The Art of The Documentary: Recording a Political Movement in Real Time

Documentaries are a complex art form that melds narrative filmmaking, political consciousness, and aesthetic intent into a living and breathing work of active creativity. The process of making a full-length film requires diligence, patience, tenacity and most importantly community participation.

To explore and celebrate all these facets of documentary filmmaking and more, The Real News Network, in partnership with Baltimore arts and community advocate Antoinette Peele will host a series of screenings that will focus on the people, the topics, and the process of filmmaking towards a better understanding of how they work to engender change in communities they cover.

To begin, we will explore the art of a political documentary with a community screening of The Friendliest Town.

The Friendliest Town recounts the transformation of Pocomoke City, a small town on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore.

For decades, the racially divided town, roughly split between black and white residents, had been governed by a nearly all-white council.

In 2011, a former Baltimore homicide detective Kelvin Sewell became the town’s first African-American police chief. To address the stubbornly high crime rate, he made a momentous decision, ordering his officers to get out of their cars and walk in the city’s black neighborhoods.

Residents accustomed to invasive policing from plain clothes drug units were astounded.​​ Most had never talked to an officer, let alone watched one walk through their community.

But the plan worked. Homicides stopped, and crime went down.

However, trouble was brewing.

In 2015, the city council unceremoniously fired Sewell without explanation. The city’s black community, distraught over his dismissal, pushed back against a nearly all white government.

They formed a group called The Citizens for a Better Pocomoke. They attended a council meeting and demanded answers.

They organized, backed candidates, and most of all, worked to create a more responsive and reflective government of a small town that had precluded African-Americans from positions of power for decades.

Real News Network reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis spent 6 years documenting this transformation. Their film chronicles the behind-the-scenes efforts by law enforcement to criminalize Sewell. It follows the rise of Pocomoke resident Todd Nock from activist to Mayor. It tells the story of a community that decided to fight back, and how their collective efforts led to real change.

The innagural screening will include a discussion with the residents of Pocomoke City and the filmmakers including the city's first Black Mayor Todd J. Nock. The conversation will feature insights into how the community and the documentarians worked together to tell their story. It will also delve into the creative choices made by the filmmakers and how those decisions affected the process of storytelling and the structure of the film.

Please join us for a celebration of an art form. The first in a series of community screenings and discussions about the process of documentary storytelling, and the critical need to elevate it to expose and reveal critical truths about our country and human nature itself.

A panel discussion featuring the filmmakers, former Chief Kelvin Sewell and the current Mayor of Pocomoke Todd Nock and other city residents which will take place after the screenng. We will also take questions for the audience.

This is a special screening by invitation only and drinks and light food will be provided. Did we mention it was free? But donations are welcomed. Hope to see you there!

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