Filmmaker Cai Thomas Shares A Message For Young People – Your Voice Matters

Cai Thomas says that it’s essential to not put limits on what’s doable in a single’s profession. She displays that if anybody would’ve informed her only a yr in the past that she would have a movie premiering on the Tribeca Movie Competition and airing on BET Networks, she would’ve requested what on the planet they had been speaking about. Quick ahead to the summer season of 2023 and Thomas’ documentary is getting ready to make its cable tv debut really fulfilling a dream come true.

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With Queen Collective, Procter & Gamble has partnered with Queen Latifah and Tribeca Studios  to highlight and promote the work of Black girls who’re dedicated to telling numerous and wealthy tales representing communities of coloration.

In Change the Identify, Thomas tells the story of a bunch of younger Black freedom fighters and their educators, who tried to get the identify of a park in Chicago modified from that of a slaveholder to the names of two abolitionists, Anna and Frederick Douglass. The documentary serves as residing proof {that a} native motion in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood can encourage and embolden a technology and exhibit that change is certainly doable.

Thomas mentioned with BET.com simply how essential neighborhood is to her and the way it impressed her to turn out to be a filmmaker. 

BET.com: When did you first fall in love with filmmaking and when did you understand that you simply needed to make them?

Cai Thomas: It wasn’t only one second. It’s been a set of moments for me. As a child, I actually was info hungry. It wasn’t actually till I went to school that I began to find out about impartial cinema and be uncovered to totally different filmmakers that weren’t blockbusters, issues with emotional depth that made me really feel. I used to be form of just like the household documentarian and so it’s actually enjoyable to see my earlier digital camera work. My love of filmmaking has simply been an evolution and one thing that I really feel actually blessed and lucky that I’m capable of do. It’s been actually superb to be a working filmmaker presently and on this second, and I’m actually excited for the rollout of the movie.

BET.com: How would you describe the ability of movie—what do you assume makes it so highly effective?

Cai Thomas: Movie has the ability to tell and in addition misinform. An enormous a part of why I’m fascinated about documentary filmmaking is in order that when occasions occur, they will’t be questioned. It was essential for me to doc these younger people as a result of I by no means needed folks to query or say that’s not doable. My filmmaking is absolutely essential to function an archive of the world that I’m residing in.

BET.com: How do you select to have fun or memorialize Juneteenth?

Cai Thomas: It’s very attention-grabbing to see that bigger companies are conscious of what Juneteenth is. For me, it’s actually essential to maintain the integrity of it and understand that there was a time once we had been enslaved. How is the world altering? How is the world attempting to shift to turn out to be a greater expertise for Black people? I believe there may be a variety of systemic inequities that also exist, however for us to have fun Juneteenth as a second of Black pleasure is absolutely highly effective.

I actually need younger people to look at the movie. It’s an enormous second for me as a director, nevertheless it’s additionally an enormous second for these younger people, that their organizing goes to be acknowledged on a nationwide scale.

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BET:.com What recommendation would you give to different folks attempting to interrupt into the movie trade and the way can they’ve their voices heard and their tales informed?

Cai Thomas: The recommendation that I’d give is to encompass your self, particularly in documentary, with people that aren’t simply filmmakers. You will need to be an individual who’s residing on the planet and paying consideration and interacting with people from varied walks of life. And do the tasks you could’t get out of your head, as a result of engaged on a movie is a variety of time, typically years. They positively take a variety of endurance.

BET.com: Why ought to folks watch Change the Identify? What makes this movie so particular and highly effective?

Cai Thomas: There’s an actual energy in being educated as a younger Black particular person by one other Black particular person. There aren’t sufficient Black lecturers. I believe it’s actually highly effective to point out youngsters at the same time as younger as kindergarten age to be like, ‘Hey, if we see a difficulty in our neighborhood, we are able to impress and attempt to change it.’ What these younger people did is absolutely highly effective and the connection that they’ve with their educators is absolutely one thing else.