Episode Transcript
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0:00
Last week, we heard from Question boother's
0:02
about what home meant to them.
0:04
Some people said it was a place, others said
0:06
it was people or a community. But
0:08
what about people who have to leave their homes,
0:11
who have to come to a new and unfamiliar
0:13
place and start all over again. That's
0:15
the story of Clarkston, Georgia. Mm
0:19
hmmmm.
0:23
Welcome to the Question Booth. My name is Dylan Fagan
0:26
and I'm Kathleen Coullian, and
0:28
we had the opportunity to speak with
0:30
an incredible local filmmaker, Aaron
0:33
Bernhardt. Aaron is the producer
0:35
and co director of the new documentary Clarkston.
0:38
Clarkson, Georgia is the most diverse
0:40
square mile in the country, now
0:43
home to over one hundred and fifty different
0:45
ethnicities. The film is in
0:47
production right now. Aaron and her crewe
0:49
are following fifteen subjects and documenting
0:51
their day to day lives in Clarkston. YEA,
0:54
so let's listen in on our conversation.
0:57
M M.
1:00
I always wanted to be a journalist growing
1:02
up UM and in college
1:05
at the University of Virginia, did a lot of television
1:07
news and radio news, and
1:10
then I was deciding between
1:12
did I wanna. I really wanted to be just like
1:14
Christian alm import international correspondent,
1:17
and I didn't know if I should get there through
1:20
going international or going to local news,
1:22
because they would both kind of get me to the same point.
1:25
So I got a job at the ABC
1:27
affiliate in Augusta, Georgia and in
1:29
the Peace Corps in Madagascar, and
1:31
I chose the Peace Corps. So I moved
1:33
to Africa, and then um we got
1:36
evacuated. I came home to Atlanta and
1:38
started working at CNN. So
1:40
I worked up through production
1:43
there and ended up being a writer and producer
1:45
at CNN, and then left to make my
1:47
first documentary feature film, Emba
1:50
means saying really really exciting. Um,
1:52
how far that film went, how many
1:54
people it's touched. And it's about the Grammy nominated
1:57
African children's choir. Another
1:59
reason why I don't like my voice, because
2:01
I compare it to theirs. UM.
2:04
So I made that film. It was the
2:06
best and worst experience of my life. And
2:09
so because of the worst parts, I
2:11
decided I was going to be a one hit wonder
2:13
and that was it. Um. And so I
2:16
did a few other jobs. Um. I
2:18
was still kind of missing that storytelling
2:21
aspect. Um. Once you do it,
2:23
it's hard to ever not do it. But
2:26
I had a good work life balance for the first
2:28
time in my life, and so that was good. Um
2:31
and then when the white supremacist
2:33
went to Charlottesville this past
2:35
August, so about a year ago, I
2:38
went to v A. I studied civil rights
2:40
at v A. So seeing the
2:42
white supremacist there, people
2:44
even our own age, like young white
2:47
supremacist, I it just
2:49
blew my mind in the worst way. And
2:51
I couldn't except not
2:54
spending the rest of my days
2:56
in the near future spending all
2:58
day every day working to stop the
3:00
white supremacists from becoming
3:03
white supremacist. UM. So
3:05
I had been talking with another filmmaker,
3:08
Joseph East, who's my co director on this, about
3:11
doing something in Clarkston. We weren't really sure
3:13
what we had been kind of talking about it for years.
3:16
Um. We were both really passionate about Clarkston.
3:18
I first discovered Clarkston over
3:21
ten years ago when I got home from the Peace Corps.
3:24
I started volunteering and Clarkston
3:26
with the Fujis soccer team, tutoring the kids.
3:28
UM. My husband and I are second date ever
3:31
was volunteering in Clarkston, So it's
3:33
been a really special place for me, and
3:36
I knew I wanted to tell a story about it, but I didn't
3:38
know how. So then when everything happened
3:40
in Charlottesville, it just seemed perfect,
3:42
Like the opposite of hate is Clarkston,
3:45
Georgia. So being able to tell their
3:47
stories what we decided to do.
3:49
Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about
3:52
how you started your idea for the
3:54
film and just like decided to go into production
3:56
because you said earlier you know you wanted to tell the story,
3:58
but you just didn't know how. Yeah, So we looked
4:01
at we thought it would be really cool to make a documentary
4:03
series there, which we still want to do
4:06
um. But we also realized that Joseph and
4:08
I each had one successful documentary
4:10
feature film under our belts, so it made
4:12
the most sense to just do that. So
4:15
our hope is that this one documentary
4:17
feature film will be so successful
4:19
that then someone will have us make a series
4:21
about Clarkston and or similar places
4:24
around the country and world, because
4:26
the story isn't just ninety minutes.
4:28
I mean, there's just so much more to it.
4:31
So in August everything
4:34
happened then in September, I
4:36
had quit everything else that I was doing
4:38
to go full steam ahead on Clarkston, which
4:40
is our working title, UM, and just
4:42
started spending all day every day there.
4:45
So we would shoot a lot, but also
4:47
I would just spend you know, twelve fifteen
4:49
hours a day meeting with people and meeting
4:52
with Matt, refuge coffee, meeting with them in
4:54
their homes, the community center, the
4:56
free clinics there, everywhere,
4:58
UM, lots of really cool after school programs.
5:01
So found over
5:03
a hundred people that had really
5:05
interesting stories. I mean, there's thirteen thousand
5:07
people that lived there who all have really interesting
5:10
stories, but found well over
5:12
a hundred who were interested in sharing those
5:14
with us on film. So we started
5:16
chasing all of those. So
5:18
it was a really tough start
5:21
because we are just filming so much
5:23
UM and then so that we wouldn't
5:26
get burnt out, we started narrowing it
5:28
down to sixty and then thirty,
5:30
and now we have about fifteen people that
5:32
we follow pretty regularly. Wow,
5:35
that's incredible. Yeah, there's so many stories to tell
5:37
that I feel like it must have been very
5:39
hard. It's still hard, still
5:41
hard to cut down to those fifteen. I
5:44
love that you're able to feature
5:47
a place in Georgia where unfortunately
5:49
people had to make a new home. But
5:52
it seems like there's so much love
5:54
there in community and strength, and
5:57
our participants really touched on that when they
5:59
came into the booth and when we asked them what home
6:01
meant to them, It kind of evolved in this not
6:04
such a physical place, but the
6:06
community and the people who they loved,
6:08
they were able to build. And I really see that
6:10
happening in Clarkston. Yeah,
6:13
well, I want to go back to one other and unfortunate
6:16
that I thought you were referring to first.
6:18
So unfortunately the
6:21
reason why Clarkson became
6:23
Clarkson. So most people when they meet
6:25
me, their first question is, how is Clarkson
6:27
Clarkson? How did this happen? And that's
6:30
actually an unfortunate story, um,
6:32
but it's turned into this really beautiful
6:35
thing. So the South
6:38
is one thing I love about the film is that
6:40
we're showing this really beautiful, positive
6:43
human rights, civil rights story coming out
6:45
of the South, specifically out of Metro
6:47
Atlanta, which has this rich,
6:49
beautiful history and past of really
6:52
amazing civil and human rights coming out
6:55
of this this city in this region. But
6:58
that all happened as bad things happened,
7:01
right. So one of
7:03
the reasons why Clarkson became Clarkson
7:05
is because Clarkson's existed since I think
7:07
eighteen eighty two. Um, it's been a
7:09
railroad town, primarily white for its
7:12
whole history. Um, it's just nestled
7:14
right between Decatur where Emery is in Stone
7:16
Mountain where the KKK was
7:19
revitalized, and I believe nineteen
7:21
fifteen. So in nineteen
7:23
seventy, Clarkston High School
7:26
integrated and a lot
7:28
of white people did what we call white
7:30
flight, and a lot of them moved over to Stone
7:32
Mountain, one town over. Um.
7:34
And as a few black families
7:36
in black youth started going to the
7:38
schools, less and less white people were there,
7:41
and not that many more other people moved
7:43
there. And then Atlanta,
7:45
the metro area had this boom
7:48
of development right after that in
7:50
the late seventies where just people
7:52
just built tons and tons of apartment complexes.
7:55
So in nineteen eighty, when the USA
7:58
and the Refugee Act, every state in
8:00
America got to decide how many refugees
8:02
to take and we're gonna put them. And these were Vietnamese
8:04
refugees and a refugee is someone
8:06
who is forced to flee and
8:08
who the US actually invites to come here.
8:11
So they're not immigrants, their
8:13
refugees and it's a legal status.
8:16
So these Vietnamese refugees, many of whom
8:18
fought with for the US government
8:20
with the US government in Vietnam,
8:23
so they fought for our flag. Um,
8:25
they came to Georgia, and Georgia
8:28
decided to put them in Clarkston because Clarkson had
8:30
lots of empty apartment complexes
8:32
that were affordable, and a community
8:35
college and a technical college there.
8:38
Um, and it's just at the intersection of a lot
8:40
of major highways. So so that's one
8:43
unfortunate that turned into something beautiful. Then
8:45
the other unfortunate is that these
8:48
thousands and tens of thousands of people
8:51
um, Clarkston has welcomed as refugees
8:53
from over a hundred and fifty ethnicities
8:56
and over sixty countries around the world.
8:58
So unfortunately, these bowl were
9:00
forced to flee their homes, which means that
9:03
war, persecution and severe
9:05
violence was happening to them. So a
9:07
lot of the kids that we spent time with in Clarkston,
9:10
their schools were bombed. They've
9:12
seen bombs. So last night we watched
9:14
fireworks for the Fourth of
9:16
July with a lot of these kids, and I was really
9:18
nervous um because it's kind
9:20
of similar to a bomb, But they got
9:23
it. They've assimilated and their resilient. So
9:25
these people have come to Atlanta, to
9:27
Clarkson and it has become their new
9:30
home. And not only
9:32
are they survivors who have survived
9:34
these horrible atrocities, but they're
9:36
making Clarkson and our whole region
9:39
now thrive. Yeah, and it's
9:41
so beautiful. It is, like you said, it's upsetting
9:43
that terrible events had to lead to
9:46
such strength and community and growth, but
9:49
it is just so amazing that that's what's happening
9:51
now in the South, which is
9:53
so important because I think it's such an important
9:55
side to show that there's still so much growth
9:58
coming slowly but surely.
10:05
We'll be right back with more from Aaron after
10:07
a quick break. M
10:19
hm hmm.
10:22
Of the individuals you're following for the film,
10:24
can you give us kind of the
10:26
background of any of them.
10:29
So one of them is Mama Mina.
10:32
She's eighty nine. She's the mom of
10:34
Clarkston. She'll be ninety
10:36
on Halloween. Um So, Halloween
10:38
will mark her ninety birthday. In her
10:41
tenth ear in the US, she's
10:43
working really hard on becoming a citizen right
10:45
now, so we're hoping to film that. Um
10:48
you can become a citizen after five years
10:50
here, but it costs um I think around
10:52
dollars, and you have to pass a bunch of tests and everything
10:55
interviews. Um So, she
10:58
hasn't really had time to study for the US
11:00
because she spends all day every
11:02
day, eighty nine year old woman walking around
11:04
Clarkston helping people. So
11:08
last night, for example, I
11:11
was calling her and calling her, you know, Mama Mina,
11:13
where are you? I want to film you watching the fireworks
11:15
And she finally called back. She said, Aaron, I'm
11:17
so busy helping people. So
11:21
she's amazing. She lost her whole
11:23
family, her husband, extended
11:26
family, and her ten children she
11:28
lost to machete violence in Mogadishu,
11:31
Somalia um
11:33
in the early nineties. So
11:36
her way of dealing with that loss
11:38
is by putting every ounce of energy
11:41
in her eighty nine year old body, which is a
11:43
lot of energy. She says she feels like she's twenty
11:45
one into helping people,
11:48
and she considers everyone she meets
11:50
her child and that's how she deals with that
11:52
she lost her real children. So
11:55
she's one. UM. We have
11:58
have All Dr haval Kelly, who
12:00
has gotten a lot of presce attention recently.
12:03
He was on the front page of the Washington
12:05
Post a couple of weeks ago because
12:07
he has become friends with a former white supremacist,
12:10
a guy who was the head of security
12:13
for the State of Georgia for the KKK, Chris
12:17
Buckley, and Chris has
12:19
left the KKK and teamed up with
12:21
have All to help he'll
12:24
hate. So we're filming the two of
12:26
them on that journey, which is really really incredible.
12:30
UM. And then we kind
12:32
of focus a lot on Amina's world
12:34
and have All's world and all the people that they
12:37
touch through their world. So have
12:39
All is a doctor. He's a
12:41
cardiology fellow at Emory and he
12:44
he really doesn't want to be the exception.
12:47
He wants to be the rule. So he's
12:49
working really hard to make that happen.
12:52
So he started something called the Young Physicians
12:54
Initiative, which is in Clarkston High School
12:56
and then a lot of other Title
12:58
one high schools now a cross Atlanta where
13:01
more House and Emory med students
13:03
mentor and have an after school
13:06
program for these high schoolers who probably don't
13:08
have doctors in their lives. Um
13:10
maybe they have a doctor that they go to, but they don't
13:12
know one socially. Um.
13:14
So they mentor these young high
13:17
schoolers and teach them what it takes
13:19
to get to med school to become a doctor,
13:21
or they even do. We filmed them doing
13:23
test dr cases at Clarkson
13:26
High School. UM so,
13:28
just it's just so rich. Oh
13:31
my gosh, that all sounds so amazing,
13:33
but like very hard thinks
13:36
are unfathomable, but something
13:39
so beautiful coming from that. Well.
13:42
I always like to ask the question
13:45
that we ask our participants to the people
13:47
we bring in for these interviews. Um,
13:50
Aaron, what does home mean
13:52
to you? I think
13:54
home mm hmm, it's
13:56
so hard. I
13:59
was born and raised here and
14:01
I'm back and I never thought I would
14:03
be back here because Atlanta
14:05
was home and I have just a really adventurous
14:08
spirit, so I never I wanted to just
14:10
have the world be my home, and that's
14:12
why I went to Virginia and Africa and
14:15
then just landed here and things kept
14:17
keeping me here. But I don't
14:19
think it just Atlanta's home. I really
14:22
do feel like the world is home. I
14:25
feel just at home. And you
14:27
know, a mud hut with a tin roof and
14:30
rural Uganda as I do,
14:33
you know, with friends
14:35
and family in Blackhead, and those two
14:37
worlds are so different, but
14:40
what they have in common is people I love.
14:43
So I think home is just being
14:45
with people you love. I have a puppy. Now
14:48
I guess he's too, so I don't know if he's still a puppy,
14:50
but yeah, Sabo,
14:53
Sabo means dude in in
14:55
Luganda, Sabo
14:57
is definitely home. Um.
15:00
Just being with him anywhere feels
15:03
like home. I wish I could take him around the world
15:05
with me, because now when I'm
15:07
not with him, I don't feel home. So
15:09
maybe that's really how you know what home
15:11
is is knowing what's not home. Um,
15:15
So being without say Bo's not
15:18
home. So it's
15:20
interesting. There was a film I haven't seen it yet
15:22
that came out at Sundance this year UM
15:25
that a bunch of cities and refugee
15:27
organizations have been screening. That's
15:29
called This Is Home, and it's about
15:32
Syrian refugees coming to Baltimore,
15:35
UM before, during, and
15:37
after the travel Ban, so
15:40
it's kind of an interesting title to go with.
15:43
That's extremely powerful. Yeah, and one
15:46
challenge that we're taking is that
15:48
we don't want our film to be like any other film.
15:51
So all the films like this as Home,
15:53
Um, we are working really hard
15:55
to see what stories have they told, and they
15:58
really tell the journey of Huming
16:00
to America. So we did at first go
16:02
to the airport and film families
16:05
just landing in Hartsfield Jackson and all
16:07
of that, but there are other films that tell that
16:09
story. And so we know that Clarkston
16:12
is so unique, um that really
16:14
no community in the world looks like it.
16:17
So we want to tell the most unique story
16:19
possible because we have that opportunity with
16:21
Clarkston, and we just really want to do justice
16:24
to the people in Clarkson and make them feel
16:26
like when they watch our film
16:28
that it feels like home. Yeah. I
16:30
mean that's what the stories you've
16:32
told already and highlighted. I mean, it's their
16:34
all on their own like that hasn't been told.
16:36
So that's very exciting that you'll
16:38
be able to tell that story. I
16:41
did. We'll
16:45
have more question booth after the break m
16:59
H.
17:02
So Clarkston is
17:04
this square mile in size one point
17:06
four. It's amazing just inside
17:09
of that space, how much
17:11
there is to tell. And you've
17:15
told us a lot of great things about Clarkson,
17:17
But I wonder, is there anything else that you for
17:20
listeners who may not be from Georgia or
17:22
may not be familiar with
17:24
Clarkston before today, There anything
17:26
else you'd want them to know about Clarkston.
17:29
Well, not only do non
17:31
Georgians know about Clarkson, but almost
17:34
everyone we meet doesn't know about Clarkson.
17:36
And when I tell people how it's
17:39
so cool to tell a story that's only fifteen
17:41
minutes from my house, they're like, what, Clarkson's
17:44
only fifteen minutes from Atlanta. Um,
17:47
Clarkston is metro Atlanta,
17:49
but it's definitely its own city,
17:51
has its own mayor and its own specially
17:54
unique sense of everything. Though
17:56
Atlanta is a welcoming city as well,
17:59
which only mayor mayor
18:01
yeah, young hip mayor exactly
18:04
a millennial mayor. Clarkson was in
18:06
November became the first city in America
18:08
with a majority elected millennial
18:10
body, So the majority of elected
18:13
officials in the city of Clarkson or millennials.
18:16
There are also former refugees
18:18
on City Council. There's a former refugee
18:21
in the police force. UM.
18:23
And what former refugee means is that they
18:25
came here as refugees and then they became
18:27
American citizens. So they're really
18:30
but we call everyone in Clarkson new Americans
18:32
because they are UM
18:34
and a lot of people there. So we're
18:36
also doing a workforce development program
18:39
with the film where we're training people
18:41
and Clarkson and filmmaking UM
18:44
and then paying them to work on our team
18:46
and then will eventually help them get
18:48
more jobs in the industry. One of them
18:51
is Abdual and Abdul
18:53
is Ethiopian, but he has never been Ethiopia.
18:56
Who was born and raised in a refugee camp and
18:58
Kakuma and Ken Yeah,
19:00
and he came here too and a half years ago and
19:03
in two and a half more years when becomes an American
19:05
citizen, it will be his first time ever belonging
19:07
to a country. Yeah.
19:10
So so talk about home.
19:13
I mean, this is his first home and
19:15
he's twenty six. UM.
19:18
But what else do I want people to know about Clarkson.
19:21
UM. There's really good food
19:24
from lots of ethnicities, really
19:26
good coffee UM,
19:28
and it's so welcoming. When we had
19:31
this situation. Um,
19:33
in May, we had a guy,
19:36
a man who was running for governor.
19:39
His name is Michael Williams. He had three percent
19:42
um that two days or three days
19:44
before the election, he was at three percent, and so
19:46
kind of in a last sitch effort to
19:49
get notoriety and name recognition.
19:51
Perhaps I don't know why he did it, but this is
19:53
what other media outlets are saying. He
19:57
got a school bus and painted it and called it
19:59
the deportation bus. And he
20:02
came to Clarkston. And
20:05
I don't know how no one told him, but there's
20:07
really no one in Clarkston to deport because
20:09
there are no illegal immigrants
20:12
there. Maybe there are one or two, but
20:14
I know a lot of people in Clarkson and
20:16
they're very illegal, and
20:19
we invited them here. So they didn't even
20:21
come here by choice. Um. They
20:23
would all much rather be in their home countries
20:26
than here. Um. But obviously
20:28
their homes don't exist anymore
20:30
in many cases, or their families.
20:33
So he brought this deportation bus
20:35
to Clarkston. A lot of people in Clarkson were
20:37
really scared because a lot of refugees.
20:39
There's these incredible nonprofits and agencies
20:42
and volunteers teaching them their rights.
20:44
But if some man says I'm coming
20:46
to Clarkston, Georgia with a deportation bus,
20:49
and you hear about a Muslim travel band and
20:51
all these things, you're you're scared.
20:53
So we went and we filmed the reaction the
20:56
day it was announced, and then we filmed the actual
20:59
occurrence, and I
21:01
would say around a hundred and fifty peaceful
21:03
protesters came out in opposition
21:05
of him. Super diverse array
21:08
of people. Um, and every
21:10
one of them that actually lived in Clarkston,
21:12
whether they were white Americans,
21:15
Black Americans, or had come here recently
21:17
from other countries as immigrants or refugees
21:20
or migrants or asylum seekers or
21:22
on special immigration visas, they
21:25
all actually welcomed him. Um.
21:27
They even had a sign that said, welcome Michael
21:29
Williams. Everyone is welcome here. Have
21:32
all's mom made him back lava
21:34
but they ate together. Um,
21:37
So that's Clarkston just welcoming.
21:41
Wow. It's great to hear about
21:43
a community, especially one like we said,
21:45
this so close to Atlanta, and the Atlanta is a welcoming
21:47
place, but that feels like a whole
21:50
another level of welcome, a level
21:52
of back lava welcome. Yeah. I didn't
21:54
even know that existing, but now
21:56
I do. It was the day before Ramadan
21:58
too, so have all was able to eat it with him.
22:01
Um, what's next for you? Yeah?
22:04
Oh, we've got six more months of filming,
22:07
so nothing's next. This is right
22:10
smack up in the middle of production.
22:13
Um, and it's it's going
22:15
really well. It's still really
22:18
challenging. I would put it in the same
22:20
category, close to IMBA
22:23
and best and worst all
22:25
at the same time. Um,
22:27
it's really hard, but it's
22:29
worth it. One more thing, where
22:31
can people follow along?
22:34
Yeah, we would love that. Um.
22:37
Clarkston Film dot Com is our website
22:39
and it links to all of our different social
22:41
media pages and we have a
22:43
special page with the Metro Ely in a
22:46
Chamber. They have a new digital
22:48
platform called thea um so
22:50
we have some behind the scenes videos
22:52
up there, specifically about our workforce development
22:55
program which is really fun. Um.
22:58
So yeah, please follow along. We have
23:00
an email list and part
23:02
of how documentary works as if you can
23:05
find your audience early then it
23:07
makes it a lot easier to raise
23:10
support to continue going. So we
23:12
would love everyone to to join us.
23:15
On the journey Now, m H.
23:21
That was Aaron Bernhardt. We'd like to thank
23:23
her for speaking with us and we hope you'll check
23:26
out her work. Tell us what you think, share
23:28
your stories with us. We love getting your emails.
23:30
You can send them to the Question Booth at house to
23:32
works dot com. We're a Question Underscore
23:35
booth on Twitter and the Question Booth on Instagram.
23:38
Yeah, and you can visit us in
23:40
the booth. We're here in Atlanta at Pont
23:42
City Market child to five pm
23:44
Friday through Sunday. Kathleen and I
23:46
wrote the script, I did the music, and the two of us
23:48
produced a show. And the special
23:51
part is you, our listeners and
23:53
participants. We'll talk to you
23:55
again soon, but until then, see
23:57
you in the Question Booth.
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