Independent film screening, panel discussion invite open conversation on social justice, race relations

Local nonprofit Brothers of the Desert is presenting a one-night-only screening of the independent film “Veils, Requiem for Trayvon” Friday at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. Directed by Courtney Baker-Oliver, the film draws connections between the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin and pivotal moments in the civil rights movement.

The film adaptation stems from a stage play by Steven A. Butler Jr. that Baker-Oliver had been directing for several years. He said the transition from theater to film opened new creative possibilities that weren’t available on stage.

“Rather than this sort of one-dimensional view that you get as an audience member looking at something on stage, we have the ability to shape pictures that you just could not do in the live show,” Baker-Oliver said.

The collaboration with cinematographer and editor Andre Strong represents a full-circle moment for the two. Baker-Oliver was his drama teacher when he first started teaching in the 1990s. “The student has definitely become the teacher, because he was super helpful,” Baker-Oliver said.

He said Strong opened his eyes to the storytelling possibilities of the film medium, which helped make moments in the film all the more impactful.

The film sees Fulton visiting with figures like Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of 14-year-old Emmet Till lynched in 1955, Myrlie Evers, whose husband Medgar was assassinated in 1963, and the mothers of the four Black girls killed in a KKK bombing at a church in Birmingham in 1963.

“There’s an opportunity to really shape the world,” he said. Toward the end of the stage production, Fulton and the other women gather to sing the song “Circle of Mothers,” a reference to the foundation Fulton later founded.

On the stage, the scene is simply blocked with the actors all standing on stage while a photo montage plays.

“In the film, we get to see this bucolic setting where the women are sitting around this table,” he said. “They’re all in white and there’s this whole other world where they’re able to be washed clean, in my mind, of all the grief.”

While working on the project, Baker-Oliver discovered a previously unknown connection to Martin through his extended family, “Trayvon’s dad is an in-law of my aunt,” he said.

But even before knowing about that connection, Baker-Oliver was drawn to the story from the moment it happened.

A native of South Florida, where Trayvon was killed, Baker-Oliver said, “I felt exposed. I felt that what happened to Trayvon could happen to me or to my nephews or to my cousins just by just because he was black in a place where they thought that he didn’t deserve to be. So that resonated with me very deeply”

Baker-Oliver said the project has received support from Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, who he met in person earlier this year. “For her, this is her 17-year-old son,” Baker-Oliver said. “For her, that’s a hole that’s never going to go away.”

The story feels even more urgent in the midst of current efforts to wipe Black history from school curriculums. 

“Someone’s got to tell the story. Someone’s got to set the record straight,” Baker-Oliver said.

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Details: The film is being screened on Friday, May 23 at 6 p.m. at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. A panel discussion will follow with Courtney Baker-Oliver, Steven Butler, Andre Strong, and City Councilmember Grace Garner. The screening is appropriate for children, though organizers encourage parents to discuss the film’s themes in advance. Find more information and tickets here.

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