We are an independent film production company. Currently we are focused on producing music videos, music documentaries, and films in the deep south and in Los Angeles. Through UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA), where Morrell is Associate Director for Youth Research, we are working with students in East Los Angeles and South Central Los Angeles as they produce digital video documentaries on life and youth popular culture in their neighborhoods. We are in pre-production on two documentaries that we will shoot over the next three years. One chronicles the unequal education students receive in American schools. The other takes an incisive look at the past, present, and future of Blues as a revolutionary American music form. In the Winter of 2007, we shot two music videos for Elam McKnight’s CD Supa Good.
Elam McKnight’s Latest Video
Every fall, parents send their five year-old children to schools across the nation filled with hopes that they will receive an education that will prepare them for bright and happy futures as informed and affirmed citizens and professionals. Unfortunately, the quality of those children’s chances is inextricably linked to the amount of money their parents earn. In essence, public schools in America are stratified based on class and the race of the students they serve. “School Life” plans to follow a group of students into different schools across a major metropolitan area to gain a perspective the very different opportunities that are made available to our kids. The documentary begs the question, “Is this what we, as a society, want for our children?” Should America’s public schools be so different from one other? Should the children of working Americans have to attend schools without materials and qualified teachers while their counterparts in more affluent neighborhoods receive the best that money has to offer? Through interviews with experts, teachers, and parents, and through a journey into the lives of America’s youth, “School Life” hopes to offer a definitive look at what can only be described as a crisis in American democracy.
A Exploration of Blues Present and Future
Sure we know Robert Johnson sold his soul at the crossroads. Sure we know that BB stands for Blues Boy. Sure we know that Muddy Waters was discovered in a Juke Joint by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress… Blah Blah Blah Blah. Most documentaries concerning blues solely focus on blues’ that has passed as though the blues is a museum piece. When in fact it is a living, breathing, vibrant movement ever changing and evolving, all the while maintaining the roots bestowed on it by its past and present masters. Today there are many off shoots of blues music and younger practitioners of the music and its culture from the rawest of sources. Meet the Future Primitives explores where the blues still lurks within the modern juke joint, the muddy crossroads of the delta, and the rolling hills of North Mississippi. Inside Punk Rock clubs and in the city streets the blues has left the most indelible mark on America’s musical landscape of any of its forms. Today it is as vibrant as ever and still going.