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

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

documentary feature.

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

But Spectacular take
on the black experience
in documentary film.

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

RAMELL ROSS, Filmmaker:
We look at black folks.

We don't often look
from black folks.

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

white gaze.

And so blackness is the other.

You go into a black community.

You don't leave a
black community.

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

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

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

write a resume or help
someone get into college.

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

I intended or thought
about making a film.

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

South looking through my eyes.

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

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

unfold in front of the
camera in a beautiful frame.

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

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

you encounter it on screen.

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

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

many years in someone's family.

This is where the
myths are made.

This is where you
learn how to love.

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

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

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

in our single points of views.

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

the black experience
in documentary film.

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

site, PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.