ST. LOUIS — While the award ceremony isn't until January 2024, Oscar buzz is already starting and it's happening here in St. Louis.
Especially as the St. Louis International Film Festival shines a spotlight on finding possible solutions for racism.
Showing one of the overgrown and mammoth green trees in the backyard of his Palm Springs home, one neighbor explains to audiences sitting in the Washington University Brown Hall auditorium watching the "Racist Trees" documentary, "This is what you get. You get just this build-up that is a habitat for a lot of unwanted creatures: rats, rodents, snakes," they said. "I can't cut the trees because it's not my property."
To Los Angeles-based co-director Sara Newens, "'Racist Trees' is about a historically black neighborhood in Palm Springs that has been excluded from the rest of what's known as a very affluent city in California by a row of 60-foot tamarisk trees which form this barrier and really depress property values and just kind of segregate this historically black neighborhood."
Another man living in Palm Springs tells Newens on tape during the documentary, "I feel segregated from it," when discussing the golf course that lies on the other side of the wall of trees.
"I don't feel like I'm part of Palm Springs with that golf course and with those trees up," the Palm Springs neighbor added. "I feel like, why am I not on the golf course with you? Why is my property value not going up gradually?"
With more than 275 films shown at the St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF), there are still nine this upcoming week that are part of the Race in America Program. They're free and open to the public.
"Knowing some of the history here, I was really excited to show it to the community and the audience here as well to see if certain things might resonate," Newens said about sharing her film in St. Louis.
In addition to the documentary Racist Trees, St. Louis filmmakers are hoping that their work at SLIFF will provide a helpful backdrop to identify problems and possible solutions surrounding race.
"Since the death of Michael Brown, there has been a needed attention to black film and screening them and making them," Race in America Programmer for SLIFF Emmett Williams said. "But a lot of the films that you see are about trauma. We wanted to change the focus to like people making change and heroic stories."
In fact, East St. Louis native Reginald Hudlin, who is an Academy Award and Emmy-nominated director and producer, will receive a SLIFF Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday, Nov. 19.
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