On Practicing an Independent African American Cinema: An Interview with Kevin Willmott

Abstract

On Practicing an Independent African American Cinema: An Interview with Kevin Willmott De Witt Douglas Kilgore (bio) During the past two decades Kevin Willmott has occupied a unique place in independent filmmaking, as an African American writer and director. His work is guided by the idea that cinema can inform as well as entertain, illuminating our world in ways that are both unexpected and pleasurable. He believes that filmmaking can do good by allowing us to remember what we may have forgotten, changing how we see the world, and making it a better place in which to live. As a maker of independent feature films Willmott’s approach is to use familiar film genres such as the western, comedy, science fiction, and the sports film to tell stories driven by the perspectives and experiences of African and Native Americans. Thus he has created a body of work that establishes a space in which American visual culture is diverted from its persistent emphasis on celebrating the political and social investments of deracinated white men. Films such as The Battle for Bunker Hill (2008), The Only Good Indian (2009), Destination Planet Negro (2013), and his best-known work, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004), demonstrate both his range and his commitment to reclaiming American history through the actions and voices of its minority actors using the traditional storytelling strategies of mainstream cinema. This interview took place following the 2013 retrospective “An African American Independent: The Films of Kevin Willmott,” presented by the Black Film Center/Archive and the Indiana University Cinema. In it, the film-maker discusses the nature of his work and why it emerges from locations and commitments largely foreign to Hollywood. Removing himself from the film industry’s institutional constraints has freed him to nurture an alternative supported by his residence in Kansas as a film professor and his history as a native of the state. As a result, his films may be seen as the cinematic equivalent of a regional theater, using local artistic and technical resources [End Page 95] to create stories that reflect perspectives and experiences immediate to the people of his state. Willmott sees his regional aesthetic as part of an active conversation about race and history with his colleagues. This exchange prioritizes the challenge of creating feature films that can attract audiences poorly served by more orthodox motion pictures. An additional challenge, Willmott notes, is both seeking and creating those audiences. That has meant making movies that mount serious engagements with the pattern and texture of black lives within the conventions that mainstream filmmaking have made both familiar and pleasurable. It is a strategy that leverages the popular forms American filmgoers share and makes them fit containers for the actualities of American political and social life. The experiences recalled and the lessons learned are thereby made attractive and, possibly, more effective than the straightforward social problem or message film. Thus Willmott’s broader ambition is to make the conversations about race that are a part of his production process an entertaining element of what an audience will enjoy. Since this interview was conducted, Willmott has released Jayhawkers (2013), a sports drama focused on the University of Kansas men’s basketball team in the civil rights era, and Chi-raq (2015), a Chicago-based comedy, co-written with Spike Lee, that uses Aristophanes’s Lysistrata to mount an incisive critique of American gun violence. De Witt Douglas Kilgore: Most of your films use Kansas, its physical and visual presence and its history, as a place worthy of interest. Could you tell us about why you decided that Los Angeles or New York wasn’t the best venue for your work? Kevin Willmott: For me it was a question of productivity. I think that a large part of the decision to go the path I chose was based on my vision; whether my idea of things would ever become real in motion pictures. It didn’t seem to me like it would, and you know one thing I really kind of believe in a lot is that you have to at some point in your life figure out: “OK, so if I’m...