AN INTERVIEW WITH MERAWI GERIMA

Merawi Gerima is a Black independent filmmaker from D.C., who just released his first feature, Residue. Residue tells the story of a film student named Jay, who returns from USC to his home on Q Street, in Washington D.C. Jay comes back in hopes of making a film about Q Street and the people he grew up in, only to find a gentrified neighborhood and family and friends who have also changed over the last few years. Residue is distributed by ARRAY and can be found on Netflix. Merawi talks to Teresa and Sam about how the limitations he faced in making Residue turned into creative strengths, being rooted in Washington D.C., and the way Residue was a story he felt he needed to tell not only for others, but also for himself.

On this week's episode, Teresa and Sam interview director Merawi Gerima over a cup of autumn punch. Merawi Gerima is a Black independent filmmaker from D.C., who just released his first feature, Residue. Residue tells the story of a film student named Jay, who returns from USC to his home on Q Street, in Washington D.C.

Merawi: It’s just weird how everybody immediately went to calling the film “magical realism.” In that way, the vocabulary itself kind of reduces it to a super westernized context. For me, it just feels like, on that point alone, the goal was to be as realistic as possible. No magic, no surrealism, no nothing. Like this is actually how it feels to walk through a space where you were born, raised, formed all your most critical bonds and relationships. And then to come back to that space and it’s been completely razed to the ground, you know what I mean.

But not razed in a way where you can see the smoke and the remains, and see the destruction, but razed in this pristine, perfected, cemented over kind of thing - as if it never existed. That’s the shit that really kicks you. That’s the shit that really throws you off. It’s just like a total erasure, rather than something you can point to and be like, “Nah, it was destroyed.” There’s no burning building to point to. No destroyed building, demolished building. It’s totally… Cemented over, you know?

And the new population comes in and falls right in line, and [the population] just goes on living there as if they’ve been there forever. That’s the other part of it.

Sam: Yeah

Merawi: It’s like this total cooperation between people who’ve never met. The folks who come and develop that shit, and actually - it doesn’t even start with them. It starts with, of course, the government who puts in place these policies which allow gentrification and all these types of displacement to happen. They invite it in to broaden their tax base, or whatever other reason they may have. They invite it in.

The police are really employed as a clean up crew, to wipe out the population that exists there. To accelerate their removal. The fact that [police are] employed to evict people with U.S. Marshals, it’s like the militarized nature of eviction itself, I mean…

And then, the developers who then come in - as if it’s all coordinated, as if there’s a master plan which there isn’t, you know, it’s just the movement of capital - but these developers come in, they do their thing. And then white folks just come in, just like, “Oh, look at this.” And they’re already pre-programmed by society to just jump right in and just exist as if that’s where they were born, as if that’s theirs. As if they’re exerting total control over it, and ostracizing folks who’ve been there forever. But yeah, sorry to go off on that tangent.

Sam: Oh no, I feel like [Teresa and I] both grew up in Hyde Park, or around Hyde Park, where that’s very much been going on.

Merawi: I could sniff it out, just being here, you know what I’m saying? I’m like, “This ain’t right.”

Sam: No, you can definitely see it. But in the film, I thought it was kind of really interesting how you showed that uncomfortability, especially in the dialogue scenes. And I noticed you had a lot of scenes where you kind of cut a character’s head off or you shot from a different angle than I think I’m normally used to. And could you talk a little bit about your choices in terms of shot selection in those dialogue scenes?

Merawi: Which one do you have in mind?

Sam: So I was thinking about when Jay and Dion have that scene, kind of in the forest, and Dion’s face is completely cut out. And the shots in that scene were all from like kind of below a little bit - it felt like we were looking up at both characters.

Merawi: You know, it’s funny because I wish I could claim intentionality from an artistic standpoint, and that [scene] specifically. But the truth is, we were running out of time in the forest. And also, we wanted to have both sides of the coverage kind of backlit, and the sun is really only coming from one place, and we wanted basically the sun to be behind both of them, which was impossible. So we did a “french turnaround” or something like that.

Basically, you just switch them around and keep the camera in the same general place. In order to make it cut, we positioned [the actors] in that way. Of course, in the edit all that kind of got thrown out the window, ‘cause the scene changed and the way I wanted to play the scene out kind of changed up. So, it was kind of difficult to edit this scene.

A lot of the stylistic choices, a lot of the choices which appear - is like super aesthetic choices in the film - really came directly out of our economic conditions. We really didn’t have the time for these choices to actually be aesthetic. They were actually just concerns of schedule and time and budget and what we could pull off.

I’m actually proud of that. You know what I mean, I like that a lot. I like the fact that our decisions were informed by our reality, and that we made the best of it. We achieved, you know - I’m happy with what we achieved with what little we had. Because it stands to me as just expression of possibilities, outside of what we’re used to imagining in film, where you don’t have much money.

My only hope is that, if I get money for my next project, will I still have the bravery or even the creative wherewithal to even imagine in these ways, you know what I mean, which were basically prompted by restrictions. If I have the money, if I no longer have those economic restrictions will I still be as creative? Something I think about a lot.

Me and my cinematographer talk about that all the time, R.G. Retna. Y’all gotta talk to him too, he’s dope, man. He’s super deep, dude. Like we had some really incredible conversations which basically fashioned this film. He came in at such a late stage, it’s incredible to think, you know, what we achieved in the time that we had.

Sam: Yeah, I know. I mean, it was beautiful. Like that scene has been playing through my head. And I feel like it doesn’t matter what the conditions are that creates it - it’s just awesome that it got created.

Merawi: Yeah, but in many ways it’s almost like the conditions are everything. Because there’s many things that a large production would never even attempt, even though they have way more ability to do so.

There’s something about the fact that we didn’t have like, you know, a perfected script, which kind of intensified our courage. Which really freed us, in a way that like is not possible - well, not possible, just certainly not something that you see with productions that have money.

You know what I mean? I mean to say the conditions do matter, almost to the point where I’m like, “If I do get a lot of money, don’t tell me.” You know what I’m saying? Just have me thinking that we only have $10,000, so then we can just really be on this kind of thing.

Teresa: Sort of going off of that, you said that you had an unfinished script. Most of your ideas for this film were revolving around a concept, and then, based on your restrictions, you would figure out how to meet that concept. Or what type of boundaries did you put on the script, and what did you kind of leave room for - the changing budget and schedule, etcetera.

Merawi: The script was like - I thought I had a completed script. You know what I mean? I thought, it felt good to me when we went into shooting, and it wasn’t until I went to edit that it was like, clearly unfinished. It was like, clearly, we have no ending. And so, basically, that’s when we decided to go shoot some more the following summer.

But, um… I guess because it was so open-ended, because it was so unlocked - the script - we, you know, basically were forced - and were freed - to kind of author on the fly, in terms of where the story should go.

So, I knew that… I knew that he would kind of live in this memory, this state of constantly remembering as he goes through the city. But, I didn’t know exactly, per say, the memories he would have, you know. So, basically it was like, I know it’s about his childhood, it’s about the kid, the other boys he grew up with.

So it was just like, what we were able to achieve came down to how many boys we were able to enlist and were able to cast for the film. And what kind of moments we’re able to find them at. All on the block, like all on Q street.

It’s like, alright, I just know I need a scene of them, or I need to build their relationship out. So what can we make out of this moment where we have these variables: three boys, all this kind of thing, and like, a bike.

So it kinda forces the script writer’s imagination to really be crystallized in the shooting - it’s like the script writer who is divorced from reality when he’s writing the script. It - It keeps the script from being impressed upon by reality of the moment. From being flexible and growing accordingly to what’s going on.

And then on top of that, was gentrification in the city. We don’t know what evidence of it we’ll get, but we have our cell phones at the ready, and like smaller, faster cameras at the ready to catch any forms that we feel like we can use. So we had a running rule: photograph all white folks who are in Q Street, because that’s evidence of gentrification. Stop what we’re doing and get them on camera.

Mochella exploded in, you know, 2019. That was the city’s, kind of, response to gentrification. This cultural explosion, while I was editing, you know what I mean? And because this kind of spirit of just capturing shit without knowing how it’ll be used was already in play, all I had to do was go get a camera or my cell phone, go downtown, and film that thing.

Not knowing in what form it would make its way into the film, or even if it would, but just knowing that the film was open-ended, you know - it’s really just a goulash, it’s ready to accept all ingredients and find its way around all of them into an interesting, kind of end product.

Sam: Definitely. And something for me that really helped wrap up that end product was the musical choices you made. And I was wondering, like I don’t know that much about D.C. music, but it seemed like very D.C. influenced. And I was wondering how you chose what to highlight and how you felt like it played a role in the film.

Merawi: Yeah, so Mochella, which I was talking about - so, you know, D.C. music, our music is called Go-go music. It’s very homegrown, it’s very unique, it’s only out of D.C. I don’t know if you’re familiar with like Chuck Brown, but like he’s the godfather of Go-go, but basically, you know, it’s very percussive, it’s very live, it’s very in your face, it’s very irreverent. There’s a whole culture around it, you know, a fashion and all kinds of things.

So there was this thing that came outta that called “Don’t Mute D.C.” which is how we referred to this kinda moment. And it was basically just like, okay y’all wanna shut us down - cause they were trying to turn down, it’s a place that plays Go-go all day, like 24/7, like all throughout the day, and they play it loud, that’s just how it is. And white folks moved in across the street, they’re like trying to get them to turn it down, so they kicked up this hornet’s nest of just live Go-go, you know, kind of like protests but like outdoor Go-go kind of performances, right there in the middle of the city.

And it was like, live bands - so that’s where the whole opening comes out of. You know, it’s just like live band, thousands and thousands of people. So Mochella, Go-go, and Go-go’s also in the heart of the film. Because Go-go bands are like super… Yeah, it was clear that had to be the heartbeat of the film. Yeah, it’s very characteristic of the city. And so it was kind of critical that was in the soundtrack. So it was like four different bands, whose music are in the film, which was really cool too to get this collaborative kind of thing going, and putting all these anthems of the city into the soundtrack.

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Sam: And kind of on the gentrification note, I feel like you see a lot of TV shows -

Merawi: I’m sorry - and, and that has been a through line in my life, far before I was even in film. That was something that’s been swirling around in my mind for over ten years. Sorry, go ahead.

Sam: I was just saying, that, I feel like you see the theme of gentrification presented a lot in film and movies, and done pretty badly, and done in a way where you know that’s not what gentrification looked like. And I was wondering how you kind of struck that balance between making sure that the audience got what was happening, but not making it way too obvious.

Merawi: Yeah, nah. I know exactly what you mean. It’s like, it’s so on the head, they actually trivialize it in a way, you know? It kind of makes light of the very thing that they’re trying to address.

Um… I don’t know. But it also goes along with the way that we just kind of push white folks to the side, you know, in terms of the frame itself. Just like I don’t want to give them too much attention, I don’t wanna give them too much of my time, you know, as a filmmaker. Like, we really only need so much to know exactly what’s going on, exactly what they’re up to.

And for me, the focus, like I said, is moreso about the folks I grew up with. To me, the primary of the film - sure, it kind of deals with gentrification, even though it doesn’t say it - the project was built as an excuse to kind of archive my community. You know what I mean? That’s the whole idea. It’s like get my folks on camera, get our houses, get our neighborhoods on camera. Get our culture on camera.

Sam: Yeah. And what are you most proud of that you were able to achieve in that documentation?

Merawi: Uh… When people were like, “Yo, they shot that right around the corner from me,” or “That’s where I grew up”, or “I know this person, I know that person,” you know, kind of like the local recognition that it has is my favorite thing about [the film]. Like, you can watch the film and kinda get a sense of where it was filmed, if you know D.C., and you know that like a black person from the city made this film.

Teresa: You could of had a story where Jay just comes back for whatever reason, and he rediscovers his childhood friends. But it was very meta in a way, that like Jay was coming back to make a film, kind of what you were doing. And so, I think that a line that I thought about a lot, was when his childhood friends were sort of criticizing him, being like, “Oh you think you can save the world, you can just come back and just film us and think that that’s okay.” Was that a struggle that you thought about yourself? And at what point did you kind of deal with that conflict?

Merawi: Yeah, it was definitely out of my own insecurities, and, you know, internal struggle as a filmmaker. Like, what’s the point? ‘Cause at the end of the day, you’re not really saving anybody. People are still dealing with the same material day-to-day catastrophes that black people deal with. None of that has changed since the film has come out.

I think that we know film is important. But at the same time, it’s a long game. You often feel that you would have been better off becoming a teacher or a doctor. So the whole thing is dubious. It’s hard to say. I know that this is probably the only way I could really be satiating the things driving me within my own self, but at the same time it’s hard to quantify what good it does.

And also hard to quantify what damage is done. None of these things are guaranteed. Just because I’m from the city doesn’t mean anything. You know, that’s the idea for Jay’s character. Delante is suspicious of him for this very reason - what are you up to? What is motivating you?

At the end of the day, this film has suited my career. Like sure, I’m in a better career position than I was before it came out. But what has it done for Q Street? Very little. So to me, it’s a long game to see how I can fold it into something bigger, something more effective for those folks, for my community.