Factual America

America is a land of natural beauty and natural resources. Unfortunately, these too often come into conflict. Never was this more true when it comes to America’s 640 million acres of public lands.

Filmmakers David Byars and Jeremy Rubingh document the fight to protect America’s public lands for future generations in their film Public Trust which recently premiered on YouTube with tremendous success.

The executive producers of the film are Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard and famous actor and founder of the Sundance Film Festival Robert Redford.

Factual America caught up with David  Byars from his home in Ojai, California, and Jeremy Rubingh aboard his sailboat in the Puget Sound.

“Public lands is this huge democratic American idea that you don’t really see really in many other countries around the world. It’s an opportunity for unity and healing, and for everybody to come together and protect something good for future generations.” – Jeremy Rubingh

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on September 18, 2020. She had a long and illustrious career as an advocate for gender equality, a jurist and most famously as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court.

Joining us to pay tribute to this true American icon is Julie Cohen, together with Betsy West, the co-director and co-producer of RBG.

RBG is a documentary that beautifully captures the life and legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The film itself premiered in 2018 at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, and is one of the top  grossing documentaries of all time.

We caught up with Julie from her home in Brooklyn as we revisit her work on RBG and her memories of this powerful woman.

“Justice Ginsburg was a very intimidating woman. Tiny, though she might had been, and with her quiet little voice, she just had this whole force and this penetrating stare – everything about her was quite intimidating.” – Julie Cohen

Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey was straight out of a Gen X teenager’s dream. The R-rated version of a John Hughes film, or as Jason Bailey at the New York Times puts it, “a rule-free stew of dangerous rides, teen guests, teen employees, raging hormones, 80s-style machismo, and booze”.

But for all the nostalgia, the place comes with bad memories for those whose loved ones were seriously injured, and in some cases killed by the reckless actions of Gene Mulvihill, the fallen Wall Street mogul who owned and ran the park.

Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott, the co-directors of Class Action Park streamed on HBO Max, brilliantly capture both the time and place – Northern New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s – that will never be repeated. And many would say thank God for that.

“The laughter of Action Park isn’t a designed joke; it’s not a comedy routine. It’s the laughter of a brain having no other way to process what it’s hearing. Laughter is something that happens when you can’t cry, you can’t scream, you can’t do anything else, all you can do is laugh. ” – Seth Porges

When we think of Texas, we think of wide open spaces, ranches, rugged individualism, the Wild West, and invariably cowboys. But where do women fit into this mix?

In their film Good Ol Girl, Sarah Brennan Kolb and Kyle Kelley put this question into the context of present-day Texas. The film tells the stories of three young modern-day Texan cowgirls, and explores the role of women in cowboy culture.

Women are increasingly taking a larger role in the traditionally male dominated industry of ranching. As we found out, Texas is going to have to change if the legacy of the past is to be handed down to the next generation.

“I’ve always hoped that women would see themselves as heroes, and men would understand that women can be heroes.” – Sarah Brennan Kolb

America is famous for its sports franchises and rabid fans. However, there is one group of Americans for whom sports raise painful memories. These are the Native Americans.

At least some people are trying to put an end to racial stereotyping in US sports. And they have already succeeded in changing the name of the Washington Football Team.

Aviva Kempner is the award-winning director of successful docs like “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg”. Kevin Blackistone is an award-winning national sports columnist. Together they are working on bringing Imagining the Indian to the screen.

We caught up recently with Aviva and Kevin at their homes in Washington DC.

“I’ve come to be opposed to all these names. The Not Your Mascot slogan is so true. People are not property of others, certainly when it is a culture that is being appropriated. We’re supposed to be past that.” – Kevin Blackistone

Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. He may also be America’s first black cultural icon, blazing a trail for other African American athletes like LeBron James.

Besides his performance on the court, Jordan rocketed to fame on the back of a clever and innovative marketing campaign to sell sneakers, and a shrewd business model that made him a billionaire.

However, has success come with a price? Well, Nike and Jordan have made billions of dollars. They have also created a shoe culture that see some misguided youth literally killing each other to get their hands on the latest pair of Air Jordans.

Yemi Bamiro and Will Thorne capture all of this in their recently released documentary One Man and His Shoes. We recently caught up with Yemi and Will from their homes in London and Berlin.

In our final episode of Season One, we’re joined by John Lewis, aka Badass Vegan. John’s upcoming documentary, They’re Trying to Kill Us, touches on so many of the issues that we’ve looked at this year on the podcast – factory farming, race and Big Pharma, just to name a few – but this time through the unique lens of hip hop.

They’re Trying to Kill Us explores the connections between diet, poverty and systemic racism. As well as looking at veganism, we discuss Big Pharma and the link between mind and body. 

John’s life is literally the material for a great movie, as we found out recently when we joined John from his home in Wilmington, North Carolina.

“I don’t think we can wait for the governments and the rich to make a change. We have to make the change ourselves.” – John Lewis

The history of jazz dance is the history of America.

That history is not well documented, however, especially when it comes to the leading role played by African Americans.

In Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance, filmmakers Khadifa Wong and Zak Nemorin trace jazz dance back to its roots in Africa, and follow its evolution up to the present.

Along the way Khadifa and Zack address difficult subjects such as appropriation, racism and sexism within this quintessential American art form, and in the process shine a light on this chapter in America’s history.

But in the end, their film is a celebration of this most human of art forms, where as they say, “what all people have in common is rhythm and a basic human need to get down”. “

Whether it was jazz, whether it’s hip hop, there are cultures that step out of oppression, and out of wanting to speak out, and jazz dance was just an iteration of that.” – Khadifa Wong

For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, the arcade was a home away from home. And most likely we were playing a video game that was the creative genius of a scrappy group of renegade designers in Chicago.

In his film Insert Coin (2020), director Josh Tsui captures what it was like for the fellows at Midway Games to revolutionize the video game industry. And along the way, Josh perfectly captures 1990s pop culture.

Insert Coin is an interesting take on the arcade gaming world, showing us its business side and how games were designed to be addictive and suck in quarters. 

“Once you make a game you can’t get that out of your system. It’s one of the most fulfilling and frustrating creative mediums out there and it’s intoxicating. ” – Josh Tsui

What is it about old abandoned buildings that can be so compelling and alluring? We find out today as we welcome filmmakers Jake Williams and John Shaw to the podcast. Their film Closed For Storm is about a theme park left for ruin in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago.

Closed For Storm shows Six Flags New Orleans in its glory days and current state of abject dereliction.

Along the way, the film also captures the broken dreams and fleeting aspirations of a community still looking for hope.

We find Jake and John in the eye of a different kind of storm in the summer of 2020, as they join us from their homes in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

They tell us how they got legal access to the property, and why so many of us share a fascination with abandoned buildings.

We also talk about how the virus has affected the film industry and what the release of the documentary will look like as film festivals shut down worldwide…

“When Katrina was happening nobody’s minds were on how the theme park was doing. But once the helicopter images came out of the park underwater, it was staggering. They took whatever was valuable, left and abandoned the property.” – Jake Williams