Stormy 'Season'

If it wasn't for her son, Jacqueline Olive might never have become a filmmaker.

"By the time he was 2, I'd taken 10,000 photographs of him," Olive said. "Literally 10,000." All those pictures taught her something.

"It was the power of an image. To not just document information, but to transport you into a moment, make you feel what that moment was like."

Olive's son, Teo, who's now 21, isn't in her documentary, "Always in Season," which screens at Wilmington's Cucalorus Festival at 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, at Thalian Hall. But in some ways her love for her son, and her concern for his safety, Olive said, in an era when violence against young black men is often in the news, informed the making of the movie.

Olive's documentary centers on the story of Lennon Lacy, an African-American high-schooler found hanging by his neck from a swing set in Bladenboro in 2014. Officials quickly — too quickly, some say — ruled Lennon's death a suicide. But Lacy’s mother, Claudia, his brother Pierre and others strongly suspect Lennon was lynched, and "Always in Season" presents compelling evidence of suspicious circumstances surrounding his death and an investigation some call a rush to judgment.

"Always in Season," which pairs Lennon's tragic story with an exploration of the legacy of lynchings in the South, is often wrenching and difficult to watch. But it also feels vital to understanding the experiences and perspective of African-Americans in the United States and, specifically, the South.

Full circle

Until September, Olive was technically based in Wilmington. "Technically" because she's been traveling with "Always in Season" to numerous festivals in 2019 and hasn't been in the Port City that much. She now lives in Durham.

In January, "Always in Season" made its premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where Olive won the Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency. With help from the Sundance Institute’s Creative Distribution Fellowship, her production company, Tell It Media, is self-distributing the film this fall.

"Always in Season" opened in theaters Sept. 20 at The Metrograph theater in New York. After its run at select AMC theaters across the country — and its Cucalorus screening in November — the film will make its broadcast premiere Feb. 24, 2020, on the PBS show "Independent Lens."

"Before I dreamed of a Sundance screening, I dreamed of Cucalorus," Olive said via phone from New York, where she'd just shown "Always in Season" at the Ford Foundation. "It means a lot."

After falling in love with photography by capturing images of her young son, Olive, a native of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, transitioned to video by shooting news, sports and weather for the NBC affiliate in her hometown. The deadlines appealed to her, she said, as did "the idea of crafting a story from idea to broadcast by the end of the day."

Later, she went to graduate school at the University of Florida to pursue long-form storytelling. Olive said that having her film set to air on "Independent Lens" brings her filmmaking journey "full circle. Some of the first docs I watched and loved were on 'Independent Lens.' So to (have) the film on 'Independent Lens' in February, it's a dream."

Priority: justice

Olive started making "Always in Season" a decade ago as a documentary about an annual re-enactment of the Moore's Ford lynchings, which took place in 1946 by a bridge near Monroe, Georgia. Two black couples, George and Mae Dorsey and Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, were pulled out of their car and then shot and killed at point-blank range by a mob of 15 to 20 whites. Mae Dorsey was seven months pregnant, and after she was shot someone cut her fetus from her body with a knife. No one has ever been charged with the crimes.

The re-enactment, which draws large crowds each year, is both compelling and bizarre, with liberal use of the n-word and depictions of both the killings and the baby being cut from its mother's body.

The murders, said to have galvanized President Harry S. Truman's support of Civil Rights in the '40s, have since been memorialized by the state of Georgia with a highway marker at the site, among other measures. The black and white actors who perform in the re-enactment, including one woman whose father was in the Ku Klux Klan, say its purpose is to bring an ugly history into the light in the hopes that society can stop repeating it.

"It's the public nature of lynching that really condemns the white community," Sherrilyn Ifill, a lawyer and activist with the NAACP, says in the film. "The idea that people didn't know? They did know."

In Olive's film, the director of the re-enactment says she's "trying to change the conversation on race," and "Always in Season" is also trying to do that. The film has grown into a full-scale examination of the legacy of lynchings. Some of its graphic descriptions — the film is narrated by actor Danny Glover — are horrific. The documentary uses Lennon Lacy's story as a way of connecting his family's search for answers to the South's brutal past when it comes to race.

For the re-enactment, and her film, perhaps, "the main priority is justice," Olive said. For her, justice isn't only about holding people legally accountable for wrongs, but "the myriad of things we can do to help honor the victims, to acknowledge them, to help bring the community toward healing," she said.

"The country is really long overdue for a national conversation around justice and reconciliation," Olive added.

Globally, truth and reconciliation movements in such places as Rwanda, Germany and South Africa have "reckon(ed) with the racial terrorism that's part of their history. We haven't done that in the U.S. We haven't fully unpacked it in a way that is really about looking at every institution that has supported the terrorism, that's made it possible, or that has benefited from racial terrorism."

Lennon Lacy

In making "Always in Season," Olive talked to dozens if not hundreds of people, from experts to regular folks. She shot in nine communities over eight years, filmed the Moore's Ford re-enactment for three years in a row and eventually amassed more than 1,000 hours of footage. With editor and co-writer Don Bernier, she spent half of 2018 structuring a narrative "that was as seamless as possible," Olive said. "It was the biggest challenge … We had to condense (everything) into 90 minutes."

Much of the film is set in Bladenboro, the Bladen County town of 1,750 people where Lennon Lacy lived when he died. The film touches on the mythical, murderous "Beast of Bladenboro," often depicted as a black cat emerging from the swamps — the swamps, interestingly, near where most of the town's black population lives. In the film, white residents generally claim everyone gets along in Bladenboro, but blacks have a different point of view.

"Some things you see, you keep it to yourself," says one African-American resident. "You'll live longer."

The film notes discrepancies in Lennon's case. The medical examiner's camera was confiscated by police, something one investigator said she'd never heard of happening before. Neither the belt Lennon was hung with nor the shoes on his feet when he died belonged to him. One doctor who examined the body said Lennon looked like he'd been "in a barroom brawl" and that he had injuries on his forearms consistent with defending himself. Also, Lennon was dating a 32-year-old white woman who lived in the same trailer as a man who was openly racist.

Jon David, district attorney for Brunswick, Columbus and Bladen counties, is shown in a video saying he's "proud" of the investigation into Lennon's death. But it's clear Lennon's family is satisfied neither with the answers they've been given nor how the investigation was handled. (Olive said the N.C. Department of Justice has told the family they are "open to reopening the case" if they get new information.)

Lennon's grave — within view of a basketball court where his friends shoot hoops — was desecrated after his death, says his mother, Claudia.

"I'm a black woman who has raised a child in the midst of all of these police shootings and vigilante killings," Olive said. "I have understood, in a way some other filmmakers may not have, a sense of what Claudia is going through. It affects me very deeply and very personally. But I'm also a professional and a filmmaker. I am looking to craft a narrative in the best way possible, one that is complex and layered and that fully and as accurately as possible reflects what is going on on the ground (for) everyone in the community."

Empowerment

Olive lived in Wilmington for much of the time she was making "Always in Season." She screened early versions of the film as part of Cucalorus' Works in Progress lab as well as for community groups and local churches. Her son, Teo, attended the Lyceum program at New Hanover High School.

"Folks I met (in Wilmington) are still dear friends," she said, including the Rev. William J. Barber II of the North Carolina NAACP, who appears in "Always in Season." "It really imprinted how lovely, and how progressively, politically active much of the community is."

During her time here, "I connected professionally and personally to Cucalorus," Olive said. She did a three-month residency with the festival, then worked for Cucalorus doing outreach. Until last fall, when she was traveling for "Always In Season," she didn't miss a Cucalorus for years, and Olive is still on the festival's board.

She just signed with the William Morris Agency, which is steering her to her next project(s). Olive said she's drawn to stories set in the South that are "filled with complexity (about) all of the wonderful things and all of the difficult things that come with living (here)."

Olive said she "never made 'Always In Season' just for it to screen, or just for it to be considered for awards. It's always been about where we are now, where it can be a tool."

She's planning a series of "impact and engagement" screenings around the film, starting in October and leading toward its PBS broadcast in February. She said one of those screenings, which are to be paired with three- to four-hour discussions "offering tools for healing," will likely be held in Wilmington early next year. With this city's 1898 killings and insurrection often likened to an unhealed wound, there will be plenty to discuss.

Asked whether there's a shadow of a doubt in her mind that Lennon Lacy was murdered, Olive is unequivocal.

"Absolutely there's a shadow of a doubt," she said. "The film has never been a way of offering a cut-and-dried answer. It shows what's unfolded on the ground. Beyond just being evenhanded, I am a filmmaker, and my filmmaking is informed by my work as a journalist, but it's really cinema that I'm creating. The idea is to show what people have experienced, and part of what they have experienced is not having answers. Not knowing, being left with stories and speculation."

As for Olive's son, who also lives in Durham, her worry about him being impacted by violence is "ever present. There are plenty of moments that are joyful and peaceful and happy," she said. "But that's because that (worry) is pushed to the side."

Teo is 21, the same age Lennon Lacy would be if he had lived. Olive has had conversations with her son about "how we can protect him, and how I can give him lessons to help him protect himself."

At the same time, "It's not just about my son, it's about myself. Black women are also the victims of lynchings and we've also been the victims of police brutality," she said. "It's just infuriating."

In that sense, while wrestling with the dark, troubling material of "Always in Season" has been difficult, Olive said, that unease comes with the territory of being black in America.

"A decade of working on the film has not always been easy. But I love filmmaking. I love the challenge of it," she said. "'Always in Season' is part of my work. It has been empowering to create."

Cucalorus Festival

The 25th annual Cucalorus Festival will be held in and around downtown Wilmington Nov. 13-17. Started back in 1994 as a film festival, Cucalorus has expanded in recent years to include the Cucalorus Connect business conference and the Cucalorus Stage performance series. Jacqueline Olive's documentary "Always in Season" screens at 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, at Thalian Hall. For more information or tickets, go to Cucalorus.org.