Tiona McClodden - Philadelphia

 

Tiona McClodden is a filmmaker and artist currently living in Philadelphia, PA. She is the director and producer of the critically acclaimed documentary black./womyn.:conversations with lesbians of African descent . She is currently filming Baby Makes Me with poet and artist, Staceyann Chin.

Philadelphia, PA

23 Feb 2010

Pho 75

Intisar Abioto:   Current projects?

Tiona M.:   The thing that I’m working on now is my next feature, a project with a good friend of mine, poet, author, activist, Stacey Ann Chin. It’s called Baby Makes Me. It’s gonna be a feature length documentary that takes a look at motherhood, non-traditional motherhood explored through the narrative of Stacey Ann’s journey in becoming a mother. We’re not looking at the traditional families like a man and a wife, babies and dogs or whatever. We want to see how women who have taken on motherhood, as a single mother..  How do they relate to their children? How do they relate to those things that inspire them or push them towards motherhood? We’re looking at grandmothers who have taken children as kinship adoption. Kids with two moms. And to complicate things the cultural aspect of what it means to be a single woman of a certain age and a certain culture and then have a child. What does that look like? It’s a bit of the ethics, the worst case scenarios, the best case scenarios. That’s gonna be at least another year and a half working on that. Aside from that I still freelance. I just booked a shorter project for the New York Women’s Foundation. It’s in conjunction with Barnard college to document their women and reproductive rights specific grantee partners and organizations.  That’s something that I’m looking forward to because I like to produce short stuff in the midst of working on the gargantuan projects. 

      

On the flipside I am trying to attempt to create this series of fictional trailers based on the motives behind film marketing. I’m putting a couple of friends into these fictional characters - fictional in the sense of how I’m going to portray them. But I’m really pulling from their lives. It’s a way to look at regular people, but about the presentation of them in a theatrical form.  I’ve been studying posters and poster designs from the 1920s on up, trailers from the 1920s on up. Looking at press kits for films. Even old school promotional packets for films. They would basically give you the bits that they would read for the radio, little talkies to advertise before there were trailers.  And also period pieces for black women. 

The big period piece trailer is going to be set in the late 1920s. It’s called The Seamstress and it’s based off of a fictional story that I wrote. It’s about a woman who migrates from South Carolina to Harlem before the Great Depression actually hit. To get into the Harlem Renaissance type time when Black people were really shaping up their own economic freedom. She’s a seamstress and she moves to get away from the domestic work that she and her mother were only able to secure in South Carolina. She’s able to thrive for a couple years with her own seamstress tailoring shop. The depression hits. She loses her shop. She goes into sewing out of her apartment. Eventually her customers dwindle off. She notices that she is taking more jobs of women who want domestic workers outfits. After her 4th or 5th one she asks one of the women.. What is this about? I’ve had a lot of people come wanting this specific kind of style.   

  

The woman’s like.. Have you heard about the corner?  There’s a corner up in Harlem near the Bronx where the women would stand to secure domestic work. She goes with the woman and she sees all these women standing on the corner and all these white women driving by in these fancy cars looking at the women and picking some of the women up and taking them off. It’s all based on the real Harlem slave markets.  Bronx  slave markets that existed during the depression. Nobody knows about this. The only skills that were in demand for them were domestic workers. Odds and ends jobs. Nannies and things like that. There was this congregation of women who would go and stand out from early morning on through the night. Zora Neale Hurston references it in her letters.. So I’m presenting this story in the form of the trailer. The presentation of it is going to be as it if is a theatrical release. So it’s not a film. And it’s supposed to call attention to the fact that this does not exist as a film. Why? It’s about presentation and trying to school the community on these things that happened. How do you get your education about periodical things? You go the movies. I remember when Rosewood came out and folks were like so enraged. What I found myself questioning in terms of thinking about this project is why don’t we have a film that really takes a look at slavery. I don’t mean like Amistad. I mean something that takes a look at slavery in its most non-hopeful form in a narrative. Like what it was like day to day. My decision was to try to tackle each decade with a trailer that calls attention to a  certain situation whether historical or inspired by my own family. The whole idea of The Seamstress is from my mom. My mom sewed our clothing. Me and my sisters and them, when we were younger. Taking pieces of that from my history. My great grandmother did domestic work most of her life. I’m shooting the trailer in the original form. Using title cards and the old school 16mm film camera. Also doing the press kit. So I’m taking stills and packaging it in that kind of a format with cinematic ads. I’m also sewing the domestic outfit that the women sews. Ultimately what she does is make the decision to go on that corner, but she makes the decision not to sew the outfit on her old sewing machine. She makes the decision to hand-sew one the most elaborate domestic workers outfits in hopes that she would ultimately get picked by the highest quality madame, as they called them. Hopefully, it is to have an exhibition where I could have that dress be the sculpture, the trailer be the visual, the press kit, the pictures and things of that nature..

 

IA:    What are a couple of your favorite places in Philly?

TM:    Everybody has their own Philly. My Philly consists of arts and cultural focused things. A lot of things that people overlook I find terribly exciting. There’s this area in Old City where you can just walk around and they have all these placards that tell you what happened in this area. And there were tons of black people that were doing firsts. The first bakery owned by a black person. The thing about Philadelphia that people forget is it’s the founding place of America. Philadelphia is where the Liberty Bell.. the Constitution Center. To walk around that area you can kind of get an idea of the way that Black folks were living in antebellum America, which a lot of people relate only to the south. To see these things that existed before the civil war is really cool.  

In West Philly I love the Ethiopian food and the Eritrean food, specifically Eritrean. Eat at Dahlak or at Gojjo. I love Chinatown. I’m actually able to shop at the same stores that a lot of the restaurants shop. We have this chain of independent film theatres, The Ritz. Clark Park Flea Market is a thing that I absolutely adore. I like that for camera hunting. And then tons of museums. I love the Institute of Contemporary Art. I shop at this place called The Big Dig on Germantown. It’s like the best kept secret of Philadelphia as far as I’m concerned. All the clothing is 50 cents. The jeans are $1.00. You have to crawl through these boxes that come up to your waist. You can walk up with a trash bag of clothing for like $10.

 

IA:    You’ve always been someone I could look at who’s doing their work.  I know we’ve been talking some about the way that you approach your livelihood as an artist: challenging yourself, not setting your standard too low and also not living above your means. How does this play into the way that you’ve been able to shape your life as a moving creating artist?

TM:    I think the way I stumbled into the opportunities that I had with my mentor and things in Atlanta was kind of off the beaten path. I went to school, trying to go the traditional route in terms of learning filmmaking. School didn’t work out. At some point I really felt it was stopping me from getting into it. This slow paced type thing that didn’t work with me and how I learned.Being able to find someone who was able to take me under their wing and  throw me into the field put me at this super fast forward maturity in my field. Because it wasn’t a situation where I had to ask people for permission or all these other checkpoints that I think a lot of other people go through. My peers and competition in terms of securing freelance jobs were grown forty and up veterans in the field, which pushed me to shut down a lot of things that would show any kind of immaturity. I usually keep to myself. I’m not a big partier. The people I surround myself with are working artists. I kind of find it hard to be in spaces that are different from that because I kind of felt like it would threaten my focus. When you’re around people who have been doing work for ten plus years and you’re just coming in the game you’re gonna work hard. Those things all came into how I tried to keep my space very protective. Like I’m not gonna be balling out with money.  Even though I would get lump sums of money for jobs, I still had to pace myself because I knew how that would equal out. There were people I knew that would work every day, but here I might work once or twice a month and still end up earning more than them. But I still have to keep a certain living standard for myself. So no I never had the fly car… extravagant apartments. I kind of kept myself humbled, because I knew the hard times when I didn’t get work that money would have to carry me. 

I think that has helped me because of how hard I had to fight for my education in my field. And still the education that is never going to end. Filmmaking is not something you can ever be the best in. You can always grow and learn. You knew me back when I was just trying to get my bearings straight. Here it’s the same. Even though I was able to finish my film and it did really well, I still keep a way of life. The way I move in the city. The way I interact with people. I don’t feel like I’ve passed that checkpoint yet where I can graduate from that. Like I can’t be out here partying thinking I’m the bomb of my little documentary, because you have to keep working. I want to show people that I’m not just my first project.  I’ve always tried to keep my head down and stay focused..

    

IA:     Books. Films. The internet .. I’ve always seen you as someone who is consistently seeking new knowledge. Even thinking about the fact that you left school.. It’s not the same thing.

TM:   That was the epiphany. I was sitting in classes. Not doing well. I’m a really good student. Always have been, but not doing well. Not based off of what I could do in the sense of papers, but just because of the subject matter I was approaching. I was trying to turn in papers about LGBT, black people, and the history of film up to the point and getting bad grades because I had ventured into gay or progressive or avant garde. I think the biggest misconception about school is that school is set in a certain amount of time.. 

I think what helped me understand how this thing really works and how you never can let up and think you got it together  is having my mentor at the time sit down and show me how people would come and try to get jobs. They would have degrees, but people were interested in what they did.  It was about work. It was about your reel. You couldn’t just roll up and you haven’t picked up a camera. Nobody’s gonna hire you. And to see working class guys coming from a similar background who had worked over time and had extensive CVs and resumes just after having done the work. That put in my head that you have to complete work in the midst of learning. You come across checkpoints. You learn what you need to do, but you have to execute that learning. I think that filmmaking is not theory, at all. I think what I’m studying now is more theory. Perceptions of African Americans in film. 

Another thing that I did is teaching. Teaching will force you. You can’t teach bullshit. If you can teach your stuff and have a kid or an adult get it, that’s how you know that you are going in the right direction. The three years that I taught at Spelman helped me to hone my skills and learn how to talk about doing these things. [ Filmmaking ] can be an insular thing. I think the way you check yourself is how you relate to other people and how you teach folks.

IA:     I think it’s interesting because when you do these interviews and you talk to different people certain people say the same thing, even the same phrase. One of the last interviews I did someone was like, "The ways in which you check yourself.”

TM:    There’s these points when you can get really caught up and think you are the shit. And think everything you touch is dope because a certain community.. Whether it’s in your immediate circle.. Like for instance.. With me doing this film my target audience is black lesbians and the communities, allies. Because of the response I got from it I could  think .. Oh, wow.. But then you have this whole area who knows nothing of your work. I think a part of that decision of whether or not you really want to challenge yourself is if you want to stay in that area of people who know and who will support you off of that one thing. Or do you try to reach that other group that will never look twice at you? So you do have to check..

 

IA:    Who are some of your favorite artists…?

TM:    I swear by Hou Hsiao Hsien. If I could make films like anybody, I would make films like him. They’re pitch perfect, slow, minimal. It’s just like watching a meditation. And they’re just so beautiful and socially conscious. Kim Ki-duk’s work is beautiful. I’ve seen just about all his films. I put him right after Hou Hsiao Hsien. Tsai Ming Liang, same thing. Those are my three directors I go to.

   I also have this fascination with French New Wave, so I have Godard. Even as far back as Bresson. I like his philosophy of film. Haneke is my new obsession.  Because I‘ve just realized what he is about. I’ve seen most of his films, but I  didn’t understand what he was about until seeing The White Ribbon. It’s like the social realism. Social consciousness evolved into work. And unapologetic despite how horrific it may appear.

 I used to have this fucked up obsession with Lars von Trier. And probably from what people say [ he’s] this horrible person, but it’s kind of like [what] being in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend would be like, somebody you love that is just terrible for you. That’s kind of how I feel about him. He was very innovative, fearless, and I liked the whole Dogme95-movement. Some of the principles were dope, but I saw AntiChrist and I just wanted to stab my eyes out. It was the worst shit I had ever... 

  I’m also heavily inspired by music. The theme that I have for all my work is social realist stuff. I like things that deal with real topics that people will not ever see in a real way.  I like rough music. Very clear music. Of course you’ve been hearing me rant about Joanna Newsom. Her new album is coming out.

IA:    I first found about Joanna Newsom either through you or Chantal.

TM:   Chantal told me about Joanna Newsom. The Milk-eyed Mender. And of course nobody else was feeling her. But her lyrics were just phenomenal. And so visual. I’ve always been a daydreamer and her works just take you there. And her lyrics are just so poignant. You can’t fuck around and listen to her on the street.. you might just start crying. You might just start thinking about something.. Wow, those are the words I would use.. If I was a genius.

And I love Jay-Z. I like old Jay-Z. When he first came out and he was really trying to have folks understand his world. I like those kind of rappers. That’s why I love Ghostface and Raekwon - the realism and taking me into that space I would never exist in. These guys are all New York and in the projects and I’m country black from these little shacky houses. But I was able to see that  world. I like things that let me see other people's world and sympathize with their circumstances..

    

TM:   I have a complete and utter admiration and respect for Kara Walker’s work. I love the fact that she somehow managed to deal with her nightmares, the things that are torturous and nightmarish about racism, a black woman being in America. It seems like she’s been able to use that as some kind of a catharsis. I only hope that I can find that kind of a thing for my work. 

Kerry James Marshall. Amazing work, I think. I love the way he paints blackness. I’ve seen his paintings and they’re all black, but you can still shape things out of them. I love Trent Doyle Hancock because of his commitment to his themes. It’s the most bizarre clusterfuckest type shit you will ever see, but he’s really committed.

I like Jenny Holzer. I have a tattoo of Jenny Holzer on my chest that nobody will ever see, but she has a big place because of the things that she says. The slogans, use of words, and the way that she frames them is amazing. I’ve had an emotional response to some of her work. The projections. I’ve only seen a lot of that through programs, interviews, and things like that. I mean the woman projects shit on water. She will project shit on waves. It’s dope.

    

...Jazz. Jazz is like my ultimate genre cause it helps my head. It helps me get things out of my head. And control my mood.

Books are the only reasons I make films.  When I was growing up  I was in a really strict religious household. We couldn’t watch films and TV. We couldn’t listen to certain things. For a decent amount of time of my life. The visual thing that I had came from books. Autobiographies.. Like The Autobiography of Malcolm X. For some reason we couldn’t watch a lot of things, but we could read whatever we could talk about. Iceberg Slim. All that. Reading that as a kid. Toni Morrison. If I ever get a chance to meet somebody and tell them how much they influence the way that I want to make films it would be Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye; Jazz; Sula. The way that she writes mood is the way that I wanna do films.

IA:   I totally feel you on that book thing, because that was all I did when I was young. I still stutter, but I stuttered more then. I would read a book a day. I would be walking up and down the stairs, at the playground. That completely influenced the way I think about moving about in the world.. Going different places. The next step is obviously trying to get there for real. 

TM:  It just makes it so real.. This is real. It’s not like what people talk about. I saw my family in Toni Morrison’s work, just written much more objective and beautiful than I could ever phrase it. But some of those same themes. But the way that she was able to put them.  

And Alice Walker’s Meridian. It’s my favorite book of all time. To me that book is about the older part of me. One of those books I had before I should have had it. It’s a lot about the things I continue to struggle with in terms of my relationship to activism. 

  

IA:    What is your idea of flight?

TM:    It’s going. Capturing the image, editing it, putting it online. You’re flying. When you sit at a computer and you’re talking to folks, communicating in whatever way. Information and traveling. 

  

I’m actually terrified of flying physically. I almost have panic attacks every time I do it. I would prefer it if there was some way I could be a recluse who has such an audience I could come out looking all crazy, shoot myself, chop it up, then come back and put it online. And have people support me like that in a real way. Which is not too far from what could happen.  [ One ] reason it wouldn’t happen for me is because I have to actually sometimes take my work to those people. 

Because everybody ain’t got the internet, which keeps people grounded.  A month ago I just skyped with my mom. I can still have that connection that doesn’t have to be delayed because of money, time, and physical flight. The new flying is online communication and technology. We gotta get our folks on it, though.

Further:

+ Purchase a copy of black./womyn.:conversations with lesbians of African descent at blackwomynfilm.com 

+ Support the filming process of Baby Makes Me at babymakesme.com

+ View some of Tiona's latest at http://www.vimeo.com/tionam