Molly’s story through my lens (no pun intended)...

Many years ago, I met a shy nine-year old at sleep-away camp in Freedom, Maine. We have since watched each other grow up. And albeit at varying levels of closeness, we have always been friends. On stage, I saw Molly finding herself and her voice as an actor. In academia, I witnessed a historian and researcher grapple with transformative moments in the past. We both were interested in the power of social movements; Molly wrote her thesis on activism at Spelman College and I wrote mine on social change within two radical “schools.” Then, as a teacher in an urban public school, Molly struggled to facilitate students transforming their futures. It is no surprise to me that she has merged these arenas; her choice to return to school to study journalism and documentary filmmaking seems a logical evolution. She might laugh at me for dredging up all this history. But it is from this vantage point, twenty-one years later, that I see Molly. And as we discussed, it is often difficult to tell someone else’s story without situating yourself as the storyteller.

When I told Molly I wanted to interview her as an artist, she found it strange to be identified as such. I say I’m a documentary filmmaker. In my head I’m a combination of a journalist and an artist... I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t always considered myself an inherently creative person, although I was an actor. And when I think about making films and when I think about it now, talking to you, I think it IS a very creative process to generate an idea and take it all the way through filming, to fruition of creating this film... Maybe because I went to journalism school, the way I shape stories and the way I think about them might be a little different. And I don’t know... the term artist...part of it might be that I’m just a little nervous to call myself an artist. [1]

In 2005, Molly—as all of these things: artist, educator, historian, journalist—went to South Africa on a Fulbright to tell a story about education in the townships. She did not know which story she would tell, or where she would find it. This film started actually from a very organic state. Molly spent time with a housing activist and began a theater arts workshop for youth in his community. She then realized she needed to be involved in a school community. At a Saturday school program, she met Kholeka Buhlungu, a teacher at Oscar Mpetha High School in Nyanga Township. When Kholeka learned that Molly had been a teacher, she immediately asked her to cover her classes as she studied for her own exams. At first, Molly was reluctant. I have a film to make, right? I never envisioned that I would become a teacher. After volunteering in this teacher’s classroom, she agreed to teach three of her classes, because there would have been no other substitute. There’s no system of substitutes at this school. The classrooms are way overcrowded and in fact, teachers don’t even show up every day to class.

So I taught her three grade-12 English classes for three days each week, because I still didn’t know what my film was going to be about. And I loved it. It was great. ... And then what happened was that my parents came to visit and my sister and I had arranged with Kholeka, the teacher, to have them visit the school and have my dad talk to the principal and stuff and...12th grade is the most important year in South Africa and the kids take this series of exams at the end of the year that essentially determine the rest of their lives. So they have trial exams. The day my parents came only one of the three classes I taught actually had trial exams, but all these kids came anyway to meet my family and I’d only known these kids for a couple of weeks. And then organically we had a whole discussion and the kids said, ‘Molly, can we give your parents a tour?’ And I thought they just meant the school. But all of a sudden, my parents and my sister and I and two teachers and like 25 students are walking around the township. It was sort of hilarious. It was like this parade.

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