"Nickel Boys" Director RaMell Ross reflects on what it means to make art at the AAFCA Awards

Transcript

00:00When I think about making art, I loved what, I think Marianne, I think you had said about

00:10something about the art teaching you or the art making process being one of discovery

00:15as opposed to one of a sort of declaration, I think is maybe another way to say it.

00:20But this film and like Hale County this morning, this evening, like they're questions.

00:24They're not, they're not films necessarily for you to be entertained by.

00:28They're ways of making aesthetic gestures that allow us to see the world as it is otherwise.

00:35And that's a thing that teaches really us.

00:38It teaches the makers kind of what we believe.

00:40It's almost like the saying that some people write to know what they think.

00:44Like I make films, at least at this point in my career, as I like to say, to get to

00:49know how us black people have come to be seen by the world.

00:53And I say that learning process because Ethan Harisi said something interesting during one

00:57of the Q and A's that really put me into a spiral that, you know, the way the film

01:02is shot, it's point of view.

01:04And you don't necessarily, like you guys are the character, you are the camera and you're

01:10interacting with the character on screen.

01:12And Ethan had said that, so he didn't have a traditional scene partner, which was really

01:16sort of disorienting.

01:17Like we know that's true.

01:18Anjani had talked about a lot, so did Brandon.

01:21But he said, now that we're screening the film with the audiences, now I'm finishing

01:27the film.

01:28Like now I have my scene partner and I love talking to them because I love being able

01:32to be in conversation with my scene partner.

01:36And that was quite beautiful.

01:37And I say that only to say that with this learning process, to me, the film is, it lives

01:42and dies wholly with the actors.