![]() Roadside Attactions releases Exhibiting Forgiveness nationwide on October 18th, 2024. NYC MOVIE GURU: How did you find the right balance between entertaining the audience and provoking them emotionally as well as intellectually? Titus Kaphar: That's not how I make stuff. That's a little bit of the challenge of being a painter which is a necessarily solitary act and being a filmmaker which is a necessarily communal act. When I'm making a painting in my studio, I'm not thinking about who's going to see it later; I'm thinking about my experience in that moment and whether I'm able to put all of that inside the thing in front of me. So, I brought that to the film, for better or worse. You judge it based on how you feel about film. I wasn't making something to entertain. That's not what I was trying to do; I was trying to make a good piece of art because all that I know how to do is to make art. That's my practice. So, I think it will be for other people to judge whether it's entertaining or not, but "Will this be entertaining?" was definitely not one of the things that was going through my head. That said, I know that that's a really common framework for making a film, but it just wasn't my process. NYC MOVIE GURU: Poetry is often a protest for or against something. What do you think Exhibiting Forgiveness is a protest for or against? TK: When you said that, it's making me think about all the poems about love that I've read and what does that mean. My favorite poet and one of my dear friends, Reginald Dwayne Betts, he actually wrote a poem about our sons and our experiences as fathers after seeing Exhibiting Forgiveness. I'm wondering, in that, what is the protest. If I have to use the language of protest and have to use that word, then I'm not sure what's being protested. What's being fought for is our sons and protecting their childhood in that poem. It's about being the kind of men that are willing to tell your boys that you love them. Being the kind of men that are willing to say to you sons, "It's absolutely okay to cry." Being the kind of fathers that say, "Your emotions are actually your superpowers, so you don't have to run away from them." I don't know if that's protest, but I definitely think that poetry is an important part of Exhibiting Forgiveness. NYC MOVIE GURU: How would you define the term "cinematic"? TK: When people are saying, "cinematic," what they're saying is, "That reminds me of a movie." When I think of the word and what it means as it relates to my films or my paintings, I'll tell you what I think is a big difference between paintings and cinema. In paintings, I have to tell you the whole story in a single image. I have just this moment for you to peace it together. You take it all in at the same time. It doesn't transition from light to dark in that moment where as you don't see a thing and then you do see a thing as it emerges. The thing that is beautiful about film is that I can show you this moment, what happened before and after. You have this sequences, you have time. That's a big difference. So, when I started to make this film, I'm a painter. That's my training. What I was setting out to do was to try to make a painting in motion. That was what was in my head. If I could do that, then those were the parameters I knew that I could work with. NYC MOVIE GURU: In the book Toxic Parents, author Susan Forward observed that society often pressures men to avoid crying. Do you think that Tarrell experiences that kind of societal pressure? TK: I grew up in a generation where it wasn't okay for boys to cry. If you were crying, you were told to stop. If you cried in the wrong context, you were called all kinds of names. I grew up with the idea that, as men, we are supposed to hide our emotions. And then I went into a field where understanding your emotions, being able to mine your experiences and what I felt in those experiences is critical to being able to communicate and being able to make great art. If you're unwilling to actually engage with your emotions, I'm not sure how you can make art. It's, in fact, the process of becoming an artist that pushed me into a better relationship with dealing with my emotions. So, I agree with that statement, particularly what she's talking about for men. That was very much my experience. NYC MOVIE GURU: Do you think that Tarrell forgave his father, La'Ron? Do you think that La'Ron forgave himself? How introspective do you think he is? TK: I actually think that that's the question. The only reason that I'm going to obfuscate a little bit is because I think what's powerful about Exhibiting Forgiveness is that it doesn't give you easy answers. You don't leave this film going,"Oh, Titus, thank you so much for that clarity. Now I can go off and have dinner." That's not what it is; what it is at the end of this film is you bringing into it your experiences and you come to a conclusion. So, I had my aunt who was around me and in my life at that time, in that situation. My cousin, who was also with me at that time, was like a younger brother to me. When they both saw the movie, they walked away with two very different understandings. They both liked what they saw, but my aunt said, "You're so glad that he forgave him at the end of that, Titus." And then my cousin said, "What are you talking about?? He did not forgive him." For me, that was "job done." I want some kind of nuance to the experience of this film. Being didactic was not what I was trying to do. I personally find that the more didactic I am as an artist, the less interesting the work I'm making is. NYC MOVIE GURU: How do you think Tarrell would react to the Pablo Neruda poem, "They can cut all of the flowers, but they can't stop the spring from coming." TK: Wow! Wow! What's interesting about that is that, as a character, Tarrel might not be able to acknowledge that in himself, but ultimately, he would hope that for his children. So, the analogy of the spring that's coming, that would be his son. Sometimes, as fathers, it feels like, "Yea, man, I'm kind of damaged goods. Maybe I'm a little fargone. I can't get away from those things that I experienced as a child, but what I can do is set up the best circumstances for my own children and make sure that the next generation is not dealing with the same kind of suffering that the last generation was dealing with. Interviews Menu Alphabetical Menu Chronological Menu ______________________________________________________ |