[ Using home video filmed over 20 years, 17 Blocks captures one
black American family enduring the joy, loss, and the scourge of gun
violence in the shadow of the US Capitol] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

'LOOK WHAT I'VE LOST': A POWERFUL DECADE-SPANNING FILM ABOUT ONE
AMERICAN FAMILY  
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Adrian Horton
February 22, 2021
The Guardian
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_ Using home video filmed over 20 years, 17 Blocks captures one black
American family enduring the joy, loss, and the scourge of gun
violence in the shadow of the US Capitol _

Emmanuel Durant taking videos in 17 Blocks. , Photograph: Davy
Rothbart courtesy of MTV Documentary Films

 

In 1999, Davy Rothbart was 23 years old and staying on a friend’s
couch in south-east DC a few blocks from a basketball court, where he
befriended 15-year-old Akil “Smurf” Sanford and his precocious
nine-year-old brother, Emmanuel. An aspiring film-maker, Rothbart had
a small handheld camcorder, which the younger brother immediately took
a shine to; the two would mess around with the amateur device, taking
in their everyday sights. “We learned how to use it together,”
Rothbart told the Guardian – strolling about the neighborhood,
interviewing people on the street, monkeying with the night vision
setting, letting their curiosity guide the lens.

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The resulting videos form 17 Blocks, which distills 1,000 hours of
footage over 20 years into a poignant, at times gutting, astoundingly
generous documentary on one black American family facing drug
addiction, cycles of gun violence, and the passage of time’s gifts
and losses. Though the film does not shy away from political
commentary – the title is a pointed reference to the distance
between the Sanford’s underfunded, largely segregated neighborhood
and the Capitol which turns a blind eye – the project developed out
of something smaller, more intangible: mutual friendship, and an
interest in preserving things on film. Rothbart started leaving his
camera at the Sanfords’, so Emmanuel and Smurf could film on their
own time, often capturing their sister Denice, and mother Cheryl.
“It was really an organic thing,” said Rothbart.

The first third of 17 Blocks, filmed in 1999 and the early 2000s, is
alight with curiosity, mostly thanks to Emmanuel, who showed a special
affinity for film-making, and for filling the screen with his
exuberant grin (he describes his favorite subject as “talking on the
phone”, for instance, then adds “and I’m a superstar”).
“Even at nine years old, Emmanuel had a poetic eye,” said
Rothbart. “He would shoot out his window like a branch swaying in
the wind, or he would shoot two people – you couldn’t hear their
voices – having a conversation on the street and twirling around
each other. He just had a really interesting visual sense.”

Many of Emmanuel’s videos focused on his mother, Cheryl, who recalls
appreciating the amateur film-making not so much as preserving
memories than as a chance to shine. “At the time it was just home
videos,” she told the Guardian. Sanford grew up middle-class, the
child of a government worker in DC, and dreamed of becoming an actor,
“so to me it was, ‘I’m a star of my own little movie’ … I
thought I was Marilyn Monroe anyway.”

Sanford is unflinching at the uncomfortable, raw moments captured by
Emmanuel at the time – a physical fight with her then boyfriend,
moments when she’s passed out on the couch in an ongoing struggle
with drug addiction, calling her father to ask for money, the many
cramped houses within south-east DC in which the family lives. “You
can’t change the past – the past is the past. For me it’s
relevant to now,” Sanford said of allowing viewers into that era of
her life. “My life experience is similar to a lot of single parents
… it doesn’t bother me to have it on screen. My life is my life.
This is what has happened to me. Maybe someone else having difficulty
in life with some of the experiences that I experienced – maybe
they’ll get something from it.”

The film is bisected by a horrific act of gun violence: on New
Year’s Eve 2009, Emmanuel was shot and killed at home (no arrests
were ever made). The carnage and devastation is captured by the
Sanfords’ bravely rolling camera, as they course through a decade of
grief, activism, reconciliation, forgiveness and learning to speak of
an unimaginable loss, through the growth of anti-gun violence and
Black Lives Matter protests. Rothbart had stayed close with the family
through the years, spending holidays together and, in the wake of
Emmanuel’s death, grieving (the rapport and respect between Sanford
and Rothbart was clear in a joint interview).

“We felt really determined that we had to tell Emmanuel’s story,
and we realized it’s not just Emmanuel’s story, it’s the whole
family’s story,” said Rothbart. The cameras kept rolling after
2009, as it “was something we were in a ritual of doing when we were
together.” By the film’s final third, in 2016, Denice’s son
Justin – rambunctious, curious, hamming it up for the camera – is
the same age Emmanuel was when Rothbart first met him at the
basketball court.

[Emmanuel Durant and Denice Sanford-Durant smiling]

Emmanuel Durant and Denice Sanford-Durant smiling. Photograph: Photo
credit: Sanford Family. Courtesy of MTV Documentary Films

The freewheeling film project, and the trove of low-stakes, easygoing
home video treasures he left behind, took on new purpose after
Emmanuel’s death. “I wanted memories of him, period,” said
Sanford. The collection of videos before and after his passing,
distilled down from the thousand hours by video editor Jennifer
Tiexiera, offer viewers a chance to know Emmanuel as something more
than a grim statistic of gun violence often weaponized by US
policymakers and pundits against black communities. “You may not
have known him, but here, this is who I lost, look what I’ve
lost,” Sanford said of the film. “This is but one story, and even
though there are many, it’s the same story.

“This movie is real life,” she said. “It’s not like just what
they see on TV, because TV is make-believe. This is real life, it
happens, it’s quite the norm for a lot of us.”

“It’s so wonderful and brave for them to share their story in such
an intimate way,” said Rothbart, who credited Sanford’s
steadfastness in recognizing the power of simply observing their
complicated, metastasizing, unbelievable grief. “Even at the time,
[she] knew that this would have value someday,” he said. Having lost
friends and children of friends to gun violence, she “knew how
challenging and painful” the weeks immediately following
Emmanuel’s death would be. But she said, “people need to see
this,” Rothbart recalled. “People need to know what it’s like to
go through something like this in your family. We have to film
everything.’

“People could meet him as a boy, and then recognize the boy that’s
been lost here.”

[Emmanuel Durant and Cheryl Sanford]

Emmanuel Durant and Cheryl Sanford. Photograph: Photo credit: Sanford
Family. Courtesy of MTV Documentary Films

Time beats on, and the film’s latter section observes the now-adult
Sanfords growing into the future – Cheryl fighting for sobriety;
Smurf, spared prison time by a too-rare compassionate judge, finding
steady work at a deli and playing with his sons; Denice training to be
a security officer. Outside the frame, Rothbart and Cheryl Sanford
look toward a safer future; the film-makers have partnered with
Everytown for Gun Safety and Black Lives Matter for screenings, and
together they started a program, Washington to Washington, which
brings youth from the DC neighborhoods on camping trips out of the
city.

“The title of the film is almost a challenge,” said Rothbart.
“The family lives 17 blocks from the US Capitol, and yet this is
what’s happening in this neighborhood. It’s kind of a challenge to
people in power, and really to any audience member, to ask: what can I
do to try to create more opportunities for people living in
neighborhoods like this, and to change some of the outcomes?

“Gun violence is a symptom, not a cause, of other issues, other
challenges that these neighborhoods are facing that aren’t being
adequately met,” he added. (“Correct,” Sanford chimed in.)

17 Blocks ends with a tribute to those lost to gun violence in DC in
the 10 years since Emmanuel’s murder – a list, over 1,200 names in
tiny font, that goes on for pages, far too long. “Each one of those
names could be its own documentary,” said Rothbart. “And that’s
a family that’s grieving, still missing their loved one.”

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17 Blocks is available in digital cinemas in the US with a UK date to
be announced

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