(bright music) (bright mellow music) - [Matt] Matt and Nicole take a field trip to MASS MoCA, chat with Renaissance Black Film Festival Manager, Patrick Harris.

♪ So I'm giving in ♪ (gentle music) - [Matt] And catch a performance from Julia Alsaraff.

It's all ahead on this episode of AHA.

- [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT venture fund.

Contributors include The Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and The Robison Family Foundation.

(mellow music) - Hi, I'm Matt Rogowicz and this is AHA.

A House for Arts, a place for all things creative.

"Field Trip" is a series that explores the capital region and beyond.

I'm sure many of our regular WMHT viewers have seen episodes of "Field Trip", but I wanted to share the latest episode with our AHA viewers.

My fellow field-tripper, Nicole, and I and I recently took a trip to MASS MoCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Hi, I'm Matt.

- And I'm Nicole.

- And today, we're at... - [Both] MASS MoCA!

(upbeat music) (mellow music) - MASS MoCA, or the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is a wildly expansive and innovative art center dedicated to contemporary art and has about 300,000 square feet of exhibition space on 24 acres right in the heart of downtown North Adams.

So the museum supports many different artists through many different residencies.

One of those ways is through The Studios at MASS MoCA residency program, which has been around for 10 years now.

We have 10 artists in residence right now who are midway through their four week residency.

And today, we're going to take you around to go visit some of the artists who have opened their studio so you can get the chance to see their art and also maybe make your own art.

- [Nicole] Hi!

- [Resident] Hi, welcome.

- [Nicole] I'm Nicole.

This is Matt.

- So what do you got going on here?

- Yeah, I'm weaving my hairs over here.

- Really?

- [Resident] Yeah.

- [Nicole] Your hair?

- [Resident] Yeah.

- [Nicole] Wow.

- There are some hairs over there.

Before I come to MASS MoCA, I just put them together so I have my material.

- Where did you get this idea to use your hair?

- The idea, it just, I'm from Iran and, you know, we need to cover our hairs and after a certain time, I was like, "Hairs contain my identity, and they started forcing us to covering my identity," and after that, I was like, "I want to make something with my hairs."

- Can you show us a little bit of what you're doing here?

- [Resident] Yeah, yeah.

- Demonstrate for us?

- I'm going to just, like, put my hairs over here.

Yeah, something like that.

And then another side.

Do you want to try?

- [Nicole] Yes.

- Oh my god.

Yeah, you try it.

(all laughing) - So I think you're going to put your foot on the, this pedal over here to open the one, the number one.

Yeah.

And right now, as you can see, it's a little fixed so you need to grab the hair over here and use your other hand, yeah, from over this opening over here and trying to give this hair- - Through, underneath?

- Yeah, yeah.

Underneath.

Yes, that's it.

- I really don't wanna mess it up on you.

- [Resident] No, no, no.

You are not messing up.

Believe in yourself.

- Okay.

- [Resident] And you need to- - [Nicole] Now pull this?

- [Resident] Yeah.

Be careful about your hand and then remove your... Yeah.

And you need to- - [Nicole] Wow.

- [Resident] Yeah, and then put your foot on the five.

It's going to get opened.

- [Nicole] Yeah.

- [Resident] And try this.

It get locked.

- Oh!

- [Resident] So right now, you weaved the hair over there so it means you can pass the- - Back there.

- [Resident] Here.

Yeah.

- [Nicole] Oh my goodness, that's so neat.

- [Resident] And yeah, this is your second row.

- [Nicole] Then down?

- [Resident] Yeah.

Mm-hmm, you fix that and then you need to put your foot on the one again, remove that foot from, and you again, have another opening.

Try it.

It's get fixed, right?

- [Nicole] Yeah.

- I think right now, it's better to just like, do another one.

You can pull a little, even harder.

Yeah!

That's nice.

Yeah.

(all laughing) (group applauds) - [Nicole] Thanks, everybody.

- Good job.

(playful music) (Matt laughs) - What is this?

Oh my, a pear.

These are beautiful.

Wow.

Oh my goodness.

So cool.

Doop-a-doop-a-doop-a... Oh, yummy.

(Nicole imitates eating) (both laughing) Oh, okay.

- This was fun.

- Okay, so we're gonna head out to go drumming outside in an exhibition by Amanda Lovely.

She got connected with our amazing public programs department at MASS MoCA to eventually work and collaborate on this exhibition that brought two trees together.

One from the southern United States and one from around here in this region to come together to communicate, to learn from each other.

It's a piece about climate change, it's a piece about connecting with nature, and also migration.

The oranges are for an offering to the trees and to the land.

Chichi was grounding us in place of, you know being visitors on Mohican land and doing this offering to the trees and land.

(Amanda vocalizes) (rhythmic drumming) - So my project is called (foreign language) which comes from two words, (foreign language), which means "syncopation", and (foreign language), which means "peace".

This is a social practice, social action art project.

And I think we're gonna try to do some collective playing 'cause that's the project.

- [Nicole] Yeah.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

- Yay!

(Nicole cheers) - [Participant] Go trees.

- Go trees!

(all laughing) - [Amanda] Exactly.

- Thank you so much.

That was so much fun.

- I'm now interested in how you feel now.

- I feel happy.

I feel like, yeah.

We were nervous at first, and now we just made music and it was fun.

- [Amanda] Cool.

- I'm still nervous, but I wanna do it more.

- Oh my god, that was so amazing.

There's so much going on here.

- [Nicole] So many different kinds of artists.

- [Matt] Yeah!

- Yeah.

And if you wanna know more about the programs that are going on at MASS MoCA, make sure to visit them at massmoca.org.

And thank you for joining us on this episode of "Field Trip".

Make sure to visit us at wmht.org/fieldtrip and let us know where you think... - [Both] We should go next.

(upbeat music) - [Nicole] We just talked about how we both had piano teachers that made us cry when we were little.

- [Amanda] Everyone says it.

- Patrick Harris wears many hats, from running marketing agencies to writing for "Metroland" to producing film projects, DJing, and more.

Jade Warrick spoke with Patrick to figure out what ties all these endeavors together and to learn more about this year's Renaissance Black Film Festival.

- Hi, Patrick.

Welcome to "A House for Arts" today.

- What's up?

- Nice to see you.

I know you run a marketing agency, you run Kick Back Studios, you've written for "Metroland", you're a DJ, you're a producer, you've got your hands in the pot.

You do a lot of stuff.

- Mm-hmm.

- So how does all this tie together?

- I think, so the majority of it is my kind of, like, drive that I got from my family.

We, in my hometown, I grew up on Long Island and so my family always made space for people.

You know, my dad ran a football league and a basketball league, you know, but they were real active at church and stuff, you know?

So I kind of just like grew up in just like community care, essentially.

So I think a lot of it came out of that, right?

Whereas like, I started DJing in college technically off of like YouTube tabs.

But that was out of, like, the necessity for supporting the Black and brown community on RPI campus because there wasn't a lot of resources when I was there.

So my house became a resource essentially, you know, doing, like, Sunday dinners and, like, Easter and like when people go away for spring break, you know, everybody else would stay and we would just camp out at my house.

And so it kind of all stems from a lot of that.

Just like, I just care about like building space for people and it was part of what led to collective effort being a thing where, you know, we started just freelancing together and then through that we kind of realized people always were wanting to be around, you know, Power Breakfast Club became a thing as like at the same time.

And that was literally just like us making space for ourselves and people being like, "Yo, can we come?"

And you know, it just grew from there.

- That's awesome.

And I know a lot of what you do kind of revolves around culture, like building culture, sustaining culture, and really defining what culture means specifically for the capital region.

So in your own words, what does culture mean to you?

And why is it so important for the cap?

- So like culture for me is the, like the tangibles, right?

It's like the taste, the smell, the sights, the sounds, like the things that we get to experience on a day to day, but also like how we, you know, walk out the house and what are you going to do after your nine to five, right?

It's like all those little mini experiences that you have, even as like how we even relate to one another, right?

How do we treat one another?

Like what is the relationships that we have?

You know, are we like service and provider or are we collaborators?

You know, it, culture kind of to me, like, it encompasses all of that.

And for the region, I think, especially right now, it's like the one big thing that keeps coming back up.

Pre-2020, we were getting a lot of work around specifically like, you know, offices trying to figure out how to better their culture or organizations trying to get in contact with the pockets of communities around in all these states, in all these cities.

Like, you know, how do we even like look at talking to people, you know, what their cultural differences are versus the neighborhood next door and like how do we talk to all of these people?

So like pre-2020, that was really, really big.

And then now fast forward, you know, things are a little crazy.

And so people are like, "Oh no, what do we do?"

So I think at, in a regional level as like, you know, Albany's just got this great investment from, you know, the government, you know, everyone around is kind of like in this space of like, you know, "What are we?

Who are we?

And like, what are we doing?

And do I even stay here or not anymore?"

I think culture is probably like the number one thing that is like, should be top of mind for folks right now.

The place has an opportunity to like, to really become something again, really.

I know it's really easy for people to kind of like fall back into what we're used to doing, which is like invest in, you know, development projects.

And, like, we still need that, but I think that there is a big kind of, like, missed opportunity in how people and regions develop themselves without taking, you know, creatives in mind because we're the ones that really create the cultural experiences of every place.

You know, you take Austin and San Francisco and Brooklyn and like all these places that have gone through these like crazy changes.

It's been on the back of creatives and Black and queer folks, you know?

So it's just like, you can't have these changes for real and not invest in that part of it too.

- Yeah.

And you're spot on about like, as you said, Brooklyn, San Francisco, like Austin, like all these places were made how they are off of the backs of creatives and artists, you know?

So that's how those cities got successful.

So I think, I honestly think the capital region does a pretty good job with that.

What are your thoughts?

- Of what?

- Of making, like, having creatives, valuing creatives.

- I don't know if they do a good job of it, but I think more so than anything, I think the region, I think the people, the creatives of the region do a really good job of taking care of each other.

- Well, let's talk about something awesome you've developed and you run right now, which is the Renaissance Black Film Festival.

- [Patrick] Yeah.

- So give us a little bit of background about what it is.

- So yeah, Renaissance Black Film Festival co-created by myself and Kevin Johnson from Palace Theater.

They were like the same conversation happening at the same time in two different places, right?

So on my team back in like 2019, we were like, "Man, we need to do some film festival stuff 'cause we really care about film and TV."

We were having that conversation and then I eventually ended up building a relationship with Kevin and around December, I think it was like December going into 2020, Kevin was like, "We need to do a festival."

Like for real though.

And I was like, "All right."

So fast forward, we kind of, like, got through COVID stuff and we really had a real intentional conversation about it and he was like, "I'm letting you know I'm doing it with or without you, but I'd love to do it with you."

And I was like, "Great, let's do it."

And so yeah, we're on our fourth year now.

We've started, you know, real strong.

We had Morris Chestnut and Gail Bean.

Gail Bean is the star of a spinoff of the "Snowfall" show that was on FX that's out right now.

So yeah, it was just like, it's been really cool.

And then, you know, two, three years into it, we had some of the folks that win, you know, like we've got people from LA that fly out, from Florida.

We get submissions from like 15, 20 countries.

It's crazy.

And like our winners have been killing it, you know?

There's a handful of young folks.

There's one right out of film school.

She was our short narrative winner and I think it was like the second year or something like that.

And she met that, we have this distribution person named Tressa Smallwood come and she does panels and like, you know, the one thing about our festival is that like you actually get to talk to the producers and the distribution folks 'cause they're just, like, there with you.

Whereas like, you know, a lot of other ones, there's like, you know, kind of like a split where like they kind of just keep those folks away from the other folks.

And so, like, it's not like that with us.

Everybody really like actually gets to know each other.

And so yeah, one young woman ended up, her name is Jasmine Hurt.

She ended up winning and then connected with Tressa, became her intern directly after that.

And then in that, they learned that she was an actress as well.

Now she's a co-star in the last movie that they put out that was like one of the first Tubi originals because Tubi's like investing in original content right now.

And she ended up as a co-star on this film solely like right out of film school, you know, it was kind of crazy and it's literally because she came to our festival.

So yeah, it was like, it works.

We did the thing, you know, that's like, that's like the goal.

So yeah it's been really, really cool for a lot of folks.

Just building relationships with a lot of folks too.

A lot of the other folks that run Black film fests across the country, in Canada even, they will just drive up and like spend a day.

Last year, we had a guy from Montreal Black Film Festival.

He just like happened to be passing through from New York City.

He was like, "I heard like you guys were doing this thing, so I just stopped in."

So yeah, it's been really cool just like building those relationships and creating those pathways for people to do stuff and yeah, like from everywhere.

While also like, you know, putting capital region on the map, you know?

There's a lot of folks, you know, from everywhere that have just been like, "Oh, that's a thing?

Albany's a thing?"

And they praise us for their spaces.

That's kind of like the one big feedback piece, like people really love the spaces that we choose to do our events and stuff in.

So yeah, it's been fun.

- So definitely building culture within the Albany area through film.

- Yeah.

- That's so cool.

So tell us about, like, when can we see the film festival?

When's it happening?

Where's it at?

- Yeah.

Film fest.

All right.

So this year, it is October 22 to 25.

We'll be kicking off at the Spectrum Theater and it'll be, I'm not even gonna tell you what we're gonna show yet.

I'm not even gonna talk about it yet, but y'all should come.

And so, yeah, kickoff night is October 22nd, it's a Thursday.

It'll be some films that we're showing, a panel, and then after that, we'll do a reception at Renaissance Hotel, which is where the bulk of the rest of the screenings are gonna be.

So Thursday evening and Friday evening, will both be at the Spectrum, but the full day of programming that we'll have is gonna be on Saturday at the Renaissance Hotel.

We got after-parties and networking mixers and, you know, we're doing a pop-up music show this year.

The music show will be at Big Emotions with Jermella.

And after-party we've been doing has been with Greg, DJ TGIF, at the Fuze Box, so lots of things.

Lots of ways to get engaged.

You can buy a ticket for everything, you can buy a ticket for one thing.

So, yeah.

- Awesome.

Well, I can't wait to join you.

- Yeah, excited.

- Amazing.

Thank you so much, Patrick, for joining us today.

- I thank you for having me.

- Of course.

- Again.

(Jade laughs) - Please welcome Julia Alsarraf.

(gentle music) ♪ I'm not giving up ♪ ♪ I'm just giving in ♪ ♪ But I sure as the sun ♪ ♪ Won't let you in again ♪ ♪ Well, I'm going out ♪ ♪ For a bite with a friend ♪ ♪ Who will convince me how great I am ♪ ♪ And that this isn't the end ♪ (gentle music continues) ♪ I can see you now ♪ ♪ Like I always did ♪ ♪ What I can't figure out ♪ ♪ Is when you said yes ♪ ♪ What you really meant ♪ ♪ So I'm giving in ♪ ♪ 'Cause enough is enough ♪ ♪ And I'm raising my glass ♪ ♪ With something else to fill me up ♪ (gentle music continues) ♪ And I'm giving it up ♪ ♪ To that stranger at the bar ♪ ♪ 'Cause nothing else has worked so far ♪ ♪ And I'm purging again ♪ ♪ It's been a while since I did ♪ ♪ 'Cause when I feel empty ♪ ♪ It's easier to give in ♪ (gentle music continues) ♪ I still see you now ♪ ♪ Like I always did ♪ ♪ But I'm getting the sense ♪ ♪ That you were never ♪ ♪ Really into me ♪ ♪ So I'm walking out ♪ ♪ With the keys in my hand ♪ ♪ And if you decide to give in ♪ ♪ We can try this again ♪ (gentle music) ♪ What is it that I really want?

♪ ♪ I think I need to go ♪ ♪ A little more slowly next time ♪ ♪ What is it that you really wanted?

♪ ♪ I think I need to be ♪ ♪ A little more careful next time ♪ (gentle upbeat music) ♪ You bought yourself a house to settle down ♪ ♪ So why'd you even bother coming out?

♪ ♪ You tell me it's not me that it's about ♪ ♪ But it's still smart somehow ♪ ♪ What is it that I'm so afraid of?

♪ ♪ Is it that you'll finally see the way I see me ♪ ♪ And what I'm made of?

♪ ♪ But I'm not even sure the ways I liked you back ♪ ♪ So what has all this crying been about?

♪ ♪ And why do I still hang myself around?

♪ ♪ And why am I still trying to reach out?

♪ (gentle music) ♪ What is it that I really wanted?

♪ ♪ I think I need to go ♪ ♪ A little more slowly next time ♪ - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Matt Rogowicz.

Thanks for watching.

(bright mellow music) - [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT venture fund.

Contributors include The Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.