Speaker 1: Oh gee, folks, it show die. People say good money
Speaker 1: to see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater, they want clod sodas,
Speaker 2: hot popcorn in No monsters in the projection booth.
Speaker 3: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Got it off?
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Move.
Speaker 3: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 3: talking with Maya Annik Bedward all about her new documentary
Speaker 3: Black Zombie. The film recently had its premiere at the
Speaker 3: south By Southwest Film Festival, and we'll be going to
Speaker 3: some more festivals as it goes along. It is a
Speaker 3: great look at action vodoo instead of voodoo. How it's
Speaker 3: been kind of twisted by Hollywood. We talked a little
Speaker 3: bit about this way back when on our sugar Hill episode.
Speaker 3: This one goes into some other zombie films including I
Speaker 3: Walked with a Zombie Live and Let Die, The Serpent
Speaker 3: and The Rainbow. Some really good stuff, some great interviews,
Speaker 3: very entertaining documentary. I would recommend that you check it
Speaker 3: out as soon as you possibly can. Thanks so much
Speaker 3: for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this interview. I
Speaker 3: want to know a little bit more about you and
Speaker 3: how you got into filmmaking.
Speaker 5: Films have always been a passion for me ever since
Speaker 5: I can remember, so my desire to be a filmmaker
Speaker 5: was always a huge thing. And I'd say there was
Speaker 5: like the practical side in me and how I was raised,
Speaker 5: which was like, Okay, do something safe and get a
Speaker 5: job in that. And then there was like the more
Speaker 5: passionate side of me that was like, I would really
Speaker 5: love to be a filmmaker. And I think I finally
Speaker 5: made the decision to be a filmmaker or to try
Speaker 5: for it, when I was living in Brazil and I
Speaker 5: was surrounded by so many incredible artists down there and
Speaker 5: they really inspired me, and I thought I should at
Speaker 5: least try. So that's how I got into filmmaking, and
Speaker 5: then I started working with production companies and going from there.
Speaker 3: What was kind of your fall mac job? What did
Speaker 3: your folks want.
Speaker 2: You to be?
Speaker 5: My parents they were very supportive of my filmmaking, but
Speaker 5: I was raised in Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada,
Speaker 5: so it's a government town and they always thought of
Speaker 5: that as an option. And I love to travel, so
Speaker 5: they thought I should be a diplomat or a lawyer
Speaker 5: one or the other.
Speaker 3: You've been making films in various forms and TV series
Speaker 3: for years. Can you tell me what kind of attraction
Speaker 3: to different.
Speaker 5: Projects, projects that were the way we generally see certain
Speaker 5: stories that challenge kind of our perceptions, things that are
Speaker 5: gener usually a misconception. So I'm really interested in stories
Speaker 5: that are kind of like challenging dominant narratives that are true.
Speaker 5: So that's definitely where Black Zombie fits into that. A
Speaker 5: lot of my stories are also inspired by my personal background.
Speaker 5: I'm Afro Caribbeans, so I'm really interested in stories around
Speaker 5: the Afrocribbean diaspora, our history, our culture, and our traditions.
Speaker 5: Black Zombie definitely came from this interest, this passion I
Speaker 5: have for learning more about our history, my history, traditions
Speaker 5: and culture. You know, a lot of people say the
Speaker 5: history of being black and living in the America is
Speaker 5: like the history that predates colonialism is lost, Like our
Speaker 5: connection to West Africa has lost, a lot of these
Speaker 5: traditions are lost, a lot of this culture is lost.
Speaker 5: And as I got older, I realized this isn't true,
Speaker 5: Like there are a lot of elements of these traditions
Speaker 5: and cultures exist in our music and our food, and
Speaker 5: most powerfully in our spiritual traditions. And I became really
Speaker 5: interested in learning more about Vodu Candnble Santa Ria. So
Speaker 5: when I found out the zombie actually had its roots
Speaker 5: in Haitian vod I was blown away to learn that.
Speaker 5: I had no idea that's where it came from, and
Speaker 5: that's was its origin. And the minute I learned that,
Speaker 5: I knew I had to make a film about it.
Speaker 5: And I've been working.
Speaker 3: On it ever since. What year was that, Oh, my.
Speaker 5: Gosh, two thousand and eleven, maybe twenty twelve. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: learned that, and then I've been pretty much working intentionally
Speaker 5: on this film for over ten years.
Speaker 3: How did you start to gather all your research and everything?
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a huge topic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a very huge topic. A lot of people
Speaker 5: are like my trying to fit too much into a
Speaker 5: ninety minute film, and I thought, okay, well let's try Anyway,
Speaker 5: I started in Haiti. I always want to center the
Speaker 5: voice of Haitian vodo practitioners, so that was really important
Speaker 5: to me, and I started a lot of my research
Speaker 5: there and working with members of that community and also
Speaker 5: practitioners across the diaspora and speaking with them and learning
Speaker 5: more about the traditions of vod As it began to
Speaker 5: get thundeing, I started reaching out more to like the
Speaker 5: people connected to the appropriation part of the story, how
Speaker 5: the zombie was taken from Haiti and brought to Hollywood,
Speaker 5: and who were the voices who could speak to that
Speaker 5: story and interviewing those people, and I always knew I
Speaker 5: wanted to focus on White Zombie, which was the first
Speaker 5: zombie that brought the zombie to Hollywood, the first movie
Speaker 5: I should say that brought the zombie to Hollywood, and
Speaker 5: I did The Living Dad, which is of course that
Speaker 5: like Pinnacle film that created the fleshyting zombie, and then
Speaker 5: Serpent and the Rainbow was all a very important film
Speaker 5: for me because I think it's the reason why some
Speaker 5: people still might know that the Zobbie is connected to
Speaker 5: Haiti but not really understand why. They might know that
Speaker 5: it involves like a pufferfish and some white powder, but
Speaker 5: they can't really explain more than that. And I think
Speaker 5: that's really because of the film Serpent and the Rainbow
Speaker 5: that was made by Wes cravean Wes Craven and was
Speaker 5: based off of the book of the same name, so
Speaker 5: that those are important things for me to tell on
Speaker 5: the film.
Speaker 3: I'm so curious about your actual subjects, especially the folks
Speaker 3: that were in Haiti. Was there any hesitation to talk
Speaker 3: with you about this stuff or did your background help
Speaker 3: you out with that?
Speaker 5: For sure, I had to build trust. I'm not from
Speaker 5: where we were filming, mostly was in Jackmel. I'm not
Speaker 5: from jack Mel, I'm not Haitian, And most importantly, I'm
Speaker 5: not a Fo dou practitioner. I don't practice FO do.
Speaker 5: I have a lot of respect for the traditions, so
Speaker 5: I really had to explain my attention why was I
Speaker 5: making this film, especially since they're such a long tradition
Speaker 5: of exploiting this culture and misrepresenting it and creating these
Speaker 5: racist tropes. So talk really about what was my intention?
Speaker 5: Why was I making the film? And I created an
Speaker 5: advisory committee to make sure that I was telling the
Speaker 5: history of Haiti and portraying Voto in a positive and
Speaker 5: respectful way. And I also made sure that all of
Speaker 5: my contributors could watch the film and if they had
Speaker 5: any issues with the way Voting was portrayed or Haiti
Speaker 5: was portrayed, they could let me know and give me
Speaker 5: feedback on the film. It was definitely a process to
Speaker 5: build that trust and very important to me that I
Speaker 5: was making sure I was showing things respectfully and I
Speaker 5: wanted to, you know, I really wanted to show Haiti
Speaker 5: differently than what we see in the news, like often
Speaker 5: we see it as this like dangerous, poor, corrupt country,
Speaker 5: and it's just it's such a beautiful, rich, incredible culture
Speaker 5: and people, and it's really unfortunate what's happening right now
Speaker 5: after the assassination of their president. Things have just become
Speaker 5: so dire and a lot of the people who a
Speaker 5: lot of the crew that I worked with, a lot
Speaker 5: of the contributors I worked with, if they could leave,
Speaker 5: have left. And these are people who love their country
Speaker 5: and didn't want to leave under any circumstance. So it's
Speaker 5: really really tough to see what's happening to this incredible country.
Speaker 5: And my goal was actually to like go and shoot
Speaker 5: it like in a very high production caliber, like bring
Speaker 5: a lot of high production to it. But unfortunately, with
Speaker 5: what happened, it just became too dangerous to shoot there again.
Speaker 5: Bringing a camera out to these kind of like cultural
Speaker 5: festivals that weren't happening in the same scope anyway, because
Speaker 5: things had just become so dangerous, we weren't able to
Speaker 5: do that. So it was really that was really difficult
Speaker 5: and sad to not be able to do. But I
Speaker 5: was fortunate that I could actually partner with an incredible
Speaker 5: team the Dominican Republic who are Afro Dominican and really
Speaker 5: understand and we're able to care for, like our Haitian
Speaker 5: crew and contributors who we brought from Haiti to the
Speaker 5: Dominican Republic to finish the project. So actually there are
Speaker 5: quite a few scenes that are shot with our contributors
Speaker 5: and our Haitian crew in the Dominican Republic, and we
Speaker 5: also worked with there's a huge Asian population in the
Speaker 5: Dominican Republic, so some of the practitioners are actually based
Speaker 5: in the Dominican Republic that we see there. So it's
Speaker 5: a mixture of that footage and what we originally shot
Speaker 5: in Haiti and we used to finish the film.
Speaker 3: Things haven't been easy in Haiti. I remember what the
Speaker 3: earthquake of twenty ten, then we've had the assassination and
Speaker 3: then also in the middle there you've got COVID. I mean,
Speaker 3: it must have been very difficult just with all the
Speaker 3: logistics of everything.
Speaker 5: Haiti doesn't have the resources to move through something like
Speaker 5: COVID and the earthquake, Like a lot of the damage
Speaker 5: that happened is a result of like poor infrastructure and
Speaker 5: all of that is a result of like this like
Speaker 5: extraction and exploitation that's happened to this country. Like Haiti
Speaker 5: is poor because it's been punished for the Haitian Revolution
Speaker 5: and the reparations it has to pay, and that's what
Speaker 5: we're seeing to this day. And so we've faced those
Speaker 5: conditions head on with the making of this film, like
Speaker 5: we're very much feeling that history as we're making a film.
Speaker 3: Is self by Southwest your premiere, Yes, it's our world premiere.
Speaker 3: Do you have any other dates in mind or where
Speaker 3: can people go to keep up with that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you can go to our Instagram page. It's
Speaker 5: called Black Zombie Movie on Instagram and we'll be posting updates.
Speaker 5: The European premiere is happening at Tesnaniki, which is an
Speaker 5: amazing international documentary festival in Greece, and then we just
Speaker 5: just announce today the Canadian premiere will be at Hot Dogs.
Speaker 3: My I Loved Black zombie. I look forward to seeing
Speaker 3: what you do next. Thank you so much again for
Speaker 3: your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you, it's really nice chanting with you.
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