I went to a marketing seminar yesterday on the power of story through the Nonprofit Philanthropy Center at Rollins College and the Orlando Ad Fed. The speaker, Andy Goodman was engaging and entertaining, a great storyteller. Our homework before the seminar was to write a story about our organization. Here's mine about Enzian...hokey, but from the heart.
Enzian Theater’s mission is to entertain, inspire, educate, and connect the community through film. In the three plus years I have worked for this organization, never has this mission been more clearly fulfilled to me than on Wednesday, June 12, 2002. The Florida Film Festival, our largest event of the year, was in full swing. Busily running from screening to screening, I made time in my schedule for the documentary program at Enzian that evening. Documentaries are by far my favorite films. The old adage that truth is stranger than fiction is so true.
The program featured two very different, films, Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme and Strange Fruit. Freestyle is a form of rhythmic street poetry that features virtuoso displays of improvised wit and verbal dexterity made all the more remarkable for the fleeting nature of the rhymes, which are often only uttered once. It is the basis of hip-hop music and slam poetry performed on the streets of cities everywhere in the U.S. Strange Fruit is a film about the bluesy, socially relevant classic often remembered as it was performed by husky-voiced jazz great, Billie Holliday. The song, a metaphor about lynching, surprisingly was written by Abel Meeropol, a Russian Jewish communist, composer, and New York City public school teacher. Still as majestic and confrontational as the day it was written, the song is a legendary work of art.
Kevin Fitzgerald, the director of Freestyle, arrived at the Festival with boxes of postcards and promotional materials. He was one of the most enthusiastic and passionate filmmakers I’d ever met. He carried those boxes to nightclubs, community centers, and record stores all over town. He passed them out on the street and begged people to come see his film. He searched out local freestyle artists and asked them to help him get the word out. He even watched added footage they brought him for the ongoing project. Audiences were already buzzing about seeing Strange Fruit, based on the established fame of the song and the performance footage of Billie Holliday.
The packed parking lot let me know the program would sell out. I hurried inside to find the most diverse crowd I had ever seen at the theater. Tables of young men in baggy jeans and baseball caps next to tables of grandparents. There was an excited hum in the air. In a stroke of genius, Enzian’s programming director, Matthew Curtis, scheduled Strange Fruit to play first, logically realizing that if he played Freestyle first, many of the youths would leave before the second film. Matthew has been in the business for more than two decades and I have seen this genius on his part repeated many times in my years at Enzian.
A hush came over the crowd as the first film began. Many in the audience, including myself, did not know the history of Strange Fruit, and we watched in stunned silence as Billie belted it out in her famous show stopping fashion. Of course, as planned, everyone stayed in their seats for the equally as fascinating and gritty Freestyle.
Typically at festivals there is a question and answer period with the attending filmmakers following the film. The director of Strange Fruit couldn’t make it, but his cinematographer Thomas Tornes answered several polite questions and complimented Kevin on an amazing film. Kevin then stepped to the microphone and sincerely returned the compliment. Both men gushing thanked Matthew for introducing them and placing these films together. After a few questions for Kevin, he invited the local hip-hop artists and poets in the audience to take the stage. Being the last film of the evening, there was no rush to clear the auditorium and none of the patrons made a move to leave. This was a first time experience for the entire staff.
I watched on anxiously from the wings, a bit nervous that the young men would start to rhyme about cars, liquor, women, and violence while taking verbal shots at each others’ mothers. They strutted on stage as if they owned the place, staring each other up and down, preparing themselves for the verbal battle. Then it happened.
As they took turns on the microphone, one by one, their words melted into each other to craft one long unforgettable poem about the evening. It was immediately obvious that watching Strange Fruit had had a strong emotional impact on them as they “sang” the praises of Billie Holiday, her voice, her beauty. They intertwined themes of freedom, history, love, music, into a narrative about where we are today, how long we have traveled to get here, and how much further we have to go, as a race, as a nation, and as individuals. The audience laughed, cried, applauded and begged for more. The rhymes went on for about 45 minutes before they ran out of words and the crowd finally flowed into the star-lit courtyard where they broke off into smaller groups to discuss what they had just experienced.
The entire audience had been entertained and educated by the films they saw that night, but these young men had also been inspired to express themselves and reach out to everyone. Never before had I felt the true power of film, or the true power of Enzian, to connect a community that becomes all inclusive. To know that those 250 people shared a moment that night that was unique and transforming is a true gift. When Enzian becomes a window to a world of possibilities, a gateway to expanding tolerance, wisdom and creativity, I know we are getting it right. It is the moments like this that make us all want to be a part of it.
