Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Tomorrow, Friday, June 6th, is the 10th year anniversary of Kalief Browder's death. In 2015, 22-year-old Kalief Browder ended his life after spending almost three years in Rikers Island jail facility without trial, mostly in solitary confinement. His mother, Venida, worked tirelessly to share her son's story, but she died from a heart attack a year later at age 63. Now, a new documentary reflects on the legacy of Browder's advocacy. It's titled For Venida, For Kalief. Using Venida's poems as an anchor, the film weaves together interviews with Kalief's siblings and archival photos and footage of the Browders alongside conversations about the ripple effects of mass incarceration and plans to close Rikers Island altogether. The law requires Rikers to close in 2027, but logistically, that isn't happening. It's raised a whole set of problems, including disputes with communities over new jail facilities currently being built in other neighborhoods like Chinatown and Downtown Brooklyn.

For Venida, For Kalief premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this Friday, June 6th, with three additional showings at AMC on 19th Street and at Village East by the Angelika this weekend. The film's director, Sisa Bueno, joins us to discuss. Thank you for coming to the studio.

Sisa Bueno: Thank you for having me, Alison. Great to be here.

Alison Stewart: Kalief's story and his mother's story is one that's been sadly told over and over again in magazines, in television stories. What did you want to add? What did you think you could add with this new mission of using his mom's poems?

Sisa Bueno: I think for me, one of my main goals was to try and make a film that allowed us to get a great comprehensive understanding of the issue, but at the same time, also less trauma-inducing, less triggering imagery. I want to try to make something that showed all the people that get impacted by these situations, which are called impacted people, show them with a sense of three dimensionality. I think having her poetry lead in that way makes us see that these horrible things happen to certain people. That's not all who they are.

Really when I heard that she made those poems, and it was a really serendipitous moment and we can talk about how that happened, but it really just struck a chord with me, and it just really felt like a very clear vehicle to lead the film.

Alison Stewart: Well, tell me how you came to it.

Sisa Bueno: I think, I have always been pretty plugged into the city. I'm from New York and always aware of all the issues and really empathizing with a lot of people power and social movements and whatnot. When Kalief passed away, it just struck a chord, I think, with everyone here in this artivist community. For me, it sounds like a far fetched thing, but it really was-- I couldn't get it out of my mind. When you think of people who start a project, it's just a constant thought or constant pull. That's exactly what I felt. It was a constant pull to this story.

Then I heard that Venida was speaking at The New School, this was in 2016, and I decided to go. I was like, "You know what? Let me just take my camera, let me just go, because I'm interested in doing something." I was just coming off of another project and I'm like, "Well, let me just try and see if this is going to be something," and so I went. It's funny enough, I'm a late person. I get late everywhere for the most part, but not here. I'm here on time, thankfully. I really tried hard today. I got there late, and it's so funny, because it was packed, the auditorium, and the only seat that was available was one at the very, very front at her eye line.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Sisa Bueno: You saw the film and the scene, the only scene that we see Venida in, in this film, is literally that moment. It's the moment where I brought my camera and I was like, "Oh, I'm just curious. Let me see what happens." I felt very much led. That chair was there for me and no other chair was available. It was just that one. That's how it began.

When I heard her speak on that stage-- what you saw in that scene, when she was answering how she dealt with all of this pain and heartache, she just let out that she was writing poems, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh." I just had these visions of montages, New York montages, really, because for me, as a New Yorker and a filmmaker, you want to make that homage New York film. A lot of that is also what's going on in this film too. It's really just honoring New York as the wonderful, complex place that it is and using those montages to do that. I just started seeing that play in my mind at that moment.

Alison Stewart: How did you decide who would voice the poems?

Sisa Bueno: Initially, it was supposed to be her. Well, it took a little bit of time. I first ran into Akeem Browder, who is one of her children, who was very much in the activist space and was literally in my neighborhood in Harlem doing an activation and an action. I just went and I approached, and I was like, "Hey, I'm really interested." Then we formed a relationship from there, and then moved into meeting Venida in that way. Then I started visiting with her and reading some of her poems and all that, and sitting with her and just talking about how she's going through and coping, all that and her process.

Initially, when I proposed this to her, it was going to be her reading it, but by that time, she had already had either one or two heart attacks since Kalief passed. Her heart was pretty weak and was on a lot of medication, and she was just stressed for a lot of different reasons that were personal in addition to Kalief and all that. She just died all of a sudden in October, so later that year. It was a really huge pivot.

Really, I was in search for a voice for quite a long time. Honestly, I just needed to make the film at that point, so I was very early on in the process, because that was in 2016. I was still in development, so I had to make this pivot really early. I knew I'd have to find a voice eventually, but I needed to just finish the film first. I was using myself, my own voice as a temp track for a long time and really trying to find a really great poet who could really help me really synthesize those words, because there were just some poems where I just felt like I couldn't really resonate.

When I found Jasmine Mans, I thought she was an incredible voice, first of all, an incredible orator, and just a voice that is very unique like no other, has a really great resonance and tone and. She's just really experienced. This is now towards the end of the film, this is like a year ago where we actually started collaborating. She came at the very end of the process.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. I wonder how having a poet like Jasmine Man read the poetry. Did you notice something new about it? Did you notice anything different about it than when you had first heard or read the poetry, when you heard a poet read it?

Sisa Bueno: Yes. The tone and the delivery really makes a huge difference. I think we worked really hard together on that. We spent quite a lot of time in the recording studio trying to get to the right points, the cadence, the right hits, the right moments to emphasize, and I think the result that we did together was an incredible result. Mostly I sat with Venida across the table for a while, and I really took in a lot of her emotion at that point, so a lot of it was transmitted to Jasmine as well.

Then having that kind of combination, that kind of personal tone that I knew that Venida had, combined with Jasmine's experience in terms of just her own innate emotionality, that's the combination that you're hearing at this point, which is an incredible feat. It's just a really resonant poetic track.

Alison Stewart: The new film premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this Friday, June 6th, revisits the story of Kalief Browder through the poems of his mother, Venida, who advocated for him after he took his own life after being held at Rikers without trial for three years. It's titled For Venida, for Kalief. Its director is with me, Sisa Bueno. When you approached the Browders about making this film, what questions did they have for you? What did they want to know?

Sisa Bueno: Honestly, it was really early in the process. This was very tricky for them. They were already in another project. If people are familiar, there is another documentary film called Time: The Kalief Browder Story. It's a series on Netflix. It's a pretty different approach to what I'm doing also in a different timeline. I think that film was effective for that particular timeline to really just raise awareness about the injustices of the case.

If you put these two films together, they're very different in terms of tonality and in terms of what they're addressing, because this is a completely different timeline. They were still at the closing end of production on that. They just got into that really quickly, too, so I think, honestly, they hadn't had enough time to process, but they were willing because they knew they wanted to get as much out as possible about what happened with Kalief, and they were just dealing with a lot with the city and whatnot.

I think they were more questioning about, "Well, why her poems?" Because I really led with that. Even Venida herself was like, "Why do you want to use my poems? I don't get it." I said, "No, I just think that this is a really important vehicle because I really want to try tenderness as a real goal here with trying to shift." I've been in this for a long time and really have a clear intent on trying to push boundaries on how storytelling is told here and really trying to challenge us in terms of not just as an audience, but also as storytellers, too, like, "How can we try to make something with more depth?"

Leading with that, for me, was really important for that reason, but they weren't on that point exactly, but happy that it was going to have some attention, though, so she was willing to go with it, which I'm really happy for.

Alison Stewart: What struck you as a filmmaker about the way the Browders spoke about Venida.

Sisa Bueno: In general?

Alison Stewart: Yes, when they spoke about her as a mom and talk [unintelligible 00:11:35] woman.

Sisa Bueno: Just a real powerhouse of motherly femininity, really, a real nurturer. A real nurturer through and through. She was always there for them. It was a really busy household. In the film, it's actually really an adoptive family, so it's a mix. She had a couple of kids that were born biological, and then the rest of them were all adopted, which is really honorable, really beautiful to see that.

I just want to lift that up. For parents who are adoptive parents, really shout out to you, because it's really just a beautiful thing. They really, honestly, speak to her really highly, mostly because she was a great mother, but also because she decided to open her doors for not just adoptees, but also fostered kids as well. She's just a very motherly, loving person.

Alison Stewart: When you spoke to her and you spoke to her sons, but specifically when you spoke to her, what fears did she have about her son, Kalief, while he was at Rikers?

Sisa Bueno: They were already being played out because he was experiencing intense violence and also just intense torture via solitary. I think all of her worst nightmares were being played out. There was nothing left to fear. She was just having to deal with all these horrendous experiences that her then 15, 16, 17-year-old child was dealing with.

Alison Stewart: When you read her poems, could you sense her fear in the poems?

Sisa Bueno: Oh, yes. What the end result product is, is that it was a giant Word document that was not just poems, but a journal.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow, that's interesting.

Sisa Bueno: That really honestly helps understand a lot more of what the poems mean, and really, again, getting at the heart of, what's the pain in her heart? Also there were moments too, of levity. I want to also just stress that, because again, we're not all the traumatic thing that happens to us. I think like anyone else, life continues and you still have moments of joy while carrying a load, which is why a lot of the montages that I chose to make in this film are actually quite positive and beautiful and lovely. People watching fireworks on a rooftop at night, a salsa party happening in the middle of the street.

This is typical New York scenes that I grew up with, and I wanted to emphasize that. I wanted to bring that to light and I wanted to juxtapose that, yes, with this hard story, because, again, people deal with horrible things, but at the same time, that's not all that they are, that's not all that we are. We're not just our pain. I really wanted to make sure that that's clear.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask you about that because you also are an activist and a documentarian. You have to document what happened as well as the beautiful part about the poetry and the lyricism, but you do have to document what's happening at Rikers Island. How did you keep that balance?

Sisa Bueno: I also knew at the same time pretty early on that I wanted to challenge or disrupt challenge, how criminal justice storytelling is told. Most of the time, when criminal justice storytelling is told, it's really, again, from a point of what I call shock and awe, like, "Let's talk about all the horrendous things that are happening and that will generate some sort of outrage and then change will happen."

I think at a certain point that worked. Now, we're pretty apathetic to that. I think we're pretty numb to that kind of approach, so now it's high time to find a way to resonate in a different way, and I think really it's through the heart and it's through just deep emotion, which the film does. In addition to that, I wanted to also focus on what's working or how to get things to work. What is the process? What does that involve? What is the two steps forward, two steps back dynamic that is always the reality in every kind of situation in terms of trying to make something change?

I wanted to really highlight the activists, the advocates that took Kalief's story as this fuel to continue their work and to really push for more. Honestly, the positive thing that did come out of Kalief's case is that it really was this canary-in-the-coal-mine situation. People just remember it. It just resonates and you can just bring it up constantly. The film does that. It shows you how often it's brought up. I didn't have to do it. People are constantly talking about it. I just also saw that as a really interesting throughline or the way to tell the story without telling it, almost, in a way.

Alison Stewart: It was so interesting we talked about the process of, what do we do about Rikers Island? What do we do about mass incarceration? Another thing I thought was interesting in the film was you talked to another woman, Tamara Carter, whose 25-year-old son, Brandon Rodriguez, he also died in Rikers facility. She could talk to you. What parallels did you see between her story and Venida's story?

Sisa Bueno: Tons. Tons of parallels.

Alison Stewart: Did they dovetail?

Sisa Bueno: Yes. She says herself that she identifies with Venida, but I think there's just so many countless stories of young people who are just swept up for somewhat minor things and are left there. I think this is the problem with Rikers in general. It's just that people don't understand, and I hope that they will, a little bit better with this film, understand that Rikers is a jail. The difference between a jail and a prison is that a jail is literally a holding place. No one's guilty in Rikers technically. A few people are because sometimes they have, let's say, minor sentences or people who had really small convictions.

Aside from that, the majority of people on Rikers Island are actually awaiting a trial and technically innocent. To be treated in that way, it's just unconscionable and really shocking. With Tamara's case in particular, which was most shocking, is that she wasn't really notified what was going on with her son. Her son was arrested and for whatever reason, he couldn't get a call out to her.

He was there for a short amount of time, and he also had some challenges mentally and physically and, I think, could not handle the pressure of this intense violence and being also stuck in what's known as a shower cell, which people can look up and Google what that is. Basically, essentially it's an empty shower that people are being held in because there's not enough room in the facility.

He, at some point, died, and no one really knows how that happened. The notification got to her in a really weird way. Not directly. Apparently, she was contacted via Facebook. That's how her case is remembered. This functionality that's happening is multilayered and multifaceted and really complex to unwind and figure out. In that way it's like you still need to try and assess and try to go step by step.

Some people are maybe assuming that closing Rikers, it is the best way to go, and perhaps, yes, I think it is, for sure, and to create other spaces, I suppose, or other institutions that can help in terms of interject and skip these spaces that hold people indefinitely, and there are other alternatives so that people can not be impacted in that particular way.

Alison Stewart: I was going to say, as we close, I want to point out that you talk about advocacy, different ways that we can go about solving the problem. Was there anything that you heard that gives you hope?

Sisa Bueno: Rikers is set to close, which is, it is law for it to close in 2027. That is a hopeful thing. It is a hopeful thing and, I think, a really necessary thing considering all the things that are happening on there. What I'm trying to say is that it's just a real tight wound problem. It's hard to unravel. Really, most people are advocating to close and to replace it with something called Renewable Rikers, which is an incredible idea, which also the film addresses, which is closing down Rikers and using that island space to set up-

Alison Stewart: Renewable energy.

Sisa Bueno: -renewable energy, solar panels, across the island to fuel the power of the city. It's a really wonderful alternative that hopefully will come to pass. It is law. Both of those things are law. It depends on who the next mayor will be in terms of how that will continue.

Alison Stewart: The film is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this Friday, June 6th. It's called For Venida, For Kalief. Its director is Sisa Bueno. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Thank you for sharing the filming of how you made this film. Really appreciate it.

Sisa Bueno: Thank you for having me, Alison. Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.