- [Narrator] Coming up on "One Detroit," we'll tell you how some Southwest Detroit residents are preserving their community's Latin American history.

Plus, we'll have details on this year's Detroit Black Film Festival, which showcases African American films from around the world.

Also ahead in our "Destination Detroit" series, we'll meet a woman whose family immigrated from Laos.

And we'll close the show with a performance by Indian singer Asha Puthli.

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

- [Announcer] 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.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] 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.

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

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Just ahead on "One Detroit," we'll hear about this year's Detroit Black Film Festival, which features 72 films from around the world.

Plus, our "Destination Detroit" series shares a story of a woman who came to the United States from Laos and eventually ended up in Michigan.

And we'll have a performance by Asha Puthli from this year's Concert of Colors.

But first up, we're recognizing National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs through October 15th.

It's a time to honor the rich culture, history, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans.

As part of our "Destination Detroit" coverage, we're shining a light on the Latin Americans who have made Southwest Detroit their home.

"One Detroit's" Bill Kubota reports on how some residents are working to preserve the community's history by documenting the stories of people who grew up there.

(gentle music) - [Bill] Corktown, Michigan Central beautified an attraction once again.

Lest we forget the people who've been part of this area decades past, like the Latino families who made their destination Southwest Detroit.

- So we have been here for a very long time, but yet our history has never been documented in the way that other communities have documented their history.

The African-American community proudly has documented their community, and that's a huge part of Detroit.

The Arab-American community has documented their history, - [Bill] This gathering.

Hosted by the Voces Oral History Project last December.

Voces, that Spanish for voices.

- The comprehensive collection of these stories has yet to be done.

And this committee came together to invite you here tonight because that's what we're gonna do.

(audience applauding) - You know, this neighborhood has been revitalized many times over by new families coming in.

There are new transplants you can call them.

They come in, they don't know any of this, and I think they'll be more than interested, everyone across the board, to learn about us and our stories.

- We have to tell our own story.

That's why I'm really proud of the work that the Voces Committee is interested in doing.

- [Bill] Filmmaker Len Radjewski Fraga used some audio recordings from the 1970s helping document his family's migration from Mexico to Michigan.

- [Speaker] And I thought he told me if I wanna go to Michoacan.

They ask me, "Do you want to go to Michigan?"

I said, "I don't know where I go."

- If my uncles could do it with reel to reel recorders, I mean, all of you should be doing.

The power of these things compared to an audio tape reel to reel and those early cameras.

- [Bill] Seems oral histories are a priority for those deemed to be more important, prominent people, but everyone has a story, right?

Technology like smartphone makes it easier to get them.

- But the first thing is, as you've heard many, many times, we all know, you gotta do a novel.

(upbeat music) - [Bill] Now, an imperative, when people die, histories can die too.

- We were motivated in a way to form this group, Voces, because of the work of one of the musicians, Cesar Pena, who said "I need to make a documentary about all these fantastic musicians that came out of Southwest Detroit and Del Ray."

But unfortunately, he passed away.

- [Bill] Back when Caesar Pena toured with famed bluesman Albert King.

Pena died in 2022.

Meanwhile, Aaron Barndollar and Ozzie Rivera had already been posting interviews done years ago on YouTube.

Musicians like Frank Panchito Lozano who'd been performing since the 1940s.

- This must be you here, Panchito, in the background.

- I'm right there.

- [Bill] Lozano, horn player, band leader, and the first Mexican American principal at a Detroit public school, died in 2014.

There were other musicians to interview, some they didn't get to in time.

- They played everything, especially, you know, during the war years there was a lot of big band, depended on where you were playing or who you were playing with.

- With the Voces project, they've expanded their scope into other aspects of life and culture in Southwest in the areas that have evolved into what's often called Mexican Town.

- Mexican Town, actually the label that we now use for Mexican Town was a marketing decision that was done in the mid '80s.

To kind of build on the fact there was a Detroit Greek Town restaurant district.

There was a strong restaurant district here back in my twenties, and definitely my teens, we would call the neighborhood (speaking Spanish) The neighborhood.

- [Bill] Rivera, almost 72 years old, born in Puerto Rico, at five months old, he and his mother joined his father in Corktown.

Barndollar, age 47, his family's home was nearby.

- My family lived on Beach Street, which would be where the MGM parking structure is right now.

- [Bill] Barndollar's family photo collection, a trove of memories.

He wants others to bring out their pictures too to add to the Voces collection.

- You know,now that generations, you know, boomers are getting older, folks are inheriting their family photos and are not sure what to do with them or kind of think they're worthless.

They're actually really invaluable.

- [Bill] Last summer, Barndollar started recording more oral histories, including his uncle, Henry Ibarra, and Henry's childhood friends, brothers Paul and Vic Venegas.

Ibarra's father came to Detroit from Michigan's Thumb.

- My grandfather had a farm and my dad did not like working on the farm.

So he left the farm in Capac and he come to Detroit and he got a job dishwashing, and he started out as a dishwasher and worked his way up to be the head chef of the Port Shelby Hotel.

- He was the Mexican Gordon Ramsay.

Never went to culinary school, but he could do anything in the kitchen.

- He knew everybody.

- [Bill] As Vic Venegas tells it, his father, Moses Venegas, started his first business in the early 1940s, - An American dream.

He won $500 at a crap game.

He told my mother, "I'm gonna rent the gas station."

He was 18 years old.

- During the day, he'd be pumping gas and all that.

And at night, out came the grill, and out came the long lounge chairs, and out came some food and drink, and a lot of the family would come over there.

They'd stop for gas.

But they stayed for a long, a long time.

- Stayed for dinner just about every night.

- [Bill] More oral histories are coming in.

Filmmaker Maurizio Dominguez got his start making documentaries.

With voces, he's doing research while editing an interview with Catholic activist Beatriz Escobel Ramos and Deacon Raul Feliciano of the Detroit Archdiocese.

- The people had that church built, the people built that little chapel.

- [Bill] They're talking about the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church of Southwest Detroit that dates back to the early 1920s.

- Yeah, the first Mexican national parish in the Midwest.

So not just Michigan, just Midwest overall.

This was all news to me.

And of course, the more that we start digging into it, I feel like the more curious I become and the more I wanna learn about this.

- Those people set for a priest in Mexico, because there were no Spanish speaking priests.

- I think that just speaks to the core of why it's so important to do this project.

You know, because stories like this, that if there's no documentation available and if there's no way for people to find out about it, then how are they gonna know, right?

What we're trying to avoid is having our history, the history of Latinos and our neighbors as well.

We're trying to prevent that from being lost.

- [Bill] Around 10 oral histories have been collected with that many more planned over the next 10 months.

Voces has some funding and is raising more to keep the ball rolling.

- I'm only one guy.

I can only record, edit so much.

So we're officially planning, you know, what's it gonna look like to expand, to grow this team and to bring more people from the community who can help with the archiving, the recording, the interviewing, everything.

- We're just scratching the surface.

This Latino community has been here since 1918.

- It's a huge undertaking.

But you know, we've assembled a great group of folks with a lot of talent and passion and expertise, and I think we're well on our way to telling the story.

- [Narrator] The sixth annual Detroit Black Film Festival is underway and takes place through Sunday, September 28th.

It features 72 independent films from 30 countries.

The event celebrates the creativity and talent of Black filmmakers and actors from around the world.

This year's theme is Cinema, Culture, and Cocktails, and includes the Taste of Black Spirits Tour highlighting handcrafted cocktails made from African American owned spirit brands.

"American Black Journal" host and "One Detroit" contributor Stephen Henderson spoke with the event's co-founders, Marshalle and Lazar Favors of Trinity Films Entertainment Group.

(upbeat music) - Sixth annual festival, this has become a fixture in Detroit.

Tell me about this year's festival.

- Well for me, it's exciting, because we weaved in the taste of Black spirit.

This year's festival, again, as you heard, 72 films, four locations, new partnerships.

New relationships, expansion, expansion, expansion.

That's how I look at it.

It's gonna be great.

I think, you know, Marshalle is, I have to give it to her.

She started me with this, right?

And I remember 2020 laying in the bed and she was like, "Hey, I wanna do the Detroit Black Film Festival."

By the time she woke up, we were set and ready to roll.

This year marks a testament for us, right?

We believe that this year, we'll challenge all the years to come because we're setting the tone that we're setting something new, right?

And I think that because we're Detroit.

Detroit all day.

Detroit every day.

That this year we'll tell it, right?

We have new things.

Cecil Detroit is one of our categories where we highlight our Detroit filmmakers.

Jeremy Brockman is an award-winning filmmaker.

So his film "The Cut" is in our festival, and we have so many more films.

- You know, when we talk about Detroit films in particular, I think there are a lot of people who don't know about the sort of cinema community here.

And I guess how robust it is.

And the festival I think is a way to sort of introduce yourself to that idea to see things that we don't see in other spaces.

- I know that the community is very robust here and it's growing every single day.

The number of films that are being made, then the festival just gives us a chance to highlight the creative community that we have.

And we're really, really excited because there is a portion in our festival that highlights specifically Detroit-made films among the other films that we're showcasing this year.

- Yeah, yeah.

The cocktails part of it.

This is the second year that you're doing this?

- This is the second year.

It gave us the opportunity to merge our audiences.

Instead of creating the event to, you know, a reception or a filmmakers luncheon, we just added the Taste of Black Spirits.

And that gives them an opportunity not only to sample products, but making, I mean, engage, right?

Because films need what?

Films need products at some point.

Filmmakers need to build their relationships with the spirit brand.

So that event happens on the 27th at the DoubleTree Hotel, a great hotel that offers us the whole second floor.

So we have the Crystal Ballroom, we're bringing in E40, Ronald Isley, and several other brands.

The brothers from have a bourbon called Sable.

And the filmmakers, the film group.

- The Best Man.

- The Best Man.

So their product will be in there and several hundred.

It's gonna be a great time.

And blending that with film, I mean cinema, again, Cinema, Culture, and cocktails.

I mean, you can't lose with that.

- And the natural connection with the Taste of Black Spirits and the film festival is really like the storytelling also because there's so many brand owners that have just incredible stories who are trailblazers, who are first in their industry, and we like to highlight the stories of the brand owners as well.

- Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about some the films.

And I guess how you curate something like this, 72 films is a lot, but I would imagine that there were hundreds of possibilities, right?

And so you come down to that 72, talk about that process a little.

- So we have 350 films this year's festival.

We have a board of judges who help us run through this process, which is not easy.

- And whittle that down?

- Right.

And we whittle it down to about, so we whittled down this year to about a hundred.

So we going over the hundred, we have the last word of course.

But at the same time, it's like, we have so many great films, this year was like, okay, wher are we gonna house these films?

So beautiful enough that we're back at the Charles H. Wright for four days, we're at the Car Center gallery, we're at the Love Building, which is our new relationship, and we're also at the Marlene Bowl there.

So we're able to break those films down and put those films in those screening places so we can comfortably do what we need to do with the Q&As and et cetera.

It is a process.

That process takes about two months after we choose the film.

- After you choose the films.

Where are you gonna watch them?

- And that's my favorite part of the festival really, is connecting the filmmakers with the audiences.

And so we have a number of people who are just traveling from around the world to be here.

Some of them are coming to Detroit for the first time.

And there's always the Q&A, and we have also just a special section for us to have further conversation with the filmmakers.

- Yeah.

It's a Black film festival celebrating, of course, Black cinema.

Let's talk about the state of Black films.

It seems to me, and I'm not someone who knows a whole lot about Hollywood or filmmaking, but it seems to me that we're in a different period now than we would've been 10 or 15 years ago with Black film.

And I guess what I mean by that is the explosion of, you know, independent filmmaking away from big studios has met opportunity for Black filmmakers as well.

So it seems like there's more, that's my impression as an outsider.

But you guys are inside.

- It's absolutely more, right?

When you think when we had, we do an event every year, annual event called Call Time.

Our very first Call Time, we had 800 folks come out that are in the film industry from Detroit specifically.

We had over 30 production teams and companies, Black teams and companies in Detroit.

There has been a surge of films on tons of platforms that we know very well that friends and family and filmmakers here have benefited from.

There has been, I think, three to 400 films in the last five years.

From out of Detroit, out of Detroit.

And they were shooting every single day.

- I also really wanna speak just on, you know, filmmaking robot as it relates to the African American community.

I think even now because of the times we're in, I think it's just even more important to make sure that Black voices and Black stories are uplifted, especially in a time where the erasure of history is happening.

So those voices are even more important.

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

Today we hear from Livonia resident Ny Derry.

She shares her family's journey from Laos to the United States and how she eventually settled in Michigan.

- The first time that he hugged me, I knew that it was family.

They were gonna take care of us.

(gentle music) When I was eight years old, our family got sponsored from a refugee camp in Thailand because of the Vietnam War, I was born in Vientiane in Laos.

And because of the war, my family had to escape to Thailand to get ready to be sponsored.

And we lived there for a year.

Then we got sponsored in Dallas, Texas, was really strange because our sponsor was in a Black community.

We never saw a Black person before.

And so when we arrive in the airport, a sponsor, which is a husband and wife from a church that went and welcomed us, I was really, I didn't know how to react.

But the first time that he hugged me, I knew that it was family.

They were gonna take care of us.

And I can't imagine my parents having four children coming here with no language, no anything.

But to be welcome to a community which is Black community from housing, from everything, for me and my family, I think we had very positive because we were taken care of.

But I know that a lot of family that comes because of the war was not that fortunate.

I think the reason why I'm telling that story is that once I'd grown up, it was like this division that we hear about white and Black.

And so I didn't know what they were talking about in the media about chaotic stuff that's going on versus what I'm living where here's a community that's taking care of us, you know?

And so that was really strange, back then, you know, I had to translated for my parents.

Also, they had a choice to learn the language, but they have to feed four kids, so they have to go to work.

Public assistant is not forever, you know, we took this public assistant, but we have to be off.

So we're working at factories and minimal jobs just for them to have their kids to fit in.

That last four year, then we migrated to New York to be united with my relatives.

And then long story short, you asked me about coming to Detroit.

I graduated from the university, Binghamton University, and I got married in the winter of 1995, and that's when I moved to Michigan.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] For more "Destination Detroit" stories, go to one detroitpbs.org/destinationdetro.

- [Speaker] Back in 1984.

- [Narrator] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thank you for watching.

We 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.

Here's India born singer songwriter Asha Puthli.

♪ Your love is making me sing ♪ Hey, you've shown me such a good thing ♪ ♪ Hey, I fell for you from the start ♪ ♪ Hey, you touched me in my heart ♪ ♪ We discovered ♪ Two lovers can go anywhere ♪ You showed me how ♪ I can leave the ground and start to fly ♪ ♪ Fly ♪ Hey ♪ Hey hey, hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey, imagine me and you here ♪ Hey, imagine you and me there ♪ ♪ Hey, won't be a cloud in the sky ♪ ♪ Hey, the sun will keep us so high ♪ ♪ We discovered ♪ Two lovers can go anywhere ♪ You showed me how ♪ I can leave the ground and start to fly ♪ ♪ Fly ♪ Hey (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) ♪ Hey, imagine you and me here ♪ Hey, imagine you and me there ♪ ♪ Hey, won't be a cloud in the sky ♪ ♪ Hey, the sun will keep us so high ♪ ♪ We discovered ♪ Two lovers can go anywhere ♪ You showed me how ♪ I can leave the ground and start to fly ♪ ♪ Fly ♪ Hey ♪ Hey hey hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey - [Announcer] 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.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] 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.

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

(upbeat music) (gentle music)