KOJO NNAMDIYou're tuned in to The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU 88.5. Welcome. Later in the broadcast we'll talk about the secret history of suburbs and learn about the utopians and radicals who helped found communities like Reston, Virginia and Greenbelt, Maryland.

KOJO NNAMDIBut first the Washington D.C. International Film Festival is kicking off this week with 80 films from 45 countries and some of those films were made locally. Today we're taking a look at some of the films screening at the festival, talking about the year round process of selecting them and explore filmmaking in the region.

KOJO NNAMDIJoining me for this conversation is Anthony or Tony Gittens. He's Founder and Festival Director of the Washington D.C. International Film Festival. Tony, always a pleasure.

ANTHONY GITTENSGood to seeing you, Kojo.

NNAMDIAlso in studio with us is Bonnie Nelson Schwartz. She's the Producer of the movie Traveling While Black. Bonnie, thank you for joining us.

BONNIE NELSON SCHWARTZHappy to be here.

NNAMDITony, this is the 33rd annual festival. Why did you initially want to organize it and how has it evolved over the years?

GITTENSWell, you know, I used to do other kinds of film programming around the city. I've always loved movies. And when I -- in my earlier years, Kojo, you would remember this and I was involved political work. I was just so struck on a community level and in a very large public level how influential films can be. That if you showed a film and you gathered people after watching the film all kinds of dialogue would take place.

GITTENSAnd I was very struck with the power of film to project ideas, different views of different cultures, increase understanding of each other, and I thought that Washington would be a perfect place to bring films from around the world that pretty much wouldn't be seen if we didn't make the effort, and here we are today 33 years later.

NNAMDIThe Washington region is home to quite a few film festivals like AFI Docs and the European Union Showcase. What makes the D.C. FilmFest unique?

GITTENSWe were the first film festival. I always like to point that out. And our success led others to want to emulate that and take advantage of what they learned by our efforts and Washington is really just so appreciative of so many of these film festivals, the Environmental Film Festival, the Gay Film Festival -- they're just so many. But we were the first.

GITTENSSo what sort of makes us stand out just a bit is that we're an international film festival. We don't have really a theme. We're looking at the best films that are made around the globe during the period when we're doing our programming and research and that sort of gives us a new -- a breadth of availability of films that aren't -- where you can lock yourself into a theme, we don't have that problem.

NNAMDIThis year the festival features a series called Food Flicks.

GITTENSYes.

NNAMDICooking and food, why did you decide to curate this particular series, because in addition to liking movies you love eating.

GITTENS(laugh) Well, actually, I'm not really a foodie. My wife is and I have many friends who are, but I'm not really a foodie.

NNAMDIOkay.

GITTENSBut we figured that if people -- they might not be film buffs, but everybody has to eat, right? This is a series we've wanted to do for a number of years. And this year we found that the films are available for us to do it. So we're showing six films from around the globe that deal with chefs and with cooking and with restaurants behind the scene, behind the food porn as we like to call it, you know, you got to eat and the food is pretty and all that.

GITTENSBut we want to look at chefs, what made them decide to do a restaurant, how they got involved with it. And this is all around the world. The Michelin Star and how that is so important to so many restaurants to be able to promote and get rewarded for their efforts. So these are fun films and we're bringing in chefs to come and talk about these. Some local folks, Aaron Silverman who some of you guys out there might know as the owner, the head chef of Rosa's Luxury and Pineapple & Pearls.

GITTENSAnd Jorge Hernandez is going to be there. He's from Mini Bar. And we have showing a film called The Best Sommelier in the World. (laugh) And this is big fun, man. Lindsey Fern, who is the head sommelier at the Little Inn in Washington. I always get that kind of confused there, but she's coming in to talk about the world of sommeliers, which is a world I got to say I know very little about and I'm looking forward to learning more.

NNAMDIAs I said also in studio with us is Bonnie Nelson Schwartz. Bonnie, the film festival is international in scope, but there are some local films. One is called Traveling While Black which you produced. But the film is a little different than most. It's a virtual reality 3D experience. Tell us about it.

SCHWARTZRather than a traditional film where everyone sits down and shares the experience together, virtual reality really allows the viewer to get inside the set and inside the movie itself. So this project really started in Washington D.C. It started with a play at the Lincoln Theater in 2010. And it began after the play was done -- called the Green Book. It began to gain attention. People had never heard of the Green Book -- if you can believe that today after the movie.

SCHWARTZAnd a lot of attention was paid suddenly to what was a Green Book and what was Ben's Chili Bowl. So we began working on collecting stories from what we called safe spaces throughout the country. Those were places like Ben's Chili Bowl that were listed in the Green Book, the travel guide for African Americans during segregation, and when we finished after a couple of years of the process, we realized we had to come home. We had to make this film in Ben's. This is a place of the community where people come together, where they share experiences as stories. It is a safe haven for all who go there.

SCHWARTZSo we made the film -- the virtual reality film is in -- it's a 3D experience, but you put on a headset or goggles, which seems a little alien at the time. But once you begin the movie you are in the situation. It's a time travel experience. You travel back into the 1950s and suddenly you have left Ben's and you're on the bus with the Freedom Riders. You're scared to death. You're having the experience. You're then into the 60s, bricks are flying. The city is on fire. It's a very dangerous feeling and experience.

SCHWARTZAnd then at the end you're with Tamir Rice's mom, Samaria, sitting in the booth and she's telling you about her son has just been shot. And suddenly it all comes together and you realize that things haven't changed that much. So when you come out of this film the empathy that is created and the emotional reaction to it is the end result of having been in the film with the characters.

NNAMDISo you will feel as if you were in this film, but it's my understanding that the way it was shot, it was shot using robots?

SCHWARTZThe camera is a robotic creature with 360 degrees of lenses. And we never went in to the room where it was shot. And for a traditional producer that's very strange experience. But we're sitting in another room controlling the robot. And the robot is moving around the room and it's capturing the conversations. The servers are putting chili dogs on the table. People are talking and suddenly you are sitting there talking to Courtland Cox or Frank Smith or Sandra Butler-Truesdale or Virginia Ali about their experience.

NNAMDITony Gittens, a lot of people may be familiar with the Green Book from the film of the same name. But for listeners who are not, what was the Green Book and why was it deemed necessary?

GITTENSWhen African Americans wanted to travel around the United States in automobiles or train that there were towns and communities they did not -- weren't allowed in. And if they went there they would be shot at or they would have what they call "sundown towns" where they would be told they better get out of there or get in their house before sundown or they were going to be open for arrest or killing.

GITTENSSo there was a guy named -- I can't remember. His name was Green, obviously, and he came up with the book to say, okay, if you are in Atlanta, Georgia, these are places where you can go. You can go get housing. You can go get food. And Ben's Chili Bowl was one of the safe places, it was called, in Washington D.C. where people could come and actually get a meal.

NNAMDIAs a matter of fact, I did not know that about Ben's Chili Bowl. And one of the things I found out about reading about this film is that Washington D.C. had apparently more places than many others in the Green Book that were considered safe places for African Americans. Is that right, Bonnie?

SCHWARTZAbsolutely. And most of them were in the vicinity of Ben's. So the Lincoln Theater was another. There were homes up and down this T Street, R Street where families would list their personal addresses and telephone numbers so you could call and say, hey, do you have a room for tonight? So it was -- the crossroads basically between north and south, which is why there were so many places in the Green Book that are D.C. based.

NNAMDIWe got a tweet from CAH who says, "Has the D.C. Film Fest included movies for a younger audiences? My middle schooler likes foreign films, but most of the films this year are too mature for him."

GITTENSYes. We have done that in the past and what we were planning to do this year is have some matinee screenings. We got contacted by some schools where the middle school students are learning Spanish and this would be an opportunity for them to come and see an actual film in the Spanish language. So, yes. We do do that. Feel free to contact us and we'll try to arrange something.

NNAMDINow back to you, Bonnie, does using these robotic cameras mean that there was no editorial directing of the shots? How does that work?

SCHWARTZCertainly there was. I mean, the shots are set up and rather than shooting a scene and cutting, shooting and cutting, it's continuous shooting for a long time. So we have hours and hours of footage that was shot that had to be woven together. It's not the same process. The director, Roger Ross Williams, was a genius at putting all of these stories together and melding them so that they would be inclusive, shocking, heart-warming. So it's -- what happened as a result of this is interesting. The film, we think of it as an American subject. But in fact, this film is now in New Zealand, Shanghai, London, Bristol, Copenhagen, it's all over the planet. It's going to the Cannes Film Festival. So what we learned from this is that there are safe spaces everywhere and this is something we share.

NNAMDIHow did that affect you? How was the process different from other films that you've worked on?

SCHWARTZWell, as a traditional producer I was at first baffled and doubting. And the two guys, who were the film makers, Felix and Paul, from Quebec have made all of the great VR films including the one recently on Obama. So they kind of led us by the hand and took us into the process. We were completely confident that this was going to work out, but it's a very different experience.

NNAMDIThis for both of you, do you think we can expect to see more films like this and if so, how will that affect the film industry?

GITTENSWell, in a lot of ways it's the future of movie going. That people can now sit at home and be able to have the kind of experience that Bonnie was describing. The effect is that the exhibition houses, the movie theaters are terrified. It's that plus streaming -- VR plus streaming is putting a lot of chains out of business or having people not come. That's why you see them putting, you know, these big couches in the movie theaters and spending so much money on the special effect Captain America and such films, because it's hard to emulate that back at your own house. But they'll do anything they can to get you to come to the movie theater.

NNAMDII thought the couches were because of people like me aging. I couldn't sit up for a whole movie.

GITTENSWell, we don't people falling asleep either, so you know.

NNAMDIBonnie, how have audiences been responding to Traveling While Black as you've shown it around the country?

SCHWARTZWhen it opened at Sundance, we were just happy that it was there. You know, thrilled, you know, oh, finally, but what happened was it sold out and blew off the roof basically and everyone wanted it simultaneously. So it is in festivals currently and we are developing it into a six part series so you can see the impact of these stories will continue. And I think that the hope is it will travel in a museum exhibition. At Sundance we built a replica of Ben's Chili Bowl. Exactly the menus, the juke box, the chili dogs, the whole thing. And we will travel this to Civil Rights museums with the VR film.

NNAMDIFascinating. We got a tweet from Richard Fornbock, who says he's interested in the D.C. Noir film. It's going to be another local film that is showing at the festival. It's called D.C. Noir. It's based on stories by D.C. crime writer George Pelecanos. What can viewers expect from D.C. Noir and why did you choose it?

GITTENSThere's been a richness of D.C. produced films this year for our festival and we're very happy about that. D.C. Noir as you mention is a film written and part of it directed by George Pelecanos. George is an award winning writer, writes about D.C. crime scene. And this is a film about the streets, the hard life guys and girls, who live in Washington and find themselves in crime. They find themselves sometimes forced, sometimes by choice, in the darker alleys of our city and their stories, the corrupt policemen that they have to deal with, captured in the way only George Pelecanos would be able to do that. So we're showing that next Saturday and George is going to be here.

NNAMDIAnd writes about D.C. the way no one else can.

GITTENSNo one else does. That's right

NNAMDII think he lives in some of those alleys. The short films that make up D.C. Noir were shot on location in D.C. using all local crews. How is business for people working on the technical side of local film making?

GITTENSIn D.C., it's not bad. It's not bad. They get out of school and there's work here especially in the government not for everyone, but a lot of folks do that. And then there are a number of folks, who want to direct their own films, and they work -- do other jobs. They teach in universities nearby. They work at public radio. Then in the time they have allowed to themselves and given their capacity to raise funding for their films, they go and make their own films.

GITTENSI mean, we're showing a couple of them in the festival this year that -- Our Walmart, for example, the film makers are locally based, work at a university and we have the American premiere of their film. And there's several others. A lot of shorts, we're showing Metro shorts.

NNAMDISo you're showing D.C. You're bringing to D.C. a lot of international films, but you're also highlighting D.C. to the world.

GITTENSOf course. (laugh) Of course, this is where we live and we appreciate these films and these film makers. They're very talented and a lot of their work can compete all over the world.

NNAMDIBonnie, talk about the state of film making in this region especially the documentary scene. How easy or difficult is the process for doing that in D.C.? We know that the city aims to encourage filmmakers and TV series to shoot here.

SCHWARTZI think that D.C. is known primary as a news and public affairs town. So making a feature or a documentary is much more challenging. There is a lot of support now, we are finding, from the mayor's office and the film commission. They were incredibly supportive of Traveling While Black and in fact, allowed us to build that exhibition that was a replica of Ben's at Sundance. So there are ways to find local support, foundations and a lot of national financial support if you work with the people here who know how to navigate the waters. It's not easy.

NNAMDITony, tell us a little bit about how long this year's film festival is going to be and what was the process you used for determining what made it into the festival this year?

GITTENSThe festival starts actually tomorrow on the 25th and we run through May 5th. And the process tends to be the same. We spend months and months looking at hours and hours and hours of films from around the world. And it's work. It's work. We attend other festivals to see what the trends are. So we can always keep pace and we have a team that does that. We pull our selections together and package them and try to do the best we can to bring the best films that we could find here to Washington D.C.

NNAMDITony Gittens is the Founder and Festival Director of the Washington D.C. International Film Festival now in its 33rd year. Congratulations, Tony. Thank you for joining us.

GITTENSThank you, sir. And I'm not sure you were born when we started it, Kojo. I don't know. I don't know. I know Bonnie wasn't.

NNAMDIThanks a lot yeah, right. Bonnie, wasn't, right. She was too young. Bonnie Nelson Schwartz is the Producer of Traveling While Black. Bonnie, thank you for joining us.

SCHWARTZThank you.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back we'll talk about the secret history of suburbs and learn about the utopians and radicals who helped found communities like Reston, Virginia and Greenbelt, Maryland. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.