Work x Work produced an audio interview about my photography. The post also features more of my photos from Morocco. The image above is just a taste. Click here for the full flavor.
photo: Ralston Smith
The Urbanworld Film Festival was the first stop in five weeks of madness. Five weeks without a day off. Five weeks of incremental, unrelenting stress. It was also the New York premiere of my film “72 Hours: a Brooklyn Love Story?†The opening night party was held high above the city and led off with a plaintive wail as trumpeter Keyon Harrold soloed through a moving set that he dedicated to Black Lives Matter. I found myself thinking, “what other festival would start like this?!†There’s a special satisfaction in knowing you’re in the place to be. That feeling would continue for the next few days.
Playing 72 HOURS in New York brought a strange apprehension. On the one hand: I’m proud of the film, think it plays well for audiences, and genuinely enjoy seeing it in front of different crowds. On the other: this is New York. My adopted home town. To be rejected here would feel personal on a level I might not be ready to accept.
Cast-and-crew, friends-and-family attended the screening, of course, but the house was packed by people who had no connection to the production at all. And… [exhale] the film played great. We got the couple laughs we expected, and I could feel the audience engagement slowly ratchet upwards as the person next to me stopped eating popcorn, eventually moved the popcorn to her knee, then finally set the popcorn bag on the floor during a pivotal scene.
Afterwards, friends who can be reserved in their praise were effusive, and friends who can be counted on for full puffery didn’t hold back either. We even got a nice review.
photo: Ralston Smith
But the festival was more than just our screening. Urbanworld has been fixed in my head for years as a place where black and brown films can play to like-minded audiences. And this year was the festival’s 20th anniversary. Rousing speeches by festival director Gabrielle Glore, founder Stacey Spikes, and filmmaker Ava Duvernay at the awards ceremony pointed to the mission of Urbanworld: to spotlight the works of black and POC filmmakers, on a big stage, while in direct conversation with the audiences who will support our careers. I was spent, happy, and proud, all at once. I want to come back.
Scout Tafoya, the author of the linked article, and film essayist at large, approached after our screening at the BlackStar Film Festival to congratulate me on making a “fucking awesome film.” That made me happy. Here’s an interview with me and a passage from his review of the film:
Not only is Rivero an exciting, intelligent new director with plenty to say about art and life, his filmmaking is impossibly beautiful, raw and honest. 72 Hours is tender and loving but never plays down the ugliness of life in impoverished Brooklyn. The way he captures the streets is splendidly empathetic, even as he uncovers the darkest things hiding in the cold night.
The emotional moment he describes between Haile Gerima and I was one of those once-in-a-lifetime type of beats. Please do click-through for the whole article.
"A repressed person retreats into the faculty of the imagination" -Haile Gerima @BlackStarFest filmmaker symposium pic.twitter.com/ploqg6gtkz
— Raafi Rivero (@raafirivero) August 4, 2016
What I loved about BlackStar was that there were no velvet ropes. The demarcations between filmmakers, panelists, and audience members were virtually nonexistent. More than once I witnessed a panelist reference another august filmmaker only to have that person be sitting in the audience. The quality of discussion during Q&As and in the lobby afterwards was truly outstanding. I hope to return.
Flying out to LA I knew one thing was certain, I would return a changed person – baptized by the fact that I could now, officially, call myself a feature filmmaker. The festival itself was 9 days, but I stayed in LA for just over two weeks, saw at least 14 movies, and talked myself dry. Moments that I didn’t capture were just as good as the ones below, nor do the ones included actually “say” all that much, but the experience, for me, was singular and these are the images that describe it.
Though you always imagine music being written and placed into your film, one of the things I hadn’t pictured at the start of this process was standing in a room while the cellist and composer record the music. Pictured, Alexandre “Diesel” Varela and Kristine Kruta, who wrote and performed our original score in a whirlwind session just days before I left for the LA Film Festival.
Here’s an article in The Hollywood Reporter about my film, 72 Hours: a Brooklyn Love Story?. In it I talk a bit about the process of adapting a short documentary into a narrative feature. And there’s even an exclusive clip from the film embedded in the article.