Interview with filmmaker Matthew Jackson on YouTube censorship and Black cinema

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. the sexual and the political orientation of the YouTube Community Standards Board. And I also wanted to find out their professional credentials. So tell me what made them qualified to judge a black film or an independent film. And YouTube never responded. And then I said, you know what? I'm tatted. I'm going to make a film that's going to be a rebuttal to them. So from one comment, it was removed. That is correct. It was removed. One person objected. YouTube then sent me the email that I had been taken off. And they removed it from YouTube. Okay, so now we come fast forward to the film. Yes. Which is very profound. I'd like to hear more about that. Yes. Well, what happened is I decided to make the film. And I collaborated with my longtime collaborator, Jeff Gottlieb, who was my editor. And we began to... We began to scour YouTube, take clips and uploads from YouTube that were controversial. And we put them all together. And we made a film called Searching for Sergey, which is about trying to get Sergey Brin, the owner of YouTube, to defend himself. So some of the things we wanted to know was we wanted to find out how do you as an immigrant come to America and engage in the same kind of censorship? And we wanted to know how do you engage in the same kind of censorship that your parents left the USSR to get away from? To me, that takes nerve. Absolutely. And then he's gonna then come back and then say, well, off of one complaint, I'm removed. But for example, one of the clips in the book in the film is we have Pastor Manning, who's the pastor of Atla Ministries in Harlem. He's in the film where he compares the beauty of our first lady, Michelle Obama to King Kong. Okay? That wasn't deemed offensive. I'm not against it. It's not like King Kong. Okay. That wasn't deemed offensive. Among other things. Right. We've got George Lincoln Rockwell, the late great American furor, has multiple dedicated channels on YouTube, and they've never been removed. So they didn't violate their standards. What makes my film. And also, there are about eight other uploads of Richard Pryor's monologue by Centennial Nigger on YouTube that have never been removed. Why is it that when I made a film of it and juxtaposed Pryor's income. to Pryor's images, Pryor's words with those images. Why is that so offensive? Very interesting and so true. So I can see where the inspiration comes from. Yes, and that's where it came from. And so we completed the film and we kind of hit it at the right time for the cycle. And we've so far submitted to about 16 film festivals. Five of them have had notified dates and we've been accepted to two. So that's it. I'm at one right now. Waiting for another one officially. That's wonderful. Yes, thank you. So we're hoping to eventually, we're going to submit it to the Pan African here in February, but we're also hoping to have it on more film festivals on the West Coast as well. That's wonderful. And so what will you be doing with the films? How are you? How are you collaborating and putting it together and getting it out there? What we've done is it's a 15 minute standalone short film. And so what we're going to do is we outlined our case. That is, we give you the history of the film, of the original film. We show you the original award-winning film, Bicentennial Nigger, and we show you our response to YouTube's censorship policies. And so that's what we're doing. Well, we also have someone who has been with you from the beginning as well. And I'd like to introduce Tyra. You know, I have to say from the beginning, I have kind of shared your heart with you, Matthew. It has been quite a journey. And all of this is definitely a labor of love. And I so admire your tenacity and your commitment. I mean, anyone else would have said, oh, wow. That's it. I'm done. But you said, no, I'm not taking this. You know, this is my work. This is my blood, sweat and tears. You know, I have a message that I'm trying to get out here. And all of these other people, they can keep all of this garbage on YouTube. That doesn't mean anything. And here it is. I give it life. I give it some organization and I put it in the form of a message. And now you're going to dog me out. I think that's absolutely wrong. But I have to admire your courage and your commitment to see it, to see it through. And you know what? YouTube, Sergey, I feel so sorry for you. You might as well, you might as well just give up ignoring or trying to escape Mr. Matthew Jackson, because he's not going to get up and get, he's not going to give up until he gets some type of resolve. So all I can, you're in big trouble. Well, integrity and heart always follows and wins. Well, that's the thing. And what I'm trying to do is not get a victory, let's say from Matthew Jackson only, but for independent filmmakers on YouTube. One of the things that I was made aware of by an individual who had done a, he's an animator and he had done animation for a Warner Brothers music video. So Warner Brothers was allowed to upload the video no complaint. He uploads his artwork, which is included in the video and YouTube removed it because again, somebody complained. So there's a bias that YouTube has against independent filmmakers. That's not right. So you stand for all of them? All of us. All. And that's why we have that clip at the end of the film when president Johnson, we have a clip of him addressing the nation after the bloody Sunday. And Selma where president Johnson says, it's not, it's all of us and we shall overcome. And that's the thing I'm trying to get for the independent filmmakers. Well, you, you couldn't have a better stalwart, a better leader. So like I said, Matthew, I was, I was with you through this film and I have to say that during the process, some of it was kind of difficult for me to watch, especially the part with Katrina, uh, with, um, Katrina and showing all of these people living in all of this degradation and filth and, and hopelessness. And I appreciate you're putting it in there because it's a reminder, you know, how soon we can forget time goes by. We're living our lives and we forget, but your, your film helps to keep it in remembrance as a point of reference, because we don't want it to happen again. Right. And now that's a good point because what I wanted to do with Katrina in Pryor's monologue, he talks about how they split us all up. They sent the wife this way, the children, right, right. My mother over here and they have photographs of Hurricane Katrina and that's what they did. They split the families up and it was the same thing going on. Well, you know, it wouldn't be so sad, so funny if it wasn't so sad and so real. So, Pryor in his brilliance, he did add a little bit of, of comedy to it, but it really wasn't. I mean, he was really speaking a strong message that's applicable for us today. And so again, I do want to applaud you because it opened my eyes to, to a lot of things with this project. So I hope that it will continue to be shown and people will see it and it will, uh, help set a new reality for people. And that may be some of these other, uh, independent film directors, but I hope that it will continue to be shown and people will see it and it will, uh, help set a new reality for people. I mean, one famous man had a dream, but he couldn't make the dream come true by himself. And so, and we know that was Dr. Martin Luther King. So you have this dream too, but you can't bring it into fruition all by yourself. Yes, thank you. And that's right. And, uh, that's what we're trying to do as independent filmmakers, trying to make something of substance. Now you've done some other things, but you've done some other things. Other things since Bicentennial. That is correct. I did Dr. Watts, which is a documentary about the traditional prayer hymns at the black Baptist church, which I'm also trying to make into a feature film. And that film played in three film festivals, uh, the, uh, Martha's Vineyard, African-American, the Indy Memphis and the San Francisco black film festival. And we did very well. And, uh, I think that's, I think that's a great, uh, a great, uh, a great, uh, a great, and, uh, very well received and hope to make it into a feature and actually be able to film it in the deep South. Okay. So for people who are not familiar with this project, can you say a little bit more about what it was about and what was the inspiration for it? Uh, the inch, okay. The film itself, Doc Watts is, um, a reference to Isaac Watts, who was the modern day psalmist, but most blacks, even from the South, don't know that he was a white Englishman who never set foot in America. So Dr. Watts was the psalmist and the traditional prayer hymns. One word for them or one phrase is that they call them Doc Watts or Dr. Watts. So what we wanted to do was document the prayer hymns in their entirety in an unadulterated form. People in Louisiana call them the old one hundreds. Well, tragically, the old one hundreds are now down to about three or four hymns. And that the same one's done over and over. And we wanted to try to document as many of them. That's our mission. And that's why we began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. And began with a feature film. the project Kirk Franklin. And, you know, with the new generation of kids, I mean, he's just kind of changed the sound of gospel music or his contribution helped to change the sound of gospel music. So if you put his music up against the old 100s, the new generation, they're going to be like, what is this? What is going on? But there are a lot of the older people who would really appreciate it because for the old 100s, there were messages in the songs. That's right. Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world. Well, they would sing these songs. It was almost kind of like in a moaning like way, because when you think about it, picture, you know, people out in the hot blistering sun and they're picking cotton or they're doing something out in the field and all they're just thinking of, oh, Lord, if you can just take me away from here, because soon I will be done with the troubles of this world. Soon I will be done with slavery. I'll be done with suffering. I'll be done with the beatings. I'll be done with the mistreatment and the abuse. I'll be done with all of these things. And so it was normal for slaves to put their feelings and their messages into song. That's true. But one of the things that I make this too is that many of the, one of the sadder things is I was at a Baptist church where the minister and his wife were both from Louisiana. And the minister's wife said, well, we can't sing the hymns because we're going to be in a bad situation. And so I said, well, we can't sing the hymns because we're going to be in a bad situation. And so I said, well, we can't sing the hymns because we have to go with what the young people want to hear. And I thought to myself, no other race of people would let the young people dictate to them what they're going to sing in their worship service. But the blind, I thought that was absurd. Well, I can understand his point of view, because you're thinking of this as the new generation. And we have to have the young people involved to keep the tradition of church going. But at the same time, you have to preserve the tradition of what has happened in the past, because that's the message. Because if it wasn't for the church, it wouldn't have happened. And so I said, well, we can't sing the hymns because we're going to be in a bad situation. And so I said, well, we can't sing the hymns because the pain and all of the sadness and the hurt that was put on the shoulders and on the back of their forefathers, a lot of us would not even be standing here today because somebody had to bleed. Somebody's blood had to be shed. And it was a lot of blood shed. And I think there is a need for the younger generation to understand. It's part of their history, whether they want to accept it or not. It is part of their history. And unfortunately, it's part of their history. And unfortunately, it's not enough black people or African-Americans who know the history, who know from whence they cometh. And their history didn't start with slavery. Their history really started with royalty. I mean, we are of scientists and astronomers and mathematicians and kings and a whole lot of people. But still over in Africa, we did a whole lot of crazy stuff, too. But right here, where we are right now, we need to be able to go back and reflect on our history and say, OK, I see where we come from. Wow. I am so appreciative of what I have now. I'm so appreciative of the traditions that we have now. I'm going to do my part to preserve it because of the sacrifices that were made for the people by the people before me. So I think you're going out of your way to travel and interview people and have them perform these hymns means so much, especially to the people who are trying to preserve it. Now, here again, it's not. Something that's going to want to make you pat your feet. But it was a form of sincere, heartfelt worship. And these hymns were sung in a certain way because there was a time when, of course, slaves couldn't read. You couldn't read. So you had to have someone who could remember the words, put it in a melody. So for those who are unlearned, they could sing it and preserve it and have something to minister to their hearts. Yes. And so. After we did that film, we then did another documentary. We did another documentary called Blood in My Eye, which was a documentary short about the black guerrilla family, a prison organization. And so we did a documentary about that, which distilled the black prison movement from 1959 up until the opening of Pelican Bay or basically 30 years. And so. Okay. For our listening audience, tell us again, how did you, I mean, there's so many ways and so many projects that you can choose. What made you pursue this project? What made me pursue that was I had didn't like the portrayal. I liked the movies, but I didn't like the portrayal of American me, which was Edward Olmos's picture and Taylor Hackford. For those of you who don't know, he directed Ray, but Taylor Hackford directed a film called Blood In Blood Out. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his portrayal. And I didn't like his of the leader of the black militant convicts in the film either. So I said, let me go back to actual factual newspaper articles, magazine articles, photographs, and make a documentary, archival documentary about the black prison movement in California. So you were able to make it real, to bring in the realism. It was real because these were actually real newspaper and magazine clips, photographs from the California State Archives. And we were doing a rebuttal how American Me was about Rudolph, Kadenia, or Cheyenne. Well, we wanted to be inclusive of people like Doc Holliday, Katari Golden, George Jackson, et cetera, and to be inclusive of them. You know, I have so much admiration for you, Matthew, because I tell you on all of your projects, you do your due diligence to research, to get the fine tuning, to get the timing of everything to ensure the accuracy. So, you know, I really hope more people will get into your, to all of the projects that you do. And for people who want to see an example of your work, they can go to... We can go to YouTube channel, just type in Razorback Films and the YouTube channel work comes up. I want to say that we were accepted also to the San Francisco Black Film Festival for Blood in My Eye. But unfortunately, that's when the economy tanked. And so they had to scale back on their screenings of the films that they did that year, and we got caught up in that. So there's still an opportunity for Blood in My Eye to be... Well, I mean, it would still be shown locally, but it wouldn't necessarily... That's kind of... That horse is out of the barn. All right. And so now I guess you have a... We have a clip from Dr. Watts that we're going to play from the film. этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот этот I am a child of God. Although I move so slow. Although I move so slow. I'll wait until the spirit comes. I'll wait until the spirit comes. Until the Spirit comes And move as God commands And move as God commands Well, amen and amen. Let the church say, amen. And that's an example of one of the old 100 songs, one of the old hymns. And like I said, it's not anything where you want to do your foot stomping and clapping your hands, but actually it would evoke or emote such emotions sometimes in some people. It would just touch their souls and their hearts. And you could just see, I remember being in a church, the deaconess, because the deacons and the deaconess would sit across from each other. And sometimes the women, they would just kind of hold their arms and just rock back and forth and just kind of moan along because you know they were feeling the Spirit. You know they were feeling something. You know that the songs meant something to them and was taking them back to a special, special place. So it's almost like you'd have to be there to really understand what it is all about. So again, Matthew, thank you so much for that labor of love and doing something to preserve these songs. I'm sure a lot of these churches who are still singing these songs today, they would love to hear this and would probably almost want to kiss your feet and then take up an offer. Thank you. Okay, well, Matthew, you have some other films coming up next. Yeah, but I wanted to go back though to searching for Sergei. We still are submitting it to different film festivals. Right now, as I said, we've had it submitted officially to 16. We've had it officially submitted to 16, selected for one, and we're still submitting it to other film festivals. I expect to submit between 50 to 75 film festivals between now and when the year's over. Okay, and you have other ways of marketing the film as well? Yeah, well, we have a label that we've done, Capital, in a way, which is kind of timely because we have the Confederate flag and we're going to have some emblems on there. Some emblems and different, some photos on there, but it's the caption reads, Rated X by an All-White Jury, with an exclamation point, and we'll have the Confederate flag around there and these images inside. Oh, you've got to open up a harness next. Yeah, but then we also have different ads that we're doing, different mock-ups of that era that we're going to have in the different programs from the film festival guys. You know, Matthew, I think you like that feeling of that shock, that shock. You like to shock people. You like to shock people. You like to shock people. You like to shock people. You like to shock people. You like to shock people. You like to shock people. You don't like to just move in on them all nice and easy and proper and everything. You just want to say, here, here I am. I know, but we do try to make something that's going to be making, to make people think, you know, and not just to do lowbrow humor, which for a lot of us is stock and trade. Well, you know, you have a pretty good sense of humor, Matthew, but there are times when you can be very, very serious and very, very deep. And this is the time for seriousness in terms of the message that you're trying to get out. And I'm trusting that more and more people will get on the bandwagon and join you. I know I'm a fan. Oh, thank you. So after that, we're doing that. And then we plan on doing, how do I want to say it? More of a feature film in terms of that based on Doc Watts, where we would actually be able to shoot in the deep South. Ooh. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, all the way to Georgia. And Georgia. Yeah, Georgia, Alabama. And to actually do location scouting and shoot at actual churches. Because different parts of the country have different styles and different cadences, but we wanted to capture that as well. How do you distinguish the styles? Well, you would know it when you hear it. I guess that's the best way I could say it or phrase it. You know, you would know it when you hear it. Okay. Because I've heard some, for example, being recorded out of Florida, out of sugar cane country, and I've heard it. And I know that that's what they're doing, but the rhythm and the cadence, I did not get at all. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to it. I want to be involved in this project. Okay. All right. Thank you. And so that basically is it. And so we work also with this searching for Sergei inside the Confederate flag emblem. We're going to have different clips and scenes that mock-ups of the different black exploitation films. We're basically, we're breaking the chains and that's what we're doing. Breaking the chains of the mind. Okay. Just in case we have some very, very young people, you know, the millennials or someone listening, someone like that listening to the show. Can you kind of give them a little bit of a tidbit of what the black exploitation films were? Because it was way before their time. No doubt. I would phrase it like this. The social... The criminal film was Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song. And that was one of the first films where a black man survived at the end. So he made it to the end of the film. And it also was one of the first things to have the soundtrack. Nowadays, everybody takes the soundtrack for granted. Sweetback, what Sweetback did, was by putting Earth, Wind & Fire. That was their first album. So what Melvin did is he made a classic soundtrack album that could be used to market the film. Okay. When he came along, it was in the 60s. He came along in 71. 71. Okay. 71. So that the millennials know. Yes. And so anyway, the result of that success spawned a whole series of knockoffs. And one example would be the different action films like Black... Black Caesar, Black Samson, movies like that. And then they were trying to knock off the success or copy the formula. And that became known as Blaxploitation. Well, it probably came at a time when that was really welcomed because up until that time, when you saw black people in movies, they were like, you know, people running around in the jungle half naked, or they were slaves or they were maids, but not in positions of authority or, you know, any kind of... Now look, most of the men, not all of them, but many of them were professional eunuchs. Okay. So what made Melvin great was that this was the first time you had a black man do something halfway brave and live to see the end of the movie. And he wasn't castrated. He was a very strong man. And he made it to the end. And when it came out, people went nuts. Okay. But with the Blaxploitation films, would you agree that it gave black people at the time some huge... Heroes to look forward to? Okay, here's the point. And I remember this growing up when some of my white friends would say to me, well, we have Farrah Fawcett. And I said, well, that's true, but I don't feel deprived because I've got Pam Greer, you see? And it gave the young black men heroines like a Pam Greer or Tamara Dobson, who are beautiful, to be equal to Raquel Welch's or what have you, right? And then it also, it did something, was that for the men, okay, the white guys, they had Clint Eastwood, Chuck Bronson. Well, we had the Hammer and we had Jim Kelly, right? So, you know, we weren't deprived. The success of Sweetback spawned all those other guys, men and women, and spawned all of those acting careers. Well, I can, you know, I really do appreciate that because I think some of the Blaxploitation films, if you look at some of the characters now, they weren't perfect guys. A lot of them, they were into numbers or drugs. I mean, they were criminals, but they were criminals who had a heroic role. And then, of course, we had Shaft. Now, Shaft was on the law enforcement side, but he was bad. No, no question. I mean, but I think that, I think that what they did was by Sweetback making that money, is it inspired everybody else wanting a piece of that action. And what Melvin did by steeping Sweetback, in such an urban ethos, with the soundtrack, okay, with the clothes, with the different style of editing, by doing that, he forced the studios to also hire some Blacks behind the camera. And see, that's the other thing too. I wanted you to say more about it got more Black people working in the industry, even though it wasn't even kill behind the camera where the real money was being made. Still, you had actors, stunt people and so forth working. Right. Oh, no question. Because once that boom happened, I was a personal friend of Eddie Smith, who founded the Black Stuntman's Association. One of the things that happened was the big fight that Eddie Smith made from 63 until 1968 was to stop using blackface for Black stuntman. Right. And people forget for all that until like 1968, James Garner was the first producer to sign an agreement to no longer use, you know, use white men and blackface to double for Black stuntman. And that was a big deal. But their employment was made possible by later by the Blacks exploitation era. Because they had to hire these guys to do those stunts and women. And, you know, a lot of people will argue, well, those Blacksploitation films, they really put women down or they put us in a in a bad light. And I say, well, you know, you can judge it any way you want. But when you get down to it, my thinking is it employed more Black people. And so, you know, I think it's a great thing. And I think it's a great thing to see, you know, that there's a lot of people in a way to get into the industry where otherwise they would not have had the opportunity. Right. They created it, but it also did. But it also created the whole thing with people you can live vicariously through. So, for example, white friends my age, they can live through the Chuck Bronson or Chuck Norris. I had Jim Kelly. Right. So, you know, we gave us heroes also. Yeah. Like we mentioned earlier, everybody needs a hero. Right. You know, everybody needs a hero. And so, you know, we had a lot of people that looked like them. And so, those films provided that opportunity. And not to mention the fashions. Oh, absolutely. That was another thing. Melvin, I think the success created a door for costume designers who were steep in that urban ethos. I know. And then also you had the hair because at that time, you know, it was the afros and all the different styles of that along with the wardrobe that went with it. Uh-huh. And the attitude, the swag that went with it as well. I think we still have some of that swag here today. But the most important thing is those films were made. They served a purpose at the time. And for a lot of people, they were a launching pad to even greater careers. I mean, look how long Pam Grier was able to last. Ah, that's true. That's true. But I think that there's one point that I don't think Hollywood, let's say, they did hire you. They did hire these people. But then there was the whole thing where the door closed, you know? And I think I would go back to Newsweek did a cover story with Richard Roundtree in 1973 called The Black Movie Boom. And the article said, Hollywood's discovered that black is not only beautiful, it's profitable too. That was the thing. Well, Hollywood also discovered as well when the rap movement came into being, how profitable that was. So when black people weren't making it in the movie industry, they made it in the music industry. And it just kind of branched out. Yeah. So that was my thing about the black exploitation in that era. So I wanted to talk though also about the label. Because we have Gina here who was the model for our upcoming label. For our upcoming label. And I'm really sorry that this is not TV because you guys are missing out. She is truly a beautiful lady inside and out. So I'm so sorry that you're going to miss out on seeing her right now. But you will see her soon. Right. On the label when it's out. Thank you so much. I was just so honored to be a part of this. And it has so much integrity and heart. And to be chosen for this project, just goes beyond words. And to work with such an amazing group of people with Matthew and Tyra and Solange. There's no words to describe the experience. But invigorating, inspiring. And hope to work with them a lot more. I'm really excited to see it grow and prosper to the people out there. And receive the message that is given. Because it does have a lot of soul. And, you know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So I guess that's the general thrust of what we're doing in terms of the project. And I hope that we can get into Pan-Africa. And that's the big goal for here, which will be in February. Oh, Matthew, with your tenacity, no doubt. We have to. But hopefully we can do that and not get out of the ballpark. And anyway, that's that in terms of that. Do you have anyone else? We have Solange with us. Who is promoting. She is our publicist. All right. So I guess that's it.