[Our House Short Film Blocking Day]
DARASIMI BANKOLE: Harambee is the annual celebration for Black history and Black culture for FMO otherwise known as For Members Only, Northwestern’s Black student union. In past years they’ve done things like an art exhibit and a fashion show for the celebration. This year, they’re doing something they’ve never done before. A short film that matches with FMO’s film theme for the quarter and the entire FMO theme for the year…The Blueprint.
The film is called Our House…a project filmed on campus and partially in downtown Evanston.
I got the chance to speak with the directors of the film, Gavyn Lewis-Richmond and Jemimah Nabugasha, about bringing Our House to life.
For Lewis-Richmond, co-directing the project simply made sense given her interests in film and Black culture, especially as a Black studies major.
GAVYN LEWIS-RICHMOND: “I’m just really into film, I watched around 300 films last year so I definitely wanted to be involved with the making of this film so yeah I wanted to take a director role because Ive never been on the production side of it and I thought it would be cool to lead something like this.”
DB: The project will pay respect to many pioneers in Black film.
LEWIS-RICHMOND: “It’s supposed to reference multiple Black horror films and Black horror filmmakers. There’s multiple references to I’ll say films such as Get Out and other black films and filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Spike Lee.”
DB: Our House created a space to celebrate Black talent across campus.
LEWIS-RICHMOND: “It’s really interesting to see how talented my colleagues are or people who go to Northwestern. Obviously I know this is like a cool school, but just being able to be around a bunch of Black talent like our cinematographer is very very talented and very skilled and also our actors, like they’re not even just theater majors, they’re also like mechanical engineering majors and you know different majors and it’s kind of interesting to see how you know black people can come together and create something cool.”
DB: For Nabugasha, she knew she wanted to get more involved in FMO this year and Harambee was the perfect way to do so.
JEMIMAH NABUGASHA: “Last year, I wasn’t as involved in like so many organizations as I wanted to be and so this year, I wanted to get involved in FMO so an opportunity came up because they have very many committees that you can join and Harambee caught my eye because obviously it’s like the annual celebration of Black culture and I was like I would love to put my few cents into that.”
DB: What started as joining a committee became watching a full production unfold in real time.
NABUGASHA: “Wow, this is becoming real. This is not something that we always do, but just seeing it in front of us was just like this is amazing, like I cant believe like this is a bunch of students like making a short film, so it was just so incredible and it’s like wow this is so cool like I became, I’m a fan of the actors themselves so it’s just amazing.”
DB: Harambee itself carries a meaning that reflects the process behind the film.
NABUGASHA: “Harambee means ‘all pull together’ in Swahili which is very amazing because I am from East Africa so Swahili like we all know whatever but like the whole goal is it’s supposed to be a community like coming together and civic unity and things like that and we see this throughout like everyone being involved, like everyone has their own different roles and we all just come together and just celebrate our own culture, identities, and things like that and so for me, Harambee itself has made that very, it has come to life in that way.”
DB: All pull together, a short film, a campus. From mechanical engineers to theater majors. Horror references and cultural homage. A blueprint.
Harambee’s film festival premieres March 8th, featuring Our House and additional short films from Black student filmmakers at Northwestern. You can follow updates on Instagram: @ourhouse_fmo.
For WNUR News, I’m Darasimi Bankole.
