Leaving Crenshaw mall behind
Saturday, December 8, 2007
(2 p.m. - local time, Los Angeles, California)
Northwest airline - flight to Columbia, South Carolina.
The crowd here is different. The slightly provincial atmosphere takes hold as this plane lands in Memphis, Tennessee - a change over to the South Carolina, Columbia flight.
Dirty South - Home of the blues. I can hear Muddy Waters, Arrested Development and see front man Speech, sampling Southern beats with Miami bass. The only Afro-American couple on the plane sits next to me, fast asleep, holding hands, cuddled up.
This morning I have messed up my 6.30 a.m. flight to Des Moines, Iowa so I could film Obama and Oprah in action. I had failed to get media accreditation for Iowa, but also had confused departure times, so I was unable to catch the flight. I considered ditching the weekend shoot completely, but could not come to terms with having no footage of Barack and Oprah on one stage together for my film. Luckily, I read on the internet that the location had been moved to an 80,000 spectator stadium at university last week. Now this is gonna be bigger and warmer. Enough space for me. Budget is down but spirit is fired up again...
According to stats on the net, it turns out that South Carolina is much warmer in winter then Iowa. I expect finger licking soul food and beautiful black sisters to cheer up Obama at the rally with their big booties. Stereotypes of a black man from Berlin. Whatever, man... I will catch Obama & Oprah and will get some good footage of the Southern hummingbirds and good chicken too...by any means necessary!
Hmm, undercover brother - where is my big piece of finger lick’n fried chicken?
Two days have gone by on this docu production. I had a difficult start in L.A. due to a serious stomach bug on my first day. It forced me to throw up all day and stay in bed to sleep it off. Also there is my jet lag. Yesterday, I finally recovered and spent the whole day in South Central with debates and lectures by Ayuku Babu - exec and civil rights veteran of the Pan-African Film Festival (PAFF) at Magic Johnson theater (near Leimert Park)- known as the heart of the ghetto.
We had fun talking about politics and philosophy and were joined by Darrel Pryor - a filmmaker that works on a docu about the BLACK VOTE and whom I met 7 years ago during my nomination for best short at PAFF.
One of the difficulties that I had often during my shoot in the Crenshaw Shopping Mall was rigging up sound alone. I felt that pausing for sound is interrupting the natural flow of events, as I talk film, bonding with the people, getting the first conversation lined up. The artificiality of stopping and staging the situation is not helping keep with the flow, it’s inconsistent with grass roots filming. I have to find a way to work around this and become comfortable with the new microphone set up (in LA for half the price it would cost in Berlin).
My skills of multi-tasking are seriously tested and it seems I lack strategic planning and foresight - mostly out of a lack of experience doing this kind of budget on a shoestring. The logistics of following a presidential candidate, via his web site, whose schedule shifts every 5 days put me to a test.
My general impression from the research and filming I have done yesterday is that Obama has no strong support in the African American community in L.A. People say again and again that they do not know him well enough and for what he stands. Of course they do not read his books or download the audio files. It feels that there is an ignorance or perhaps inconvenience to engage in research or analyses when it comes to presidential politics. Therefore, it is no surprise that Obama is better known in white middle class circles across America then in the ethnic working class neighborhoods.
Babu told me yesterday that one Afro-American voter from Obama in California quit the campaign, cause she could not deal with the patronizing attitude of his white young middle class followers, who seem to dominate his movement.
In the barbershop were I got my trim I heard from my barber that he only knows about OBAMA from the endorsement Oprah made on TV and he kind of knows more about Hilary. Seems to be a Oprah endorsement can swing opinions among women and barbershops. Interesting... The barber said Obama should come and talk to them and visit them in the hood, instead of throwing fundraising parties in Beverly Hills for 5000 dollars in Oprah's mansion. He’s got a point.
I guess his time on Chicago's Southside is long gone and he has to do everything to win the mighty and powerful corporations.
I heard one Afro-American business woman reflecting about Obama's statements in regards to foreign policy and the role the Israel lobby plays in his campaign. Another friend of mine born in Palestine was very critical about his statements and said that she could not support him, if he does not change his policy on Palestine.
All in all it was mesmerizing to see those beautiful faces and relaxed people in the mall, given the moral support of Babu. It feels like they have more sympathy with someone coming from overseas then their local filmmakers from the hood - at least that's what Darryl says. I must work with this warm sympathy and hope.
A good and really formidable hookup from Andrew (my friend from Johannesburg) was my host Dave and his funny girlfriend Monique, who proved to be a valuable source of good humor and interesting contacts. I will most definitely see them again soon - either in Europe or America.
Obama is on cover of this weeks Time magazine under the premise: will his campaign change his style of politics and will he be abandoning his high morals and integrity for the race against Hilary? The media of course have to create conflict and produce stories that can attract people to read their magazine and adverts. But so far there has been little drama and the coverage he gets is mainly positive.
A very interesting article from Shelby Steele talks about the perverse obsession that America has with race. In a very sharp observation S. comments that:
“There is the unspoken hope that his mixed race freshness carries a broader political originality. And, in fact, he does embody something that no other presidential candidate possibly can: the idealism that race is but a negligible human difference. Here is the radicalism, innate to his pedigree, which automatically casts him as the perfect antidote to America's exhausted racial politics. This is the radicalism by which Martin Luther King Jr. put Americans in touch-if only briefly-with their human universality. Barack Obama is the progeny of this idealism. As such, he is a living rebuke to both racism and radicalism, to both segregation and identity politics - any form of collective chauvinism. Thus, the cultural and historical implications of Obama's candidacy are clearly greater than its public policy implications.”
Word up! What more to say?