Project Ideas

I have a couple of different ideas right now for this semester. The first project that I am working on will probably take the longest but hopefully will be the best. It is a documentary tentatively titled Keeping Up With The Jones' featuring a friend of mine named Curtis Jones. The basic concept of the movie is that we are going to trace his families history back into the days of slavery. We are then planning on visiting the actual plantation that his great-great-great grandfather was enslaved on. Here's some background:

Curtis is mixed (black and white) but identifies, I think, as black. Growing up he was a fighter, as in literally fighting, and got caught up in all that is the streets. Around 2000 Curtis was shot nine times outside of a 7-11 but survived. The incident caused a sort of spiritual awakening in him and he has spent the last decade pursuing knowledge in all forms, independently studying religion and politics along with history, which brings us to this project. He has a deep interest in researching his family's history, he sees it as a spiritual journey. He is also passionate about African American issues and believes that slavery, in many ways, helped set the table for the cycle of poverty and violence that many blacks find themselves in today, specifically in the inner-city where he came from. I make that last point because those issues will no doubt come up in this film.

Outside of Curtis, we will also be interviewing his father, who is around 80 years old and grew up in Mississippi (with Elvis Presley, none the less), so his childhood experience was centered around racism in many ways as he experienced the Jim Crow era in the deep south. We will also be interviewing other family members that we determine to have pertinent information for this film. We will be making a trip down south to wherever we end up, and my hope is that we will secure interviews with some of the local historians and then in a PERFECT world we would get an interview of some sort with the family that still owns the plantation. According to family legend, the same family still lives there, although we will have to confirm this through our research. We may also try and interview an IU South Bend professor or two to provide some historical perspective, as it becomes necessary.

In the end, I'm not exactly sure what we will find or where this will take us, instead I am just along for the ride, so I don't know that I can speak to it's purpose or message. That, I think, will be determined by the events as the unfold, but I hope that it can be a powerful depiction of one man's journey back through time. At this point, I have met with Curtis and held preliminary talks on what direction to go and I purchased a new camera that shoots in HD for the filming. We plan to begin shooting this weekend at Curtis' home in Michigan, where he currently resides.