John Lewis documentary available via Indie Memphis
Released for home viewing and to a handful of theaters around the country on July 3 (Independence Day weekend, not coincidentally), the documentary “John Lewis: Good Trouble” is now available for streaming via Indie Memphis.
The movie was added to Indie Memphis’ online “Movie Club” last week, just days before the July 17 death of the 80year-old civil rights warrior who became known as “the Conscience of Congress” during his 33 years representing much of Atlanta in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“John Lewis: Good Trouble” will be part of the Movie Club through at least July 31. The film can be accessed at indiememphis.org, at a cost of $12 (or free, with Indie Memphis member credits).
The value of a work of art isn’t necessarily tied to its connection to current headlines. Nevertheless, a film conceived as a tribute to a hero of recent American history now becomes a memorial to Lewis’ memory while remaining an inspirational call to action for an era of Black Lives Matter protests, voting rights controversies and increasing income inequality.
In other words, the Indie Memphis Movie Club provides “a space for honoring John Lewis and observing his legacy,” said Indie Memphis programmer Kayla Myers.
Showcasing films from Black creators
At the same time, Indie Memphis is continuing to showcase new independent cinema, including international work and films from Black creators. Aside from the Lewis documentary, this week’s offerings focus on “Black British Film,” including Debbie Tucker Green’s “Second Coming,” with Idris Elba, and “The Last Tree” from English-nigerian director Shola Amoo, which London’s The Guardian described as “the British ‘Moonlight.’ ”
“We’re also trying to honor the people who are doing important work now,” said Myers, 24, a graduate of Germantown High School who majored in journalism and “digital storytelling” at the University of Missouri, Columbia. “To give them their flowers now.”
“The works that Black people create are so diverse and the experience of the diaspora is so wide-ranging, if we can share these works, there is value in that,” she said. The value is not just for the people who watch the movies, but “also for Black artists, who will see how you can work within these systems that weren’t necessarily made for us.”
An online initiative that has included weekly public Zoom conversations and question-and-answer sessions with such notables as directors Barry Jenkins (”Moonlight”) and Robert Townsend (”Hollywood Shuffle”), actress Julia
Fox (”Uncut Gems”) and critic Richard Brody of The New Yorker, the Indie Memphis Movie Club was launched in response to the pandemic-motivated shutdown that put a halt to Indie Memphis’ weekly theatrical screenings.
The most recent talk in the series occurred Tuesday, when Myers hosted a talk with Grace Barberplentie of the British Film Institute, in connection with the “Black British Film” programming. (One advantage of Zoom is that one of the participants can be in London.)
Lewis’ unofficial slogan
Meanwhile, the very non-british “John Lewis: Good Trouble” is definitely the highest-profile film now on the Indie Memphis site. Directed by veteran documentarian Dawn Porter and distributed by Magnolia Pictures, the movie necessarily functions as a history of civil and human rights activism, from the 1950s to the present, as it presents a biographical portrait of its subject: the timelines representing the man and the movement are inextricable.
The film was produced in part by CNN Films and Time Studios (an affiliate of the weekly newsmagazine), and it very much belongs to the tradition of journalistic documentation, “feature” storytelling (we see Lewis at home in the morning, reading from the good old print newspaper he retrieved from his driveway) and progressive advocacy one associates with such news gatekeepers.
“John Lewis: Good Trouble” takes its title from Lewis’ unofficial slogan, which he repeats in the movie, with variations, in numerous public settings.
Describing his decision as a teenager to be a civil rights activist, he says: “The action of Rosa Parks, the words and leadership of Dr. King, inspired me to get in trouble — what I call good trouble, necessary trouble,” he says.
Later, he adds: “My philosophy is very simple. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, say something, do something — get into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.”
That “good trouble” caused Lewis to be beaten by police, Klan members and white thugs many times during a career that also found him arrested 40 times before his first election to Congress, when he was a Freedom Rider, a leader of the Nashville sit-ins, an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, and more. (”I thought I was going to die on that bridge,” he says of his “Bloody Sunday” beating on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the 1965 Selma-to-montgomery march.) Even so, in the film he shares no regrets, but offers plenty of warnings, and a few rays of hope.
“There are forces today trying to take us back to another time and another dark period,” he says, as if rallying today’s generation of activist. “My greatest fear is that one day we may wake up and our democracy is gone. We cannot afford to let that happen, and as long as I have breath in my body, I will do what I can.”