American Cinematographer - September 2007 - (Page 102)

Points East Little Rock Central, 50 Years After Desegregation by Douglas Bankston Fifty years after the integration of Little Rock Central High, the school remains segregated. Angelica (right) is one of the few AfricanAmerican students in the school’s renowned advancedplacement track profiled in Brent and Craig Renaud’s documentary Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later. n September 1957, Central High School in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, became a focal point in the turbulent desegregation movement. Gov. Orval Faubus defied a federal court order to integrate the all-white school and sent members of the National Guard, under the pretense of student “protection,” to prevent African-American teenagers from stepping onto campus. A national standoff ensued, and it ended on Sept. 25, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower had soldiers from the 101st Airborne escort nine African-American students, known as the Little Rock Nine, to class. In Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later, documentary filmmakers Brent and Craig Renaud take a critical look at how far race relations have progressed at Central since then. Stripped to its essence, filmmaking is but a man (or woman) with a camera trained on a subject. The Renaud brothers adhere to this simple point-andshoot methodology, unobtrusively capturing the scene’s realism — no staged shots and no pre-lit sitdowns. “We know our films aren’t always going I to have beautiful cinematography,” says Brent. “We flow with whatever the environment presents.” The cinéma vérité label often is misapplied in the film industry, but on the Renauds the tag sticks, reinforcing the notion that content is king. The content in the brothers’ documentaries has garnered them critical praise. Based in New York, they were mentored by Emmy-winning filmmaker Jon Alpert (Baghdad ER, Lock-Up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island, American Undercover series) before striking out on their own in 2001 on The Season, an ESPN series documenting college-football rivalries. They then spent 18 months trailing two drug-addicted couples on the streets of New York City to show the lengths someone will go to fuel a crack habit. Airing on HBO in 2005, Dope Sick Love was nominated for an Emmy and has since been adopted by social workers and rehabilitation centers as an educational tool. Off to War, a 10-part series that aired in 2005 on Discovery Times (it also aired on the Discover Channel as a one- hour documentary), followed a unit of the Arkansas National Guard throughout its entire deployment in Iraq, as well as the families they left behind. Off to War won the International Documentary Association award for Best Series and the Overseas Press Club Carl Spielvogel Award for International Reporting. (Ted Koppel, Brian Ross and Lou Dobbs are some of the previous winners of the latter.) The brothers were also nominated for best documentary direction by the Directors Guild of America. Last year the Renauds followed a few war veterans during their campaigns for national office in Taking the Hill. With the 50th anniversary of the Central High crisis approaching, filmmakers and production companies were beating down the school’s front door, but the Renauds had the inside track: they grew up in Arkansas, and Craig was a Central graduate. Craig had also known the school’s principal, Nancy Rousseau, for many years. The brothers were soon granted exclusive, complete access to the school for an entire year. “We always wanted to do something about Central — it’s such a fascinating school,” Craig says. “I think it was important for the school to have someone that knows its history as well as the present-day situation [make the film]. Fifteen years have passed since I was in school there, so we had to be cautious about walking in and assuming to know what it was like. Things change. It was good to be an insider in terms of trust and access, but we also had to take a step back to try to be as objective as we could.” Central High has the distinction of being the only U.S. high school that is also a National Historic Site, complete with a visitor’s center and full-time park ranger, who happens to be the daughter 102 September 2007 Photos courtesy of Brent and Craig Renaud.

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Contents Editor’s Note Global Village DVD Playback Production Slate Bourne Again Cultural Immersion Baroque Visions Once Upon a Time in Bucharest Short Takes Post Focus Filmmakers’ Forum New Products & Services Points East International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index ASC Membership Roster Clubhouse News Wrap Shot

American Cinematographer - September 2007

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