When former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell and photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders got together for lunch, they walked away with more than a satisfying meal; they had the beginnings of a magnificent project. The two friends ultimately collaborated on The Black List, a feature-length film they aptly describe as “a living coffee table book.”

We grabbed a few minutes at the Entertainment Weekly Café in the Kimball Art Center to talk with the collaborators before the projects’ Sundance premiere:

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The idea for the project started when I was having lunch with Toni Morrison who was talking about Margaret Garner and the fact that there were so many amazing women she had auditioned I should do a book on opera stars. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of opera stars, but I thought there was an interesting idea there.

Elvis is a good friend, and he’s also my neighbor, so we sat down at lunch and started talking about it…

Elvis Mitchell: We were going in the same direction on different roads. I’d always wanted to do something around reclaiming the notion of being “blacklisted” – to turn it into a positive, rather than a negative, connotation.

TGS: I started thinking about Black people I knew — Parsons, Faye Wattleton — incredible people. Elvis said ‘I love this! Let’s take back the Black List.’

The more we talked, I realized: that’s not a book, that’s a documentary. We should also do everything at once – film, book, pix. By the end of lunch we had 175 names on a napkin.

I called [art curator] Thelma Golden to do a test. Asked her to be a guinea pig. Thelma certainly knew Elvis’ work, and thought him to be a highly respected, intelligent interviewer. I have a certain reputation as a photographer. The combination was us making portraiture.

EM: Whenever black people are on camera there’s always an agenda. This wasn’t that at all. Each interview is a conversation; each interview has a conversational tone.

TGS: After Thelma, I called Toni who was a big fan of Elvis and we had a wonderful lunch. She said yes, which opened a lot of doors. We knew what we were doing at that point. I started out in film – went through the AFI program, produced a couple of projects (Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart and Thinking XXX)– so I love the whole filmmaking process. The way we shot — two cameras, no zooming let’s you come into it, let’s you view the film. The idea of not having Elvis in the film, not hearing the questions — we knew that was something we could edit. Once we had [the technique], it was a question of ‘let’s get interesting people.’

EM: Interviewing in the traditional sense – both people on camera, hearing the interviewer ask the questions — you end up judging the questions, not listening to the answers.

Being a black person informed [my work on] this project more than being a critic. What I always see is what’s missing. There’s never been a time when African-American culture has been more of a shaping force. People under 30 speak in hip-hop. Yet, I am constantly reminded that the world I talk about, that I talk to my friends about, is never portrayed.

What this was not going to be was a standard look at black culture. “What’s it like to be Black in America?” was not the question I was going to ask another Black person. So each interview really became more of a conversation. After a while people just bought into the idea. They were curious: ‘where is this going?’ They couldn’t go to their repertoire of sound bites…

TGS: Elvis makes people come alive and trust him. As for the style in which we shot, I’ve been used to making portraiture in a very simple way: One light, simple backdrop. Each session ranged from 30 minutes to roughly an hour. We had four minutes for the portrait of Colin Powell.

HBO gave us a little seed money. Early on a group of guys at Freemind Ventures saw the interviews with Thelma and Toni and thought it amazing and said they would finance the project. Met with them every week or so to see if it was a good fit. It was. We did it. They have very strong plans to do educational outreach to go into schools, even prisons. [An exhibition of the 20 portraits] is opening in July at The Museum of Fine Art in Houston.

HBO was an obvious fit. A DVD is obvious.

EM: In 1999 I served on a panel with [Sundance festival director] Geoffrey Gilmore. He can be tough, but respects people who give as good as they get. I knew he would be honest with me about what he thought. [Sundance senior programmer] Shari Frilot (who is Black) said ‘I love this, I want my family to see this.’ Sundance felt like the most logical place for us to be.

I’m just excited about seeing it with a Black audience. Once we started to see fruition of the film… I got a taste of [the response] in Detroit with my sisters, who were talking back to the screen. Within the community, that’s always been a working ethos — the call and response.

TGS: I also think something historic is happening with Obama – he wasn’t where he is now a year ago, but it’s a zeitgeist moment geared toward this discussion of race. An amazing thing — the right thing at the right time. 10 years ago, there would not have been a conversation about the Black experience.

EM: In media terms they wake up once a year. Oh my God its February: let’s write something good about Black people. Here is something good.

TGS: Ultimately, we made the film for ourselves. And like-minded people.

Wednesday, before the official start of the festival, HBO Documentary Films picked up theatrical release of the film. Look for The Black List: Volume I to hit screens in the Fall of ’08.
To learn more about the film and the filmmakers, go to TheBlackListProject.com.
Read Kim Voynar’s review of The Black List at Cinematical.com

After years of answering the question, “Are you related to Danny Glover?” (Hah! That’s a good one. Never heard that before!) with “I keep trying to convince him of that, but he won’t return my calls,” who should I happen across at Butchers last night but – you guessed it – Danny Glover. As Black folks who cross paths tend to do, we spoke, and, of course, I seized the opportunity to make a formal introduction. Seemed like he’d never met anyone with his last name ‘cept family because he nudged the woman he was with and told her my name. This was my chance: I tried my “won’t return my calls” line out on him. He got a good laugh out of it and disappeared into the night.

Still didn’t get those digits, though. 

Fearless Moseley

Spent a good deal of time with Walter Moseley at Sundance HQ on Friday. A good man who has some very strong opinions about Hollywood and what comes next: “Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with me.” And he’s right. Despite the successful adaptation of “Devil in A Blue Dress,” Moseley’s love affair with the industry has been, at best, a sometime thing. Even so, he remains a fixture on the Sundance scene, showing up as part of any number of panels for the last 15 years. Saturday afternoon you can find him being brutally honest during the festival’s “Rewriting the Process” Screenwriting panel.

It’s Utah. It’s January. It’s COLD. Yet here I am, outside the Salt Lake City airport without a coat. It’s nobody’s fault, really (thanks, Delta). Life goes on, and so do I – into Park City to the Sundance Film Festival headquarters to check in, get settled in and see what this crowd of indie filmmakers have produced through blood, sweat and equity over the last year.

Sundance is, of course, the premiere fest at which to see the kind of original and innovative moviemaking Hollywood seems incapable of producing. Not that they don’t recognize it – Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, and Grace is Gone were little indies that got huge box office boosts from studio marketing and distribution – but the behemoth studio process doesn’t allow for unique perspective when it’s up against the bottom line.

So for the past two decades, Sundance has been the godsend of independent filmmakers trying to be heard, a mecca for those looking for a home and a distribution deal for their celluloid babies.The venue has changed a lot since those early years when founder Robert Redford took over the Egyptian Theatre on Main Street in the heart of this skiing community. Now snidely referred to as Brand-Dance in some circles, the event is brimming with official sponsors and celebrities. A glance around at the legions of volunteers in Kenneth Cole-branded jackets sporting “Focus on Film” buttons indicates the dance with the devil in which the festival is engaged.

I’m here to get the scoop on what Black filmmakers are bringing to the party. Though a fraction of the 207 films to be shown, I am relieved to report a handful of titles on the docket:

American Son by Neil Abramson
Nick Cannon stars in this portrait of a Marine recruit and his actions during a 96-hour leave before he is shipped off to Iraq.

Ballast by Lance Hammer
A story of suicide and community ties set in a rural Mississippi Delta township.

North Star by Matthew Stanton
The tale of an aspiring rap star who comes to appreciate the value of going into another man’s land and “preaching to the unconverted.”

The Black List by Tim Greenfield-Sanders
Elvis Mitchell engages 20 influential African-Americans for a series of fascinating miniportraits.

A Good Day To Be Black and Sexy by Dennie Dortch
An exploration of Black sexuality through a set of six interconnected vignettes that unfold in a single day in Los Angeles.

Sugar by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
The story of a Dominican baseball player struggling to make it to the big leagues and pull his family out of poverty.

Derek by Isaac Julien
A remembrance of and tribute to Derek Jarman, the single most crucial figure in British independent cinema.

A couple of these titles bring up the point of discussion on what defines a Black film: does a Black filmmaker making a film about a non-Black subject qualify? What of a film whose subject is Black but the director is not? More on this later as the fest (and, hopefully, the venues) heat up. See you at the movies.