Exclusive: Chinonye Chukwu on the Power of the Black Female Gaze in Film and Till

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Nigerian-American director Chinonye Chukwu made history when she became the first Black woman to win the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize. She won for her film Clemency, which starred Alfre Woodward and Aldis Hodge, and launched her career to the spotlight it deserves. Now, three years later, her follow-up to Clemency, the historical movie Till, tackles the story of Emmett Till’s life and tragic death. But there is a catch here: it centers the experience through the eyes of his mother Mamie Mobley-Till, who became an activist due to what happened to her son. This is a case still relevant in American society, as the woman who accused Till still walks without any consequences in 2022.

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MovieWeb chatted with Chukwu about the film.


The Intentional Centering of a Black Mother

MW: As a filmmaker, why was Till the story you felt you needed to tell right now?

Chinonye Chukwu: For several reasons. It’s a story that’s never been told on the big screen, and it’s long overdue on the big screen. I was also excited at the opportunity of telling it through the perspective of Mamie, her emotional journey, and the journey of what she did after Emmett’s murder and her expanding activist consciousness. We get to see that in an incremental way. To center a Black woman—we were often erased from these narratives, history, and our present—all of that got me very excited about bringing this story to the screen in a cinematic, artful way.

Related: Best Movies Directed by Black Women

MW: Throughout the film, there was a lot of deliberate placement of where the camera was, such as the unveiling of Emmett’s body. How and why were these decisions made in the process of developing the film?

Chinonye Chukwu: I knew I wanted to be as focused on Mamie’s emotional point of view and perspective as much as possible. So when she is seeing Emmett’s body for the first time, narrative and visually the focus is on her emotional experience seeing the body for the first time. It is not our, the audience’s, emotional experience first. It is about Mamie. That kind of intentionality informs my directorial choices about where the camera is and it is not. Who is in frame, who is not, who is centered visually, and who isn’t. A lot of that is who’s point of view is it from scene to scene. In that scene, it was Mamie’s emotional point of view that needed to be favored cinematically.

MW: The Emmett Till story is one of many tragedies of American history. As the director and a writer working on historical content, what were the non-negotiables of what you had to include?

Chinonye Chukwu: First and foremost, the story had to be told from Mamie’s point of view. And so, there is another version of this story that does not center her in this way. It was important that I center her humanity, her multi-dimensionality, that she is not just a grieving mother. She kicked it with her girlfriends, she had a man, she had relationships with people, a community, a job, a career. She was living life and so it was a non-negotiable for me to make sure that I capture that. Alongside the inherent sadness and pain to the story, there’s a lot of life, joy, community, and love. It was really critical to include all those aspects of the story as well because essentially, in addition to the story being about Mamie’s journey, it’s also a love story between a mother and her child. It was important I began and ended the story with joy and love.

MW: A lot of research obviously went into this film. What was the process of piecing it all together like?

Chinonye Chukwu: I was really fortune in that one of the producers, Keith Beauchamp, was a mentee of Mamie’s when she was alive. He also had a relationship with Gene, who was Mamie’s husband, before he passed. On top of that, he spent the last thirty years uncovering this history, reopening the case, and forming relationships with other members of the Till family. By the time I came onto the project three years ago, I was gifted with this treasure trove of research, information, and relationships with people who lived this story. All of that informed my making of the film.

Related: Emmett Till Biopic Releases Heartbreaking Trailer

A Relevant Piece of Filmmaking

MW: What was casting Till like?

Chinonye Chukwu: Let’s talk about Danielle Deadwyler. She is extraordinary. She is brilliant in her own right, and when she sent in the audition tape, it just blew everybody away. And so months before shooting the film, we spent time going through every emotional beat and nuance in the script, and she dove so deeply into the research. By the time she came onto the set to shoot the film, she had an inherent understanding of who Mamie was emotionally and psychologically. Jalyn sent in his audition tape, [he] was fantastic, and his chemistry with Danielle was extraordinary. They had such a natural chemistry with each other that was loving, playful, and pure. My directing was a manner of preserving that. For all the actors, everybody was so tapped into the mission and wanted to honor the humanities of everyone they were playing truthfully and authentically. It was an incredible experience working with everyone.

MW: What is your hope that this movie will achieve going forward?

Chinonye Chukwu: A lot of things. I hope that it resonates with people so that they can feel and see the humanities of everyone on screen. That they learn a lot. A lot of people think they know the story, but they don’t. There’s so much to the story that many of us don’t know much about, like Mamie. Before I made this film, there was so much I didn’t know. I believe everyone will learn something from this film, this history, this story. We’re in a country that is actively to this day trying to pass legislation to erase this history… it is present in our reflective realities. I hope this film can help mitigate that a bit and push people to interrogate within themselves how can I contribute to the world beyond our bubbles. We’re all connected.

MW: How did centering and anchoring the story to a woman change your directorial vision?

Chinonye Chukwu: I centered the Black female gaze. Danielle can command a screen like few people can. It was easy to make the decision to stay on her face at times. Not only does it work narratively and cinematically, but it’s also my own kind of small act of resistance by really staying on this Black woman’s face, on her journey and humanity in real time. There’s something really beautiful and special about that [which] I’m really proud of doing.

Till is out in theaters on October 14, 2022.

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