Moving the Culture Forward – The Provincetown Independent

Filmmaker Stephen Winter will be in Provincetown next week for a screening of his work-in-progress, A Brief History of Silence. The documentary focuses on queer Jamaican author Marlon James. The screening will be followed by a talk at Twenty Summers. —The editors

Q: Your film follows Marlon James as he returns to Jamaica and reckons with his history there. Why were you interested in telling a story set in Jamaica?

Stephen Winter: My mother was from Jamaica, so I spent a lot of my childhood going back and forth between the island and Chicago, where I grew up. I was always interested in queer Jamaica. It’s a very hard community to access, because Jamaicans are very private.

Q: Marlon James was the winner of the 2015 Booker Prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, which tells the backstory of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. How did you meet James?

SW: He’s one of the most critically acclaimed writers of our generation. He’s also one of the most accomplished Jamaican novelists and the only one who has been so openly and remarkably queer and modern. We’ve lived parallel lives but in different worlds. James grew up in Jamaica, and we’re about the same age. Now we’re able to come together in this film. He’s also the smartest guy in any room, but gentle about it.

Marlon and I got acquainted through a producer at MSNBC in 2023, and then I received a Ford Foundation grant to make a queer documentary about him.

Q: In your film, how does James’s story introduce the struggle for LGBTQ rights in Jamaica?

SW: Jamaica has always been a country that punches far above its weight. Everyone knows about it, but there are some things hardly anyone knows. Jamaica is extremely homophobic. When Marlon left Jamaica for the States, it was to escape anti-gay violence as well as for teaching positions. He said, “Whether it was in a plane or a coffin, I knew I had to get out of Jamaica.”

In the film, Marlon returns to Jamaica to confront the homophobia that drove him from home — and his mother, who still cannot accept the truth about him.

Against images of condemnation and fear, another Jamaica emerges: queer Jamaicans dancing at underground parties, lovers embracing in hidden corners and public streets, activists speaking defiantly into microphones, artists refusing silence. These competing realities sit at the center of the film: fear alongside joy, repression alongside defiance.

Q: Who are some other people the viewer meets in the documentary?

SW: Staceyann Chin is a Jamaican actress and activist who became the first lesbian to appear on Jamaican television. When she first came out, she was met with a lot of abuse. Today, she is back in the country, owning and operating a queer ranch in the Jamaican countryside. Staceyann is also a highly regarded poet. The film shows her close relationship with Marlon. He visits Staceyann at the ranch where they have a welcome home party for him, and they talk extensively about their histories as queer Jamaicans.

Q: Your 1996 debut film Chocolate Babies also focuses on the experiences of people who are Black and queer. Jeremy O. Harris, who spoke at Twenty Summers in 2019 the summer after his controversial Slave Play appeared off-Broadway, called you the godfather of queer cinema and has credited you with influencing his own work in film. What was the context in which you created Chocolate Babies?

SW: I made that film when to be Black and queer was to be marginalized without question. The plot involves five Black and Asian mostly HIV-positive drag queens and Afro-punks who out a conservative, closeted Black politician. It’s an urban fantasy, a mad romp through 1990s New York City from an Afro-punk point of view.

We were still living in an era when the whitewashing of culture was like the air one breathes. That’s how white supremacy works. There’s no rule saying that we don’t let Black people into the mainstream. But then there’s someone like Jeremy and it seems like maybe a starburst could happen this time. And it did.

I’ve had the experience of seeing Chocolate Babies get recognized, and all these younger artists come through doors that my generation helped open. It’s not a legacy we could have imagined. And we’re still here.

Q: How has Chocolate Babies been recognized in recent years?

SW: The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, but since it didn’t get top prize we couldn’t get distribution. It was shown at other festivals and got great audience reactions but with the same result — no offers of distribution. It wasn’t until people like Jeremy could rent it at video stores that it attained cult status. And then, in 2020, with the Black Lives Matter movement, distributors like Criterion were taken to task about their lack of films from Black directors. So that’s what it took, along with the help of white millennial filmmakers who had seen Chocolate Babies, to get this film into the culture.

Q: How do you explain the balance of pathos and humor in your work?

SW: The queer community that I came up in, especially the Black queer community, was very humor-forward. I also learned a lot from my family. My father, along with his mother and uncle, escaped the Nazis, and although I didn’t learn about my Jewish heritage until my 20s, my father had this wonderful anti-authoritarian sense of humor that came from a place of being an underdog. It’s the Jeffersons infused with the Marx Brothers.

Q: Do you still have support for making your work? Is the Ford Foundation grant you received still in the wings? What other projects have you been working on?

SW: The Ford Foundation was one of the organizations that came under attack by the current administration, forcing them to make changes, which included funding our film. Last July they told us that with great regret everything was suspended until further notice. Like many artists and academics, we are looking for additional funding.

Lately I’ve been co-producing podcasts, including the Afrofuturist podcast Adventures in New America. It’s a serialized buddy comedy tackling themes of racism and inequality through a science-fiction lens. I aim to play an active part in moving the culture forward in everything I do.

Silent No More

The events: Screening of A Brief History of Silence and Stephen Winter artist talk
The time: Thursday, June 4, screening 1 p.m., talk 6 p.m.
The place: Screening: Waters Edge Cinema, 237 Commercial St., Provincetown; talk: Hawthorne Barn, 29 Miller Hill Road
The cost: Screening: free; talk: $20 suggested donation