A Family Affair

About 6 months ago, I was laid off from a pretty cushy Office Manager gig at a professional development company for teachers. This job was not film related but it paid well and I enjoyed working for my two managers. In May 2012, our headquarters closed our branch and I told myself enough is enough! No more working office jobs that I am not fully happy at. I graduated film school in 2003 and since then all I have to show for it is a year at the Austin Film Festival, and few PA jobs on shorts, and a dream in need of resuscitation. I began looking into the film community in Boston and discovered the Massachusetts Production Coalition. A networking organization that caters to the professional filmmaking industry in Massachusetts.

On Saturday, December 1, 2012, I attended the Massachusetts Production Coalition’s final seminar in the Working Methods in Film Television Advertising seminar series for 2012; the topic of Film Distribution. Of the 6 panelist, one person’s advice and stories stood out for me, filmmaker Chico Colvard, director of autobiographical documentary Family Affair. Colvard accidentally shot his sister in the leg at the age of 10 and this event brought to light the terrible truth about physical and sexual abuse by his father and tore his family apart. His film was a profile of his family as a result of this tragic event. It has won several awards at film festivals such as Independent Film Festival Boston, Atlanta Film Festival, Duke City DocFest, and premiered on the Own Network in March 2012. At the seminar, he discussed the various methods for making and distributing his film. 

Colvard explained that as an independent filmmaker, it is important to retain the rights or as much of the rights to you film as possible. When it comes to distribution, having a good lawyer to assist you in making deals that allow your film to be distributed in the US and abroad while also retaining the rights to sell and screen you film as you see fit. Having your art “owned” by a separate entity to make money and sell apart from you can be a hard lesson. Your life, your story, no longer yours to control.

I was lucky enough to ask him a question during the Q&A portion, about the challenges with navigating the distribution world as a filmmaker of mixed race. My point being that I have seen no less than 3 films about chess, but have rarely seen documentaries about people of mixed race. Chico explained that there are challenges in general for independent filmmakers attaining distribution, but in particular for people like he and I, the difficulty is that our stories become “race stories” rather than stories about people that happen to be mixed race. He said that there aren’t enough of us that hold “gatekeeping” positions in the business, so it is important for us to be present at events such as that seminar on distribution, or at film festivals, or networking events. Putting a mixed race face in front of the gatekeepers and getting them used to us, so that we can tell our stories.

Chico Colvard is the exactly the type of filmmaker I have been wanting to meet. As person of multiracial descent and a filmmaker that self distributes, he is the embodiment of everything this blog is meant to represent. He has a tragic upbringing, as did I, and he has put his family’s difficult past on video for the world to see. His upcoming projects are related to the treatment of mixed race, Black Russians, in Russia. I am inspired by this brief meeting with this filmmaker, and feel validated in my quest to become a distributor of films by mixed race filmmakers.

To learn more about Chico Colvard, or his films, please visit http://www.c-linefilms.com.