This time on Filmmaker.

This program is brought to you in part by Oolite Arts, what Miami is made of and by Friends of South Florida PBS.

Hi I'm Jason JaFLUE Lauren.

And this is the short film that you're about to watch it's peanut heads.

George Washington Carver It's from my series animated series called peanut heads where we explore different moments and things and people in black history.

So in this one, we wanted to go ahead and dive into George Washington Carver because we were peanut heads and we got to talk about the peanut man.

[narrator] Don't do anything without heart and do it good.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

I know what you're thinking.

How can the Peanut Heads make cartoons about black history and not talk about George Washington Carver?

I know madness, but have no fear.

I'm here to tell you about how one man's belief in peanuts save Southern farmers.

And for the record, no peanut butter will be needed in this.

George Carver had lived a pretty odds defying life by age 12 already.

I mean, just a week after being born a slave, George, his mother and sister were stolen.

When raiders bun rushed his slave masters Arkansas farm in 1864 during the American civil war.

[Young Woman] with that kind of backstory you just knew he was destined for something big.

Science has always been the apple of George's eyes or maybe I should say peanut George worked hard to get an education getting a high school diploma while working as a farm hand, laundry man hotel worker, and whatever else to support himself.

George's brain was no south earning my God and admittance to Highlander college in Kansas.

But you know that ugly little hater named racism.

Well they've popped his head up and blocked his shot.

So George pivoted and took his talents to Simpson college and eventually transferred to Iowa state agriculture where he was the first black student.

You see George had developed a love for botanical studies and in 1894, he received a bachelor's degree in agricultural science and in 1896 a master's science degree making black history as the first to do so there.

In the fall of '96, George was ready to start a new chapter in his life after being offered a gig teaching at the historical Tuskegee Institute by Booker T Washington even with offers coming from all over George was impressed by Booker's offer.

And even added Washington to his own name.

Carver was devoted to trying to find ways to help Southern agriculture.

The deep south was in deep trouble at this point due to all the years of cultivating mainly cotton, the soil was trash.

Now isn't that ironic that the cotton fields would be the undoing I'm getting sidetracked here.

So is 1914 and this bug called the boll weevil had all but ruined cotton growing, That's when George came through and unveiled what he was experimenting on.

By planting peanuts, the soil had been improving and the protein people needed was steady rocking.

But when farmers switched from cotton to peanuts they realized nobody got time for peanuts.

There was no demand for them.

That's when Carver got the cookie, he went in the lab and came up with the heat.

My mans created three hundred derivatives from peanuts, I'm talking milk, flour, ink, soap, cosmetics, stamp fluid, and so much more.

George had everyone going nuts When George came on the scene in '96 peanuts were barely even considered a crop but within the next half a century they were all the rage becoming one of the sixth leading crops in the US and the second cash crop in the south by 1940.

So no George Carver didn't make peanut butter but he used peanuts to make the world better.

Hi, my name is Sandra Portal-Andrew and I am Mateo Sandra Zapata and we're the directors of superficial.

Superficial is sort of like a dance on camera.

It was an experimental process that really explores our connection with the environment and you know what we're receiving and what we're giving right?

It's a, it's a constant conversation between us and the environment and how one influences the other.

Hi, my name is Roxana Barba and my film is called On the Note of Humanity and Unity.

And it is a tender ode to inspire inner strength solidarity, and care for each other.

Hi, I'm Annik Babinski and I'm Jorge Gonzalez-Graupera And this is our film Mooring.

It's about choosing a life on the water and the meditative existence that goes along with it.

We hope you enjoy it.

When I had my first boat it was called Bonnie blue, beautiful name, beautiful boat.

So when I picked this boat up it had this really stupid name.

And so here's how it goes.

About 20 years ago, my mom died and about two weeks before she dies, she sees me walking by smoking a cigarette and she goes, Mike, come in here.

I think I jinxed you.

And I go, what mom?

Yeah, yeah, everything's cool.

You know, no problem.

She goes, no, no, I jinxed you.

I had three older brothers and my brother just younger than me was just born.

I was in the high chair and I would moan and groan and complain and she'd go, yeah, Mike, it's a tough life.

Isn't it?

You know what I mean?

She's a mom with five kids here, you know, one baby, right.

And here I am in a high chair complaining and I would stop.

And you know, every time I complained, she'd say tough life.

And then one day, instead of saying mama, dad my first words were tough life.

So that's the name of the boat.

I'm very comfortable out here.

You know, as you can see, if you look around and I don't have a TV, I do have a radio because you know I don't know if the world ends.

I'd like to know beforehand.

I can go ashore every day, which I do and converse with people because I know I have to.

I see it out here of the people who don't go ashore.

And it is a bit scary.

All my life.

I've always sailed.

You know, whenever I could, my dad made a small sailboat it's called a sailfish and we'd go down to this tidal river down below Cape Cod, it was in Wareham.

And at five years old it was me sailing back and forth on this thing.

I worked on the oil boats in my twenties and thirties down in the Gulf of Mexico and all that.

And you know, people would say get a boat and I'm going, no because it'll be like all those boats that are in there.

None of them ever go out, you know these people are working, you know, they got the boat but they ain't using it.

I got Gilliam Buray about seven years ago.

I almost died.

I'm laying there in bed and I go, you never did it, Mike you never did it.

You know?

And then one day it happened and I says, I can do this.

And that was it.

Nothing stopped me after that.

I'm hoping within a few years that, you know, once I I get like central America, you know, I'll get down there.

And, I always tell people, once I go through the Panama canal, bye, I don't know, I don't know if I'll even get on Facebook after that, you know but there's, there's plenty on the Pacific I'd love to see some day, so who knows.

I got the line on one take.

Ha ha.

The guys out here seem to be individuals.

Most of the people, if I talk to them and I talk about something like seamanship, they all have their own idea.

They have that captain mentality.

When you make suggestions, like how to tie a knot it's hard to get everybody to agree.

It's, it's kind of a funny thing to watch and you know, it's nuts.

Mike Hattie, I'm lying.

All right, bye John.

That's me brother.

Well, you know there's something that I like to compare our lifestyle to is the, is the old west.

No seriously, because everybody is secluded in their own way.

And you know these are our horses and they, they faithfully wait.

And sometimes they they're a little rambunctious but you know, we get by part of the charm of living out here is to is to overcome the mundane, normal existence.

And I enjoy the challenge of that every day.

We've got the best view in the world.

We wake up, we get our coffee and we're looking at billion dollar mansions all along the shore.

And they're looking at us.

Well, see all these million dollar people, they don't want they don't want to see us.

They don't want to see us out here, dirty boaters.

How dare they They're having more fun than we are.

What's the deal.

I have to go to the office every day.

And these guys are out here and you know, oh we're doing what we're doing.

I think I've conquered a lot of my fears after a while.

You know, you face this stuff, you know and the people that get fear and soon thereafter they weren't on boats anymore.

At the end, when they throw you in the ground, okay I want to be a little scratched up and a little dirty, you know, sliding into home base.

yeehaw we did it.

Cause life is meant to be lived.

It's it's living life to the fullest and this will get me there.

A very good friend had died of cancer in December.

And I says, okay, I need a retreat.

So I went over to The Bahamas and I stayed.

And I went purposely to places where nobody else was.

It was really, it was good for me.

And it's peaceful.

The boat life is allowing me to realize these things.

If I lived in it all the time I wouldn't be able to realize it.

I know that.

If I was in it all the time it would be very difficult for me to do that.

I feel like I'm a lucky slash blessed whatever word you want to call it to be able to do things like, you know a retreat and, and recharge and, and come back.

You know, I think maybe part of it is I don't have to work anymore.

I don't have much cash, but I don't need it.

You know, the more money people make, the more they spend.

So shouldn't it be the same the less people make the less they spend.

And I think I'm proving it.

Hi, my name is Carla de Jesus Jerez and my short film Offline is a ritual on how to heal and cope during the internet based stress of COVID.

So it used to be that my way of like engaging with the internet and that space felt way more empowered or like way more on my own terms.

Like I love connecting with the world, but I do that best by just being with something and kind of being left alone.

It's harder for me to really pay attention to what somebody else thinks, which says a lot about me.

But recently it's been a different space and the internet is a tool for so much collective work and activism which is amazing, and also intimidating.

And I feel like I don't always know how to engage in that.

There's like a wrong way to engage in that.

If I ever choose to disengage that I carry some guilt for that, but that space where I used to just be able to sit with things and create and learn and discover.

It's kind of harder.

It's harder to shut things out.

It's harder to shut out the direction from others.

And I don't want to shut that out, but I just need something that's a little bit mine.

I need that practice of connecting and more so than ever I need it to be physical and separate and offline.

Hi, my name is Avram Dodson and my film is called Mommy Will You Play With Me?

when you were a kid did you ever try to like move something with the power of your mind?

Mom I thought we were going to play [mother] Sorry hun, I'm on a call.

Will you play later [mother] After my call.

[daughter] La la la la There.

[mother] Open the door please [daughter] Sorry honey I'm on a call.

Mommy, will you come play with me?

We can play as long as you want honey bear.

Mommy will you come play with me?

Sorry hun still on my call.

ahh This program is brought to you in part by Oolite arts.

What Miami is made of and by Friends of South Florida, PBS.