Transcript:
Justin Joseph Hall:
Hi, welcome to Feature & a short, a monthly screening hosted by Fourwind Films, where an appointed contributor presents their chosen feature motion picture and a short movie. There's only one condition for the screening selection. The presenter must have directly been involved with one picture, but not the other. My name is Justin Joseph Hall, owner of Fourwind Films.
This week's guest is Michael Fequiere. He brought along two great films, one he made in 2017 called Kojo, about a young kid from New York City who plays jazz drums. He has traveled to many countries with this film, including the Toronto International Film Festival. After the first film, we stopped to discuss and the audience had quite a few questions and reactions for Michael.
Michael Fequiere:
This is a short documentary that I did. It's basically about a 12-year-old jazz prodigy. I've known him for like nine years, and we just had a really good opportunity to film this. So this is an interview with him and then kind of following him through his day and his performance and stuff, so.
Audience:
I work with Justin at Fourwind Films. I actually had the good fortune of seeing this prior, at the Landmark Sunshine. I just wanted to commend you cause even the second time showing it was just as good. So, bravo.
Michael Fequiere:
Thanks, man.
Audience:
Yeah, I'm Adam, and I don't know much about film, but I appreciate them. I was wondering, like, how you met that kid.
Michael Fequiere:
I met him, like, about nine years ago. So his older sister and I went to college together, and so we were cool. And so she kind of invited me over to her place. And so I met her entire family, so.
His whole family is talented, like, his mom is like a well-known contemporary dancer, like his sisters in ballet. They did like a cover spread with, like, Misty Copeland. You know, kinda sucks, you know? It’s kind of, like, damn, like, what am I doing? You know, just a cool family to kind of hang around and just kind of pick their brains.
And then nine years later, that happens. So, yeah.
Audience:
Nice.
Michael Fequiere:
Yeah.
Audience:
When did you film this?
Michael Fequiere:
We filmed that 2016 June. So yeah, he turned, he’s 13 now.
Daria Huxley:
Yeah, where is he now?
Michael Fequiere:
Well, he’s actually on tour, so this is gonna screen at BAM. He was supposed to come there and perform, but he's like touring. So, you know, he's a musician. So that comes first.
So he's like, I'm going to do touring because that's going to pay me. So I was like, shit, all right, fine.
Isabel Restrepo:
At the end, I wish there would have been like a little graphic of, like, how long he actually ended up performing. Cause he’s like, I feel like we could do 20 minutes.
Michael Fequiere:
Oh yeah, they definitely go for 20 minutes.
Isabel Restrepo:
And then I wanted like 20 minutes later.
Audience:
(laughs)
Audience:
I was hoping. Wait, but yeah, it was. And he has a great style too. I'm like, how are you so hip and, like, cool and.
Michael Fequiere:
Confident.
Audience:
Yeah, yeah.
Audience:
…It’s cool that, like, you highlighted this kid because I'm trying to think is rare. But at the same time it's not like it's out there with these people, let's just have these interesting ass lives. But normally you get to hear about it. And it's kind of, like, what am I doing with my life?
Audience:
You go from, like, a still portrait of the person straight to the interview.
Michael Fequiere:
Right.
Audience:
Did you find that style somewhere else or did you?
Michael Fequiere:
Yeah, I used an exact similar style on a previous documentary that I made to replace clothes with paint. So with that one, though, in those long takes where it kind of stays on him. That one I got from the 13th, actually, because I remember, yeah, I remember watching it and I was like, the editor did a cool job where it would just like, hang on the faces for a little bit and then cutting to like the next scene or whatever. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.
Audience:
I don't know what it is about your editing style.
Michael Fequiere:
Yeah.
Audience:
I don’t know what it is about your editing, but, like, pushes you forward.
Michael Fequiere:
Yeah, no. And that's kind of like two story lines. It's like one is following him and then, you know, your classic interview style kind of thing. So it's like as he's telling you, like you're also forced into this point.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Like Frontline, he’ll go to the next part or whatever instead of just…
Michael Fequiere:
Exactly, exactly. So yeah.
Daria Huxley:
Especially, I appreciated the graphics.
Michael Fequiere:
Those were my brother.
Daria Huxley:
Those portraits.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Yeah, Michael’s brother worked on the graphics and.
Michael Fequiere:
We’re twins, so. We’re not identical but fraternal.
Audience:
I'm also curious, what's, what was it like working with your brother especially, like, assuming he should do those as well?
Michael Fequiere:
Yeah, yeah. So he drew those. It's funny. So he just did them very quickly. So he's done some animation series and stuff like that where it's, like, full on animation and just like all in color and it's like way more vibrant. These were like quick sketches for him. But yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I just, I just isolated the clips and I was like, oh, these would work as animations.
So I just, like, hit him up. I was like, dude, can you just animate these? And he's like, okay. I don't tell him the direction cause Kojo is telling the story. And so he would just animate.
Audience:
But I know a lot of animators don't like to have free rein. They’re like.
Michael Fequiere:
Yeah, I think it's just because those segments I'm giving him have a start and end point. He knows it has to end at some point, whereas if he's just doing something open-ended, it's kind of like he has no direction and he doesn't have anyone telling him that there's a deadline. You know what I mean? So when there's no deadline, it's kind of hard for him to.
I paid him, but I mean, it was super cheap. So we did the Indiegogo, so there was a couple of funds left over. So I was like, at least let me pay the people who are working on the film. So yeah. But to answer your question, I've been, I went to school for film, so I'd been making them since like 2009.
Yeah, yeah. I work, so I work for Great Big Story. So I'm a producer for them. So basically we just travel around the world, just like producing all these short form documentaries that go on their social platforms. We had a big shoot coming up. And so we rented all this equipment, and so we rented it two weeks early cause, you know, when you rent from Adorama, they give you like the special deals or whatever.
So we had an extra whole week of the cameras just sitting there. We rented a bunch of reds and everything. And I was just, like, wait a second. So these are just gonna sit here in this office over the weekend not being used. So I was just like, oh, fuck that. I took it with me. And then I just filmed.
I just went up to him. The interview I shot in a day, and then we ended up getting another guy who owns the red, and then he just lent it to me for like 300 bucks, and I just shot the rest of it. So, you know.
It was literally like an on-camera light that I literally mounted somewhere else. Everything else was pretty much natural. They had really big windows. So that kind of, like, helped with the lighting. The only light I had was this like an on-camera light that I kind of mounted to the side.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Michael’s second film was a 2008 documentary. This is the first time that we had any documentaries presented on Feature & a short. Michael paired his documentary with Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, which is one of the films that got me interested in documentaries. When I learned what documentary storytelling could be, and that it could have stories just as good or even more unbelievable than narrative film.
Michael Fequiere:
So yeah, like Justin said, the name of this film is called Dear Zachary, a letter from a father to his son. It's, it's a really powerful film. And again, like he said, it's, it's a film that you can totally recommend to anyone, who is not into documentaries, who's never seen a documentary. It's very, very powerful. Might need your tissue box, but.
Justin Joseph Hall:
During this film, we didn't provide any food due to the intense nature of the film. Because it takes place in Canada and the US, we had homemade shortbread cookies and provided American whiskey and Canadian beer for everyone to drown their tears. After, people discuss the film.
(crying/laughing)
Crystal Hilaire:
I was trying to be the strong one.
Michael Fequiere:
I legit cry everytime I watch it.
(crying/laughing)
Crystal Hilaire:
My sweater is soaked.
Michael Fequiere:
Imagine him going there. You don’t, you’re like
Audience Member:
Oh my god!
Justin Joseph Hall:
Thank you for listening to Feature & a short. If you would like to see more of Michael Fequiere’s work, check out his Vimeo page. Please leave us a review on wherever you get your podcast or a comment on our website. Our social media is @fourwindfilms, that is at f-o-u-r-w-i-n-d-f-i-l-m-s. Thank you for listening to Feature & a short where filmmakers present, watch and discuss films.
