John Ridley Explores the Art of Documentary Filmmaking With Industry Insiders for ‘Critical Content’ Series (Video)

thewrap.com:

‘Flee,’” Ridley said. “Someone pitched it to me and they said, ‘it’s — in short — it’s a film about immigration.’ But the film is about so much more than just that and there’s some things even in this conversation, I’d love to keep just a little bit arcane because I really believe people need to see this film and they need to feel it.”Rasmussen ultimately wanted to capture his friend Amin’s story, and through “Flee” show that being an immigrant is not an identity, but a circumstance.

Part of creating a safe space for Amin to feel comfortable sharing his story involved animating the documentary.“[Ahmin] was really intrigued by the fact that he could be anonymous behind the animation, because what you hear in the film is the very first time he talks about it, his real voice talking about his intimate secrets, his traumas for the very first time,” Rasmussen explained. “And it’s not easy for him to talk about, so the fact that he could be anonymous and not be in the public eye with these stories was really important to him [so] that he could kind of keep control over when he wanted to talk about the story.”In his one-on-one conversation with UCLA graduate Jessica Beshir about her documentary “Faya Dayi,” which highlights the ‘khat’ leaf as both a cash crop and spiritual substance in Harar, Ethiopia, Ridley wanted to know more about Beshir’s documentary style. “There’s trancelike cinema, there’s hallucination, there’s, I mean, there’s all kinds of ways in which people are trying to articulate what this film is about,” Beshir said. “And it’s not that one is more correct than the other.

There’s really no wrong answer.”Questlove said he put pressure on himself to make sure he got the story of the legendary 1969 Harlem Cultural.