Rat Film introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Theo Anthony.

Transcript

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

Rat Film with introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Theo Anthony. Monday February 19, 2018.

Haden Guest  0:00

Happy Presidents Day, but I think that's become an oxymoron. And I'm very excited to be here, nevertheless, tonight because this is part of our monthly series entitled, “Cinema of Resistance.” And this is a series that was invented by the late David Pendleton, a late, great colleague who wanted this to be more than a screening series. He wanted this to be a communal space for us to gather to watch challenging works, films that make us think differently about politics, about place, about history. All of which is true of tonight's film, Rat Film, by Theo Anthony. The legendary critic and painter, Manny Farber, came up with the term termite art, which he placed against elephant art in an essay “Elephant,” elephant versus white elephant versus termite art. And he is to speak about narrative films. And for Manny Farber, the termite film was that film that borrowed differently, subversively, that created and discovered different kinds of meaning, as opposed to the bloated, the mainstream, the so-called white elephant. Theo Anthony's film, of course, marries cinema with another always unwelcome pest, the rat, and I would say that there are certain affinities to Farber’s termite film, in Rat Film. In fact, and if we think, as a documentary, the way that it finds a different kind of meaning, the way that it burrows subversively, in this case, following the errant path of the rodent, this film leads us through a different city, a different Baltimore, a different cartography of the urban and of race in America, that is specific to Baltimore the city but is also, Theo Anthony argues, endemic to all of the cities in this country and elsewhere. I'm very thrilled that Theo Anthony can be with us tonight to say a few words of introduction about tonight's film but also to join us for conversation, to join me and to join all of you for conversation about Rat Film. I’m reaching into my pocket now to turn off my cell phone and I won't be using it at all during tonight's screening and I hope you'll do the same. Please do not use your phone or any camera to record or take photographs either. And now please join me in welcoming Theo Anthony.

[APPLAUSE]

Theo Anthony  2:59

Can you guys hear me? Cool. I hate microphones. Thank you so much for having me. This is really wild to be at Harvard. I feel like I get up here and automatically say, “I'm honored to be here. Thanks so much for having me.” I'm really honored to be here at the Harvard Film Archive. I have a very proud mama tonight. And yeah, I just really hope, you know, this film is this very private interior experience that I was filming on my own for two years, and no one knew what I was doing until I had a first cut. Now, a year and a half after it's come out, I'm here at Harvard, and it feels like I've just like yelled this secret out really loud and now you're about to watch it. I think it's a film that's best in conversation and so I really hope that you stick around and join me for some conversation afterwards. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

 

Haden Guest  4:07

Thank you here for this truly thought provoking film. And there's a lot to talk about, and I want to definitely open the floor but I thought maybe I would begin by sort of warming things up a little bit. And this is a film that is, I think one of the things that's so unusual and important about the film is the way it keeps us sort of guessing and looking, the film sort of ricochets, sort of ping-pongs in different places. I was wondering if you could speak to us a little bit about how this sort of structural concept came about, this idea of really, as I said, you know, subverting traditional expectations of the documentary and, or of, let's say of traditional, of documentary conventions and coming up with something that's so completely different.

Theo Anthony  5:00 

Yeah, I think...well yeah, thanks for staying. I think for me it was really important that this film was honest to how I came to the information. I'm not an expert, still, in a lot of these histories that the film talks about. And there's a thrill in my own discovery of these histories and these connections, and I really wanted to capture that feeling, but also the way that that material came across. So, you know, if I was wandering in Google Maps, you see a screenshot of my desktop. If it was a map to map Harold, me riding around with Harold is, like, the first time that we ever met, and that idea of capturing the discovery is really important. But I think editing-wise and assembling the structure of the film, most of my instant inspiration comes from just the internet, and just the way that information is collaged together. I think that the way my inspiration and the way that I think is like having 40 browser tabs open at once and just like sort of clicking around and, you know, you start an article and you get interrupted by a video, then your mom calls, and it’s like, we're used to digesting information in these very incomplete packets and that incompleteness is so fascinating to me because I think it requires you to make those connections and to finish stories, and, you know, really push back against the author, the author's intentions of delivering a finished product. And so I think in editing, yeah, it’s a long way of saying in editing, I really wanted to capture that.

Haden Guest  6:39

So this kind of synaptic structure, so to speak. So you did do a lot of research on the internet, then?

Theo Anthony  6:45

Yeah. I mean, if you open up my computer right now, I think I have like 120 tabs open or something. And it's just how I think, and I was told growing up that it's like the wrong way to think because, you know, you have ADD and you can't finish things. And I just had this real release of just embracing that and having things only appear on screen as long as I could pay attention to them. So yeah, I don't know, it's cool. It's cool for really, like, high schoolers to watch it, ‘cause they just get it right away, the filmic language. Like, they just...I don't have to get all like conceptual and stuff with it, because I think that the editing is more like an Instagram story than a traditional documentary. And I think, yeah, it's just cool to see younger generations engage with the film.

Haden Guest  7:32  

Now, I mean, speaking of younger generations as well too, I mean, the video game and the game is sort of a larger logic of the film. But then you also trace that back and you find a kind of deeper archeology, the idea of the scientist as sort of like God, in a sense playing with its own universe, its own city of the rats, and I was wondering if this is something you could speak about. Because in the end of the sort of, the virtual, as being grounded in the actual, and you take it to this other level with this almost speculative, game-sort of dimension, like let's create another city to our own rules, our own possibilities. So I was wondering if you could speak about the ways in which the video game and the virtual also inform this film?

Theo Anthony  8:27 

Yeah, I think I got to this point where I realized that I was making this film that talked about how a lot of very biased, very subjective mapmakers were making this map and how all of that subjectivity and how all that bias got imprinted into the map. And as I was making this, I very quickly realized that I was mapping this terrain of the film and that I am filled with a lot of bias and a lot of, obviously, my own experience and I didn't want to cover that up. I realized, I thought that that was a really interesting thing to engage with. So I think I'm really interested in simulation and how do you address the director's hand in documentary. I think specifically with the video game section, the story of that is that I just was editing the film in upstate New York and feeling very alienated from the city of Baltimore. And I realized that I was making this film about Baltimore but I didn't have any B-roll of Baltimore. And I had this, like, freakout night while I was editing that I had to go back and actually I thought that I have to go to every single street corner in Baltimore and shoot every single street corner, and then I will have totally captured the city and I could move forward. And I caught myself at what a shitty, colonizing instinct that is, that idea of total capture, even the language vocabulary of that, as a way to tell a story or to get the full picture. So I think from there, I just started spending lots and lots of hours in Google Earth, and just walking around the city and using it to fill in all of these dates and all of these places that I had been reading about in these texts. And I found that that virtual landscape was a really interesting way to speak to my distance to Baltimore, but also that privilege in the distance. It’s so easy to have this very critical perspective when you're not in the middle of it. And yeah, I think just speaking largely to lots of different histories that the film engages with, a vérité, you know, of pretending the body isn't there, that the cameras is this floating eyeball moving through all these rooms, as if there isn't this really loud, expensive machine in the room. You know, that's great, ‘cause you can sort of move across all these boundaries and zip codes and neighborhoods, but you get this really crudely-rendered landscape. And it's only when you actually start to fill it out with pictures and however crude those may be, it actually becomes discontinuous and much harder to navigate. So I like the idea of not necessarily picking a history but engaging with both. And I think that the video game format, or fictional positing of Google Earth as this video game, allowed me to do that.

Haden Guest  11:23

And some have described the film, which I think is a nice way of thinking about it, of being in different tenses, like present, past, into a speculative future, all at once. I was wondering if you could speak a bit about your relationship to rats themselves? I mean, there's a point in which, actually there's a moment, where there seems to be a real tenderness towards these rats and even the sort of loving shot that we recreated in our calendar, of all these pink little rats all asleep, and I was wondering if...did you have any preconceived ideas about rats beforehand that informed this project, or?

Theo Anthony  12:02 

Yeah, I think I have a deep respect for rats and I try to have a deep respect for all living creatures. I don't have particularly strong feelings about rats. I have learned a lot about them and I have a lot of experience with them. I made a film extensively about them. But I think, for me, it's not as interesting to try to define what is a rat and what draws me to a rat, but rather the the ideas and the people in the history that are drawn into orbit around this really strange gravitational center of the rat and you don't necessarily have to define what the rat is, but, you know, look at the impression that it makes and so that to me is a much more interesting direction to go.

Haden Guest  12:48 

Well, certainly, I mean, the rat is one of the creatures that seems to inspire the most primal fear in some people. And so this opening shot that you have with the rat actually jumping towards the camera. In some ways, it seems to be saying this is the most primitive and sort of basic understanding that most people have of the rat. And it seems like in some ways, you're critiquing, you're opening up that image and offering something...

Theo Anthony  13:14

Yeah, that’s how the film actually started. I just heard the sound of my trash can, and I took out my iPhone and started filming and didn't think I was gonna make this film or anything. And I don't know, I just was going through my iPhone, I had totally forgotten that I had taken it, and it’s just...

Haden Guest  13:34

And that’s the footage we see?

Theo Anthony  13:35

That’s the first shot of the film you see. It was in parallel with a lot of my own initiative to just deeper understand the history of Baltimore and my place in it, and all of these things just started intersecting in really strange ways. And that's the film that you see. So.

Haden Guest  13:55  

Wonderful. Well, I’ll ask one more question and then open to the audience, but I'm wondering about the car racing. I mean, that's one element, I feel like we're sort of placed in this role of this sort of forensic scientist in training and trying to put together the pieces and that's one that sort of eludes me in some ways. And then, especially that moment when he turns to Thomas, this kind of surveillance footage of that chubby boy being like [MAKES TICKING NOISE], like somebody’s watching us, I’m wondering if you could speak to us a bit about that.

Theo Anthony  14:28

Yeah, I mean, that's the question. That's the scene that people have the most questions about. And it's definitely, on the surface, the most directly unrelated. I can't really say, obviously, what specifically it means or like sort of say, “this is where the puzzle goes,” but I can just say that this film really feels like a diary to me, of a summer, just learning about my city and making, trying to figure out how to actually make a film. And I found myself at a drag race in Mechanicsville, Maryland and the main event was this jet dragster where they literally, you know, they take a jet engine and just screw on wheels, like literally, the level of sophistication. And, you know, there's this countdown and everyone's cheering on the sideline and there's an explosion and it just goes and it’s over and, to me, it took on this whole mythical dimension of like, this birth, life, and death of the universe, and everyone's, you know, life goes on. And to me, I'm really interested in positing this film as a myth, as this thing that I'm reciting. I don't think that this is a definitive tale of, you know, race relations in Baltimore or, you know, the history of pest control. I don't think a definitive anything should really be written. But for me to say, “Oh, here's this myth,” I think I try to always remind people that you're in the audience, like watching this myth unfold. And I think there's a lot of strains of documentary cinema in particular that try to convince you that you're in the driver's seat or that you are there and I think that that's a really dangerous conflation, where you really feel like you've accomplished something by watching a film, and you feel like, you know, poverty can be solved by sitting in a chair for two hours and I think, I like to have that distancing effect of just trying to have people remember that you are in a seat and that the important thing is, not what happens in the film, what happens once the film ends. I always think I'm gonna just answer it in one sentence, and then...

Haden Guest  16:38  

No, No. This is great. No, because it is this sort of rocketship that seems to be launching, taking us, right? To somewhere else...

Theo Anthony  16:44 

Yeah, no, I’ve had people who would just go and be like, “so like, race/racist, right?”

[LAUGHTER]

Haden Guest  16:50

I hadn't thought about that.

Theo Anthony  16:51 

I don’t want to be like…I want to be open to all interpretation. That one might be a little experimental, but yeah. Yeah.

Haden Guest   17:00

All right. Let's take some questions from the audience or comments from the audience. We have microphones on either side, if we have one right up here, if we will, please. Thanks.

Audience  17:13

Hi. I was interested in your use of narration. And I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about that. And then also the rupture that happened at the end, where we've relied on the narration to be very straightforward. And then, to me, it took on kind of like a Herzog vibe at the end, like the end of Lessons of Darkness, where he kind of sees the people putting out the fires and he speculates that they are putting them out only to start them up again, to put them out again, and I was wondering if you were influenced by that sort of, what does he call it?  Like, the ecstatic truth of the the moment and putting your own spin on it as opposed to the more narrative straightforward thing that we saw in the beginning?

Theo Anthony 18:01 

Yeah, definitely, I think this type of narration comes in a long line of inspiration, Hertzog definitely being one of them. But other filmmakers like Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, Hito Steyerl, Black Audio Film Collective, all these people working in essay film tradition, who, you know, I think it's really important to say, you know, this isn't coming out of nowhere. It's coming from a long line of people who experiment with the narrative voice and voiceover in particular, like this. There's so many more. But yeah, I think for me, going off that point I was saying before, of mapmakers making this flawed map and me making this flawed film, I was like, “Oh God, how am I gonna be able to say, definitively say, or say in my film, what actually happened?” Right? Like, how can I say the history of Baltimore, you know, when I've already exposed myself as this flawed maker? So I think just most simply to answer the question, I was, again, editing at this residency and I was really avoiding using voiceover up until the last minute and I realized I had to use it. And I don't like the sound of my own voice, so I was using Siri just to dictate my text that I was writing. And so I'd write something, Siri would dictate it, and I’d throw it under. And I actually really loved that really cold and clinical tone that it had. And that actually made it into, like, almost the final cut and it just didn't work. But luckily, we found Maureen Jones, who's an amazing, amazing artist and what I found so amazing about her performance and what I was able to accomplish with her performance was this real...there's so much flexibility. You can go from the narrative to the historic to the poetic and just make all these, like, lateral slides between styles. I think for a film that really, like, laments all these tragedies of subjective ideologies passing themselves off as objective and you know, you hear this voice of God, hopefully there's this sort of voice within you sort of saying, “Who the fuck is talking to me, you know? Who is this?” I really love the idea of a form that subverts itself. Like it's saying something, but it's saying, “Don't trust me.” And you're sort of left to figure out what that is.

Haden Guest  20:28 

Yes, the gentleman in the t-shirt, please.

Audience  20:33

Hey, thanks for coming. Can you talk about how you describe the project to some of the people you've shot and their reaction to you? And I guess I'm particularly interested in the rat hunters with the blow gun and the fishing rod? What did they make of you, and how did you interact with them?

Theo Anthony  20:50 

Yeah, good question. I tried to be...it took me a while to figure out the film that I was even making and I think it was only until a couple months after it’d come out that I could really summarize what the film I made was. At the time, I think, it was some variation of a making a film about rats but it's not about rats but it is, but it's not, and I tried to, like, explain some of the histories and intersections that I was speaking to. Yeah, I mean, for the most part, I would find, you know, people who I'd heard about through word of mouth or through the Internet, and reach out to them. The Rat Czar, he calls himself, is sort of like a local legend. And he was very eager, you know, like, I didn't even need to finish my pitch. And then, yeah, the rat fishers is actually a more complicated story. So rat fishing was a real thing that happened in Baltimore in the ‘90s. And I think, earlier than that, too, but specifically at this bar called Rose’s in Fells Point. And for the purpose of this film, we resurrected it and those are, like, actors acting out. Yeah, you know, at the time, I thought that, you know, we could resurrect this myth that was sort of this urban folklore in Baltimore. And yeah, I have complicated feelings with that now. I don't think it's a decision I'd make again. Not because of the idea of a reenactment in documentary. I think, you know, if this isn't a documentary because there's reenacting in it, I don't know it, and let's find something else to call it. I think the second is the violence. The violence gives me pause. But I also think it's really important that for all of the acute violence that's visible, that there's also in this conversation of invisible forms of violence that you don't see. For example, you see a very brutal death of a rat in there. And you also see Harold spreading out rat poison, you know, and that's going to kill dozens and dozens of rats, but like a very slow, painful death over weeks. And that's just like a very literal example of, you know, invisible death that you don't see. And so that's a conversation. But I think the thing for me, what it comes down to is that I, you know, obviously a white filmmaker, I was working in a Black neighborhood. I was working with an all-Black cast and they were the ones who had brought me the story, my partners Dave and Will and Greg. At the end of the day, you know, we were all consenting and everyone got paid, but at the end of the day, I'm up here presenting a film that doesn't necessarily paint that neighborhood in a positive light. And I think that's a much more complex consideration than I was going into as a first-time filmmaker at the time. And so yeah, you know, it was something we developed together, but there's, there's a lot of layers to it. Sorry, that's a long winded thing again, but honest, so...

Haden Guest  24:19

So just to understand, the two rat fishers, had they ever, they'd never done that before then?

Theo Anthony  24:25

They were fishermen.

Haden Guest  24:26

Okay.

Theo Anthony  24:26

They were avid fishermen. And, you know, Dave was like, “My uncle used to rat fish, but he doesn't want to come out on Saturday night, and he doesn't want to do it.” And so he's like, “I bet we'll get my buddy Will to do it.” And Will's like, I mean, Will’s amazing. It was all ad-libbed. But it was, you know, it was his own fishing rod, and he was like, yeah, he was amazing. We've traveled with the film together, he loves getting up and doing the Q&A and it's an amazing experience for them, you know? It's just, yeah, I just have complex feelings with it. So, yeah.

Haden Guest  25:00

Other questions or comments...yes, we have one right here, Amanda. And we'll just use the mic, because otherwise the people in the back can't hear. Thank you very much. Here it is.

Audience  25:14

I have just two very short questions. Did you intend to do a documentary? One. And secondly, the timing in your edit is just exquisite. And I'm wondering if that was conscious or you... There's a musical kind of poetry to it that keeps us all with you. And so I wonder if you would talk about that as well.

Theo Anthony  25:49

Yeah, I think, to the first question, I had never made a feature before. I had made some shorts. And I knew that it was just gonna be whatever it was going to be. And I sort of released myself of the expectations of it being something. I don't know, I thought it was gonna be this five-minute thing. And then it grew to 15 minutes. And then there’s 20 minutes. And then I was editing and it reached, like, an hour on the timeline, and I was like, "Alright, I have a feature.” And it wasn't like a planned thing, and I think in terms of the style, documentary versus whatever, I knew that at this point, I would have the most control over what I was making, that if I was lucky enough to make another film, I would never have so much freedom. And I wanted to do exactly what I wanted to do. And to push that as far as possible because I knew it was a chance that I would probably never have again. So, yeah, I wasn't so concerned about, like, “What is this?” I wanted it to be a music video, I wanted it to be a video game. I wanted it to be all these things. And, you know, just it... got roped together into this film. And yeah, then the second question. Oh, the pacing. Yeah, I mean, in addition to the sort of the clicking around the tabs and stuff, one of the first things I did, that clicking sound that you hear? A lot of people think it’s like a Geiger counter. So, it's actually the sound of a rat's brain. Very early on when I was explaining the project to a friend before I had filmed anything, a friend named Tiffany Hopkins, she said, “You know, I made music with rats brains in college.” And I was like, “Oh, can you send this to me?” And she had attached these electrodes to neurons in a rat’s hippocampus as it ran a maze. And every time that the neuron fired, it registered as a click. She sent it to me and, you know, it's this really sporadic clicking, you know, sounds like a Geiger counter. And one of the first things that I did was I just, I laid it on the timeline, and I just started editing to the clicks. And that's how I just...I had that first shot in the film and I knew that I wanted that click after that, so I just started editing to these clicks. And in an earlier cut of the film, I described, like, exactly what I just said, you know, ”this is a sound of a rat's brain, et cetera.” But at the end, I just took it out. Because I think it's really fascinating how the essence of that decision is there. You really feel it, even though you don't know what it is. So, yeah.

Haden Guest  28:32 

Other questions Yeah, Rinna here.

Audience  28:35

[INAUDIBLE]

Haden Guest 28:37

Actually, if you can just wait for the mic, so we can...yeah, thank you. And then we'll do…

Audience 28:43

My daughter lives in Baltimore. She told me it’s been shown there.

Haden Guest  28:47

If you want to speak into the...

Audience 28:49

What was the reaction down there when you showed it?

Haden Guest  28:53 

What was the reaction in Baltimore to the film being shown there? If you've shown it there?

Theo Anthony  28:57 

Yeah, yeah, we did. We've done a lot of screenings. It's the most terrifying thing to bring a film home. All of its strengths come out, all of its weaknesses. ‘Cause it's not just like, “Oh, Baltimore.” It’s like, “Oh, there's my backyard,” or, “Oh, that's my neighbor,” “Oh, you know, you got that right,” or “You didn't get that right.” And so there’s no joking around when you play it where the film is made. For the people in the film, it was really important to me that they saw the film. I knew that the film would have a lot of attention in the city, and it was important that all the actors and subjects in the film, that I gave them the respect of reacting to their reaction on screen, not in front of hundreds of people. Those were some of the most amazing screenings of my life. We did a screening with all of the rat owners I met. I was a very active member on the Baltimore Pet Rat Meetup Group, like a forum.

[LAUGHTER]

Theo Anthony  30:05

So I became friends with all these pet-rat owners and we had like a big vegan potluck and Louis Eagle Warrior, who's the guy who plays the flute, and, you know, they were bawling. You know, obviously, there's a lot of very tough scenes to watch, especially if you have, like, a dozen pet rats or something, you know, it's really hard. But they gave it a chance. And they talked about the film and had a lot of uncomfortable conversations. And even though they didn't agree with everything that happened in the film, they felt as if they were incorporated into that landscape respectfully. The other screening that was, I think for me, the best screening I've ever had was with the Rat Rubout team. It was very tense going in. We had the screening at the Baltimore City municipal building, which is where all the government decisions get made. And we did it in the conference room. And we tied a bed sheet to the drop-down ceiling and brought in a projector and bought pretzels and stuff. And all the Rat Rubout team came in but all their bosses, all their bosses’ bosses, all their bosses’ bosses, and it was totally segregated coming in, in terms of workers and management. You know, all the workers on the right hand side of the aisle, all the management on the left. And, Harold comes up to me before he's like, “Man, Theo, like, I really trust you, but like, I really hope, you know, I didn't say something bad, ‘cause like…"

[LAUGHTER]

...and that's like, I don't think that he said anything. But that's a lot. And I mean, he's the most, I mean, yeah. He's amazing. And the film started and it was tense a little bit and then people started laughing. And then every time Harold would come up, everyone would start cheering and stuff. Oh, yeah! And then they watched the whole film. And the film ended, and I got up to sort of do my awkward “Thanks for coming” thing. And they ignored me and faced each other and started talking about policy and, like, the way that management was abusing the workers. And, you know, it was actually this platform, because they don't have a chance to speak directly to management. So that was, for a moment, like, I think the upper limits of what this can do and at a very, very small scale. And I think we tried to take that approach wider, especially doing a lot of free screenings in Baltimore, trying to give rides to people to the theater to come and see it and as many workshops with kids as possible. And yeah, there's a lot of reaction. I think there’s a lot of good, there’s a lot of people who reacted who felt that I had gotten things wrong but, like, yeah, like the pet rat owners, they felt that the film was like this really earnest, respectful effort at trying to make sense of this and more important than the film, people started talking about this in a very real way. And yeah, I don't know. It was a really, really amazing and humbling experience to do that. So yeah.

Haden Guest  33:18

[UNKNOWN] --right behind.

Audience  33:25

You partly answered my question with the last question, but I thought Harold was such a compelling and generous presence. How much of him ended up on the cutting room floor? Did you use all of him that you had? He was just a really great character. And then I was also curious about the whole crime scene because, to me, that was one thing that I couldn't quite connect as much.

Theo Anthony  33:50

Yeah, I think...I mean, Harold has become a very good friend of mine. We try to talk as much as possible and it's been really cool to just stay in touch and update him about the film and he tells me about his family and he's just the absolute... I get so emotional so quick talking about him because he's the absolute best. There was a lot left on the cutting room floor. He was, I think generous is exactly the word, he just opened up right away. He was really shy, he would play shy, but like sort of say something out of the side of his mouth that lets you know that he has a lot to say if you just give him the chance. We  just clicked right away. But with that whole crew, the Rat Robot team- originally, the film was gonna have profiles of four or five people and they all could have had documentaries about them. They're all, you know, amazing, amazing people who have such an intimate knowledge of the city and history through their own unique experience. Yeah, so a lot, unfortunately, got left out. But that's what happens. What’s the second question?

Haden Guest  35:10 

The crime scene.

Theo Anthony  35:11

Oh, yes. Yeah, the crime scene is another one that people have a lot of questions about. I think for me, again, thinking about me making this map or charting this train or creating this model of experience and what do you do with that? And I think Bruce, who is the tour guide for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, has I think the best line and something that I've really taken as one of my central tenets is, he says there's the information that you're being given and then there's what you see. And I think that...there's that space between, and that's the important thing. He says it in a different way, but yeah, there's what you're being told, and there's what you see or what happened. That's the most fertile ground, I think, for interpretation and life of anything. So yeah.

Audience  36:07

[UNKNOWN]

Theo Anthony  36:11

Not necessarily like a…

Audience  36:12

[UNKNOWN]

Haden Guest  36:13

Is the film like a kind of crime scene in your mind?

Theo Anthony  36:15 

Not necessarily like a crime scene. More just like a model of my experience. Like me, just trying to build something that makes sense to me so that I can feel like I understand the world even a little bit. So, I don’t know.

Haden Guest  36:37

I thought I saw another...oh yes, right there.

Audience  36:45 

Hi. I was really interested by your, sort of, flying through Google Maps. And one thing that really struck me is when you penetrate the building in Google Maps and the narrator says that underneath, this sort of sky is there. Near the end, there's a scene where, almost like there's this sort of glitch in the map. And you see this green bottom. And that, to me, reminded me of the district map that had green sections and maybe under all these buildings is this potential for green. But I just thought your use of maps was so interesting, and how it sort of, as is being said with the crime scene, there's this map that is, you know, impenetrable, is inaccessible, just from top down, this is the way that things are. But then there's sort of a map that you can walk through and a map you can even look at from a ground level. I guess I'm just wondering, did you start with any kind of a map in mind? Like, did you think of, maybe, your particular neighborhood? Or did you sort of have more of an objective, like, I want to get as much of the city as possible in this film?

Theo Anthony  38:09

Yeah, well, I think the first sign for me that this film was going to be about more than just rats is, I used to live on this street called Green Mount Avenue, that is this north-south street and it borders all those sort of really fancy houses that you see at the beginning of the film. It's a neighborhood called Guilford-Homewood, [UNKNOWN] by the Roland Park Company, which is the first garden suburb in America and those are the neighborhoods where these residential segregation legislations were first enacted. And so, those are still multi-million-dollar homes, and right across the street are, you know, like middle-class, lower-middle-class row homes, maybe a third of which, a quarter of which are abandoned. You know, working-class neighborhood. But I was really interested in, like, “Why does it look like this?” On the left and on the right, you have these row homes and you start to look at and you realize that, you know, it's obviously not an accident, but you see all of the different ways that segregation gets codified, there's no entryway into the rich neighborhood, that there's only two entry points, and they're all one way streets and they don't obey a grid system and you need a parking permit. So traffic can't turn into the neighborhood. Whereas on the right, you know, there's a grid system with stop signs and stuff like that. And yeah, it's really designed to keep people out and keep the right people in. And that to me was such a visual example of what this film– and I think just diving into the history of what that was and I was really ignorant to the history and I didn't know what redlining was, and you know, there's a lot of really great scholarship out there that goes much, much deeper into...this was just a very quick primer. But, yeah, I mean redlining, but also redlining isn't the only policy, it's part of a real, concerted effort across the 20th century to codify racism into law. But, yeah, I think I sort of answered that question. Yeah.

Haden Guest  40:36 

Do we have any final questions or comments for Theo Anthony? If not, I wonder... Oh, we have one right there at the back, yeah.

Audience  40:46

Yeah. Thanks for the film. I don't think anywhere in the film you mentioned Freddie Gray but I felt like Freddie Gray was somehow an unspoken presence in the film, especially when you're talking about redlining and the racial dynamics in Baltimore. Was that episode in some way an inspiration for the film? And if so, in what ways did it shape your thinking about this documentary?

Theo Anthony  41:19 

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for bringing that up. See, before this, I worked as a journalist. I've done a lot of work in the Congo and in eastern Africa, Zambia, and Uganda, and I, at the time that Freddie Gray was murdered, I had somewhat of a career for myself for traveling to other places and telling other people's stories and had really begun to feel really bad about that. Like really, really bad about that extractive process of, you know, I shouldn't be the person telling this story. I shouldn't be the person taking these people's life experiences and turning it into a product for an outsider's consumption. And so I was living back in Baltimore after moving back from the Congo and all of a sudden, the world's attention came to my backyard and all the news crews was there. And for the first time, I was tasked with telling the story of my home. And as this thing happened, where the closer I looked at my own backyard, the more I realized how little I knew about it. And directly out of that experience, I think, came this film. And that real sincere, like, drive to understand the history of Baltimore, and also like my place in it, and why the city looked the way it did, and not just taking that for granted. So yeah, I think this film deliberately doesn't mention his name. I think I'm interested in talking about the present through talking about the past. I think there's a lot of really great work that does talk about this present moment, and does name names like, you know, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, you know, this really tragically long list, and with this film, I tried a different approach. So yeah, but definitely coming from a similar place.

Haden Guest  43:26

There is a short film that we could see on your website.

Theo Anthony  43:29

Yeah, yeah, I made a short film called Peace in the Absence of War that sort of turns the eye on the media attention there. And that's available online. So yeah, on my website.

Haden Guest  43:44 

Well, I want to ask you to please join me in thanking Theo Anthony for Rat Film and for his presence here today.

[APPLAUSE]

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