{"id":22752,"date":"2017-09-28T11:56:31","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T18:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=22752"},"modified":"2017-09-28T11:56:31","modified_gmt":"2017-09-28T18:56:31","slug":"interview-yance-fords-powerful-strong-island-reveals-inequity-criminal-justice-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/interview-yance-fords-powerful-strong-island-reveals-inequity-criminal-justice-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Yance Ford\u2019s Powerful \u2018Strong Island\u2019 Reveals the Inequity of Our Criminal Justice System"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"strongisland-poster\"Made over the course of 10 years, the riveting documentary Strong Island, <\/em>now streaming on Netflix, chronicles the arc of a family across history, geography, and tragedy \u2014 from the racial segregation of the Jim Crow South to the promise of New York City; from the presumed safety of middle class suburbs to the maelstrom of an unexpected, violent death. It is the story of the Ford family: Barbara Dunmore, William Ford, and their three children, and how their lives were shaped by the enduring shadow of race in America. In April 1992, on Long Island, William Jr., the Ford\u2019s eldest child, a black 24 year-old teacher, was killed by Mark Reilly, a white 19 year-old mechanic. Although Ford was unarmed, he became the prime suspect in his own murder. This deeply intimate and meditative film was made\u00a0by Yance Ford, one of William Jr.\u2019s younger siblings who is now a transgender male director. Strong Island<\/em> asks how people deal with\u00a0grief\u00a0when it is\u00a0entwined with historical injustice, and how we all\u00a0grapple with the complicity of silence that\u00a0can bind a family in an imitation of life, and a nation with a false sense of justice. I sat down with Yance Ford in Los Angeles to talk about this very personal and timely documentary.<\/p>\n

\"StrongDanny Miller: I was incredibly moved by this film. And I think I was only about three minutes in when I realized that I\u2019d fallen in love with your mother. Did she always speak in that slow, measured way that makes you want to hang on her every word?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yance Ford: <\/strong>(Laughs.) Yes, that was my mother, and that is absolutely the way she always spoke \u2014 the cadence of her voice and the speed was very unique. It was wonderful, but when you\u2019re growing up with that person as your mother, you get to a point where you\u2019re like, \u201cCome on! Speed it up, I\u2019m late for work, what are you trying to tell me?!\u201d But she was a remarkable woman, and my father was a remarkable man. Luckily, I always saw myself as reflected through my parents, I didn\u2019t ever turn to the media to affirm my existence or to reflect back at me who I was.<\/p>\n

I told you at the screening last night how moved I was by your sister\u2019s participation in the documentary. I was surprised when you said that she hadn\u2019t seen the film yet and may never watch it. Is it just too painful for her to revisit the story of your brother\u2019s death?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I asked her to be a part of the film, my sister said yes immediately, just like my mother. My sister knew that I was making this film so that our brother\u2019s story would finally be told in full. But my sister also knew that she didn\u2019t necessarily have the need to become any kind of a public figure. She wanted to help fill in the many blanks that I had of that time and talk to me for the first time about it. Beyond sitting down and sharing her experience in those interviews, however, she doesn\u2019t really see the need to screen the film. But she\u2019s grateful for everything that\u2019 it\u2019s doing in the world. She keeps track of the press and I talk to her every day. She\u2019s super proud of me.<\/p>\n

The relationship between you and your two siblings seemed so wonderful. I love the story your sister tells about the time when she was young and feeling very insecure and your brother told her how pretty she was and really made her see that for the first time. I think that was when\u00a0the tears first started\u00a0coming for me during\u00a0the\u00a0course of this film. <\/strong><\/p>\n

My parents raised us to be loving friends, I\u2019m so grateful for that. And with the age difference between my brother and sister, he recognized the awkwardness of adolescence and just naturally wanted to help her through that. He wasn\u2019t a perfect person, none of us were, but I do think that he was a very good older brother. I had never heard that story until my sister told it to me on camera but I wasn\u2019t surprised. I remember after one of our screenings at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, my brother\u2019s friend Kevin was there and he told me, \u201cYance, by the way, William knew you were gay.\u201d And I was like, \u201cExcuse me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh wow, and up until that point you thought he had died not knowing that about you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had no idea, we had never discussed it. But Kevin said, \u201cYeah, he told all of us. He said, \u2018Listen, my sister\u2019s gay so back off, I\u2019m taking her to the prom.\u2019\u201d So it was only in April 2017 that I had confirmation from my brother’s\u00a0best friend that he knew and that all of his friends knew. And none of them ever treated me any differently. I think it was the equivalent of affirming my sister\u2019s beauty the way he told his friends, \u201cListen, my sister\u2019s gay. Deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just so heartbreaking to learn about William and imagine the life he would have had if he had not been murdered. He was such an amazing guy. When you\u2019re working on a project for so long\u00a0about such a painful incident from your family, is it difficult to navigate through that pain? Are you constantly thinking, \u201cOkay, now William would be 42, now he\u2019d be 47\u201d and all the other what-ifs and speculation about how all your lives would be different?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know, I learned so much about my brother in the context of making this film. I had his journals and got to read about all of his aspirations, what he hoped for in his life. I was completely taken aback by how thoughtful and rich his internal life was, but also I was saddened by how little of each other we had been able to know as adults. With any homicide, it\u2019s very difficult not to mark time. When I was 24, when I reached the age of my brother\u2019s death, that was a huge year for me. When I was a year older than him, it was a huge year for me. He would have been 50 years old this year, and that\u2019s huge because his best friends are all celebrating their fiftieth birthdays, and they\u2019ve got kids and grandkids. I know that our family would have been a different constellation had he not been murdered, and that\u2019s the difficult part.<\/p>\n

\"strongisland-yanceford\"<\/p>\n

The injustice of your brother\u2019s killer not even having to go to trial is just so shocking and appalling. But sadly, one that we\u2019ve seen over and over since then. <\/strong><\/p>\n

My brother\u2019s story is one of the many failures of the criminal justice system. And remember we\u2019re talking about 1992 \u2014 two weeks before the Rodney King verdict and Los Angeles exploding. During that time there was no social media. When we were going through that we had the support of our community, we had the support of all the people who signed petitions, of our friends and colleagues, but that\u2019s it. There was no Twitter, there was no Facebook, there was no way to galvanize a nation and get people behind you. So in the absence of that and\u00a0with the failure of the system, what happens is that there is this silence that descends. And ultimately that silence becomes about protecting each other from your own pain.<\/p>\n

You have to continue to live, even in the face of such injustice. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, you have to continue to live on this planet, you have to continue to navigate the racism of everyday life in America as a black person. You have to continue to remember who your son was, who your brother was, you have to hold on to the knowledge that if the races were reversed in this case, that killer would now be in jail.<\/p>\n

No question about it. <\/strong><\/p>\n

But the silence was finally broken in the making of this film which gave us a chance to talk to each other about this for the very first time. It was especially important to my mother that this story be larger than our family. She lived through so many killings. I remember after Trayvon Martin was killed, my mother heard the tapes and she watched the trials. She\u2019d say, \u201cOkay, now they\u2019re going to start talking about X, Y, and Z\u201d and it was like clockwork, exactly as she said. It was a familiar pattern to us.<\/p>\n

Did you ever think of exploring more about your brother\u2019s killer, Mark Reilly? Did you consider showing his face in this film? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It was never going to be about Mark Reilly. When I first began the film I did work with some private investigators to try to locate him, but they were unable to locate any images of him. He does not exist in social media as far as I was able to find out. But I soon realized that Mark Reilly was not a character in this film, he was simply a catalyst for a series of events. My investigators did locate a handful of Mark Reillys and I called one and then said to myself, \u201cWhat am I doing?\u201d I have nothing to say to him and he said everything he could possibly say to me and my family when he shot my brother. If he wants redemption or forgiveness or to apologize then he can go seek out whatever God he worships and do it there.<\/p>\n

When you were making this film there was no way you could have known that it would be released at a time in this country when abject racism was coming to the surface in a way that has shocked many of us, and from the very highest levels. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I think there are some Americans who find what\u2019s going on now unthinkable. And there are other Americans, and I count myself among them, who are not at all surprised \u2014 the fact that there is this kind of neo-Confederacy that has never left. The folks selling \u201cThe South Shall Rise Again!\u201d buttons at flea markets or flying the Confederate flag \u2014 the fact that those folks have never gone away is not a surprise to me. I think that there\u2019s an entire segment of our country who just don\u2019t\u2019 understand that the racism that my parents grew up with simply got passed down to the children and those folks live all over the country now. And the whole myth of millennials not being as prejudiced as the generations who came before them \u2014 well, we know that\u2019s been blown out of the water.<\/p>\n

Some of us were lulled into thinking that things were different because of the past eight years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, some of us were lulled into complacency during those years. I never believed in the the notion of this country being \u201cpost-racial.\u201d I think a lot of people took that off-ramp so that we could stop dealing with the troubled history of our country.<\/p>\n

And now there\u2019s been a major accident on that off-ramp \u2014 with fatalities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. And we\u2019ve got to sort it out. We are right back to where we started. The foundation of this nation was built on slavery and the genocide of Native Americans. And the foundation of our policing is based on capturing runaway slaves. The containment and control of black people in America is as old as the country itself. And we certainly see that in my brother\u2019s case.<\/p>\n