SLIF 2016 Interview: Dan Parris – Director of SHOW ME DEMOCRACY

DP: Thank you.

DP: I’d say my personal inspiration was we lived in Shaw. I just got married two months before Michael Brown was killed, and then two months after that a kid named Vonderrit Myers was shot in the Shaw neighborhood just blocks from our house, and I probably had driven past him a bunch of times. A couple days later protesters came by our house. When we heard the drumming and we heard them chanting “Out of Your Homes and Into the Streets! Out of Your Homes and Into the Streets!” I went with my camera into the streets, and I just started filming. So, the first few weeks I didn’t know why I was filming or what I was going to film, but I was just following things because literally every day there were people protesting right by my house. So I just started to document what was going on, and then I had a conversation  with the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis, and that conversation was with the director and another individual. Basically, she told me, “We’re doing this advocacy internship program, and one of the characters is one of the main protesters in Ferguson.” And I said, “Ok, when does this program start?”, and she was said “In an hour,” and I said “Ok” and I ran home and got my camera and I started filming. One other thing, this is my fifth year volunteering with kids from Roosevelt High School with an organization called Young Life.I work with students with similar backgrounds and life experiences to Mike Brown every Monday night. I play basketball with them and we eat dinner together and play fun games and this is a church organization. We share the gospel with them, and it means these guys are very close to my heart and they’re friends of mine and I felt like, in a lot of ways, I was making this movie for them.

DP: No, I was actually a recipient of the St. Louis Foundation Scholarship, so I was a scholarship recipient and I got it in 2003, so I’ve been paying them money every year, so they can give interest-free loans to low-income students or students in need. I was one of those students  so I maintained a relationship with them, but I’d never made anything with them before that.

DP: I would say that when we talk about Ferguson, and when we talk about Black Lives Matter, I’ve found that many people are talking about different things. I think stereotypically, when white people,  from a town in South County or whereever you want to say, hear about Ferguson and Black Lives Matter, they often imagine people burning down buildings, turning over cars, hating police officers, or things like that. And when my black friends hear about it, they feel like they’re fighting for justice, they’re fighting for us. But they’re thinking about human history. They’re thinking about all the things in that motion graphic that you saw (in the film). They’re thinking about the schools that are struggling in the neighborhood. They’re thinking about the lack of good housing. They’re thinking about the lack of opportunity, they’re thinking about the lack of jobs, about how police have interrogated them. They’re thinking about their friends who they know who have been shot by the police. Maybe they were doing something illegal, maybe they weren’t, but did they have to die? And they’re thinking about structural inequality that’s been here for hundreds of years, while other people are just thinking about Michael Brown and what he did and what happened in Ferguson afterward. You’re using the same words while talking about two different things. I think as a community, we’re having two different conversations.

DP: In the credits it highlights a couple of them. One big one is that they were given a grant for a lot of money to grow the program from just seven students. So now there are students all across the state that are part of this program. It’s actually 75 to 100 students now.There’s been significant developments on Bright Flight. The stats on Bright Flight featured in the film were actually discovered a year later. They have seen an increased awareness of the difference between merit-based financial aid and need-based financial aid in legislators. The ACCESS Scholarship has been increased to $1850, so the governor, I think, passed an increase. So there has been change and I think they have been a part of it.

DP: I think the most important is kind of the slogan of the film, “Nothing About Me, Without Me,” and this idea that it empowers young people to be part of the conversation that affects them. The policy work, the politicians, that kind of work, isn’t just for old white guys or politicians. It’s for everybody. Everybody can be involved and they can impact it, and they can impact the things that are impacting them.

DP: Well, I would say St. Louis didn’t really know that I was making it. I just had a friend over, and she said “ What! You’ve been working on this?” Obviously my wife knows, my son knows, some of my friends know, but a lot of people don’t even know what I’ve been up to. So I would say that it’s really not on people’s radar, but I’m hoping it is going to be soon. St. Louis in a lot of ways is supportive. The composer is a Grammy Award-winning artist from St. Louis. His name is J.R. and when I told him about the film, he was ready to jump on board right away. All my camera guys, my assistant editors, my marketing team, and my associate producer are all St. Louisans. A number of them have grown up and lived in Ferguson and similar areas. The nonprofit community has been very supportive. The Missouri Arts Council, The Regional Arts Council, The Humanities Council, The St. Louis Community Foundation, all of them in the VLAA, (The Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts), all five of those organizations supported the program in one way or another. They supported our partners. They didn’t support the company directly, but I share nonprofit partners that we worked with.  I don’t know if you know this but I’m also the executive director of a nonprofit called Continuity, which was mentioned in the film,but Continuity’s mission is to expand diversity in media production through skills-based training, mentorships and opportunities for untapped talent. One way the St. Louis community got involved is through the nonprofit cause. We had a training program where we trained underrepresented, aspiring filmmakers. A lot of the scenes in the film were actually edited by students initially, and then this fall we had a program where we taught them marketing and had experts come in and speak to our students. This fall they helped with all the marketing. They helped design posters, and logos, T-shirts, and gave feedback on the trailer. Rhey’re starting grassroots marketing on the streets, so the whole film’s been made by minorities who are aspiring filmmakers.

DP: That’s a good question. I think one thing that was really interesting was that we have eight characters in my film, and during the filming of this, seven out of the eight graduated from college with their bachelors or masters. Faith even got an honorary doctorate. Who could have guessed that would happen?