Documentary filmmaker absorbs the American South’s history in ‘Descendant’

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Documentary filmmaker Margaret Brown was born and raised in Mobile, Ala., and has had an absorbing interest in the American South, including her 2004 documentary “Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt.” But only while filming “The Order of Myths,” in 2008, she learned of the last known slave ship brought to the United States in the late 1850s, and the nearby community former slaves formed. “I didn't remember learning about that in school. That was the first time I had heard of the Clotilda [ship] or Africatown,” she states. That was the moment when she came across the topic of her newest project, the film “Descendant.” Now, Brown shares how she created partnerships to make the film, and got Questlove, Netflix and the Obamas to become involved in it. But first, Kim Masters banters with Matt Belloni about Warner Bros. Discovery’s unpredictable decision to hire filmmaker James Gunn and producer Peter Safran to run the DC Universe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.
0:04.9	Director Margaret Brown set out to make a documentary in her hometown, Mobile, Alabama,
0:09.6	that would include black and white perspectives on the story of the clotilda,
0:14.5	which in 1860 was the last slave ship to arrive in the United States.
0:19.5	That history is still very much alive today. The descendants
0:23.1	of the ship owner still live in Mobile, as do the descendants of those aboard the ship, whose community
0:28.5	is still called Africa Town. I thought this was again going to be another film where it would be
0:33.2	about the American South and all its complexities. But as time went on, and a lot of white families were afraid to talk to me that were connected to the Clotilda and the industrial blight that surrounds Africa Town.
0:43.3	I was like, oh, shh, now I'm suddenly a white woman making a film about the Black experience.
0:48.3	Margaret Brown talks about navigating that challenge in her film, Descendant, and how it came to be that
0:54.6	Questlove, himself a descendant of those who arrived on the Clotilda, became an executive
0:59.8	producer on the film. But first we banter. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW.
1:07.7	I am joined by my associate in banter, Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hi there. So we have talked more than once about the DC Comics quest of David Zaslov, the head of Warner Brothers Discovery, to find his own Kevin Feige, which is words he put in his own mouth, I will note. And there's only one Kevin Faggy.
1:32.4	We've talked about that many times. And he runs Marvel. He has a team around him. But, you know,
1:36.9	there's a vision and it's his. And he is the architect and the contractor. And he built it his way.
1:45.7	There is no other Kevin Faggy for D.C. But contrary to what I think I was predicting, I thought they would default to Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi, the heads of the Warner Brothers Film Studio, who initially they weren't going
1:50.1	to give the DC properties to, but then I felt like, well, they're just having a terrible
1:54.5	time finding anybody.
1:56.3	Turns out they surprised everyone.
1:58.5	They announced James Gunn, the filmmaker James Gunn, and his producing
2:03.3	partner, Peter Safran, are going to run DC. I don't know that it's totally clear. I'm trying to be
2:09.3	nice because, you know, I feel like sometimes we're very skeptical. I am about this, that,
	...

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