- [Narrator] Coming up on "One Detroit," we'll have details on the International Royal Starr Film Festival, now in its 10th year, plus we'll talk about the importance of reading books by African-American authors during September, also ahead, in our "Destination Detroit" series, we'll meet a man whose family came to the Detroit area in the 1920s, and we'll close the show with a performance by boogaloo band Spanglish Fly.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

- [Narrator] Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(upbeat electronic music) (upbeat electronic music continues) - [Narrator] Just ahead on "One Detroit," we'll tell you how you can take part in the September is Black Reading Month observance, plus, our "Destination Detroit" series shares the story of a man whose parents were drawn to the city because of job opportunities in the auto industry, and we'll have a performance by Spanglish Fly from this year's Concert of Colors, but first up, the Royal Starr Film Festival is back in Metro Detroit for its 10th year, showcasing films from Michigan and around the world.

The festival is underway and runs through Sunday, September 14th at Emagine's Birmingham 8 theater.

"One Detroit's" Chris Jordan got the details on this year's event from one of the organizers, plus, we hear from local filmmaker Andrew Templeton about his documentary titled "1969: Killers, Freaks, and Radicals," it's playing at the festival on Friday.

(upbeat electronic music) - We are here at the Birmingham 8, home to the 10th annual Royal Starr Film Festival, Billy, tell me a bit about the festival.

- Coming up September 11th through 14th, we have 100 films that are gonna be showcased over that Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday for people to come out and see, they're a mixture of both documentary as well as narrative features and shorts from around Michigan, around the nation, around the world.

We started at the Royal Oak Emagine for our first seven years, and we've been here at the Birmingham 8 Powered by Emagine for the past three.

- And now, the festival is just part of the work that Royal Starr does, I mean, you do a lot to build community among local filmmakers, you have the filmmaker mixers that happen from time to time, tell me a bit about that.

- Yeah, so the parent nonprofit is the Royal Starr Arts Institute, which the Royal Starr Film Festival is part of that, we also do filmmaker community mixers every month, the second Tuesday of every month at the Eastern Palace Club in Hazel Park, and that's an opportunity for various filmmakers of Michigan to get together, to collaborate, to actually see each other in person, to see what projects they're working on and see what they can create next.

- Why is that so important, to create that community among filmmakers here?

- Well, filmmaking is really a collaborative endeavor and it takes a lot of people to build that team out.

A lot of us are still developing our skills, and learning and building our networks, but the way we have technology nowadays and the distribution channels, filmmakers can be anywhere in the world that actually create content and monetize that content, and we're looking to empower the Michigan filmmakers to do that.

- And how many films get submitted for this festival every year?

- There are hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, and our... We have this very dedicated film selection committee that goes through, watches them, there's a various grading system, and that helps us go through the large submissions that we have.

You can find all the films, their write-ups, the trailers at boxoffice.royalstarr.org, you can kinda peruse the 100 different films and see what's interesting, we have one film called "Breasts Not Required," that's the story of nine women who had undergone mastectomies and their stories about undergoing that, we have another very intriguing film, it's called "1969," which is a local film out of Ann Arbor, and that's, like, a true crime, history story.

One's called "Power Lines," and that was a organization that got together and they were going forward with trying to create political districts in Michigan that actually made sense and they weren't biased, and so, this is their documentary about their endeavor going through that.

There is one non-competition film that we're gonna be screening that I'm actually acting in, it's called "On Gallows Hill," it's kind of an '80s vampire cult-classic movie, it's gonna be having its premiere here at the Emagine Saturday night at 6:00 PM, and again, all those tickets are available as well as the trailers and the write-ups at boxoffice.royalstarr.org.

- So people who come to the festival, what do you hope that they see or that they learn about our Michigan community of filmmakers here?

- Just that there's so much talent out there, I mean, everyone has a story to tell, and to see these stories on the screen, there are so many different topics and so many different takes on things, and we're also part of that community, so we do like to emphasize our Michigan filmmakers because those are the ones that are creating the films of tomorrow.

- [Person] We had the Michigan murders, the campus riots, Vietnam War protestors... - [Chris] One of the Michigan films featured in the festival is "1969: Killers, Freaks, and Radicals," a documentary directed by Andrew Templeton.

Earlier this year, the documentary won the Audience Award at the Cinetopia Film Festival in Ann Arbor.

It is one of the headlining films on Friday night.

- Making sure when we go out, we go in groups and don't go by yourself any place.

- [Person] There was a big conflict with the older generation, they said, "We're looking among the freaks, and radicals, and hippie element for the killer."

- It's a film about the late '60s in the Ann Arbor area, it was a fascinating time historically, a lot of, you know, unique cultural things going on, you've got the women's movement, the civil rights movement, war in Vietnam, and all of this is going on at the same time as this series of really shocking murders of young women, and I had read about the crime, you know, I guess about seven years ago now when I was living in Ann Arbor, and I was just fascinated that I hadn't heard about it and it felt like there was still a lot left unresolved.

- You did a lot of really unique research for the film, a lot of FOIA requests, a lot of interviews with people who were there, who knew the victims, who were investigating, who were part of the whole counterculture community in Ann Arbor and Ypsi then, tell me a bit about that process of the research that you did and kinda how you told the story in a unique way.

- When I started, I definitely wanted to take a sort of... Like, a fresh, independent look at it, 'cause I just felt like things were, like I said, unresolved, I mean, John Collins was convicted of one murder, but the rest are all officially unsolved, when I started to talk to people from that time or who had a relationship with the case, it did seem to come up that there was a sense of frustration at the lack of resolution, and that it maybe could have been made a bit clearer or some more convictions could have occurred, and then, once I was on that path, I got into research, I requested documents from the state police, which was a whole thing I'd never done before, there was a lot of stuff in the files that I got that wasn't... That had never been public information, and it was surprising and it told a lot, I think, about the investigation that is maybe poorly understood, even from people who lived through it and have some familiarity with the cases.

- Something the film does really well is you really give that sense of the cultural context of the backdrop that this story played out against, how did you approach this sort of daunting task of telling this, like, huge story that's, like, about the murders, but also, about this whole era, and includes voices like John Sinclair and everything that you brought into it?

- The more research I did, the more I felt like that couldn't... You couldn't separate that part of the story from the crimes and the investigation themselves because it's kind of intertwined and, you know, societal norms affect everything, a good example would be the... You know, I think the police in general in some parts of society were very focused on this outsider element, hippies, freaks, radicals, and that's something I saw again and again in newspaper reports, police reports, those terms, and it's hard to not see how that doesn't play into the failures of the investigation as well, and it's also, I think, a reflection of how people's lives were, like, the women interviewed in the film, I kinda wanted to get a little bit of their... What it was like to be a young woman at the time, and I thought exploring all of that other stuff that was going on was important to give a full picture and not just focus solely on the murder investigation.

- The film is gonna be in the Royal Starr Film Festival here, had you been familiar with that festival before you submitted for this film?

- Yeah, you know, I've been to their filmmaker mixers that they do, which are a great thing, anybody... You know, Detroit or Michigan filmmaker should come to these things, they're very friendly and it's a great way to meet crew and just even just talk about the process of being an independent filmmaker, a local filmmaker.

- Why do you think that's so important?

- Well, I think that's important just, you know, to foster that community anywhere, independent film is tough and you have to support other creators, and I think there's just a lot of interesting Michigan stories to be told, both fiction and nonfiction, so the more independent filmmakers come together and collaborate, the more things we can share with the world.

- [Narrator] September is Black Reading Month, a time to celebrate African-American literature and culture.

Organizers are encouraging the community to read books, magazines and journals written by black authors and to support black-owned bookstores.

"One Detroit" contributor and "American Black Journal" host Stephen Henderson spoke with one of the co-founders of September is Black Reading Month, Malik Yakini, about the importance of the annual observance.

(upbeat electronic music) - Black Reading Month, something you co-founded, let's start with the... Just the origin of that, how did you come up with this idea?

- Well, in 1978, '79, myself and my wife at the time... (indistinct) Yakini, and Dr. Keith Dye, had created a company called New Directions Information Institute, and we were distributing black magazines and books trying to get them in kinda mainstream stores throughout the city, so we noticed that grocery stores, for example, at the checkout counter, there were various magazines, but none of the magazines dealt with the black experience, or those who dealt with the black experience dealt with entertainment and issues like that, there were no real serious black publications in the places where people went every day to shop, so our attempt was to get those magazines and books in those kinds of stores, and so, for about two years, we were distributing, going every month, dropping off magazines like Black Enterprise and Africa Magazine, and others that dealt with serious issues of the day, but when we came back at the end of the month, we'd notice only one or two had sold, so we realized that it was more than just getting the publications.. Getting access to the publications, we needed a public campaign in order to promote the importance of reading black books and magazines, and so, we met with a number of other black book distributors and black book sellers in Chicago with Third World Press in the summer of 1980, and out of that, we decided to come back to Detroit and do something concrete, there had been a lot of discussion on the national level about some kinda promotional campaign, we decided to come back to Detroit and create Black Reading Month... September is Black Reading Month, we set it for September because that's the time when students are... At least at that time period, that's when students were going back to school, I understand students are going back to school earlier now, and also, it was the peak book-buying month in the book industry, so we wanted to not only promote literacy in general, we think it's important that people be literate and well-informed about what's going on both in their communities and in the world, but specifically, we wanted to promote the familiarity with the black literary tradition so that we can, as the people, ground ourself in our own experience and have a window to look at the world which is informed by that legacy.

- Yeah, yeah, and this is something that's celebrated in many different places now, I mean, it's kind of an international phenomenon.

- Yeah, well, you know, with the...

Especially with the advent of the information superhighway, as they used to call it, you know, people all around the country and around the world have become familiar with Black Reading Month and are celebrating it or observing it in various ways, the most fundamental way that we ask people to celebrate or observe Black Reading month is to read at least one book by a black author during the month of September, that's kinda the low bar, but at least one, you know, and that might sound like it's not a big accomplishment, but the reality is in American society, the average adult has not read a book in the last five years, and so, we have a tremendous problem with literacy in general, but again, with black people in this country, people of African descent, we have the problem of living in a society which has intentionally kind of covered up our history, our culture, and part of that is the tremendous contributions that we've made to literature.

- Yeah, yeah, you know, I think we'd be remiss to talk about reading and African-Americans without talking about the linkage between literacy and the word, and freedom and the idea of liberation, that both in terms of resistance to slavery and to things like Jim Crow that came after it, but also, in terms of just the idea of self-determination, that bedrock is very rich with the ability to read and the proclivity to read, to understand, to know more, to know ourselves and to know the world around us.

- Yeah, I don't think I could have said it better, Stephen, in fact, maybe we'll hire you as a spokesperson for Black Reading Month... (Stephen laughing) But our tagline has always been, "Black reading is crucial for black survival," and it really speaks to what you're saying, both in the times that we were in chattel slavery, having access to the printed word and having access to the world of information that that opens up was certainly a liberating experience and certainly something that our ancestors struggled for.

In the current time period, being well-informed is extremely important, and especially in this age of misinformation and intentional disinformation, it's important that we're reading from multiple sources, and that we're comparing that information, and that we're thinking critically, and that we're arriving at decisions which help to benefit ourselves as individuals, our families and our community.

We want people to do a couple things, one, as I said, to read at least one book during the month of September by a black author, and then, two, for those who are up to it, we ask them to participate in the turn-off-the-TV challenge, that is to turn off the television for the entire month except for shows like "American Black Journal."

- Except for "American Black Journal."

- Yeah, no, seriously, and which speak to our experience and help to uplift us, but we're trying to break people from the habit of kind of mindless television watching, and so, the turn-off-the-TV challenge during the month of September is really a fast of sorts, it's a fast to break our addiction to television, it's a fast that enables us to take the time that perhaps we were using watching television in the past and use that to read, and also, it's an exercise in self-discipline, fasting of any sort also always strengthens us and allows us to have the kind of fortitude to move through the challenges that we're facing in life.

- Yeah, yeah, so before we go, give me a suggestion for listeners, the one book if they might choose to read a book by an African-American author this month.

- Well, there's so many books, I can't narrow it down to one, but what I'll say is I've been doing lots of family research over the last several months and finding out incredible things about my family right here in Detroit, there's so much history that is still to be uncovered, much of it is out there, but it's in archives, and newspapers, and books, and so, we have to dig to find it, but one of the books I'm rereading is "Black Detroit" by Herb Boyd, I would strongly suggest that if people want to have an overview of the history of people of African descent in the city of Detroit, that that would be an excellent book to start with, "Black Detroit" by Herb Boyd, - Yeah, no, that's an excellent book, and of course, Herb's a great author and thinker.

I'm gonna suggest a book too, it's a book that I just bought last week, it's by a woman named Alice Randal and it is about the history and linkage of country music to the African-American tradition, the way in which country is ours like all American music is ours.

- [Narrator] Turning now to "Destination Detroit," our new series that explores the region's rich history and the people who helped shape it.

Today, we hear from Bill Goodwin of Shelby Township.

He shares how his parents came to Detroit to find work in the automotive industry.

- Bailing hay and mining coal might not have been too exciting for them.

(relaxed string music) My mother come from a very large family of 13, they were burly tobacco farmers in Western Kentucky, and my dad came from coal-mining country in Southern Illinois...

Here in Illinois, and they came up in the early '20s, pre-Depression, times were good, but just the excitement of Detroit, and bailing hay and mining coal might not have been too exciting for them.

They were auto workers their entire lives, both of 'em, my mother was probably in her early 20s and kinda started out as a housewife, and came down with tuberculosis and spent a few years in the TB wards, got well and went to work at Packard, and she retired for Fleetwood Cadillac after, I don't know, 35 years, and she would've stayed at Fleetwood Cadillac 'til this very moment if she could've.

(laughs) In fact, on her tombstone in Western Kentucky, we have a Cadillac crest on her tombstone.

My dad worked at Ford, I've got all kinds of Ford stories, my dad said that five dollars a day was a big deal, that's what brought many, many people here, but he said, "Mr. Ford absolutely got his money's worth out of you for that five dollars."

(relaxed piano music) - [Narrator] For more "Destination Detroit" stories, go to onedetroitpbs.org/destinationde.

That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit," thank you for watching.

We'll leave you now with a performance from this year's Detroit PBS broadcast of the best of Concert of Colors, which featured a variety of music genres from around the world.

With their Latin boogaloo sound, here's Spanglish Fly.

(upbeat boogaloo music) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) ♪ Think of all the... (indistinct) (upbeat boogaloo music) ♪ Think of all the sacrifices I made for you ♪ ♪ Think about the good things I've done for you ♪ ♪ Think about the... (indistinct) ♪ Things I tried not to do ♪ Think of all the wrong things you dared me to do ♪ ♪ Come on (indistinct) ♪ Think, think, about the good things, about the bad things ♪ ♪ About the wrong things, about the right things ♪ ♪ Baby, before you leave me ♪ Realize that I'm the one who loves you ♪ (upbeat boogaloo music) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (person singing in foreign language) (upbeat boogaloo music) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (person singing in foreign language) (upbeat boogaloo music) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) (upbeat boogaloo music continues) ♪ How much of your sacrifices can I really claim ♪ ♪ How many tears have you shed for which I was to blame ♪ ♪ It's all I can remember, just what went wrong ♪ ♪ I try so hard to please you ♪ That's what their wrong ♪ Come on (indistinct) ♪ Think, think, about the good things, about the bad things ♪ ♪ About the right things, about the wrong things ♪ (indistinct) (people singing in foreign language) ♪ Yeah, think, think (people singing in foreign language) ♪ Think about the right things (people singing in foreign language) ♪ Think about the time we were in California ♪ ♪ Think about the time we were (indistinct) ♪ Come on, baby, think, think, think, yeah ♪ ♪ Come on, baby, think, think, oh ♪ (upbeat boogaloo music) (people singing in foreign language) - [Narrator] Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation, Michigan Central, and viewers like you.

(upbeat electronic music) (upbeat electronic music continues) (upbeat piano music)