her lifetime will be able to feel seen for who she is not seen first by the color of her skin.

And I pray that she will be able to look at herself in the mirror and find value for herself as who she is as opposed to how people might perceive her.

And I pray that she'll be able to look at other people in the same way where she will first try to identify this person's character and their kinship as brothers and sisters as opposed to where they come from or how they look.

Every time I want to give up every time I wanna pull the curtains, I think about those 2 million slaves that died on that passage on their way here from Africa.

I think about them, they're on my back back and I'm not going to fail them.

They keep me going.

They keep me going Huh, I have a lot of hope for the future.

I hope that people normalize listening to other people.

And it's not just a black and white thing.

Everyone has to do it because it impacts everyone.

So everyone has a role to play to find what can they do to bring about justice and social justice in their environment in small and large ways.

James Baldwin said, "Without hope, essentially we're dead."

And so hope is necessary.

As much as that might seem as hokey for some people, it is necessary.

That being said, I'm less focused on how hopeful I feel and more focused on how much work I need to do in order for the hope to be realized.

Open Dialogues is a short film where we sit people down we ask them really intimate questions and they answer and they floor you every time.

Honest, thoughtful, provocative.

I'd follow up with that with a real, heartfelt and human.

"What's Going On?"

by Marvin Gaye.

Oh wow, I like that.

Yeah.

Didn't really think about it.

But yeah, I love that.

Listening to people's stories.

You know when you give people an opportunity to talk, they will.

And it's your obligation to listen.

And I think that's really what this documentary is ultimately about.

Everybody that came in was open, willing to share and unafraid really to go into a place of their own experience.

Well, for me, I wish I knew how much editing was gonna go into it.

I would've asked for more money or something.

So Freddy takes six hours, thereabouts, four five or six hours of footage, turns it into a 20 minute raindrop of a piece of poetry.

It's gotta be a story in there and it's gotta be a story that it gives us a greater sense of our humanity.

I think that's what a great film does.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, on the web at arts.gov and by Oolite Arts, what Miami is made of.