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JUDY WOODRUFF: The documentary
"Hale County This Morning, This
Evening," about a community

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in the Alabama Black Belt, was
nominated for an Academy Award
earlier this year for best

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documentary feature.

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Filmmaker RaMell Ross, who
spent more than five years
making the film, gives his Brief

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But Spectacular take
on the black experience
in documentary film.

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It's also part of our of arts
and culture series, Canvas.

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RAMELL ROSS, Filmmaker:
We look at black folks.

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We don't often look
from black folks.

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And the reason why that's the
case is because the sort of
world view of the U.S. is the

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white gaze.

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And so blackness is the other.

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You go into a black community.

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You don't leave a
black community.

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I live in Hale County currently,
been there for 10 years.

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I moved there to teach
photography and then
eventually ran a youth program.

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And eight years living there,
people still knew me as the
one who could help someone

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write a resume or help
someone get into college.

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That role gave me more leeway,
and allowed for people to
trust me by default, before

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I intended or thought
about making a film.

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I talk about the film as a
return to home for a Northern
black American to the historic

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South looking through my eyes.

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I'm encountering the moment
in the same way in which
you encounter the moment.

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I'm waiting and watching and
participating, in hopes that
something magnificent would

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unfold in front of the
camera in a beautiful frame.

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When I'm filming Quincy, and we
walk outside, and literally a
storm is born on the horizon,

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I'm in the same shock and awe
and appreciation for the moment
viscerally as you are when

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you encounter it on screen.

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Making the film was
the most profound five
years I have ever had.

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No one has access to the
nuclear family, the living room
environment over the course of

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many years in someone's family.

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This is where the
myths are made.

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This is where you
learn how to love.

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And I was able to witness that
in Daniel and Quincy's lives.

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If we weren't stuck in our
first-person points of view, I
would argue that most problems

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in the world that have to do
with inequality would be solved,
because we wouldn't be stuck

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in our single points of views.

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My name is RaMell Ross, and
this is my Brief But Spectacular
take on the centrality of

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the black experience
in documentary film.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can
find additional Brief But
Spectacular episodes on our Web

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site, PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.