Jennifer Redfearn is an Academy Award-nominated director. She directed and produced “Sun Come Up” about a small island community losing their land to rising seas. “Sun Come Up” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2011, screened in theaters across the U.S., and aired on HBO. “Touch the Light” (“Tocando la Luz)” was co-produced with ITVS and aired on PBS in 2016. It premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Festival where it won the Charles E. Guggenheim Award. Redfearn worked on the 2016 SXSW Audience Award winner “Landfill Harmonic” as a field director and consulting producer.
“Apart” is screening at the 2021 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival, which takes place April 29-May 9. The fest is digital this year due to COVID-19. Streaming is geo-blocked to Canada.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
JR: In a Midwestern state caught between harsh drug sentencing and rising incarceration for women, three unforgettable mothers – Tomika, Lydia, and Amanda – return home from prison and rebuild their lives after being separated from their children for years. Their stories overlap at a new reentry program for women, run by Malika, an advocate formerly incarcerated in the same prison. Filmed over three and a half years, “Apart” traces their steps as they reconstruct lives derailed by drugs and prison.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
JR: In 2016, my partner Tim Metzger and I learned about a new reentry program in Cleveland, Ohio created to address the unique needs of women transitioning home from prison. Women’s incarceration rates in the United States have increased over 800 percent since the beginning of the war on drugs, and a majority of women in prison are mothers. Given the shocking stats, we were keen to learn more about the program and the women in it.
We brought our camera on a research trip to Ohio where we first met Tomika, Amanda, Lydia, and Malika. It was in December, and the reentry program was putting on a holiday party for the women and their families. Some of the women hadn’t seen their families in months. Tomika told us she was finally ready to tell her six-year-old daughter that she was in prison and she invited us to sit at the table and film this profound moment with her family. It was a difficult moment for everyone involved, but we realized it was important for an audience to confront this side of the story — the side most of us don’t get to see.
On a personal note, I had just lost several important family members, so I was thinking a lot about family, separation, and loss around this time. After witnessing the women seeing their children for the first time in months and reaching across a vast divide to give love — and to feel loved — I knew this was an important story to tell.
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
JR: The issues raised in this film are part of a much larger conversation we’re having in the U.S. about inequality, racism, drugs, and mass incarceration. We made “Apart” as one piece of this wider conversation with a focus on maternal incarceration.
I hope the film encourages audiences to grapple with how incarceration impacts mothers, children, families, and, as a result, entire communities. How can we take the steps necessary to move away from the current punitive model to one that’s more just and restorative?
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
JR: The biggest challenges we faced had to do with the logistical hurdles of filming in a prison environment, including gaining and maintaining permission to film over the three and a half years while personnel and politics shifted in the background.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
JR: “Apart” was funded with a combination of grants, as well as co-production partnership with ITVS. An early grant from the Cleveland Foundation helped us start production and cut a sample. Chicken & Egg selected the film to participate in the (Egg)celerator Lab, a year-long series of retreats and mentorship that was incredibly helpful in shaping the film and gaining additional support for it.
Additional grants from Fork Films, the Tribeca Film Institute, and IDA Enterprise Fund helped raise the profile of the project, and ITVS came on board towards the end of production. We also received grants from the LEF Moving Image Fund, Good Gravy Films, and Mountainfilm.
We couldn’t have finished this film without the strong support of the Meadow Fund and our executive producer, Patty Quillin.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
JR: I thought I would become a tropical ecologist, but the film bug bit me in college after taking darkroom photography courses and film classes with filmmaker and video installation artist Salem Mekuria. I come from a large extended family of gregarious storytellers and talkers. I can be shy, so when I discovered photography and documentary film as a medium of expression, I was hooked.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
JR: Worst advice: Put it on a credit card.
Best advice: This industry is tough. It’s challenging to make a sustainable living as a documentary filmmaker, and you hear “no” a lot. Mentors and colleagues encouraged me to avoid taking “no” personally and view rejection as part of the process. It’s really helped to have that perspective. Also, get your ego out of the way and do what’s best for the story.
W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?
JR: The early documentary pioneers were also technologists and builders. In addition to the racial reckoning that’s shaping the industry, a new wave of technological change is coming, possibly on par with the invention of the Internet. It will disrupt the media landscape again, but it will also create new opportunities for storytellers and creative entrepreneurs. I see more men in this space right now, and I’d love to see more women and BIPOC storytellers at the forefront of this movement with the support to invent new tools, new ways of telling stories, and new platforms for reaching audiences.
Another thing I’d like to mention is the business of filmmaking. My family didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, and I’m passionate about women’s financial education and financial empowerment. I would like to see more transparency from the business side and more financial education for emerging filmmakers.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
JR: There are so many notable woman-directed films. I can’t pick one favorite, but let me give you two that are on my mind lately. Garrett Bradley’s stunning feature, “Time,” inspires me for its visually and emotionally rich storytelling and elegant use of music. It’s also boldly pushing the art form — as did her short film “Alone” — while powerfully confronting injustices.
The other movie I want to mention is Barbara Kopple’s classic “Harlan County, U.S.A.” Being there day in and day out with the striking miners allowed Kopple and her crew to bring us an insider’s view into their lived experiences. And when the foreman, who violently threatens the strikers, tries to intimidate her, she holds firm and keeps filming. It’s a striking example of courageous filmmaking and a remarkable work of art, just as vital now as it was 45 years ago.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?
JR: As director of the documentary program at the U.C. Berkeley graduate school of journalism, I’m shepherding students through a year-long process of directing their first films during one of the most challenging times to make documentaries. I’ve poured my creative energy and time into that this year and have loved every minute of it.
W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?
JR: There’s a gathering momentum behind this movement now, and there’s a lot the documentary field can do to bring about positive change. The industry can work to level the playing field by directly supporting more filmmakers of color, both emerging and mid-career filmmakers, to make films and make a living doing it.
We need to support more people of color in decision making positions such as funders and in curatorial and executive positions with distributors. And we can support efforts to reexamine how resources are apportioned in public media.
As makers, we have a responsibility to be aware of our potential blind spots when making films, and to ensure we’re engaging diverse voices in key creative roles on our teams.
