(bright music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to the April edition of "Black Nouveau."

I'm Earl Arms.

This month brings the Milwaukee Film Festival from April 11th through the 25th.

Marquise Mays, programmer for the Black Lens strand of the festival previews this year's offerings.

"Nina Simone: Four Women" begins its run at the Milwaukee Rep this month.

Everett Marshburn goes behind the scenes to talk to the costume designer Yvonne L. Miranda, whose work has graced both The Rep and First Stage Children's Theater.

April is National Minority Health Month.

Alexandria Mack introduces us to a local fitness instructor who uses her own experiences with bulimia to break the silence around disordered eating in young girls and women of color.

But we begin with another issue affecting our community, Wisconsin's high incarceration rate.

James Causey introduces us to My Way Out.

(upbeat music) - According to The Sentencing Project, Wisconsin has the highest Black incarceration rate in the country with one in 36 Black Wisconsinites currently locked up.

Ruben Gaona knows how difficult it is for the formerly incarcerated to get back on their feet.

After he was discharged from the Navy, Gaona was arrested on a drug conviction and sentenced to 10 years.

After his release, the father of five was told he had to settle for minimum wage jobs.

He wanted more for himself and his family.

Three years ago, he started My Way Out, a nonprofit program supporting nearly a thousand men and women in southeastern Wisconsin.

Gaona joins us now.

- Thank you for having me, James.

- Hey, thanks for joining us.

So how did you come up with the idea for My Way Out?

- Actually, it happened right after the pandemic.

When the pandemic happened, 2021, after we started seeing a lot more people getting released and not having the support services that they needed.

So, you know, I remember when I came home, I wanted that way out, but at the same time, I wanted someone to empower me and make me feel that there is a way out.

So that's where the name came out, like, you know what?

Let's empower and reach the individuals, and let's ask them what is their way out.

So that's how My Way Out was born, really, you know, just providing the support services and meeting people where they're at.

Instead of us telling them, what you do is have them take charge.

One of the things I realized when we get incarcerated, the first thing that's taken away from you is your voice, 'cause you're told you have the right to remain silent.

And often we forget that we have a voice because we get incarcerated, and we don't have the say-so while we're incarcerated.

So when we come out with like, "We wanna empower you.

Now you have a voice here.

Let us know how your reentry journey looks like," and then we create a personalized reentry plan.

- What's the most significant needs for the formerly incarcerated?

- I would say, you know, it's funny because before the pandemic, it was employment.

People were seeking employment, couldn't find employment or sustainable living wage jobs.

And as soon as the pandemic happened and afterwards, we started noticing in 2022 that housing has become a real serious needs and issue.

People are coming out, getting released and have nowhere to go.

People don't have sometimes family members and are getting released to being homeless.

So, and often, sometimes if they do have somewhere to go, they might qualify for temporary housing with Department of Corrections, but it's only up to 30 or 60 days.

So housing has been one of the most important things right now.

And then employment, I think employment and transportation follows right along.

I think people are noticing that, you know, if you're able to find somewhere to lay your head and don't have to worry where you're gonna sleep, then how do you sustain that and how do you find that employment that's gonna pay you, you know, a sustainable living wage so you could afford where to live.

And then transportation comes right along with it.

Like, how do you get from to appointments, to jobs?

Often people still gotta go see their probation officer, so they have to be able to leave their job, go to visit the PO, then come back to the job.

So all those three, I would say, has been the most effective.

- What agencies do you work with to find housing and employment?

- Actually, we partner with everybody.

We're part of the Milwaukee Reentry Council.

That's about 70 organizations that, you know, we network real big, and when I started this nonprofit, I had came in with like my military background of in order to see true change, we have to work with the mentality of One Team, One Fight.

So this is a problem that's affecting everybody, so let's all just work together.

I'm a well-known, well, started off new organization, so I know I don't have that much funding, but the little I do have, I'm able to provide, and if I need additional resources, I reach out to other organizations that might be able to provide those support services.

- When you say you meet people where they are, what do you mean by that?

- So when I say we meet people where they're at is if someone gets released out of the Milwaukee Detention Facility and they got nowhere to go, they'll pick us, they'll call us, and we're come and pick 'em up and say, "Where do you need to go?"

You know, "You gotta go check your PO, your probation officer.

You have to go check into your TSS, let's take you."

When we make appointments, often people come out with no transportation, so we're asking them, you know, "Where are you staying at?

Where can we meet you in a coffee shop?"

And we come to you, so we're able to create that personalized reentry plan and provide that support service.

We're not telling them, "Well, you have to go over here.

No, let us know what's easier for you," you know?

"Let's meet you at where you at.

How does this look for you?

How does your journey look like?"

And often, you know, people are shocked by that.

They're like, "Oh, I don't have to go nowhere?"

I was like, "No, you know, we're remote."

So that gives us that flexibility to go and meet people where they're at.

- Measuring success, how do you do that?

- You know, that's funny.

I think in the nonprofit world, we always wanna set measurables to like what services we're providing and all that.

I take a different approach when it comes to measuring success.

To me, success is based on what the individual considers success.

Often, if that individual success is just to be able to get a bus pass, to have transportation so he's able to look for jobs and we obtain him a bus pass and then he gets a job, that's success right there in itself, you know?

So I think when, how I measure success is however individual I'm working with or we're working with, whatever they determine that their goal, they've accomplished whatever success they wanna accomplish.

- We've got about 30 seconds left.

What would you say to encourage people to hire or give a second chance to someone who's just been released?

- I want 'em to understand that mistakes do not define who they are, you know, but what we do afterwards.

We can only do something afterwards if a true opportunity is provided, you know, so I encourage people, like, really meet people where they're at, provide that true opportunity because our mistakes do not define who we are.

It's what we do afterwards.

- Well, I appreciate you.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you, James, for having me.

(upbeat music) - Approach, child, and face your destiny.

I see your future, and it is seeing "Percy Jackson," the musical.

- [Everett] These are some of the costumes designed by Yvonne L. Miranda for "The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical" that recently played at the First Stage Children's Theater.

Next month, Milwaukeeans will see her work at the Milwaukee Rep's production of "Nina Simone: Four Women," but local residents have seen her work before in "August Wilson's Seven Guitars" at The Rep and in "The Hobbit" at First Stage.

♪ Come-a, come-a, come-a little shop ♪ ♪ Little shop of horrors ♪ ♪ Bop-she-bop, you'll never stop the terror ♪ - [Everett] Within the past few years, she has been the costume designer for dozens of shows across the country, bringing to life her childhood love of fashion and design.

- I always, since the age of like 12, would just draw clothes.

I would try to style my own Barbies because I couldn't afford, you know, I couldn't afford the clothes, and I would also try to like build, you know, their own houses and everything like that.

And as I grew up, I ended up going to a magnet school called Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Texas.

And a teacher was like, "You should apply," because I was very good at drawing.

So I got in there, but I wasn't really doing what I was supposed to do.

I would just go to all my fun classes and never really take my, you know, health, social studies very seriously.

So I ended up going to a regular high school, and my grades weren't as good just because it was something that I really wasn't interested in.

And I was trying to figure out how I would pay for college and you know, have something to fall back on.

And so at the time, I was reading through magazines, and they had those little postcards in there, like for the Navy, the Coast Guard, the Marines.

So I sent all of them off, and the Marines were the first ones to call me back.

(laughs) They must've been very desperate.

They were like, "Hey, are you still interested?"

So they actually sent a recruiter to my school.

He pulled me out, I did the ASVAB test, and then I got shipped off right after graduation.

- [Everett] After five years in the Marine Corps, she traded her combat boots for a career in theater, opera, film, and television, and earning her MFA in stage design from the Meadows School of Arts from Southern University and a BFA in fashion design from the University of North Texas.

There has been an increase in the number of roles for people of color on stage, but that has not resulted in a significant increase of jobs for people of color behind the scenes, at least not yet.

- I really wasn't aware of that until I got into theater because I don't come from theater.

And so that was very eye-opening when I actually started working how many people who were like me who weren't behind the scenes.

And especially when they're telling stories about people like us, that was really crazy to see that there really wasn't any people like me behind the scenes to give nuances to the design.

And it's just been really jarring.

But also it's just been really exciting because when I get to work with actors, I can advocate for them, and a lot of times they're just really happy that someone like me is there when it comes to costumes because there's always issues that arise when it comes to like their hair or their makeup or what they're asked to do by a designer who doesn't look like them.

So I'm always very cautious and just trying to make my performers comfortable and advocating for certain things that I see that aren't right when it happens behind the set or behind closed doors.

And yeah, so that's, I hope that we see more out there.

I do try to advocate for having assistants or just talking to students.

I actually finally got a teaching job in Minnesota that I'm gonna be starting in the fall, 'cause that is a real big passion of mine because getting to this career was very difficult because when you're not exposed to theater when you're young, you don't know that it's a job.

I was exposed through it through film and television, so that's the lens that I wanted to go to.

And I actually got the opportunity to do that and decided that I didn't wanna do it at that moment in my life because of my family and just the politics behind trying to get into the union.

There's a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to doing this professionally as in getting into the union.

It costs money.

You have to have a certain amount of like credits of what you worked on, and a lot of people aren't aware of that, and they don't have access to that, and they don't even know that there's a union for us.

So these were things I found out by having to go to grad school, and if I hadn't, I wouldn't have known how to basically get into this career path.

- [Everett] Are you optimistic that things will get better?

- Oh yes, I am.

I very much am.

I believe it needs to start though in the school level, which is why I'm a big believer in the teaching environment, which is why I want to be one, because if it wasn't for my teachers just guiding me along the way, I don't know exactly how I would've been here.

Because a lot of the times, like your family is like, "Oh, that's not a real job."

You know, they don't support you.

They are well-meaning, but they're like, "I don't think that's something that you should do or that you're gonna make it at."

And a lot of the times it's the teachers who are giving you the resources and just the knowledge of being like, "No, you can do this."

So yeah, I'm very much optimistic.

- If we don't claim our real names, we allow ourselves to be oppressed.

- That is assumed that it changed anything.

- It's an anthem.

♪ Trouble in mind, I'm blue ♪ (upbeat music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) - Gimme some love.

How you doing?

Feel so good.

I'm so good.

I woke up and like, right, pinched myself 'cause it doesn't feel real.

- How you doing?

- I'm so glad you made it.

I'm not a mathematician, so, you know, 23 times 365, I don't know what that number is, but that's a lot more than 365.

Today is my one-year anniversary for recovery.

So I feel really, really good about that.

Every single one of you have inspired me.

- [Alexandria] 365 days of getting back on the saddle.

- There were moments where I didn't, I would've never thought I could make it this far.

So this means everything to me.

Because I made it!

My name is Glenna Scholle-Malone, and I'm a wellness advocate.

And so now my relationship with fitness is really trying to advocate, encourage, uplift, and motivate people to use fitness as an outlet.

Never going back.

- [Alexandria] But initially, her fitness journey began to try to change the parts of herself that she didn't love.

- I try to think about when my first episode of bulimia was, and I really don't remember.

I know it was sometime in middle school.

I didn't view myself as ugly, as fat, or different until others started imposing those views onto me.

And that's when I started to hate myself because I hated the feeling of bullying.

I hated the attention, the negative attention I got from being bullied.

And then that's when I started to hate my body.

That's when I wanted to be and look different.

But I loved food.

I distinctly remember one time in middle school, only one time, my mom, I think when I said like, "I'm not hungry," I remember her asking me, like, "What are you, like anorexic or something?"

like in a joking way, because again, at that time, I was 200 pounds in middle school.

You know what I mean?

Like, I didn't look anorexic, but I think she noticed something changed in me.

(gentle music) ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪ - [Alexandria] Glenna, finding a new sense of control through what she now understands to be the eating disorder bulimia, defined as a combination of binge eating followed by self-induced vomiting.

- Part of that, when I was 12 years old, I was sexually assaulted by someone that I didn't know.

And so I know now, again, with my education and my awareness, being overweight, obese, low insecurity, self-hate, body image issues coupled with a traumatic experience really was just a playground for this disorder to continue to grow and fester.

And so that continued, the binge, or excuse me, bulimia from really 12 until 35.

It became like a comfort.

I knew it wasn't right, I knew it wasn't healthy, but I enjoyed hearing people say, "Oh, you look so good."

When you think you're the only one going through something, when you think you're the only one having to navigate something in your life, you feel bad, you feel different and not in a, you know, unique, wonderful way.

And so, how old was I, maybe 30, I remember having an episode while I was living in Madison, and this was the first time that after I made myself vomit, there was a huge puddle of blood in the toilet.

And so then that was the first time I was scared for my life, and that was the first time where I really felt like, "I can't do this anymore."

- [Alexandria] For the first time, Glenna found herself disclosing her eating disorder to a medical professional.

- She did not connect me with any resources.

I don't feel like she validated or even really heard my experience in the same ways I know it would've been heard if I was white-presenting.

It was just dismissed, and honestly, it took all of me to disclose that with her.

(gentle music) - [Alexandria] Soon after, she began therapy, her recovery initiated with the 12-step process often used to help treat people battling addictions.

♪ Can we break the cycle ♪ - [Alexandria] Now, a year into her recovery, she doesn't shy away from the tough conversations of body image and self-confidence with other girls and women of color.

- The image or the perception of what it means to be beautiful is all around us, especially for young people.

If you don't fit that image, we're looking in the mirror either pointing out or being mindful of all the things we hate, all the things we wish we could change, right, instead of learning to love ourselves, how we are made, how we were created.

And so I pay it forward, really, by just any opportunity I get to share my story no matter how uncomfortable I might get.

We have to share our stories so that other people can understand that they're, one, not alone and so that they can have hope.

He healed my body, come on!

- [Alexandria] Reminding herself recovery is a lifelong marathon, not a sprint.

- I'm going to do my best to support anyone who needs it, who might be in a similar situation.

And Lord willing, I hope to never see a day one ever again for the rest of my life.

- [Group] Congratulations!

- Whoo!

(upbeat music) - [Rasheed] This is my story.

♪ Run it up ♪ - [Rasheed] I'm doing my first paid stand-up comedy gig today.

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ - I'm getting paid to do what I love.

- I need you to do me a favor.

(laughing) Girl!

♪ Run it up, run it up, run it up ♪ - What's up, my brother?

How you doing, man?

- Right?

- Two down.

- There is a clip from "All I've Got & Then Some," one of the films in the Black Lens strand of this year's Milwaukee Film Festival, and joining us now to talk about that film and many more, Marquise Mays, the programmer for Black Lens and a teacher and filmmaker in his own right.

Marquise, thank you so much for being back here with us on "Black Nouveau."

- What's up?

Thank you for having me.

I'm so excited.

- Absolutely.

So glad to have you.

Talk about this film.

Man, it looks funny.

It looks like it's gonna be good.

- It's gonna give some good laughs to the people.

I'm really excited about "All I've Got & Then Some."

It is a 24-hour escapade into a struggling comedian trying to make it to his first gig.

So you can only imagine what happens throughout the day as he tries to get to this very important gig to make some money.

So it's everything funny about the hustle that we all seek to kind of engage with.

So I'm very excited to have it.

The filmmakers will be here, too, so very excited for Milwaukee audiences to be engaged with it.

- All right, now we'll look at the next film, "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt."

Take a look.

(calm music) - You wanna know a secret?

It doesn't end or begin.

This change is hard.

(calm music continues) (thunder rumbling) (birds chirping) (calm music continues) - And now we have "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt."

Doesn't look nearly as funny as the last film but certainly a story to be told.

- Oh, yeah, it's time to get heartfelt real quick.

"All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt" is a directorial debut from the incomparable Raven Jackson, and it tells a story of a lineage between women in Mississippi.

So being that a lot of my family is from Mississippi, I thought it was a befitting option for a lot of the Black folk that live in Milwaukee.

Due to the Great Migration, a lot of us have come from the South.

So I thought it would be a beautiful way to honor a legacy that exists within our city.

So I'm excited for that to be in the festival as well.

- Appreciate that, now we'll take a look at our next film, "Bike Vessel."

- [Donnie] This scar right here is from 1995.

That was the emergency surgery that they did.

This scar is also from 1995.

This was my second open heart surgery.

This scar here is where they opened my chest.

I could always hear my chest pop like your ankles would pop.

(gear creaking) The first time that I noticed I had health issues, I was in a meeting, and I started getting this flush feeling like I had drank too much coffee.

(intense music) - I still talk to other Black men who still don't trust the health care system.

- And I remember seeing on one of his notepads, "Am I going to die?"

- [Eric] This is the first time that I've talked about the different things my dad has gone through.

- You over there crying, that's not gonna help him.

So you need to get it together.

- We don't have a health care system in America.

We have a disease detection and management system.

(dramatic music) (calm music) - And I'm excited about this one, Marquise, "Bike Vessel," right?

- Yes.

- Seeing Black people cycling, always a good thing.

- Yes.

A great father-son story, too.

I think it, like, it's a beautiful story about health, about like what does it mean to commit to helping our elders like within their health systems, but also just to highlight like the biking community that we have in the Midwest, specifically Milwaukee.

So I'm excited for people to have like a nice sports heartfelt film in the lineup as well.

- Appreciate it, Marquise.

Now, the next film we're gonna be looking at is "Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between."

Take a Look.

- [Announcer] Time, weather, and- ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ To the matador ♪ ♪ Little Black boy, say five ♪ ♪ I'm waiting for my man ♪ - [Deejay] Some artists just get better with time.

- [Deejay] From someone who has played your music on the radio since Grinder's Switch.

- [Deejay] The name Garland Jeffreys either means nothing to you or everything to you.

♪ I'm just a New York City kid, and I'm looking ♪ - I don't do any filming with my hats off, so.

(laughs) ♪ You gotta keep on tryin', baby ♪ - Yes, "Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between," let's talk about that.

We're talking reggae, and we're talking rock, but music as a whole.

- Yeah, I think it's very important that in the Black Lens program we also have options to really discuss and really explore our history of music.

And I think Garland Jeffreys is such a unique and interesting subject within our larger understanding of Black American music, specifically as we make it in the Americas.

So I'm very excited to have an option not only for people to get like a heartfelt story but also to groove, have some fun, and like move a little in a theater.

So I'm excited about that one as well.

- Appreciate that, now we'll go to our final film, "All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White."

Here it is.

(calm music) (car horn honking) - [Narrator] It isn't just a waste of our time.

You can't waste time.

No matter what thing we do, time gonna move.

(woman speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] What we can waste is our lives.

- And finally, "All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White," looks like an African film, I think Nigerian you said?

- Yeah.

- So talk about that film and what's gonna make it special.

- Yeah, I think the film is not only an incredible story about a queer relationship, but it's also very timely, specifically thinking about the kind of new ruling against LGBTQ+IA identities, specifically in Ghana, right?

So it's a very timely film that is talking about this relationship between, same-sex relationships within Africa.

So I'm super excited to not only bring it to Milwaukee but to be in conversation about it within Milwaukee as well.

So another great option that I think is gonna be eye-opening to a lotta audience members.

- So that's gonna be a great film.

I know you got a lot going on always.

So just talk about what you have going on with these films.

Where else are we gonna see 'em?

Just you know, what's in the works for you?

- Yeah, so Milwaukee Film Festival is coming up.

It is gonna be 14 days of two to three screenings of all of these films within the Black Lens program.

And it's gonna be an amazing time.

So even if you can't make it to the first or second, you got an extra option, which is a really great option to check out.

But also it's 14 days, so we're gonna have panels, workshops, discussions, Q&As with some of the filmmakers from the Black Lens program but from the broad program as well.

So it's gonna be a fun time, busy, but a very, very fun time for the movie lovers in the city.

- Looking forward to it, Marquise.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Always a pleasure to have you here.

- [Marquise] Thank you.

(upbeat music) - That's our program for this month, and as always, we invite you to join us online for more information and stories celebrating the African American experience.

For "Black Nouveau, I'm Earl Arms.

Have a great evening.

(upbeat music)