Deep Roots: Talking With Jennifer MacArthur, Director of "Family Tree"
"Family Tree" strikes a compelling balance between a call to action to protect our climate future, and a reflection on the importance of human connection. New documentary, "Family Tree," explores the world of sustainable forestry through the lens of two Black families in rural North Carolina. The film, directed by Jennifer MacArthur, explores the importance of deepening familial ties and creating a strong foundation of trust for multi-generational economic and ecological sustainability for families. It also highlights the burden that land theft has on Black families and the planet. The documentary's debut at Full Frame is on Friday, April 5.
प्रकाशित : दो महीने पहले द्वारा Justin Laidlaw में Lifestyle
New documentary Family Tree takes us into the world of sustainable forestry through the lens of two Black families in rural North Carolina during pivotal moments in their business and family history. Black land ownership has dwindled since the beginning of the 20th century, and Family Tree examines the ways that creating multi-generational economic and ecological sustainability for families requires deepening familial ties and creating a strong foundation of trust.
Jennifer MacArthur, the film’s director, brings audiences inside intimate moments between the two families—the Jefferies and Williams—while detailing the burden that land theft has on Black families and the planet. In doing so, Family Tree strikes a compelling balance between a call to action to protect our climate future, and a reflection on the importance of human connection, two things that are also deeply personal to MacArthur. A
head of the film’s debut at Full Frame on Friday, April 5, we spent time talking with the director.
INDY: What motivated you to make Family Tree?
MACARTHUR: I was going through my own reconnection with nature. I grew up in the country outside of New York City, but when I was a teenager we moved to Alaska. This was in the ’90s. There weren’t things like satellite television. It was very remote and rural, even in Anchorage. When I left Alaska, I moved to New York where I lived for 20 years, but I’m still a bumpkin.
I feel like there’s such an association with the Black experience in America and cities and urban environments. The reality is that we’re all country people. Most of us live in the South and a lot of us are living in exurbs or in rural places. So the film is an opportunity for me to explore that lifestyle and that way of being, and show a different side to the Black experience and our identity, one that I think is central to our experience as Americans.
Tyrone and Nikki are compelling narrators for the story. Why did you choose their stories to anchor this documentary?
There’s a way that you can approach storytelling when you are connected to land and to a place, you know, place-based storytelling, and I feel like that really comes through in the film. North Carolina is very much a character in the film.
Our brilliant researcher, Nadine Natour, worked on the film RBG and a few other projects. She did the initial research and connected with SFLR, Sustainable Forestry, and African American Land Retention. She kind of found the families initially and began to make the connections and sort of build that trust that it takes to really get people to want to participate in a film like this. And then, I can’t remember exactly how we came across Tyrone [Williams] and Fourtee Acres—but they’re kind of rock stars in the Black landowner community.
Why did you choose to show those intimate moments between families in a documentary about sustainable forestry?
We set out to make a film about sustainable forestry, but it’s just not going to connect with audiences in a way I think will hold their attention for 90 minutes. Maybe a two-minute film, or a five-minute film, that tells you the basics about what it is and how it works—sure. But if you want me to make a feature, it has to be something that can really hold people’s attention and that people will care about.
So we asked, “What are the barriers to people being able to hold on to their land and how does sustainable forestry help?” One of them was succession planning and passing down to the next generation—that’s Tyrone’s family, that’s what they represent. And then another one was getting access to resources and barriers to financing. That was the Jefferies family. So we dug into those two issues.
I just didn’t want to tell a story that was about something that was being done to Black people. I wanted to tell a story about our agency and what we do. And SFLR was clear that at the heart of all these challenges are the family relationships. A developer can’t come in and pick [the land] off if the family is communicating and they agree that this is what they want to do, right? So for me, the story was always about family dynamics and the personal and interpersonal relationships. That is where the juice lies.
What are lessons that you hope viewers take from the film?
I want to make sustainability something that’s real and something that’s accessible, not this buzzword that exists in climate spaces and environmental spaces and universities—places where people don’t feel comfortable.
What I’m trying to do is plant the seeds for the next world. I don’t want to focus on the dysfunction and the doom and gloom of the thing that is falling apart because it has to fall apart for us to get to the new thing. And it’s not going to feel good. It’s going to be challenging. Change is always hard and some people are going to suffer and it’s going to be painful. But we have to know that there’s something on the other side that’s worth living for. We have to plant those seeds.
That’s what I’m trying to do with this film to help people understand that we as individuals, just with our family alone and our little sphere of influence, can decide that we’re going to plant the seeds for a future that is meaningful and that you can pass down to your children and the community around you and their children. That’s hopefully the takeaway: that people will feel empowered and some sense of hope.
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