TCB April 4, 2019 — RiverRun 2019: A Curated Guide

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point April 4 - 13, 2019 triad-city-beat.com

FREE

RIVERRUN 2019 A curated guide Page 16

Carolina Chocolate Drops and other fascinating subjects.

Council outburst PAGE 10

GOP indictments PAGE 13

Bassnectar cleanup PAGE 6

April 4 - 13, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Eddie Garcia’s lament

by Brian Clarey

“I know you think I suffer from overexposure in the media,” Eddie Garcia said to me.

“Yes,” I said, “but to be fair, for a while I had you confused with

Andy Garcia.”

True, Garcia is everywhere: on the airwaves at WFDD, where he spends his days; on social media, which he aptly wields to push his side project 1970s Film Stock; performing on any stage he can talk his way onto; chatting casually at virtually every event I’ve ever attended inside Winston-Salem city limits.

But this project — an original score for the Coen Brothers film No Country for Old Men — may be the perfect confluence of Garcia’s weird guitar work, his fascination with the audio/visual medium and the RiverRun Film Festival, with which he’s long been associated.

“I wanted to get this experience of writing a score,” Garcia said. “And No Country doesn’t really have a soundtrack, so to speak, just a subtle droning that’s barely mixed in.”

The first 20 minutes, he says, lays out the vocabulary for the entire piece: An empty, frozen landscape. The hitman

strangles the cop and commits another gruesome murder. The first car chase.

Once he got the chord — something bleak, with the insinuation of danger behind it — it started to flow.

“C-sharp minor with a low G-sharp drone,” Garcia said. “For the chase scenes I was thinking about Escape From New York, even though there’s no proper chase scene in that movie. Driving, but sinister.”

On stage, he’ll switch between Jazzmaster guitars with different tunings, and a 6-string bass. He has one guitar just for Woody Harrelson’s cameo in the film, which he says is so abrupt and incongruous that it demands a departure from the form.

He’s written most of it out — “way more than I would for a Film Stock show,” he said — and he’s got a cheat sheet just in case he loses his way. He’s not quite figured out where he’ll stand on the stage, how he’ll switch instruments on the fly, if he’s going to play through the credits or not.

But you don’t spend as many hours in the public eye as Garcia does without learning how to work on the fly.

Eddie Garcia will perform his live score for No Country for Old Men on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Hanesbrands Theatre in Winston-Salem.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Marcus Deon was a live, breathing, black man that deserved to live.

- Zalonda Woods pg 10

BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green jordan@triad-city-beat.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sayaka Matsuoka sayaka@triad-city-beat.com

STAFF WRITER Lauren Barber lauren@triad-city-beat.com

Savi Ettinger

2

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 The story of the Carolina savi@triad-city-beat.com EDITORIAL INTERN Cason Ragland Chocolate Drops is immortalized in the film Don’t Get Trouble in ART Your Mind, screening this year at ART DIRECTOR Robert Paquette RiverRun. (courtesy image) robert@triad-city-beat.com SALES

KEY ACCOUNTS Gayla Price gayla@triad-city-beat.com

SALES Johnathan Enoch

johnathan@triad-city-beat.com

CONTRIBUTORS

Carolyn de Berry, Matt Jones

TCB IN A FLASH @ triad-city-beat.com First copy is free, all additional copies are $1. ©2018 Beat Media Inc.

April 4 - 13, 2019

3

April 4 - 13, 2019

CITY LIFE April 4-7, 2019

by Cason Ragland

THURSDAY April 4

Come celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month at the Delta Arts Center and discover the works of Leo Rucker, Bobby Rosebuck and Owens Daniels. Their paintings and photographs shine a light on the significance of music and the performing arts. The exhibition will run through Aug. 15. For more details, check out the event on Facebook.

Opening Night for The Jungle Book @ Kaleideum Downtown (W-S), 5:30 p.m.

Opinion

News

Up Front

Terra Incognita: 21st Century Ceramics @ Plant Seven (HP), 5 p.m.

Terra Incognita shows how contemporary ceramicists approach materiality, form and surface in order to bring innovation to the craft of pottery. Come check out what North America’s leading region for ceramics has to offer in the way of unique sculpture. You can find the event on Facebook.

Songs From the Road @ Muddy Creek Cafe & Music Hall (W-S), 8 p.m.

Some well accoladed folks are gonna be performing bluegrass and Americana tonight.

Experience a high-spirited concert chock full of original material from the group’s four studio albums. Their technical skill will surely amaze any lover of folk music. For more information, look for the event on Facebook.

Enjoy a retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s classic under the stars. This experience of sights and sounds of Mowgli and his friends will ignite the imaginations of those young and old. Don’t worry if you can’t make it, though.

The event will also be held April 12-14 and April 16-18. You can find more information on Facebook.

Grasshoppers Opening Day @ First National Bank Field (GSO), 7 p.m.

Spring training has finally come to an end

Debbie the Artist @ Mindful Supply Co. (GSO), 7 p.m.

and now it’s time for the real deal. The Greensboro Grasshoppers host the Hagerstown Suns for their opening game of the season. Enjoy cheap drinks, eat good food and cheer on the boys at First National Bank Field. Check out the event on Facebook.

For this month’s First Friday, come check out Debbie the Artist at Mindful Supply Co. behind Natty Greene’s. Debbie is a musician who currently studies at NC A&T University.

This event is free to the public. Check it out on Facebook.

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

River Run

FRIDAY April 5

PULSE: Opening Reception @ Delta Arts Center (W-S), 6 p.m.

4

April 4 - 13, 2019

SATURDAY April 6

Beyond the Looking Glass: Debi Cable’s 3D Blacklight Experience @ ARTC Theatre (W-S), 1 p.m.

SUNDAY April 7

Twin City Comic Con @ the Millennium Center (W-S), 10 a.m.

Up Front

Slow Art Day tour @ Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO), 2 p.m.

When it comes to observing art, it’s neither a sprint nor a marathon. In fact, it isn’t a race at all. The Weatherspoon invites the public for a free, slow tour of their exhibits so that art enthusiasts can really take in and understand the pieces on display. No reservation is required. For more details, look at their Facebook event page or the WAM website.

Abigail Dowd album release @ the Carolina Theatre (GSO), 8 p.m.

News

Debi Cable, an artist based in LA, brings her fluorescent mural project to Winston-Salem this weekend. Put on some of her signature black-light 3D glasses and take in the visual specter of her three-dimensional art gallery. Kids ages 7 or under get in for free, and tickets will not be sold after 8 p.m. Check out the event on Eventbrite.

River Run

Featured on the cover of the Winston-Salem edition of last week’s TCB, Abigail Dowd is celebrating the release of her new album Now What You Seem at the Carolina Theatre.

She’s traveled the world to find herself and now she’s in the south to perform her new material. Check out the even on Facebook.

Ballet Folklorico: Fiestas y Bodas de México @ the Carolina Theatre (GSO), 5 p.m.

Take a trip south of the border by attending this performance of Mexico’s traditional music and dances. Performers will showcase the folk art of many different Mexican states. This colorful display of foreign culture will not only entertain but also educate any of those who attend. Check out the event on Facebook.

Opinion

Arm yourself to the earlobes with lightsabers, ray-guns and magic wands because it’s time to celebrate all things nerdy at the Twin City Comic Con. Shop for figurines and other collectables from a myriad of vendors at the convention.

Kids ages 10 and under get in for free! Check out the event on Facebook for more info.

Shot in the Triad Puzzles

5

April 4 - 13, 2019 Up Front News Opinion River Run

5by Sayaka questions for John and Mary McGinnis Matsuoka John and Mary McGinnis drove from Asheville to Greensboro on Saturday to pick up trash in hopes of rehabilitating the image of Bassnectar fans. News reports claimed more than 200 fans overdosed at a concert they attended at the Greensboro Coliseum on New Year’s Eve. The couple, along with a few others, picked up trash for two and a half hours on Gate City Boulevard.

John responded to questions via phone call about the event on his drive home.

What made you guys decide Bassnectar fans from around the state gathered COURTESY to organize this event?

PHOTO in Greensboro to pick up trash on Ssaturyday.

It mostly was in reaction to the bad press. [Bassnectar] is something that my wife and met through. We’ve traveled around to quite a lot of places. This was kind of our response. The stuff that didn’t get covered in the press was the 2,500 pounds of food that was donated through Conscious Alliance to a local church, $2,500 that was raised and donated and 40 bags of coats and blankets that were donated.

The news report said that a gentleman died in his hotel room and that they had found evidence that he was at the concert. It just lumped everyone together.

[These events] are kind of a time to meet up with our friends that we only get to see a specific number of times per year. Every event has something attached to it. We try to donate water or food. We try to set out to be a nice community that tries to do good in the places that we go to. We just set out to pick up as much trash as we could. As far as we know, only three people were from Greensboro. Most people were from at least an hour away. And most of us wore our Bassnectar gear.

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

How long have you been a part of the Bassnectar community?

Well, [my wife and I] met in 2013 when we bumped into each other in the crowd. A few years later, we met up again and started dating and then we got married and now we have a 2-year-old kid. We’ve been to 33 concerts apiece. About 18 of those have been together. This community means a lot to us. It’s not about getting messed up.

6

What was the turnout like and where did you guys go?

Well, this was our rain date so it wasn’t as big as we hoped for. There was only seven of us, but I think it’s quality over quantity.

We met up on Gate City Boulevard where the old Toys R Us used to be and cleaned up about a half-a-mile stretch there. And our plan is, if the event is back again for New Year’s, to clean up that end of Gate City Boulevard near the coliseum too.

What has the response been so far?

A lot of the community is tight knit. It’s getting a lot of appreciation. A lot of people who don’t live nearby are happy that we did it. Local government was very responsive too about permits and stuff and we got a really nice response. A lot of people honked at us too.

Do you feel like you accomplished your goal?

Hopefully. Time will only tell. We ended up with about 10 to 12 bags of trash just in that area. I feel accomplished in that fact. It doesn’t necessarily matter that every person sees it and thinks it’s great. I feel good.

April 4 - 13, 2019

Forsyth Republicans late to the party

by Brian Clarey

Up Front

How is it that Forsyth County state reps Donny Lambeth and Debra Conrad are just now getting on the municipal redistricting grift, when the rest of their cronies have been running the play for years — with, it should be said, poor outcomes?

Lambeth and Conrad introduced legislation that would reduce the number of WinstonSalem wards from eight to five, and introduce three at-large seats to keep the total at eight. As always, the purpose of the redistricting plan is revealed in its architecture: It triple bunks the three African-American women currently on council into a single ward.

Councilmember Dan Besse, who ran against Lambeth as a Democrat in 2016, was drawn into the city’s lone Republican-leaning district.

Like all of these redistricting plans, they are presented as solutions in search of problems — this is the first anyone on city council had heard of the plan, including the sole Republican Robert Clark. But really, they are designed to erode a city’s naturally Democratic power structure to the advantage of the minority party.

And it’s so very 2015 — the year Trudy Wade and John Faircloth filed something like this, unbidden, for Greensboro. A judge declared the redistricting illegal in 2017, by which time no one cared. It would be wise to remember that Wade lost her next state Senate election in 2018, and that Faircloth faced his first competitive race ever, and that marginalizing the majority is the way of tyrants.

News

GINA CHAVEZ

Opinion

Yakov THE MANHATTAN TRANSFER

River Run

The � a new exciting season! s t n High Point Theatre PreseSAUCE BOSS BILLY “CRASH” CRADDOCK

BRANFORD PASSPORT 2018 & 2019

MARSALIS QUARTET

Show | 7:30pm / RDoors A EDE |6:30pm N

support of the Greater High Point Food Alliance.

THE QUEEN’S Acts and dates are subject to change. For tickets and updates, go to HighPointTheatre.com or call 336.887.3001 CARTOONISTS

Puzzles

To Entertainment

LBA

N R INDE A L Blues, Cajun, rock and country withB a sideHof AL gumbo!

Concert goers are asked to bring food donations in

May 7th, 2019

OF SERENDIP

THE SAUCE BOSS

RYTHM OF THE DANCE

Shot in the Triad

Raleigh Ringers

THE HIGHPOINT BALLET veters o L et

Smirn

April 27th, 2019 Show | 8:00pm / Doors |7:00pm With nine #1 singles and countless top-ten charted singles to his credit, this Greensboro native will perform such mega hits as “Rub It In” and “Knock Three Times”.

7

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

River Run

Opinion

News

Up Front

April 4 - 13, 2019

NEWS

8

Winston-Salem co-op grocery learns from Renaissance’s mistakes

by Jordan Green Share Cooperative of Winston-Salem needs to raise $1.3 million to open the planned Harvest Market grocery cooperative on Peters Creek Parkway.

The Rev. Gary R. Williams, a cofounder of Share Cooperative of Winston-Salem, walked through the storefront in West Salem Shopping Center handing out Envy apples, a hefty red varietal developed in New Zealand in the late aughts that is a cross between a Royal Gala and a Braeburn.

The apples came courtesy of Vernon Produce, a local wholesaler that Share Cooperative plans to buy from when it opens the planned Harvest Market in the shopping center’s 9,000-square-foot anchor space at the end of the year.

Addressing the first membership meeting of the co-op, whose members will own the future store, Williams told the roughly 20 people in the room that the venture was ready to move into its third phase: construction. He said they already have a 10-year lease in place with the landlord of the shopping center.

“The thing that stops us from getting to Phase 3 is we’ve been counseled repeatedly that we need to make sure that we’ve got most of our funding in place so that we have enough operational money for the first year, so that we’re not struggling right away,” Williams said.

The estimated cost of preparing the site, purchasing equipment, stocking the store and hiring staff for the planned cooperative grocery is $2.3 million, and Williams said the cooperative has raised more than $1 million to date. But only $27,600 of that amount comes from 276 members who have bought in at $100 per share. During a recent visit to the National Cooperative Association in Milwaukee, the founders learned that in order to build the collateral needed to be considered a safe bet for lending institutions, roughly 50 percent of their start-up capital needs to come from member-owners. Williams asked the people in the room to each go out and recruit one additional member, but he added, “To be honest, membership fees alone are just not going to do it.”

It fell to Ralph Peeples, the cooperative’s legal advisor and a retired professor at Wake Forest University, to make the hard sell — a good called “preferred shares.” Preferred shareholders won’t have any additional voting privileges;

that would run counter to the cooperative model of governance. But they will be qualified to receive dividends — 3 percent on a $500 share, 4 percent on $1,000 and 5 percent on $5,000 — if the cooperative earns a profit. Peeples explained that profitability is generally defined as a condition when assets exceed liabilities and the company — or cooperative, in this case — can make timely payments on debt, but ultimately under North Carolina corporate law, it’s up to the board of directors to determine when the company is considered profitable.

“The beauty of the preferred shares is it’s not a legal obligation,” Peeples said.

“The board of directors will want to pay dividends on preferred shares, but it’s up to the board to decide when to pay the dividends once the store is profitable.”

No one in the room was naïve about the potential yield of a preferred share; Williams had already explained that the profit margin of selling food “is very low.”

“The benefit is you become a social investor, a social entrepreneur,” Peeples told the members. “You’re doing good, which I still think counts for something.

As an investor, you can find better investments; there’s no question about that.

But I don’t think you’re going to find a better investment for making you feel like you’ve made a difference in Winston-Salem.”

After settling down to a catered meal of stir-fried rice, snap peas and chicken with salad and bread, Williams called up Mike Sakellaridis, formerly the general manager of the defunct Renaissance Cooperative in Greensboro and a consultant for the planned Harvest Market. Sakellaridis told the members a 1-2-percent efficiency could determine whether a grocery survives or fails. And efficiency depends on correctly anticipating demand so that the store doesn’t lose a customer by not having the product in stock or have to write off inventory because it doesn’t sell.

Members are juggling a number of principles, including affordability and healthfulness. Local sourcing is an important one.

Sakellaridis suggested they might have to sacrifice affordability if they want to focus on local sourcing.

“The trouble is price versus product,” he said. “If we want to serve everybody,

The Rev. Gary Williams responds to questions from members of Share Cooperative in Winston-Salem.

we have to find a way to make the local products accessible because a lot of times the price point is difficult. In the same concept that one store has certain values to maintain for profitability, the same thing goes for the small farmer.

The small farmer is two or three people trying to make their mortgage payments sometimes off of spring mix. That’s a lot of spring mix! And so you end up with a $6 price point for a pound of spring mix.

Whereas you can go buy the Earthbound Farm stuff for $3.99 for the package, and if you don’t have a real good reason, you need both customers to be served. So, we’re going to definitely keep them in mind and do our best to represent that.”

Rather than projecting what they think prospective customers from the community need, Sakellaridis urged members to copy down their shopping lists or hand over their receipts so that the cooperative can order exactly what customers want down to the brand. Even before the store opens, he said, members can immediately start a buyers’ co-op in the temporary storefront, and start ordering produce, dry goods and various nonperishables in bulk. With little to no overhead, including labor, they can realize a 40 percent profit, and put the proceeds towards the store.

The recent closure of Renaissance Cooperative in northeast Greensboro after only two years in business inevitably came up as a cautionary tale and, organizers in Winston-Salem hope, an opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes.

Ultimately, Sakellaridis said, Renaissance couldn’t figure out the right balance between product quality and price point.

“When I stepped in, the selection was actually kind of interesting, and I

JORDAN GREEN

had talked to many people who would pop in after having been gone for a few months,” he recalled. “And they would be like, ‘Oh, this is better.’ Or, ‘Oh, you’ve got this. I used to try to come in, but this thing that I love was never here, or this thing had a quality issue.’ So, for those certain people, that matters. For folks in the neighborhood, they were like, ‘Look, 18 years we didn’t have a grocery store here, and I went to Walmart. And I come in here and it’s more expensive.’

And, yeah. And you can rattle off all the excuses, but for the customer for whom the price is the only determining factor, you can’t have everything.”

For Harvest Market to succeed, Sakellaridis suggested, it needs to find a niche.

“What you can have is the things for which price is not the only determining factor and hope they’re willing to commit those dollars to shopping here,” he said. “Whether it’s a foodservice moment, where they just want to get lunch here with some friends and family. Or maybe it’s that healthier thing — that crustier loaf of bread, or that one alternative milk that’s not at the other store. I could get half my groceries at Walmart, but my wife only wants the Silk French vanilla creamer. And if it’s not there, I’m going to another store. We could be that store for a lot of people.”

In one significant respect, the planned Harvest Market is markedly different from its shuttered counterpart in Greensboro: While Renaissance Cooperative was located in the most acutely foodscarce part of the city, Harvest Market will be located on Peters Creek Parkway, a busy thoroughfare, and only a couple blocks south of downtown WinstonSalem.

The location is technically considered

April 4 - 13, 2019 Up Front News Opinion

a food desert, but it will be less than two miles away from Acadia Foods (formerly Washington Perk & Provision) in the heart of Washington Park, Compare Foods Supermarket on Silas Creek Parkway and Whole Foods on Miller Street. When Williams went to city officials to request assistance for the cooperative, he said he resisted suggestions that he choose a location with a steeper need on the east side of Winston-Salem. He said it’s important to position the store to build its assets early, and then they might consider expanding into the east side.

Peters Creek Parkway runs between two neighborhoods, West Salem and Ardmore. Shalom Project, a nonprofit operating out of Greene Street Church, is building an affordable housing and retail complex across the street from the planned cooperative grocery.

A half-mile to the north, downtown Winston-Salem is experiencing a housing boom, and still lacks a fullservice grocery store. And when Business 40 reopens in 2020, the Peters Creek Parkway exit will provide a major access point for additional customers from across the city.

For Williams, the lesson learned from Renaissance Cooperative’s failure comes down to an old real-estate saw.

“Location, location, location,” he said. “We won’t be off the beaten path like the store on Phillips Avenue.

The traffic there was not what it could have been.

Here, we’re more visible. We’re on a main thoroughfare. We’re at the apex of three neighborhoods and many ethnic communities. It creates a more inclusive community.”

River Run Shot in the Triad Puzzles

9

April 4 - 13, 2019 Up Front News Opinion River Run Shot in the Triad Puzzles

10

City council may order independent investigation for Marcus Smith case

by Sayaka Matsuoka Members of city council agreed to have a future vote on whether to conduct an independent investigation into the death of Marcus Deon Smith during Monday evening’s council meeting.

Cheers erupted from the crowd as two city council members made and seconded a motion to open an independent investigation into the death of Marcus Deon Smith, who was killed after being hogtied by Greensboro police in September 2018, at Monday’s city council meeting.

At-large Councilwoman Michelle Kennedy, who knew Smith personally through her position as executive director of the Interactive Resource Center, called for the motion about halfway into the meeting, saying she’d like to ask the city manager to call for an independent investigation into Smith’s death. Councilwoman Yvonne Johnson, at large, seconded the motion.

“I think that it is important that there is a resolution and we aren’t any closer today to a resolution than we were when this happened,” Kennedy said. “This conversation keeps coming to our feet. I believe that the only way we get to some different place on this is moving forward to a resolution…. If there’s not trust at this level, then an independent investigation into this should bring that level of understanding.”

While the motion was brought forth

by Kennedy, she and others on the council, stated multiple times during the evening that votes can’t be taken in town hall meetings and that the item would be put on the agenda for the next meeting scheduled for April 16.

Zalonda Woods, a member of the Homeless Union of Greensboro and the Justice for Marcus Coalition, spoke during the public comments section and presented a petition with more than 100,000 signatures calling for the firing of police Chief Wayne Scott.

“Marcus Deon was a live, breathing, black man that deserved to live,” Woods said. “He did not deserve the treatment that he received. He was asking the police for help. The police relations here is bad, as an understatement. Hold this department accountable. Change the narrative of Greensboro.”

Several members of the council spoke after Kennedy, including District 1 representative Sharon Hightower.

“If you will recall, several months ago, I asked for that independent investigation and it was ignored,” Hightower

said. “I hope it’s not ignored this time. I agree with you. We have to find a way to move on, move beyond. We have to right wrongs and that’s something I think people are asking us to do.”

Mayor Nancy Vaughan said it’s not clear what form an independent investigation would take.

“The city manager and I have had discussions over the last couple of months on what even an independent investigation would look like,” she said.

“We haven’t really been able to come up with what an independent body would be acceptable by anyone. What would an independent body be? And that is something that I think we would have to talk about. We are not prepared at this point.

This is something that just came up. We don’t know what this independent body would look like this evening.”

As Vaughan spoke about how Smith’s case has affected her since he died last September, many audience members angrily spoke over her, pointing to Smith’s mother and sister who were in attendance. After Councilwoman Goldie Wells, of District 2, implored the community members to let Vaughan speak, one woman stood up shouting, “We have listened to her speak since September!

You have silenced people in this city since September! This man is dead!”

Shortly afterwards, Councilman Justin Outling, of District 3, left the chamber and did not return for the remainder of the session.

The Rev. Wesley Morris, the pastor at the Faith Community Church and a staff member of the Beloved Community Center, walked over to calm the woman, whom Vaughan and Wells asked to be removed from the chamber. Morris and several other community members held a rally before the city council meeting, in front of the Melvin Municipal Building where organizers spoke out against the city council and Chief Scott. Many in attendance were faith leaders, who along with Morris, submitted a letter to city council on March 28 listing six points of action that include firing Scott, ending police coverups, conducting an independent investigation, apologizing to victims of police violence and compensating them, establishing an independent citizen’s police review board, training police officers in de-escalation tactics and providing mental health workers for the police department.

While Vaughan said council members would talk among themselves to figure

Marcus Deon Smith’s sister, Kim Suber, holds up a poster with pictures of SAYAKA MATSUOKA Smith in a casket, during the rally before Monday’s city council meeting.

out how to conduct an independent investigation before the next meeting, Kennedy told community members that if an investigation were to take place, that they would have to accept the results, whatever they may be.

“I do want to say, that I hope that if this is something that this council agrees to do… and the city manager agrees to do, that we are able to come to a position that whatever the outcome is of any type of investigation, it will be understood and accepted by all of us,” Kennedy said.

Later in the evening, Kennedy reiterated her position.

“There is an important part of this that is if there is an independent investigation, it needs to be done by a body that… everyone in the community can accept as independent,” she said.

“It does no good to have an independent investigation if following that, the community says, ‘Well that wasn’t really independent.’ So, there is a process in that part that has to be determined.”

Councilwoman Tammi Thurm stated that the length of the investigation, if the council were to approve one, would be up to the independent body.

Morris, who referenced the letter, signed by 12 different ministers and approximately 200 members of different congregations during the public comments section, pointed to an independent investigation conducted by the city

of Charlottesville, Va., following the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in 2017, that exposed the misconduct of the city’s police department. After reading two points from the document, Morris noted that the city of Greensboro hired Parker Poe, a Raleigh law firm, to draft an alternative ordinance after members of the Homeless Union of Greensboro challenged the unconstitutional panhandling ordinance passed in April 2018.

“I’m sure you have consultants in your ear left and right, on every single issue,” Morris said. “It is not something that you can’t do. It is something that you can do.”

The independent Charlottesville report took months to complete and was led by former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy of the Hunton and Williams law firm in Richmond, Va. The report found that unprepared police and government failures compounded the violence during the rally. Shortly after the report was released, Charlottesville police Chief Alfred Thomas resigned.

“Is there any justice that’s gonna be done?” asked Kim Suber, Smith’s sister, towards the end of the meeting.

“We are tired of wondering,” continued Mary Smith, Smith’s mother.

“We’ve been wondering since September. We can’t go to bed at night.”

April 4 - 13, 2019 Up Front

News

Opinion

River Run

Shot in the Triad

Puzzles

11

April 4 - 13, 2019 Up Front News Opinion River Run Shot in the Triad Puzzles

12

CITIZEN GREEN

OPINION

Dangerous lies about sheriffs and immigrants

North Carolina House Speaker documented immigrants are more likely to commit crimes Tim Moore showed how political than their counterparts, and of course that’s exactly the opfarce takes on a reality of its own posite of reality. Whatever the timeframe for the Fox News during his March 20 appearance review, one could quickly assemble a list of citizens arrested on “The Ingraham Angle,” part for assault on female, assault on government official, of Fox News’ fact-free zone, also manslaughter, drug smuggling, kidnapping and first-degree known as state television news. rape who were then released on bond, after their charges

by Jordan Green “Another sheriff is saying his were dismissed or after they were found not guilty. officers will no longer hold ICE detainees, leaving more House Bill 370, entitled “Require Sheriff Cooperation dangerous criminals on the streets,” host Laura Ingraham with ICE,” is a political circus act designed to enthrall erupted in scorn, seated next to former acting ICE director Republican base voters who love to hate urban liberals. It’s Tom Homan. no accident that Republican lawmakers are pushing this Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller represents legislation after black Democrats were elected to sheriff’s the perfect bugaboo for Fox News’ paranoid audience as offices in the state’s seven largest counties. The new sheriffs a Democrat, an African American and a law enforcement are naturally highlighting their friendliness to immigrants official in the liberal so-called “sanctuary city” of Asheville. as a means of connecting with their own political base, but Ingraham rolled some tape of Sheriff Miller explaining, “We in many cases their policies aren’t a departure from their do not make or enforce immigration laws. That is not part white Republican predecessors. That’s because many legal of our law enforcement duties. I will be attacked for this analysts have concluded that honoring ICE detainers is policy directive, maybe even by ICE. A detainer request is unlawful, and the black Democratic sheriffs, like their white not a valid warrant.”

Republican predecessors, took an oath to uphold the law Then Ingraham invited Moore, whom she and the Constitution. introduced as one of a number of “folks fight“I’m in a battle with the ICE folks,” BJ ing back,” to respond.

Barnes, then the white Republican sheriff of Many legal “Well, respectfully, I say that sheriff is Guilford County, told TCB way back in the analysts say wrong,” Moore said. “And that’s why we’ve distant political past — April 2018. “They’re filed the legislation that we have — to asking me to do something illegal. They want that honoring mandate that sheriffs must honor these ICE to hold these folks in jail on a detainer beICE detainers is me detainees [sic].” yond the adjudication of their charges. That’s unlawful.

In case anyone gets the wrong idea from unconstitutional and it’s a violation of their Speaker Moore’s statement, Sheriff Miller is Fourth Amendment rights.” right in saying that “a detainer request is not a I don’t recall any Republican lawmakers valid warrant.” labeling Barnes, who campaigned for Donald Trump, as a But Moore’s spokesman, Joseph Kyzer, suggested in “sanctuary sheriff.” Somehow, I don’t think they would have response to a fact-check by PolitiFact that his boss had gotten as much political mileage out of it. been misunderstood.

When I have a question about a sheriff’s office policy, “The speaker responded with his opinion of the sheriff’s I typically go to the sheriff’s attorney. Unlike the sheriffs, stance on not cooperating with ICE, that he believes the who have to worry about whether they’re keeping voters sheriff is wrong to refuse such cooperation,” Kyzer said. and line officers happy, the attorney’s job is to worry about “The speaker knows all too well that compliance with ICE whether the agency is acting within the bounds of the law. is not currently required of sanctuary sheriffs under North “The sheriff’s office does not… honor requests (i.e.

Carolina law — that’s why he went on national television detainers) from ICE to actually hold an inmate for up to 48 supporting legislation to do just that.” hours after the inmate’s state criminal charges have been To further color in the landscape of non-facts, Ingraham resolved,” Guilford County Sheriff’s Attorney Jim Secor posts a graphic to illustrate Moore’s claim that “it’s irresponsaid in a Feb. 11 email to TCB. “The reason is that the act sible for any official, particularly a law enforcement official, of holding such inmates after their state criminal charges to in any way advocate releasing someone who is a criminal, have been resolved is very likely a ‘seizure’ for the purposes who has committed a crime back out of the streets, who of the Fourth Amendment and the United States Constitushould not even be here.” Under the header “Illegal aliens tion.” released under sanctuary sheriffs in North Carolina,” it lists This is the lawyer for the Guilford County sheriff. His a “22-year-old arrested for assault on female, two assaults opinion is the same now that he works for a black Demoon gov. officials; 19-year-old arrested for manslaughter; crat sheriff as it was when he worked for a white Republi22-year-old arrested for drug smuggling; and 20-year-old can. arrested for kidnapping & first-degree rape.”

Republicans love law and order — except, apparently, Of course, the spurious infographic suggests that unwhen it doesn’t suit, they don’t.

EDITORIAL

by Clay Jones

Up Front News

claytoonz.com

Opinion River Run

Justice on this one, stands accused of It’s late-breaking news and there’s still contacting Causey on Lindberg’s behalf, a lot to sort out, but from where we’re and pocketing a $150,000 campaign sitting it looks like sitting state Insurdonation for his efforts. ance Commissioner Mike Causey just And it turns out that, through various brought down half of the state GOP apparatus in one fell swoop.

PACs and political agencies, Lindberg It’s all so greasy, and the scandal winds has also been a major contributor to Lt. its filthy trail right through Greensboro, Gov. Dan Forest, who just started gearwhich is mentioned specifically in the ing up his campaign for governor. indictment.

It’s all quite incredible: the breadth The allegations go like this: Back in and scope of the festering corruption; April 2017 Greg Lindberg, owner of the ease and frequency with which such Global Bankers Insura scheme — Lindberg ance Group in Durham, is also under investigaallegedly set events in tion in Florida — can be It looks like Mike motion with the intenimplemented; the entire tion of influencing the infrastructure that exists Causey just state insurance commisto help large corporabrought down half tions bypass the law. sioner, Mike Causey, to make decisions favorable of the state GOP in Most of all there’s to his company, accordMike Causey, who, acone fell swoop. ing to the indictment, cording to the indictunsealed on Tuesday ment, refused to accept afternoon. $10,000 from Lindberg Embroiled in the acin April 2017, and then cusations are — John Gray, a Lindberg went to the feds with the whole thing in advisor, and John Palermo, a GBIG January 2018, after which he recorded associate — who, the indictment states, conversations, provided evidence and wanted to come work for the NC otherwise sealed the doom of everyone Department of Insurance while GBIG involved — which includes many powermade up the difference in his salary. ful people in the party of which he is a And that’s not all! member.

Current chair of the NC GOP, Robin The story is still live, and it is imporHayes, has been indicted for lying to tant to remember that it’s an indictment and not a conviction — though most the FBI. Politico, WRAL the News & of the indictment’s evidence comes Observer and other outlets have already straight from interactions with Causey. sussed out the identity of “Public OfBut right now, it looks like a Guilford ficial A” as Rep. Mark Walker of the 6th Congressional District that runs through County farmer just ripped the state Guilford County.

GOP a new one.

Walker, who has said he’s been cooperating with the Department of

Claytoonz

April 4 - 13, 2019

Is Mike Causey a hero?

Shot in the Triad

Take charge of your mind, body and spirit Puzzles

Test pH balance, allergies, hormones Balance diet, lifestyle and emotions Create a personalized health and nutrition plan

(336) 456-4743 • jillclarey3@gmail.com

3723 West Market St., Unit–B, Greensboro, NC 27403

www.thenaturalpathwithjillclarey.com

13

14

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad River Run

Opinion

News

Up Front

April 4 - 13, 2019

April 4 - 13, 2019

Up Front

News

Opinion

River Run

Shot in the Triad

Puzzles

15

April 4 - 13, 2019

RiverRun Film Festival 2019: A Curated Guide

This year’s 21st edition of Winston-Salem’s RiverRun International Film Festival begins today and screens through April 14. More than 170 films from 47 different countries grace screens across Winston-Salem and one location in Greensboro, bringing a wide breadth of films to local viewers. Comedies, thrillers, documentaries, shorts and even animated works tell stories relevant to our pasts, present and futures. As part of this year’s RiverRun issue, we are excited to bring a carefully curated guide reviewing some of the most compelling works of film from the last year. You’ll cry, you’ll laugh, you’ll groan and maybe even yell. We know we did.

Up Front

by Lauren Barber, Savi Ettinger, Jordan Green, Sayaka Matsuoka and Cason Ragland

Don’t Get Trouble in Your Mind

Always In Season

On stage in front of an adoring crowd, Rhiannon Giddens gave Dom Flemons a framed photograph of the two of them with their former bandmate, Justin Robinson, and Joe Thompson, a folk musician from Mebane. The photograph was taken just before the trio formally considered themselves a proper string band. Before he saw the gift, Flemons had his legs crossed and his head tilted down towards the floor. This performance would be his last with the Chocolate Drops. Once he saw the photograph, once he remembered where it all started, he leaned back in his chair and laughed. His apprehension subsided and the group went on to give a rousing performance.

Giddens, a Greensboro native, smiled to herself. The journey of the Chocolate Drops hasn’t been easy on her. She started with the Greensboro Youth Chorus while still in elementary school. In high school she joined a pow-wow drum circle to explore her Occaneechi ancestry. She studied classical voice at Oberlin College and Conservatory, and after graduating moved on to Celtic music.

In a July 2017 interview with the San Francisco Classical Voice, Giddens said “I was given a voice, and as long as I follow that, everything feels right. I spend enough time in each [genre] to really get a thorough grounding in it, ’cause I don’t really believe in dabbling.”

Though the film explores some very personal areas of the trio’s life, it also takes the time to highlight the broad history of American folk music.

“The fact that the banjo was only played by Africans for the first hundred years is something huge.” said Justin Robinson. “It kind of changes your whole view on race relations, how things were in the American South, migration patterns — it has a lot more implications other than that it just ‘came from Africa.’”

The fiddle, an instrument that’s long been associated with white, rural artists, was considered to be a black instrument before the beginning of the Civil War. It’s like lesson in American music history.

In many ways, this film succeeds in relaying both regional string-band music as well as the interpersonal history of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The documentarians don’t pull any punches, either. From the quarrels between Giddens and Flemons, who dated for some time, to the creative differences the plagued the Chocolate Drops, this documentary presents a drama that’s not always present in this type of film.

The film ends with a bittersweet tone. Both Giddens and Flemons have successful, solo careers and Robinson now works in forestry after getting a master’s degree from NC State University. No matter how impactful a group of a creative minds can be, sometimes these collectives aren’t meant to last. And that’s alright.

Some North Carolinians may remember a brief flurry of international media interest in the suspicious death of Lennon Lacy, a 17-year-old who was found hanging from a swing set in rural Bladenboro in 2014.

Local police quickly declared Lacy’s death a suicide, and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina eventually reached the same conclusion. But the circumstances of his death — the fact that he was found with someone else’s shoes on, that the police seized the local medical examiner’s camera when he was attempting to photograph the death scene, that Lacy’s grave was vandalized within days of his burial and that Lacy, a young black man, had been dating a white woman — leave the undeniable impression that he died as a result of a racially motivated murder.

In other words, a modern-day lynching.

Recalling the 1996 documentary Paradise Lost, parts of Always In Season scrape underneath the conventional news coverage of the case to suggest a plausible alternative to the official story by identifying a neighbor whose avowed racism provides a motive and whose hasty departure raises suspicions.

But beyond the true-crime element of the story, filmmaker Jacqueline Olive uses the story of Lacy’s death and his family’s quest for justice as a hook to examine the history of racial terror against African-Americans in the US South. Her unflinching yet thoughtful film poses some difficult questions: Are black and white Southerners ready to break a silence forged in fear and shame around racial violence? Is Lacy’s death a fearful reminder of an era when black people, mostly men but also women, were killed wantonly and with impunity to reinforce white supremacy, or is it a signal that the United States again hovers at the precipice of a new spasm of racial violence?

Reflecting on how murders of black men and women were carried out in public with the avid participation of ordinary white people from roughly 1890 to 1960, Sherrilyn Ifill, president of counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, reflects, “Lynching was a message crime.”

Heather Rattelade, a lawyer for the North Carolina NAACP, identifies a different but chillingly parallel trend in the past 15 years.

“As I started researching black males committing suicide in public and I realized there had been almost 20 black males found hanging in public parks over just the past few years, and I realized how quickly law enforcement that responded to those scenes deemed those deaths suicides,” Rattelade says, “I became concerned that there may be a bigger surreptitious movement at play here.”

Olive’s masterful film leaves viewers with another unsettling question: Even if white racists aren’t brazenly murdering black men in gruesome public spectacles, do these purported suicides send their own message of racial intimidation to the black community that is only compounded by law enforcement indifference?

Don’t Get Trouble in Your Mind screens in Winston-Salem on April 10 at 8 p.m. at SECCA and in Greensboro on April 11 at 5:30 p.m. at Red Cinema.

— CR

Always In Season screens on April 9 at 8 p.m. at Red Cinemas in Greensboro, and at A/perture 1 in Winston-Salem on April 10 at 4:30 p.m. and April 11 at 8 p.m.

— JG

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

River Run

Opinion

News

Dir. John Whitehead, USA, 2018, 83 min.

16

Dir. Jacqueline Olive, USA, 2019, 89 min.

‘The Ostrich Politic’ Dir. Mohamad HouHou, France, 2018, 6 min.

‘The Ostrich Politic’ screens in Winston-Salem on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at UNCSA Main and April 13 at 4 p.m. at UNCSA Gold.

— SM

Puzzles

Despite being just under six minutes long, Director HouHou’s animated short “The Ostrich Politic” has a lot to say. The piece begins with poetic narration that sets up a world in which ostriches live as humans, working in offices and drinking in bars. All of them do so with their heads covered — usually with bags — and go about their day to day lives, even ignoring catastrophic events like a building exploding outside their office.

The birds live routine, formulaic lives until a scientist discovers that the established notion — that ostriches like to bury their heads — is actually false. A new law forces the birds to live with their heads uncovered, wreaking havoc on the carefully balanced, happily ignorant society that had been in place.

At the end of the film, when ostrich society reverts to its old ways, live images of deforestation, bishops, strippers, pollution and missile testings flash across the screen.

“I wondered how come they never picked up the truth and upon us bestow it, or is it already within us, but we’re terrified to show it?” asks the narrator. “So we wander around bleak with a spark of our soul lit. If poetry lies its way to the truth, we’ve been lied to, and you know it.”

Using striking visuals that at times call to German expressionism and propagandist art, “The Ostrich Politic” poses pointed questions to the audience about science and truth versus complacency, about accountability and action.

It’s a quick ride, and one that leaves spectators uneasy.

Shot in the Triad

— LB

Freaks screens at Hanesbrands Theatre in Winston-Salem on Friday at p.m.

— JG

River Run

Life is Fare screens in Winston-Salem on Friday at 5:30 p.m. at UNSCA Babcock, Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at A/perture 2 and April 8 at 1 p.m. at A/perture 1. Director Sephora Woldu will be in attendance for the Saturday screening.

Opinion

Adams Stein and Zach Lipovsky’s suspenseful thriller inverts the campy horror trope of child-asmonster in movies such as Child’s Play by presenting viewers with a relatable 7-year-old named Chloe, played by the compelling Lexy Kolker. Chloe just wants to be normal, like any 7-year-old, even though her dad is kind of weird, and she instantly draws our empathy.

The father, played by Emile Hirsch, is at first presented as a helicopter parent taken to psychotic lengths. He barricades his daughter in the house and comes back from outside forays covered in blood.

Eventually, the film reveals his paranoia to be justified, unspooling a dystopian scenario of government relocation and liquidation of so-called “abnormals,” whom it must be said, do possess extraordinary powers and go into trance-like states akin to demonic possession that can produce lethal results.

Freaks resists easy moralism, confronting viewers with the question of whether individuals are monstrous — or is it society?

The richly layered narrative, with a child struggling to find out who she is, a father and grandfather frantically attempting to improvise a safety net for the vulnerable child, cops and federal agents ready to use deadly force, and a mission to save the girl’s mother from a horrific lab underneath a mountain, hurtles this engrossing film towards a not entirely unexpected conclusion. Before the credits roll, viewers can already appreciate the animating questions of the sequel: Will the abnormals carve out an independent enclave or fight a war of liberation?

Dir. Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, USA/Canada, 2018, 104 min.

News

The film opens in black-and-white as director Sephora Woldu rollerblades to her mother’s San Francisco apartment, where she lays out her plans for an experimental film about what it means to be Eritrean in the Bay Area, a film she wants to produce before pursuing a doctoral program in architecture. As the two relax on the sunny balcony Woldu’s mother, skeptical, roasts coffee beans for the occasion of her daughter’s visit.

(Fresh coffee-making is one of the most prominent features of Eritrean culture, whether offered during festivities or as a fundamental feature of daily life.) The smell effortlessly wafts through the screen.

Though Life is Fare is not a documentary, Woldu grounds viewers with a quick history of her family’s homeland: Eritrea — a nation bordered by Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa — formed in 1991 following three decades of armed resistance from Ethiopia, which had annexed it after the ouster of both Italian and British colonizers. Its citizenry is multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and predominately practices Christianity and Islam. Eritrea is a one-party state and, according to Human Rights Watch, its human rights record is among the worst in the world. Complete state ownership of local media earns the fledgling country a freedom of press score second only to North Korea. Their cuisine is lighter than Ethiopian fare, featuring more tomato, seafoods and Italian influences.

A collage film mostly shot in brilliant color to a jubilant soundtrack, Life is Fare clocks in at just over an hour, leaving viewers with but a surrealist glimpse into what it means to be part of the Eritrean diaspora in San Francisco. The film’s audacious freeform structure mirrors Woldu’s stated dismissal of Eritrean cultural mores to make way for a limitless exploration of identity in her immigrant community. Other than her mother’s condemnation of this idea, suggesting that it’s in poor taste to air out family secrets and in-group conflicts, viewers see this dynamic play out through the film’s homesick taxi-driving protagonist, Haile, who finds himself venting to his dentist due to a stigma against seeking help from psychologists. Viewers, alongside Haile, must navigate “hallucinations” while the untraditional structure sows seeds for multiple narratives, reflecting the many disparate realities Woldu says Eritreans operate within. She leaves audiences wondering: How grounded is your sense of reality? Is pursuit of objective reality even desirable? Is it politically advantageous? Psychologically?

And as the characters, including the filmmaker, attempt to reconcile their diasporic identities, she allows them to figure it out along the way, in community.

Dir. Sephora Woldu, United States, 2018, 61 min.

Up Front

Freaks

April 4 - 13, 2019

Life is Fare

17

April 4 - 13, 2019 Up Front News Opinion

The Rusalka

Dir. Perry Blackshear, USA, 2018, 79 min.

This quiet thriller by North Carolina native Perry Blackshear, the director of the 2015 psychological thriller They Look Like People, depicts a modern retelling of the Rusalka, a Slavic folktale female creature who haunts the waterways in which she drowned.

The film, which lasts just 79 minutes, sees the return of the three main actors from Blackshear’s previous film as they depict new characters in this dark fairytale: a man searching for his husband who went missing in a lake, a mysterious woman who seems confined to that lake, and a naïve, mute man who is staying in a house on the shore of the body of water.

Relying heavily on sound design, emphasized in particular due to the limited amount of dialogue in the film, The Rusalka tows the line between dread and beauty.

While the silhouettes and imagery created by the siren, played by Margaret Ying Drake, are often terrifying, every other shot in the film resembles a Baroque painting, with the lighting illuminating her in dramatic effect. A hauntingly beautiful Croatian song plays during several moments in the film, creating a melancholic backdrop for the developing forbidden love between the mute man and the trapped woman.

Other sounds like the lapping of water and the creaking of bones and wood create chilling moments, only to be abruptly offset by luminous imagery from the characters’ past and possible futures. Though slow and seemingly disjointed at times, this sophomore film breaks the traditional boundaries of being just a horror film by beautifully capturing both the quiet and profound moments of love, longing and grief, all while keeping viewers on the edge.

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

River Run

The Rusalka screens in Winston-Salem on April 11 at 8 p.m. at SECCA and April 12 at 8:30 p.m. at UNCSA Babcock.

— SM

18

Ode to Joy

Dir. Jason Winer, USA, 2019, 97 min.

This comedy starring Martin Freeman follows a man named Charlie suffering from cataplexy. The narcolepsy-related condition causes him to suddenly fall asleep when experiencing strong emotions. Charlie’s trigger is joy, so he clings to what makes him somewhat miserable to keep himself awake.

When Charlie meets a beautiful woman named Francesca, he fears falling in love. He decides to keep himself at a slight distance, instead setting her up with his brother, played by UNC School of the Arts alum Jake Lacy. The situation leads to a wide array of emotional chaos and romantic blunders.

The film combines the witty jokes of a rom-com with a touch of dark, dry humor.

The mix keeps the audience wondering where Charlie will end up, or whether or not he will continue to deprive himself of positive emotions. The film connects its characters through these normal situations upheaved by the unpredictable amount of happiness Charlie can handle without passing out. His self-restraint possesses subtle tragedy to it, and it is as much a battle of Charlie versus his condition as it is a battle of Charlie versus himself.

It bounces between lightheartedness and seriousness in such a way that feels genuine, as Charlie confronts where he ends and his cataplexy self-treatment ends.

Ode to Joy explores the complications of love, true happiness and life’s little moments.

Ode to Joy screens on Thursday at 7 p.m. at SECCA. — SE

The Sound of Silence

Director/Country/year/run time

An unshaven, middle-aged man stands in the middle of Central Park with three tuning forks in one hand and a small hammer in the other. He taps each fork and lifts them to his left ear. The tone is a clear G-major. Peter Lucian, the man behind this experiment, packs up his tools and goes back to the Cold War fallout shelter he calls home in order to record his findings.

Lucian is a man who makes a living by “tuning” the homes of anxious, troubled New Yorkers. Throughout the film, Lucian attempts to prove his theory on how the inaudible, ambient sounds of day-to-day life can have a profound effect on mood and behavior. The idea sounds preposterous, even comical to an extent. However, co-writer Ben Nabors said that The Sound of Silence isn’t meant to be a comedy, despite how RiverRun chose to label the film.

“If this [film] were ever to be filed in a Blockbuster video, which will never happen, it would be in the drama section of that video store,” he said in a phone interview. “[However,] I think approaching the film with a sense of humor and an openness, as people do approach comedy, is a helpful point-of-view. Humor was really important in approaching the characters, the dilemma [of the film] and this concept of the house tuner. I think that humor is disarming, in a good way, for audience members. It allows you to loosen up and emotionally expose yourself to a story.”

The Sound of Silence muses on conflicts such as free will versus destiny and the overlap between both the creative and scientific worlds.

“Beyond the log line, it’s fundamentally a film about obsession, commitment to ideas that maybe don’t yet exist and pursuing something that only you believe in,” he said. “I think, to the individual, those stakes can feel very high, but maybe to an audience that isn’t directly involved in that experience [it] can be a very personal, introverted journey.

“I think humor and [the use of] a real-world setting are strategies that [my writing partner] and I followed in order to make the film more relatable to the audience.”

Nabors continued.

The Sound of Silence succeeds in this aspect of conditioning the audience to relate with Lucian and his obsession with the experiment. Nabors said that he can empathize with Lucian’s obsessive and committed nature.

“I hope that a lot of people relate to [Lucian]… to look at the long story of the film,” he said. “It was a 10-year pursuit and that’s a long time in which [my partner] and I see something that other people can’t see and we have the obligation of trying to motivate people into believing [the story].

“I don’t think [that process] is unlike the scientific process that we portray in this film.”

The Sound of Silence screens on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the UNCSA main stage in Winston-Salem.

— CR

Dir. Ben Masters, USA/Mexico, 2019, 99 min.

The story opens with a name and closes with a new one.

As the transgender protagonist of this drama searches for their sister, their birth name remains as the last remaining thing she gave them. But as time goes on, it fails to identify them.

The film follows a Cuban immigrant as they attempt to track down their sister who went missing in the city’s sprawling sex industry. However, the realization that they are transgender complicates the journey, leaving them having to navigate their own self.

The film handles gender beautifully. It illustrates a gradual but powerful unearthing of truth and identity. The visceral process manages to influence each aspect of their life. The protagonist must face how their gender affects their search, their personal life and their career as a boxer.

This liminal moment in the character’s life displays a real vulnerability that one cannot help but connect to. The film explores the physicality that dysphoria can bring, even through a look in a mirror or a conversation with a stranger. Yet, it also highlights the beauty of finding support and acceptance through community and self-assurance.

The film emphasizes the multi-dimensional experience that gender can be. It portrays finding one’s self as a journey of discovery and self-definition.

Lupe reminds audiences of the value of living one’s truth.

Opinion

Lupe screens in Winston-Salem on Friday at 10 a.m. at A/perture 1 and Sunday at 11 a.m. at Hanesbrands Theatre.

— SE

News

A Scientist’s Guide to Living and Dying Dir. Nitzan Mager and Shachar Langler, USA, 2018, 75 min.

Puzzles

A Scientist’s Guide to Living and Dying screens in Winston-Salem on April 12 at 1 p.m. and April 13 at 4:30 at A/perture 1, and April 14 at 11:30 a.m. at UNCSA Gold.

— SE

Shot in the Triad

This drama, co-directed by and starring UNC School of the Arts alum Nitzan Mager, centers on a scientist named Amy, played by Mager, as she mourns the loss of her husband Chris while preparing to give birth to his child. The arc of the story follows a full-term pregnancy, as Amy struggles to articulate the intricacies of motherhood.

She finds both solace and confusion through caring for two boys from a shelter, named Ari and Caleb, as she juggles these responsibilities with her natal health and career. As each trimester progresses, so too does her current scientific study on mysterious male cells inside certain women’s bodies.

The narrative flows smoothly, utilizing subtlety to reveal what Amy realizes over the course of nine months. It drifts in and out of reality, delving into Amy’s consciousness.

The film intersperses moments of philosophical ponderings from Amy in between the scenes, as she wonders about motherhood, her body and a scientist’s mindset.

As her pregnancy progresses, her perspective seems more and more complicated.

With each passing month, she dives deeper into a frenzy of questioning what she knows. One views the film through the context of Amy’s mind, blurring the definition of metaphor and objective reality. The film, however, never loses its grounding, as it portrays these abstract ideas through physical elements.

The film places Amy at the intersection of motherhood and scientist, discovering a balance of her different roles as each one comes into question. Even the self comes under scrutiny in this powerful tale of motherhood, stability and healing.

River Run

The River and the Wall screens in Winston-Salem on Friday at 11 a.m. at Hanesbrands Theatre and Sunday at 1 p.m. at UNCSA Gold.

—LB

Dir. Charles Vuolo and Andre Phillips, USA/Dominican Republic, 2019, 77 min.

Up Front

This documentary tracks a group of five friends — experts in their fields — as they travel from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico on a 1,200-mile journey to document the border and investigate the looming impacts of a wall on the natural environment.

They travel across gorgeous and rugged terrain by bicycle, mustang and canoe, at times carrying their bikes through thorny brambles with sheer rock faces on either side. They witness the discontinuous metal barriers already erected from Imperial Beach, Calif. laden with ice, up and down magnificent sand dunes; they witness the ocelots, tortoises and bird species that flourish in low-elevation, subtropical environments, and the rams and black bears that rely on crossing the river artery in a mountainous habitat on a daily basis in order to survive. They do not recognize artificial international boundaries.

The River and the Wall is a pleasure to watch because it overflows with the filmmakers’ joyful sense of adventure and reverence for wild landscapes most Americans know little about, not to mention the awe-inspiring cinematography that punctuates solemn moments highlighting the stark disconnect between rhetoric and border realities. Facts scroll across the screen as in any documentary, but it’s the impromptu riverside conversations with Mexican fisherman and interviews with ranchers whose land — 200,000 acres of some of the most productive farmland in the world — would be seized through eminent domain, that humanize the border “debate.” Their expert testimony underlines the objective absurdity of constructing a $30 billion, contiguous concrete wall on straight lines across levees and irrigation canals, sometimes miles inland from the twisting river, slicing up public land and stranding an estimated 1 million acres of private land.

The film is a remedy to misconceptions about the vast borderland, from topography to culture to industry, and sets the record straight: that illegal drugs are overwhelmingly smuggled through regulated ports of entry; that it is Americans’ consumer demand for those drugs that funnels an estimated $50 billion into cartels’ coffers each year, which they weaponize to hollow out civil institutions and further destabilize their regions; that most people who cross illegally are Central Americans fleeing civil instability, abject poverty and violence, not Mexicans; that since 2007, the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States has grown more via visa overstays than by illegal border crossings, which are down significantly.

Viewers walk away from The River and the Wall able to discuss the borderland — it’s precious wilderness and unique cultures — within new frameworks, and with a firmer understanding that the fight against a barrier wall is as much about protecting wildlife and stunning public lands as it is about reckoning with violent foreign policies and current abuses on US soil to move toward safeguarding human dignity.

Lupe

April 4 - 13, 2019

The River and the Wall

19

April 4 - 13, 2019 Up Front News Opinion River Run Shot in the Triad Puzzles

20

Bei Bei

Buddy

This rollercoaster of a documentary delves into a under-examined facet of the abortion debate by highlighting the story of Bei Bei Shuai, a 35-year-old Chinese immigrant who became the first woman in Indiana history to be charged with the murder of her unborn child because of an attempted suicide in 2011. Bei Bei follows Shuai — whose case becomes a focal point in the abortion debate in Indiana, a state that has historically been conservative when it comes to a woman’s right to choose — and depicts the complicated ways in which abortion rights, mental health and immigration can intersect when the justice system gets involved.

After having her heart broken by the father of her child, Shuai takes rat poison as a way to escape her sorrow. When she’s taken to the hospital, the employees tell her that she has to make a decision of whether or not to take her child, who was born by emergency C-section, off of life support. After Shuai makes the difficult decision to do so, she gets hit with two felony charges — one for murder and one for infanticide — and spends 435 days in jail and before being released on bail.

Interviews with a wide cast of characters — including Shuai’s defense attorney, Linda Pence, and Terry Curry, the chief prosecutor of the case — unveil the complex parts of a case that made headlines for its uniqueness.

“Most people don’t understand how vulnerable they are in our society,” Pence says. “They don’t understand how easily they can be free one day and then be accused of something the next and all their rights are stripped and they’re in jail.”

In addition to closely following Shuai’s emotional journey throughout the case’s two-year lifespan, the documentary looks at the history and legislative precedents that enabled the prosecution to file charges against Shuai, who had never had a criminal record. Shots of former President George W. Bush signing the Fetus Protection Bill, as well as interviews with two Indiana Republican senators who introduced a bill to enhance the penalty for fetal homicide in the state, are shown in the film.

“How in the world could you take a grieving woman that has just suffered all of that pain and a loss that she’ll be living with for the rest of her life and pull her into the criminal justice system?” Pence asks.

As someone who came the United States alone, the documentary shows the growing bonds that Shuai forms with those who support her through the emotional process.

“You’re like my mother,” Shuai says to Pence at one point in the documentary.

As the film progresses, more and more pieces of the case come out of the woodwork, like unreliable testimony by a pathologist with religious ties and Curry’s attempts to run for re-election amidst the whirlwind of the highly publicized case.

By the end of Bei Bei, Shuai’s future looks brighter, but the film reminds viewers that cases like Shuai’s are on the rise and as hers comes to an end, another Indiana woman’s case is just beginning, under similar circumstances.

“This is really important to me,” Shuai says. “To fight this case. Not only for me, but I think it’s for other woman too. You’re pregnant; you’ve been through a lot of stuff. Your hormones change. Your life is changed. And then, anything could happen.

And when something happens, what you really need is a lot of different supports.

Not the jail time.”

The title of “man’s best friend” seems like an understatement here.

The Dutch documentary, Buddy, explores the deep connections people have with their service dogs. Each scene provides vignettes from the lives of six people and the canines that help them. Perfectly balanced, the film offers up the lighthearted, funny moments animals give us right alongside powerful and emotional glimpses into when their people need them most.

An opening shot shows a woman named Edith van der Meulen jogging along a dirt path, a white cane in one hand and a canine named Makker trotting on the other side.

The dogs assist in everyday tasks, such as leading people with visual impairments like Edith. For another woman, her dog can even administer a syringe of medicine by gently nudging it with his nose. The animals alleviate symptoms of distress from a veteran’s PTSD to a young boy’s autism. The film shows these instances with grace, keeping a calm tone; the viewer feels like a guest in the homes of these people and their helpers.

The film’s genuine approach allows viewers to immerse themselves in the lives of its subjects, as they discuss their experiences and the undeniable bonds they have with their dogs. Then, they move forward. They live their lives, and the filmmakers follow both the sweet new memories and the more tragic ones.

Buddy displays the universality of humankind’s relationship with dogs and shows the complex beauty of being human while needing someone who is not.

Dir. Mohamad HouHou, France, 2018, 77 min.

Bei Bei screens April 12 at 10:30 a.m. and April 13 at 3 p.m. at A/perture 2 in Winston-Salem.

— SM

Dir. Heddy Honigmann, Netherlands, 2018, 86 min.

Buddy screens in Winston-Salem on Sunday at 8 p.m. at Hanesbrands Theatre and at 8 p.m. on April 9 at SECCA. — SE

This Changes Everything

Dir. Tom Donahue, USA, 2018, 97 min.

This clear-eyed documentary strips away the illusions of Hollywood’s dream machinery — one of the United States’ most successful global exports — to explore how film and television promote narratives that marginalize and render girls because women are denied the opportunity to tell stories as producers, directors and actors.

There isn’t a lot of narrative drama or flashy animation here; the film is built around a stunning number of interviews with some of the movie and television industry’s biggest names, including Reese Witherspoon, Mira Nair, Shonda Rhimes, Rashida Jones, Meryl Streep, Lena Dunham, Taraji P. Henson and Sharon Stone, with welcome legal contextualization from Anita Hill.

The ironic title comes from a remark by actress Geena Davis, an executive producer of This Changes Everything, following her star turn in Thelma & Louise, the 1991 the runaway success that put women’s perspectives, desires and concerns at the center of the story. Of course, it didn’t: The documentary shows that the studios continued to overwhelmingly back male directors and sideline women. Spoiler alert: In 2018, following the watershed emergence of the #MeToo movement, the film tells us that the percentage of women directors actually declined.

Sexual harassment in the movie industry, as exemplified by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, gets a brief cameo; it’s presented as a symptom of the lopsided power dynamic in an industry in which women face systematic employment discrimination.

The film comes across as a depressing and sobering report card on one of our most influential industries — and as a call to action to those who will heed it.

This Changes Everything screens on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at Hanesbrands Theatre in Winston-Salem.

— JG

Dir. Zachary Stauffer, USA, 2018, 80 min.

River Run Shot in the Triad Puzzles

Santuario screens on Sunday at 2 p.m. and April 12 at 3:30 p.m. at Hanesbrands Theatre in Winston-Salem.

— SM

Opinion

Juana Luz Tobar Ortega crochets with olivegreen yarn, her hands moving deftly as she manipulates the string between her fingers.

“This is what I do to make the time go faster,” she says in the translated subtitles.

“It takes away the stress.”

The short documentary “Santuario” follows Ortega’s day-to-day life at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Greensboro, where she has taken sanctuary to avoid deportation since 2017. At the start of the film, Ortega — who, fleeing violence, immigrated to the US from Guatemala in 1991 — had lived for just two weeks in a small room at the church, fitted with a bed, a side table, a dresser and hand-drawn pictures by her grandkids that decorate the otherwise bare, cinderblock walls. By the end of the film, she’s been there for a year.

Ortega was one of the first undocumented immigrants in North Carolina to take sanctuary in recent history, the film explains, and did so after living in the country for more than 20 years. Now, she is confined to the church grounds and wears an ankle monitor that ICE uses to track her movements.

“There are times when people of faith have to make a choice between serving the people that we believe God has called us to serve and serving the government,” says the Rev. Randall Keeney, the pastor at St. Barnabas. “And some laws are simply unjust.”

Through the 25-minute documentary, viewers are given an intimate look into Ortega’s attempts to maintain a certain level of normalcy in her life. Her kids and her grandchildren visit her when possible, and she attends services at the church where members of the congregation greet her warmly and sing and pray with her. Still, both Ortega, as well as her family members, fail to hold back tears, as they individually struggle to deal with the uncertainty of Ortega’s future.

“What we want is for people to know that this is happening,” says Lesvi, one of Ortega’s daughters. “You can’t turn away because we’re not the only ones.”

Interspersed between scenes of Ortega’s daily life are examples of other undocumented immigrants who also took sanctuary to avoid deportation. Minerva Cisneros Garcia, a Mexican woman who had taken sanctuary at Greensboro’s Congregational United Church of Christ a month after Ortega, visits Ortega at St. Barnabas after learning that an immigration judge had vacated her deportation order. The two women embrace as tears run down their faces.

“I hope that you can leave here soon,” Garcia says to Ortega as they sit at a table together.

“Yes, to go help others going through the same thing as us,” Ortega responds. The two women clasp hands and the camera zooms in.

At the end of the film, Ortega cries as she watches Garcia leave after she visits her at St. Barnabas, her feelings of happiness for Garcia mixed with a yearning for her own freedom.

“I don’t think we can afford to be silent anymore,” Keeney says. “The question isn’t if something is wrong; we know it is. The question is what will we do.”

By capturing the quiet, mundane moments that make up a life, “Santuario,” shows viewers how much those moments can mean when they are taken away. The film also demonstrates the power that religion and community can play in such a divided political landscape. And it highlights the uncertainty and real threats that those in our community face every day due to anti-immigrant policies.

“As of the completion of this film, she remains in sanctuary,” ends the film.

Filmmakers confirmed that as of the publication of this review, Ortega is still at St. Barnabas.

News

Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? screens on April 10 at 5:30 p.m. at Red Cinemas in Greensboro and April 11 at 7:30 p.m. at Hanesbrands Theatre in Winston-Salem.

Director Zachary Stauffer attends both screenings.

— JG

Dir. Pilar Timpane and Christine Delp, USA, 2018, 26 min.

Up Front

Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? focuses on the story of Lt. Wes Van Dorn — a Greensboro native, incidentally — who lost his life during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia in 2014 while piloting the US Navy’s 53E helicopter. The documentary persuasively summons a picture of Van Dorn, his crew and the Navy mechanic who serviced the helicopter as dedicated and conscientious service members betrayed by the military establishment. Early on, viewers learn that Van Dorn and his crew did nothing wrong, and in fact Van Dorn had tried to warn a Navy investigator that the program was plagued by training and maintenance problems that made accidents inevitable.

Similarly, the mechanic, Chris Humme, wrote a letter to his commander after Van Dorn’s death to call attention to safety flaws in the helicopter maintenance program, and wound up getting drummed out of the Navy.

The film outlines a series of accidents since the 53E entered service in the mid1980s, including a crash that took 31 lives in al-Anbar province in 2005, making it the deadliest day in terms of US casualties in the entire Iraq war.

The technical reasons for the crash that took Van Dorn’s life are fairly straightforward: A zip-tie holding together a bundle of wires chafed against fuel line, sending a spray of fuel into the bundle of frayed wires that eventually ignited the cockpit.

Unlike many documentaries that take a polemic approach, Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? is rigorously investigative. One of the film’s executive producers is Lowell Bergman, a veteran investigative reporter with the New York Times and founder of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC-Berkeley. Reporting for the film comes from director Stauffer, along with Jason Paladino — a 2015 graduate of UC-Berkeley’s J-school and childhood friend of one of Van Dorn’s crew members — and Mike Hixenbaugh, a military reporter for the Virginian-Pilot. Paladino and Hixenbaugh’s work also laid the groundwork for a 2015 investigative story aired by NBC Nightly News.

As the film reveals, the Navy had acknowledged the danger posed by the wiring used for the helicopters since as early as 2009, yet failed to take action. The mystery of this whodunnit is really why the Navy continues to subject service members to unnecessary risks while failing to correct the problems. It turns out to be a bipartisan scandal, with both Republican and Democratic administrations enacting bloated budgets with billions of dollars for new advanced military hardware while starving legacy programs like the 53E helicopter.

Chuck Spinney, a former Pentagon analyst who has been calling for military budget reform since the 1980s, gives perhaps the best explanation for the misplaced priorities that result in service members’ deaths.

“It’s making a lot of people rich,” he says. “A lot of people are benefiting from this lunacy. Generals are going through the revolving doors. Lieutenant colonels and colonels are going through the revolving doors. Contractors are making big profits, and congressmen are basically getting lots of pork in their districts, which enables them to increase their longevity and power and wealth. Everybody wins — except, of course, the soldier at the pointy end of the spear, and the taxpayer.”

‘Santuario’

April 4 - 13, 2019

Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?

21

April 4 - 13, 2019 River Run

Opinion

News

Up Front

SHOT IN THE TRIAD West Fairfield Road, High Point

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

LFOD of the Mad Dollies in a bout against the Elm Street Nightmares. Both teams are part of the Greensboro Roller Derby.

22

Recycle this paper.

CAROLYN DE BERRY

PIZZERIA

L’ITALIANO

Large 1-topping pizza

11

$

99

Good through 5/4/19

Monday – Thursday

4-cheese pizza

10

$

WE !

DELIVER

99

Order online at pizzerialitaliano.net

every Tuesday, all day

219 S Elm Street, Greensboro • 336-274-4810

by Matt Jones

Across

Every Wednesday Matty Sheets and Guest Every Thursday Open Mic with Zander Friday, April 5th Hatchling

Up Front

Saturday, April 6th The Hypnotic Conquest ©2018 Jonesin’ Crosswords

(editor@jonesincrosswords.com)

News

602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

Answers from previous publication.

(336) 698-3888

Opinion River Run Shot in the Triad Puzzles

1 Wish for success 11 Nemesis for Hook 15 It stops at ports of call 16 “You leave ___ choice” 17 Nonstop 18 Lenovo competitor 19 PC menu command 20 Short-term positions 22 20-20, e.g.

23 Gp. with a Seattle team come 2021 25 Maiden name lead-in 26 Turn green, perhaps 27 Pre-grads 28 Kool Moe ___ 29 “The Hollow Men” poet 31 Instruction segment ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 33 British heavyweight?

34 Word before operandi 39 ___-Caps (concession stand candy) 40 Pushed, with “on” 41 Home of California’s Mendocino College 42 TV character who jumped the shark, with “the” 44 Course outlines 46 Short Morse code bit 48 Break stuff?

51 Ohio airport code 52 Dad joke, often 53 Upscale hotel offering 54 Noir investigator, slangily 55 Bob Mould’s band before Sugar 58 He played Wiseau 60 “Just ___ bit more” Answers from last issue 61 Drama with a title character voiced by 21 PGA’s Calvin Kristen Bell 24 Explorative phrase in kids’ science shows, maybe 63 Contested 30 Yule symbol 64 Embarrassed 32 Ambient music producer Brian 65 Parts of loaves 34 Requisite 66 Buckeye and others 35 “Fine, I give up” 36 Pork roast flavorer Down 37 Suffix after habit or sex 38 Rhombus, e.g.

1 Speaks too proudly 43 Archive format 2 Cream-filled pastry 45 Old Scottish towns (as opposed to towns 3 Individual beings elsewhere?)

4 ___ Modern (London art gallery) 47 La Brea attraction 5 Nearby 48 Nick follower on cable TV 6 Gives substance to, with “out” 49 Ruling 7 Tipsy 50 Reprimands 8 Fathom or foot 56 Classic canvas shoe brand 9 Swimming pools, a la “The Beverly Hillbillies” 57 Pres. Eisenhower’s alma mater 10 Krispy ___ (some doughnuts) 59 Petri dish medium 11 Key with no flats or sharps, for short 62 Plop down 12 Editing a program, say 13 Single-file 14 Wearing some Victorian garb

EVENTS

April 4 - 13, 2019

CROSSWORD ‘Fly Free’— another freestyle for everyone. SUDOKU

23