Noteworthy
D E C E M B E R 2 02 0
N E W S , T I M E LY F A C T S , A N D O T H E R
Cover image courtesy of Random House Children’s Books.
This is Your Time
disease”. Written as a letter to young people, This Is Your Time proclaims: “I have not witnessed hatred or bigotry when I’ve looked into your young eyes. Regardless of what you looked like or where you came from, I saw some of my six-year-old self in you. You did not care about the color of each other’s skin, and I have loved seeing that, because I saw hope.” On November 10, the day the book was published, Bridges announced that her mother, Lucille Bridges, had died at the age of eighty-six. She wrote: “Our nation lost a Mother of the Civil Rights Movement today. And I lost my mom.” After setting her daughter up to break down the barriers she herself had faced, Lucille Bridges has long advocated the importance of sharing one’s experiences. In a 2016 interview produced by the Spring Branch Independent School District in Houston, Texas she spoke on the value she placed on getting an education and how badly she wanted her children to have a better chance at it than she did. “And I want other people to know how hard it was,” she said. “I would love for people to just listen to my story so they can know how hard it was for my kids to go to school.”
WITH THE RISE OF A NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, RUBY BRIDGES TURNS TO AMERICA’S YOUTH
I
n July of 2011, just eight months after the fiftieth anniversary of Ruby Bridges’ first day at New Orleans’ William Franz Public School, she stood in front of the famous Norman Rockwell painting “The Problem We All Live With,” beside President Barack Obama, who told her: “I think it’s fair to say that if it hadn’t been for you guys, I wouldn’t be here.” The first Black child to attend an allwhite elementary school in the South, Bridges—who today speaks about the experience all over the country—recalls that day as shrouded by the profound innocence of childhood. At six years old, she had no idea that what she was doing would change the world. In November of 2020, now sixty years past the day she walked into William Franz accompanied by U.S. marshals, Bridges released an appeal to the children of America in the form of her new book This Is Your Time, published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers. Rockwell’s painting, depicting Bridges at age six walking bravely with her schoolbooks against a backdrop of hatred and 8
violence, graces the cover. In a year marked by its new civil rights movement, Bridges’ story of bravery and disruption in the face of inequality remains as pertinent as ever. In This Is Your Time, she retells it for a new generation— one whose world, though changed, remains shaped by the same forces of inequality and unrest that placed her in the history books sixty years ago. In interviews spanning her career as an activist, one message Bridges has proclaimed again and again is the belief she has in children. Reflecting on her own innocence in the face of so much hatred and drawing from her experiences in classrooms all across America, she has famously said that “racism is a grown-up
D E C 2 0 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
CURIOSITIES
LO O K C LO S E R
W
Testifying to the obstacles to integration and to equality, as well as to the pure hatred and terror experienced throughout the process, Ruby Bridges has spent her life making sure that we don’t forget. But she has also spent her life spreading a message of love, of unity, and of hope; a message that she leaves with her readers, this next generation of
change-makers: “Don’t be afraid. This is your time in history. Keep your eyes on the prize. And at all costs, stay united.” —Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
This Is Your Time can be purchased at penguinerandomhouse.com.
The Louisiana Film Channel A STREAMING SERVICE DEVOTED SOLELY TO FILMS FROM THE BAYOU STATE
O
n a chilly Thursday night in mid-November, I drove out to the Scott home of Country Roads Managing Editor Jordan LaHaye Fontenot. We had gathered on her cozy couch, sugary snacks in hand, to watch Intention, a documentary feature being screened at this year’s virtual Southern Screen Festival. Produced and directed by a pair of Lafayette filmmakers and narrated by eleven Acadiana women, the film beautifully captures the slices of their lives in frame after frame of stunning, mesmerizing footage. We’d been eagerly waiting to see Intention since it premiered at the New Orleans French Film Festival in February, and it was well worth the wait. But, what if we didn’t have to? What if films made in or about the Bayou State could all be found in one place, readily accessible by the public? Well, thanks to Dr. Lucas Fry, thousands of Louisianamade titles will soon be made available to anyone and everyone, from the comfort of their own living room. Fry, president of the Louisiana Film Channel, has a lifetime of experience in broadcast media and has spent the last three years curating titles and designing the new platform, which debuted on Thanksgiving Day. The channel’s catalog encompasses a wide variety of content, from short and feature-length films and documentaries, to television shows, podcasts, and even music videos. It’s all fair game, as long as the title has some kind of “Louisiana thread”. Viewers will find that some of those threads are looser than others. "It's either you produced it and you live in Louisiana, you acted in it and you're from Louisiana, you funded it and you're from Louisiana, or you're the third spear chucker from the left and you’re from Louisiana," said a chuckling Fry. Aside from fulfilling a niche in the
streaming market, Fry envisions the channel as a way to connect younger filmmakers and new talent with industry professionals, generating even more content made in the Boot. Anyone can submit a work to be considered for distribution on the platform. “We want to provide a platform for Louisiana filmmakers to be able to recoup, or at least make some money on their work, if not introduce them to someone that may want to invest in them and their next project,” said Fry, who is also general manager of the WLFTTV station in Baton Rouge. “I want filmmakers to know they now have a place where they can get seen. So if you have a movie, whether it's four minutes long or two hours long, if you need distribution, submit it.” The service already has more than 2,200 titles in its streaming library, and will continually add new selections each week. And come 2021, the channel will begin acquiring scripts and developing original content, so screenwriting hopefuls can still set their sights on landing in an LA writer’s room—only, this one is a lot closer to home than the offices of Netflix or Hulu. As of press time, a week before its official launch, the service already had about three thousand subscribers— the majority of which do not reside in Louisiana, according to Fry. Though, it should come as no surprise that Louisiana-made media attracts international audiences. Users can opt for a free or paid subscription, and the cost is $5 each month or $50 for a year. The Louisiana Film Channel app is available on Apple and Android devices, as well as online. —Lauren Heffker louisianafilmchannel.com.
