Directors Jonathon Leslie-Quam and Jamie Quam want to show how grassroots action leads to policy changes.
An upcoming documentary on racism in Madison began as a breakfast conversation between a brother and sister back in 2013.
Jonathon Leslie-Quam, a Dallas-based filmmaker, was discussing Madison with his sister Jamie Quam, a Madisonian (the siblings are Sauk City natives). “I was longing for the days of when I lived in Madison, and that city as I remembered it,” says Leslie-Quam. “She kind of jumped in and started running down the list of, ‘Here’s what’s really happening. Here’s what you’re not seeing. Here’s what you’re not reading. You have a skewed view.’”
Quam shared some provocative material on racial disparities in Madison. It included “Race to Equity,” a report issued in October 2013 by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. She also gave her brother a then-recent article from The Capital Times by the Rev. Alex Gee, headlined “Justified Anger.”
The two set out to document the work groups are doing to address the issues brought to light in the report. They share directing and producing duties and have titled their film Forward: Anger Into Action. “The main focus for us is this broad view of Madison during this time of crisis,” says Leslie-Quam.
They began work on the film in January 2014, well before the controversial shooting of 19-year-old Anthony Terrell (Tony) Robinson by Madison police officer Matt Kenny on March 6 of this year, which sparked national news coverage and ongoing protest.
“We started to talk about what was going on here in the community and what type of skills that we had and ways that we could contribute to providing support for the social justice work going on here in the community,” says Quam.
“And we kind of ran with it,” adds Leslie-Quam. “We did want to see Madison become a better city, the city that I remembered. I wanted it to become the city that I had in my head, and Jamie did as well.
Quam moved to Madison in 2008, graduating from the UW in 2012 with bachelor’s degrees in political science and life sciences communication. She recently left Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, a Dane County nonprofit that serves domestic violence survivors, to begin work on a master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins University.
Leslie-Quam is a professor of documentary filmmaking at Midwestern State University, near Dallas. He’s worked on documentaries including Blood Brothers, which he wrote and directed, and which has been featured at the Wisconsin Film Festival. He attended UW-Stevens Point and lived in Madison from 2007 to 2009. He received a master’s degree in documentary production from the University of North Texas in 2012.
Quam and Leslie-Quam are white, as are two others on their film crew; one other is biracial. Content producer Sheba McCants is a Madison native. She has a 2006 degree in visual and performing arts from New York University and also works at DAIS. Joe Brown, co-producer and director of photography, teaches filmmaking at Marquette University. Chance Cork, production coordinator, is a student at Madison College.
Area organizations that will be featured in the film include the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, Race to Equity, Voices Beyond Bars and the YWCA of Madison.
Leslie-Quam says the mostly white production team has been welcomed by these groups, and that the filmmakers’ roles extend beyond mere observation. “On a couple of occasions [the groups] have allowed us to actually just participate with the organization — put the cameras down and sit down, and help develop a stronger understanding of what this work is, and what goes into the development of the individuals who are going out and doing the work in the schools, marching on the street, building up new coalitions.”
Ananda Mirilli, YWCA restorative justice director, says she is impressed with the filmmakers. “I think they’re amazing,” says the former school board candidate, who also appears in the documentary. “Jonathon did an amazing job on understanding where I was coming from as a person.”
Fundraising efforts for the film production continue. The team estimates a total budget of $35,000, with lots of additional “in-kind” contributions in the form of volunteer hours. A crowdfunding campaign netted $1,800 earlier this summer, and they’ve received a grant of $1,500 from the Madison Arts Commission.
The filmmakers expect production to total three years, with completion scheduled for May 2017.
"We don’t expect to see a 180-degree turn on the disparities over the course of three years,” says Leslie-Quam. “The idea is to show how to meet disparities [by] taking ground action, and how that grassroots action makes its way toward policy changes.”
