New Doc Captures Intensity Of NYC Protests

It’s hard to believe that just a month ago today, the nation watched in horror as a video went viral of George Floyd taking his last breaths when then Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Just about every state and several international communities have responded in ways that have shaken us at our very core. 

While protests erupted from coast to coast, seasoned New York City filmmaker Julian Marshall, was devising a plan on how to take his Blackmagic Pocket 4K camera and capture the events unfolding in one of the epicenters of the daily Black Lives Matter movements and nightly blazing riots. 

Marshall says that the first few nights of protests are ones that he will never forget as neighbors banded together during the day only to see their communities engulfed in flames and chaos by rioters during the night. Documenting the public outcry in this way ended up being somewhat cathartic. 

“This film is for anyone who felt outraged at what happened to George Floyd,” Marshall told BET.com “It’s for people who didn’t know what to do. Largely the riots are a result of people just not knowing what to do and feeling like ‘when your voice isn’t heard for so long, you just have to cry out.”

Awakened by the voices of Cornel West and Killer Mike as they individually called out and further explained the roots of the anger resulting in protests, and riots, Marshall crafted a short film, We Are George Floyd, as his call to action to vote in the 2020 presidential election amid issues such as police brutality, white vigilante violence, and the senseless killings of Black people in America.  

“Vote like your life depends on it. In order to solve this we’ve got to go out and vote at every level,” said Marshall. “Not only to get rid of Donald Trump but we need to vote and kick out a whole bunch of congressmen, kick out a whole bunch of senators.”

BET.com sat down with Marshall to find out more about the vision behind the lens for the short film, We Are George Floyd.

BET: How did you feel when you first say the video of Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck?

Julian Marshall: I mean, it was disgusting. The tough thing about it, obviously, is just how long it went on. I had a chance to talk to the police officers who have worked on my sets before about this just to get their opinion and to learn about police protocol and training. And you know, there is no protocol for putting your knee on someone’s neck. It’s not something that exists within police training to my knowledge based on what I learned from them. The sad part about it, is that this is just the one that got caught. This is unfortunately something that occurs at such a high frequency and this is just the one [officer] who got caught. 

BET: What encounters have you personally had with the police?

Julian Marshall: I grew up in Washington, D.C. skateboarding. Something that’s unique about D.C. is that there’s so many different police forces that take on so many different tasks. It meant that there were some who were ust left to their own devices, which incentivizes some of the worst behaviors. 

Specifically, with skateboarding, there was a force of cops who were tasked with hassling skateboarders on a daily and weekly basis to the point of police brutality and nothing short of [it]. I’ve had a knee in my back before. I’ve been tackled before. That was throughout my teenage years. Racial profiling was absolutely a part of that. The caveat that I’ll say is that D.C. has some really good, strong police forces who are responsible for actually keeping people safe, but then there are a few police forces where they just abuse the power.

BET: What motivated you to take to the streets and document this public outcry of protests?

Julian Marshall: Friday, May 29 was the moment that I really tuned in to the protests here in New York. I tend to go and protest a lot, but this was one of the few exceptions where I was conflicted simply because of spending months hearing about this invisible enemy, Coronavirus. It was an internal battle and then Friday night I just lost sleep over it.  

[Then] Saturday morning, I woke up and I saw Cornel West on CNN and Killer Mike’s Atlanta press conference. They were just so strong in their rhetoric. I was like, I gotta do something about this. And not only that, I think I know the story to tell here [in New York City] that will be productive in this environment. 

With everyone having been stuck inside for months, people are already pent up and then with an event like [George Floyd’s death], it’s so emotional. I was afraid that we would just tear each other apart. I knew that I had to suck it up, get out there, and make a film to help.

BET: Is there one thing that the media isn’t showing about these protests, whether it be good or bad?

Julian Marshall: I mean, there are a couple crazy things that I saw that I couldn’t capture because they just happened so quickly in real-time. [But] I shot, cop cars getting blown up. I suspected that the people who did it had to have been on their bikes just to have the mobility and pace of what they did.  

I noticed there were a couple of guys on dirt bikes fleeing from the cops. That was one of the craziest, most reckless things that I have ever seen which is two dirt bikes weaving in and out of oncoming traffic on Sixth Avenue. It was straight up out of a movie. That was something I wasn’t able to capture that was pretty wild. 

BET: How would the We Are Floyd filmmaking experience have been different if you had chosen to film in another city instead of NYC?

Julian Marshall: [What] really enabled me to tell the story I wanted to tell [was because] it was all happening right here [in my neighborhood] and I have access to it. There’s no telling what type of access I would have had in Los Angeles or Minneapolis. But no matter where I was for this, I would have gone and done something. 

BET: What was your decision-making process on leading with Cornel West’s voice for the daytime scenes and transitioning to Killer Mike’s quote for the evening scenes?

Julian Marshall: It’s structured as [presenting] a problem and then solutions. With Cornel West, I was trying to illustrate the problem that had led to what just happened. The problems in America both culturally and economically that have led to this point that we’ve had so many compounding failures in our country that have caused these outbursts. 

On the solution side, that’s why I was hit by Killer Mike, which is don’t burn your house down. I want to really put the solution side of the structure to motivate people to do something productive with what’s happening right now. And to make sure that we don’t allow in this case, Donald Trump and Republicans to dehumanize us because of the riots. The riots make it very easy for them to call us thugs and animals. That makes it easier for them to empower their base when they strip our humanity away from us. 

We need this place operating in full capacity in order to solve the problem that we are protesting against. 

Watch We Are George Floyd below:

This interview has been condensed for clarity.