- These are the stories that move us, the stories that guide us, and the stories that reflect our community.

Filmed in our neighborhoods and local haunts by those who call the city home, these filmmakers are creating stories that show the life of our city in only a way we could imagine.

These are the stories that we tell.

This is Atlanta on Film.

Welcome back to Atlanta on Film.

I'm your host, Alechia Reese, and tonight we're going to be watching some pretty thought provoking films.

In this next film, we'll meet a woman whose power is snatched away in a place she once felt safe.

Picking up the broken pieces and rebuilding with the shards that remain isn't always easy.

Let's watch her journey in Molly Coffee's Cracks.

(rock music) (eerie music) (rock music) - I am here with Molly Coffee, the director of the short Cracks, and this conversation, we are going to hop right on in.

If you are just joining us for Atlanta on Film, you are in for a treat because this particular story, Molly, I wanted to find out from you, if you had to kind of give us just a brief synopsis, what would that be about the film Cracks?

- Absolutely, so Cracks is a film that we shot on 35 millimeter film and it was me kind of doing on-screen therapy dealing with my own sexual assault.

- Wow.

- Yeah, just right out there.

- I see, we got right into it.

So you said doing your own therapy, a lot of times, filmmakers do create from a point of reference or a point of lived experience.

What would you say was the biggest challenge in working through that with you?

- Well, I will say, so when this whole incident that inspired the film took place, I had a friend of mine who I was very close with and we had gone through a lot of things with, and he didn't believe me when I told him about what had happened to me.

And really it was because he couldn't quantify this idea of a victim, like this girl who he had gone to punk rock shows with, who he'd seen get into fistfights and drink whiskey and all these different things.

That idea that that person could also be a victim.

And so I then didn't tell anybody or talk about it for another three years after that 'cause I just couldn't figure out my own feelings about the fact that someone who I thought was one of my closest friends, like didn't take me seriously and then one day, I decided that I was going to talk about it and think about it and started down the route of making the short film and part of that was meeting Blair Bathery, who is my actress in the film and her openness and her own personal stories that she told me that kind of became the impetus of how much cooler really the character in the film is than I am.

- No, I think you both are pretty cool.

Like I'm feeling your energy here and I can guarantee you both are pretty cool.

The lead actor in the film was such a powerful woman who was doing her own thing.

So in the film when we looked at the point when it seems as though she does lose something, her power, her essence, and it's taken from her and she has to try and figure out who she is now, what was the discussions or what was the leading that you gave to her in telling that part of the story?

- Well, I think the film is a little bit experimental in its structure.

And so me and Blair had lots of conversations about our own ideas of ourselves and really, she brought a lot of her own things to the project in addition to like my own things, which is a big part of the collaborative process.

And so it really was creating the film kind of in two halves.

It's like the person and her before, and then the person and her after and kind of approaching is, you don't know internally like what the people around you really are dealing with and going through.

- So you essentially are showing the different aspects of what a victim could look like and that it doesn't have to be the person who you deem is worthy of victimhood, it could be the person who is strong and powerful, and it also could be the person who's still trying to find their voice.

- Absolutely, and then this idea of who has the strength to speak out immediately.

That could be...

It's easy to doubt someone because they aren't speaking out.

- Yeah, and you said that it was experimental in how you shot things.

So what was your own artistic vision behind how you wanted it to be shot?

There was a particular piece of clothing that she had spent so much time building, nurturing, creating, and crafting and one of the last things you see is her leaving that piece of her behind.

So it felt as if she had completely dismissed or lost that part of herself.

So what was your idea when it came to framing, pacing the cinematography?

What was your vision behind all of that?

- Well, the battle vest as we call it, or the armor that I always considered it, it's really amazing that you picked up on that just 'cause that is like a very personal thing for me.

And it was something that was like the source of strength for me constantly 'cause you have everything from your issues with your body and your issues with other people and all of that is kind of channeled into this vest.

And so it was her kind of making the decision to quit using the armor as a crutch is kind of where the end of it is.

But yeah, the vest itself is just kind of a metaphor for like needing to be strong to those so that you can't show weakness.

- Thank you so much, Molly, for sharing the story that is Cracks helping us all to see not only that every single person has the potentiality of becoming a victim, but what it also looks like to be willing to face what you've experienced and work through it.

So thank you so much.

- Absolutely.

It's not uncommon for people to have strange stories arise from rideshare interactions.

In Charlene Fisk's Rideshare, what begins as a normal ride home is complicated by the questionable actions of a menacing driver.

This is Rideshare.

- Just one more drink.

- I can't, I told you I can't.

(light music) - A good night, fun?

- Yeah, it was.

But I'm pooped, that was a long week.

- Pooped, what is pooped?

- Pooped is like really tired.

- Tired.

Gina is pooped.

- Gina is pooped.

- Mark is pooped.

Long day, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Keep the the window up, it's too cold, too cold.

Keeps the heat in the car.

I am pooped, Mark is pooped.

I live outside the city, so I drive in the morning, I drive people all day to airport and home, work and drive all night.

I'm tired, long days, long weeks, long life.

You go see music tonight?

Yeah, yeah, yeah?

- Yeah, yeah.

- This is like a club.

No, no, no food.

People in the food in the car, it's too messy.

This guy drive so slow.

Get you home soon, but this guy.

(light music) Nice neighborhood, yeah.

Your neighborhood, huh?

- Yeah, it's great.

- Safe.

So is this good neighborhood for pets?

You know pets, dogs, cats.

- Yeah, sure.

- You have pets?

- Yeah, I have two big old dogs.

- Ooh, big dogs.

Your dogs, they are mean?

Do they bite Gina, your dogs?

Will they bite me, Gina?

- Can you unlock the door please?

Can you unlock the door?

- Oh yes, no, but might not work.

- Can you unlock the door please?

- Yeah.

Gina, this is your house, yeah?

Your dogs, they would bite me?

- Yeah, they would rip your (bleep) face off.

Hey, come on, come on.

Alexa, turn on the living room lights.

Alexa, turn on the living room lights!

(bleep) turn on the lights!

(light music) - I am here with filmmaker Charlene for Atlanta on Film.

She's the director for Rideshare.

And this particular film, Charlene, was so thought provoking and honestly a little scary for me.

Now, before we hop into it, I would love for you to share just a brief synopsis on not only your role in the film, but also just a quick overview of what it was.

- Rideshare is about a woman, Gina, who takes an innocent kind of rideshare home, but halfway through the ride, it takes kind of a different turn for her, a terrifying kind of turn.

So it's the story of 1,000 rideshare rides that people take, but not all of 'em are as safe as you think they'll be.

- Exactly, and it was so insidious and it kind of snuck in.

And so for you, what was that like in building that tension between Gina and the driver, making sure that folks are actually able to see and follow along with, hey, there's something happening here, there's some tension being built.

What was that for you?

- I think that was the hardest part, 'cause the whole film takes place in the car, right?

So it's two people, one limited little place.

So to build that... Like, to open up that power dynamic and watch it shift, it was...

I mean, we had to really beat it out and figure out, okay, how much can we... How much tension does there need to be at each place, and how real is this?

We decided to give a quick moment where he kind of snaps at her.

- No, no, no food.

- It's so subtle and it could be nothing, but that's the moment when it's like, hmm, something's a little bit off here.

We had to very carefully figure out how can we make everyone feel like she's feeling in the back of that car, that kind of terror, that subtle something's wrong and let it grow for everyone until it's like, get me out of this car.

And so we chose not to show him his face.

So whether you realize it or not you don't see him, you only see his glances from the mirror.

- And like many women or many humans, they just completely ignore it because oh, that's just a little thing.

And so for you, especially being that one in six women, American women are sexually assaulted in the US each year or over their lifetime, how did you, or what was the conversation with the main character in terms of, hey, this is what I want you to ensure that you communicate or get across to the audience.

What were those notes like?

- Tyner Rushing was originally cast in that part.

She had to step out at the last second so I had to do a casting shift a week before we shot.

So in that process, we just had a couple really great rehearsals and conversations, but I chose to keep the two leads separate so they never met each other until they sat in the car, which is a super dangerous decision for a director because you don't know what you're gonna get from that performance, but after talking to the actress, I realized that she had been in enough situations and I asked her if she was comfortable kind of like leaning into that where she's meeting a stranger and possibly just going off of what her actual instincts would be in trying to catch everything in the first couple takes.

Does that make sense, so everything feels fresh.

So we made a conscious decision to shoot the very first thing would just be on her the whole time 'cause this is her first reaction to meeting him.

- So that it's much like your experience when you are ordering a rideshare, you don't know that person.

And it is an intimate exchange because you're letting them know exactly where you live or wherever you are consistently at or where you're going to be staying for that period of time.

So it is an intimate exchange, which makes it so relatable to folks who are watching.

And what I took from it too was how intentional a person can be in trying to ensure that someone knows I have more power over you.

Also too, like what women have to experience on a daily, where it's never even a thought of, hey, this person could harm me.

I know in my own experience, when I experience sexual abuse myself, it never came to me except for there was this still small nagging where I was just like, huh, this feels weird, this feels strange.

But you ignore it because, oh no, I'll be fine.

Oh, it's okay.

And way too many times we do ignore it.

So I feel one of the themes that folks can walk away with is when you feel a certain way, who cares if they think you're being extra?

Decide that I'm gonna step out.

I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna stop this.

I'm gonna step out anytime you don't feel safe.

- It's interesting that you say that because when we were talking earlier, I did not think this related back to a rape that I had in high school, but like now that I look at it, I think, wow, this is me possibly like trying to understand how I got there.

And it was like the same thing, like a series of red flags that maybe we ignore, you know?

And then all of a sudden it's like, whoa.

- It's terrifying, and thank you so much for even being willing and open enough to share that with me because I do understand that it's a painful and sometimes touchy subject because it's taking your power.

And so with this particular short, were there any challenges for you, especially knowing your own background in dealing with scary situations?

- I honestly making this film, I didn't think about that until just now until you started talking about it earlier.

I thought, wow, holy cow.

Because I think in all of our work, everything that we've lived through our lives comes out and sometimes we see it all and sometimes we see bits of it.

So it's interesting to see this now that was like, oh wow, yeah, I've actually lived this more than once.

This was the story I told about it and this is maybe when I could have a voice around it.

- So it's taking your power back in a sense too without even realizing.

I love that.

- It's great, thanks for letting me see that.

- You are welcome, reclaiming our power.

- I love it.

- Listen, if you want to watch more of this and see the full short, make sure you visit AtlantaonFilm@wabe.org.

As a child, we see the world with very few boundaries and if we're lucky, we get to hold onto that expression as we grow.

Our next film Gatito, Kristina Arjora explores a father and son relationship as papa works against his traditional Puerto Rican upbringing to help his son express himself without toxic masculinity, limiting their relationship.

This is Gatito.

- Mijo, breakfast, hello?

No, not in the back.

Then if you would follow up on the status of her work VISA.

Mijo, sientate, yep, no, I'm here.

I'm in proceedings until one.

After that, you'll have to go back through the application.

- Meow.

- Then if you wanna follow up on the status.

(speaking foreign language) - Meow.

- No, I'm walking out the door.

I am calling him on the way over.

- Meow.

Meow?

Meow.

Meow.

(light music) - I am here with Kristina Arjora of the film Gatito, which means little kitty.

I'm super excited to have this conversation primarily because as a mom whose child has definitely had some interesting experiences where she decided she wanted to be something that I didn't necessarily understand, seeing it play out on film and understanding that it really is about acceptance whether or not you understand it was incredibly beautiful to me.

- I'm so happy that you received it that way.

That was a big part of it.

So I'm somebody...

I write or I work on a lot of feminist films, is something that I'm really passionate about, but I really wanted to explore something about boys and like what's going on with men and what's happening with how we raise boys.

And so this was something that I developed with my friend Elin Rose Hill, who was the writer and she let me adapt it a little bit, which was really lovely and bring in a Latino element to it.

So I am Colombian and I was really happy to kind of explore that as well of what's it like machismo and how that can often affect how we raise our boys.

And so what is it like to see positive reinforcement?

That was kind of the goal is to reinforce that and hopefully start a conversation with a lot of different kids, a lot of different parents, and normalizing accepting your unique kid however they are.

- The father was like, if he believes he's a cat and he wants to be treated as such, I'm going to allow it.

And he nurtured that.

He allowed him to experience himself in ways that he thought, this is what works for me, this is what I like and seeing that play out was incredibly important.

So what did the direction to the father and the mother when you were helping to develop those characters, what was the direction that you were giving them to ensure that they were providing space for him to be who he wanted to be?

- Yeah, so again, we were kind of trying to play with going against gender norms and these expectations of how a mom is supposed to act, how the dad's supposed to act.

We played with Norio Nishimura who plays the father who's just an absolute delight.

That was something we talked about a lot.

And I interviewed a lot, specifically Latino fathers and sons and just men in general about their relationships with their fathers and fathers of LGBTQ+ youth and kind of asking what their experience has been.

And it was really, really lovely to take all that information and work with Norio and help him explore what he's very open about, like this is kind of a love letter of what he wished his father had been.

And we don't see enough positive reinforcement of that kind of media.

There's a lot of what can be really stereotypical expressions of what fathers are to sons.

And so if we don't see it, it's hard to believe it and it's hard to normalize it.

And that was something that Norio was like very passionate about getting to express and getting to explore.

- So when you were thinking about how to shoot this, because again, not very much dialogue, a lot of it was emotion-based or you were communicating through actions.

What were some of the things that you wanted to make sure you got, especially when it comes to the technical aspect?

Like what was that for you?

- Yeah, well thankfully I had a really incredible DP, Jess Silva, and I spent a lot of time breaking that down and really talking about how we wanted this visual story to be told.

And then we had some friends who had a movie, which is a really wonderful camera equipment that we were able to use that helped us kind of play with some of the movement of it so we could have a little bit more of a cat-like movement and exploration, a little more playfulness with it and then finding our little boy.

I mean that was a really long process and really stressful.

The pre-production that we did for it was so, so helpful so that we had a really clear vision going into it 'cause again, our lead actor is five years old, so we only have a certain amount of hours in that day and then he's a pumpkin.

We're done, we don't get any more time.

That played a lot in how we shot it and trying to shoot a lot from his point of view lower and again, it's such a beautiful house with all these hardwood floors.

It had its own personality, so it helped kind of set that scene.

- That really is beautiful because you could feel literally every intentional aspect of how you thought about not only the colors, but the location and even the type of house and the characters and then the actors to play those characters, it really did pull it all together.

So for more of films like this, make sure you visit AtlantaonFilm@wabe.org.

When a photographer captures the final moments of a woman's life, something strange begins to plague her as they prepare for a new project.

As an homage to various art house styles, Kevin Fermini takes us into the eye of the beholder in Death Walks on Nitrate.

(light music) (eerie music) (eerie music continues) (upbeat music) (cackling) (eerie music) Hello, hello, hello.

I am here with Kevin Fermini, the director for Death Walks.

And now this particular film was actually quite unique in that it highlighted not only a woman who seemed to be snatching souls using her camera, but she snatched the soul of one who could actually give her a taste of her own medicine.

Kevin, how are you?

- Hey Alechia, I'm doing great.

- Before we get into things, I definitely want to ask you, what was the motivation and inspiration for this film?

I have to know.

- That's a great question.

I've had people ask me like, oh, is it about like journalistic ethics or like, is it about exploitation of people who are suffering and stuff like that?

And to be honest, the impetus for the film was I had the idea of the photographer holding her camera, looking into the viewfinder and then pulling it down and having that gag of like her eye being full of shattered glass.

And I had that idea, that idea wouldn't get outta my head.

And eventually I was like, I need to build some kind of framework to get to that idea because if it's in my head, I guess it's in there for a reason.

- Exactly, it has to get out some kind of way.

For me, I saw the film more like karma in that definitely what she was doing, snatching souls with her camera, she finally came across a person who could kind of give her a taste of her own medicine, see how she liked it.

- Yeah, definitely.

- What would you say, though, are some of the themes that we may have missed as the viewing audience that you really wanted to make sure that you highlighted and got across in the film?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, I think I joked on it earlier before, but I think there is something to be said about people in places of privilege preying on people who are suffering and using it to kind of build themselves up, the higher class preying and working off the lower class.

So that's definitely there to a degree.

But I think at the same time, something that's important to me is what I guess you would call like reflexivity in cinema, like feeling the hand of the filmmaker making the film.

That's part of the reason why we shot on Super Eight.

That's why we have the borders of the film visible throughout the runtime and that's why we tried to put so much color and style and practical in-camera effects into the film is because we want the filmmakers' hands to be shown, making it in a way it's kind of encouraging for the audience to see the seam of the production and be like, if they did it, I bet I could do it too.

- So then if you had to describe or give us a brief synopsis of what the film is, what would you say Death Walks is?

- If I had to say it in one sentence, Death Walks is a karmic, cosmic, psychedelic technicolor nightmare.

- Yes, I love that.

So then as you were filming and deciding how you were going to pull all these elements together, were there a number of maybe obstacles and things that you had to overcome?

And if so, like what were some of those?

- We shot Death Walks in 2019.

That's like four years ago and to this day, it was the hardest production I've ever been a part of.

We had bad luck at almost every turn with our days getting rained out over and over and over again.

Almost the entire film takes place in the photo studio.

That's not in the script.

We had to film everything in the photo studio because no joke, every day that we booked to shoot exteriors, we got rained out.

There was one sequence, the scene where the old woman dies in the park and the photographer captures that moment.

That had to happen outside.

And after three or four days of getting rained out, the day that we finally were able to capture that scene was 90 degrees and poor Sasha, our actor playing that old woman character, was caked in makeup and scarves and gloves and a giant winter coat on top of sweaters and blankets and it was terrible.

And I should have never put her in that situation honestly, but she was a trooper and we got through it.

Earlier in the conversation, we were talking about reflexivity, feeling the filmmaker's hands on the film.

That is the biggest thing that I would want people to take.

I'm glad people can take a moral from the film.

I'm glad that they can take messages, but more than anything, the reason I make films the way I do is because I want to encourage other people to make theirs as well.

We, myself and my friends, we love making films together and we think that when you can see a little bit of the behind the scenes process in the finished project, it gets you excited and it gets... Hopefully it lights a little fire, a little spark in people to go out and try their own weird ideas.

Just go for it, give it a shot.

- Thank you so much for sharing this karmic piece with me.

I truly enjoyed not only watching it, but also discussing it with you.

- Thank you so much for having me on and giving Atlanta filmmakers this platform to show their work and I can't wait to see what else you feature.

So thanks, it's been a lot of fun.

- Tonight, we've explored a range of emotions and experiences.

Next week though, we'll be finding love in some of the most unique spaces.

I'm your host, Alechia Reese, and I want you to make sure you stay tuned for more Atlanta on Film.

(light music) - Should we just wait for them inside, the movie's about to start.

- [Alechia] Atlanta on Film is back with an all new season of captivating films and in-depth conversations with the filmmakers behind them with 23 independent films curated by two of Atlanta's most prestigious film festivals.

This season of Atlanta on Film is sure to ignite your passion for cinema like never before.

Experience a range of stories from thrilling dramas to insightful documentaries.

- She's very surprised that I became a clown.

- [Alechia] Each film offering a unique window into the artistry and vision of independent filmmaking.

Catch all new episodes starting Saturday, April 6th at 10:00 PM on WABE TV and stream anytime on wabe.org/atlantaonfilm.