In 1999, Davy Rothbart was 23 years old and was staying on a friend’s couch in southeastern DC, a few blocks from a basketball court, where he befriended Akil “Smurf” Sanford, 15, and his precocious 9-year-old brother. years, Emmanuel. An aspiring filmmaker, Rothbart had a small portable video camera, which the younger brother immediately liked; the two fiddled with the amateur device, watching their day-to-day views. “We learned how to use it together,” Rothbart told the Guardian – strolling through the neighborhood, interviewing people on the street, manipulating the night vision environment, letting his curiosity guide the lens.
The resulting videos form 17 Blocks, which distills 1,000 hours of footage over 20 years into a moving, sometimes devastating and incredibly generous documentary about a black American family facing drug addiction, cycles of armed violence and the passing of those present and wasted time. Although the film does not shy away from political commentary – the title is a direct reference to the distance between Sanford’s under-funded and largely segregated neighborhood and the Capitol that overlooks it – the project developed from something smaller, more intangible: mutual friendship and interest to preserve things in the film. Rothbart began to leave his camera at the Sanford home, so that Emmanuel and Smurf could film in their own time, often capturing their sister Denice and mother Cheryl. “It was really an organic thing,” said Rothbart.
The first third of 17 Blocks, filmed in 1999 and the early 2000s, arouses curiosity, especially thanks to Emmanuel, who showed a special affinity for filmmaking and filling the screen with his exuberant smile (describes his favorite theme as “Talking on the phone”, for example, then adds “and I’m a superstar”). “Even at the age of nine, Emmanuel had a poetic eye,” said Rothbart. “He would shoot through the window like a branch waving in the wind, or he would shoot two people – I couldn’t hear their voices – talking in the street and spinning. He had a very interesting visual sense. “
Many of Emmanuel’s videos focused on his mother, Cheryl, who remembers enjoying amateur cinema not so much as preserving memories but as a chance to shine. “At the time, it was just home videos,” she told the Guardian. Sanford grew up in the middle class, the son of a government official in DC, and dreamed of becoming an actor, “so to me it was, ‘I’m a star in my own little film’ … I thought it was Marilyn Monroe from anyway . “
Sanford does not hesitate in the uncomfortable and cruel moments captured by Emmanuel at the time – a physical fight with her then boyfriend, moments when she collapses on the couch in a continuous fight against drug addiction, calling her father to ask for money, many tight houses in southeastern DC where the family lives. “You cannot change the past – the past is the past. For me, it’s relevant now, ”said Sanford about allowing viewers to enter that era of his life. “My life experience is similar to that of many single parents … I don’t mind having it on screen. My life is my life. This is what happened to me. Maybe someone else has a hard time with some of the experiences I have had – maybe they get something out of it. “
The film is split in half by a horrible act of armed violence: on New Year’s Eve 2009, Emmanuel was shot and killed at home (no arrests were made). Carnage and devastation are captured by the camera bravely rolling from the Sanfords, as they go through a decade of mourning, activism, reconciliation, forgiveness and learning to speak of an unimaginable loss, through the growth of anti-gun violence and protests Black Lives Matter . Rothbart remained close to the family over the years, vacationing together and, after Emmanuel’s death, suffering (the relationship and respect between Sanford and Rothbart was made clear in a joint interview).
“We feel really determined to have to tell Emmanuel’s story and we realize that it’s not just Emmanuel’s story, it’s the story of the whole family,” said Rothbart. The cameras continued to run after 2009, as “it was something we did a ritual when we were together”. In the final third of the film, in 2016, Denice’s son Justin – undisciplined, curious, exaggerating for the camera – is the same age as Emmanuel when Rothbart met him on the basketball court.
The freewheeling film project and the treasure trove of low-risk, relaxed home videos he left behind took on a new purpose after Emmanuel’s death. “I wanted memories of him, period,” said Sanford. The video collection before and after his death, distilled from the thousand hours by video publisher Jennifer Tiexiera, offers viewers the chance to get to know Emmanuel as something more than a grim statistic of armed violence often used by American lawmakers and anti-crime experts. black communities. “You may not have met him, but this is who I missed, see what I missed,” said Sanford of the film. “This is just one story and, although there are many, it is the same story.
“This film is real life,” she said. “It’s not just what they see on TV, because TV is a make-believe. This is real life, it happens, it is quite the norm for many of us. “
“It is so wonderful and courageous for them to share their story in such an intimate way,” said Rothbart, who credited Sanford’s firmness in recognizing the power to simply observe his complicated, metastatic and unbelievable sadness. “Even then, [she] I knew it would have value someday, ”he said. Having lost friends and children of friends due to armed violence, she “knew how challenging and painful they would be” the weeks immediately after Emmanuel’s death. But she said, “people need to see this,” recalled Rothbart. “People need to know what it’s like to go through something like this in your family. We have to film everything. ‘
“People could get to know him as a boy and then recognize the boy who got lost here.”
Time passes, and the last section of the film watches the now adult Sanfords growing up in the future – Cheryl struggling for sobriety; Smurf, who was spared prison by an overly compassionate judge, finding steady work in a deli and playing with his children; Deny training to be a security officer. Outside the frame, Rothbart and Cheryl Sanford look to a safer future; the filmmakers partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety and Black Lives Matter for the screenings, and together they started a program, Washington to Washington, which brings young people from DC neighborhoods on camping trips out of town.
“The film’s title is almost a challenge,” said Rothbart. “The family lives 17 blocks from the United States Capitol, and yet, this is what is happening in this neighborhood. It is a kind of challenge for people in power, and really for any audience member, to ask: what can I do to try to create more opportunities for people living in neighborhoods like this and change some of the results?
“Armed violence is a symptom, not a cause, of other problems, other challenges that these neighborhoods are facing and that are not being adequately addressed,” he added. (“Correct”, Sanford agreed.)
Seventeen Blocks ends with a tribute to those lost in DC armed violence in the 10 years since Emmanuel’s murder – a list, with more than 1,200 names in minuscule font, that spans pages, very long. “Each of these names could be its own documentary,” said Rothbart. “And this is a family that is suffering, still missing their loved one.”