Inertia

Inertia (2018)

Created by: Brandon Markell Holmes

Inertia is an experimental visual album, a meditation on the history of Black survival in the face of personal and political trauma held together by the vocal and lyrical artistry of Brandon Markell Holmes. 

In the piece, we mostly see Brandon – gazing directly at the camera, running to it and away from it, occasionally dancing – amid a collage of digital post-production and found footage, from Civil Rights protests to Soul Train. The overall effect of the piece reminds me of the opening line of Julius Fleming’s Black Patience: “The history of blackness is at once a violent history of waiting and radical refusal to wait.”

For Brandon, those political histories are allegories for inner struggles: 

“All of the emotions I was feeling, now I’m able to put meaning to them. These were all the things that were living in my subconscious that I couldn’t necessarily say in words, I could only see them in pictures,” he said in a talkback after a screening and live performance. 

Credit: Jaclyn Rivas

Inertia is a rare work of film focused on mental health struggles among Black and queer men. Brandon said that the piece reflects his coming of age in his teen years struggling with narcissism and self-image, bulimia and anorexia. In the piece, we see the “VHS” effect that later became quite trendy among rising Black and queer filmmakers, which recalls Brandon’s history watching MTV, where celebrities would complain about their weight and showcase plastic surgery, which has now shifted to social media, fueled by narcissism. 

“I became upset by the way I looked,” he said.

The vintage touches overlaying Brandon’s images play on his mental struggle, a fogginess and suggestions of schizophrenia amid the scratchiness we associate with TV fuzz.

The references to civil rights reflect the unjust things Brandon saw growing up on the west side of Chicago in Austin, the residue of the movement and slavery which relate to community-wide mental instability. 

Meditating on the images of Soul Train, Brandon remarks that creator Don Cornelius, purveyor of Black joy, committed suicide. “Black men needing that love, needing that support. Knowing that it’s OK to hug another man, it’s OK to cry.”

Watch Inertia on OTV!

Brujos

Brujos (2017-2018)

Created, starring, written, and co-directed by: Ricardo Gamboa

Of all the OTV projects released in our early years, Brujos is by far the most ambitious. Running at around two hours, with a massive cast, sprawling narrative, and fantastical special effects, it is an epic tale of three Latinx witches on a quest to fight the descendants of New World colonizers. 

Around the time Brujos premiered, Hollywood studios were becoming interested in science fiction and fantasy, genres that are historically very white. Black and Latinx people rarely had the opportunity to star in the genres Hollywood spends the most money producing, but in the 2010s, new streaming platforms saw these genres as critical to enticing new subscribers and broadcast/cable channels saw them as critical to keeping their audiences from migrating to streaming. So we got new superhero shows like Black Lightning and Watchmen, reboots liked Charmed and Rings of Power, and blockbuster films like Black Panther and Shang Chi. Most of these films flattened the cultural specificity of their leads, and many others cast actors of color in “colorblind” narratives where their identities didn’t matter at all. 

In this context, Brujos may be one of the most radical series of the decade for giving characters of color complex storylines that refuse to sugarcoat the darkest experiences people of color endure in a white supremacist country, while also avoiding the trap of trauma porn. Through wit, strong directing and acting, Brujos shows its leads coming to terms with who they are in terms of class, sexuality, ethnicity and nationality. 

Significantly, the villain in Brujos is white supremacy and colonialism, embodied by nerdy, bloodlusty white men but occasionally characters of color whose bodies they take over or who have offered their bodies to serve the state. The police are not good guys in Brujos, neither are the scientists and entrepreneurs who American upholds as pinnacles of innovation and human achievement. 

Brujos is as much a story about solidarity as self-love. People of color have to come together to defeat this force. Ambitiously, writer Ricardo Gamboa expands the narrative to include witches of various races, genders, and sexualities who have to unite across differences to defeat the big bad. This is no small feat for a production budgeted at fractions of the cost of any Hollywood film or series. Few indie creators take this risk, but Ricardo had a political commitment to expanding the audience’s understanding of what justice looks like. 

The filming of Brujos is a lesson in what representation looks like. Ricardo was sincere in their commitment to ensuring what viewers see is as real as possible, even in the fantasy genre. For example, in a scene where the leads go to Lakeview East (formerly, Boystown) to find a stripper to join the team who happens to be Asian American, Ricardo went to the neighborhood’s gay strip club to find the actor, and filmed in an Asian-owned bar that regularly serves the queer community. The series is also partially told through lectures heard by the leads, who are PhD students just as Ricardo was at the time of filming. Ricardo cast actual Latin professors – Northwestern’s Ramón Rivera-Servera and DePaul’s Coya Paz – to play those roles. 

The release of Brujos was no less focused on cultural and local specificity. When I approached Ricardo about premiering the pilot at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and then screening the series at the Chicago Cultural Center, they agreed. But as native Chicagoan from the south side, they knew that these institutions were not historically welcoming to people like them. So they dropped the series online before we screened at MCA, to give their community the premiere, not the historically white (and deeply problematic) institution. In addition, after the premiere at the Cultural Center, Ricardo organized their own premiere at Latino-owned bar in Pilsen, Chicago’s historically Mexican-American neighborhood on the south side. Sadie Woods, a brilliant Afro-Latinx DJ, spun beats and the packed bar more closely approximated the energy of the series. 

Directors Ricardo Gamboa and Reshmi Hazra-Rustebakke at the packed Chicago Cultural Center premiere. (credit: Jaclyn Rivas)

Brujos premiere right after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, whose rhetoric was stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx. Ricardo wanted to use the large space of the Center to highlight local activist campaigns against hate, and so our premiere was introduced by the Chicago ACT Collective who gave out free signs for any to declare their spaces safe for all. 

Brujos producer Robert Stockwell with members of the Chicago ACT Collective, including Silvia Ines Gonzalez. 

Sadie Woods DJ’ing the Brujos premiere in Pilsen.

There is so much more to say about this rich text, from Ricardo’s casting of Justin Mitchell (DJ Hijo Pródigo) and writer Isaac Gomez to cameos from local organizer Jenna Anast and prominent sex worker Juju Minx. The story is full of original moments, biting humor, cathartic violence, and pyrrhic victories. It is a classic, and one of the series I most often recommend to OTV newbies!

Watchi Brujos on OTV!

Afternoon Snatch

Afternoon Snatch (2017)

Created by: Kayla Ginsburg & Ruby Western

In Afternoon Snatch, a queer couple break up, leaving one to realize the healing power of art and community. 

Created by Ruby Western and Kayla Ginsburg, the comedy series focuses on Annie, played by Western, who is dumped by her non-binary partner, PJ (Pamela Davis). 

Annie is a comic writer for an alternative feminist magazine, Snatch Magazine, and spends most of the series wallowing in self-pity and despair, unable to face or talk to her ex. Snatch Magazine is a cool if lightly dysfunctional workplace, a commentary on the comical imperfections of independent and feminist worldmaking: “This is not a radical collective. This a benevolent matriarchy,” the editor tells Sky (played by Theo Germaine) in response to their critique that she listens to the cis-man on staff more than them. 

The breakup is affecting Annie’s will to work on their comic, which we later learn has taken a dark turn. The series critiques the common impulse, perhaps particularly among artists, to wallow in their own suffering without realizing the beauty and support that surrounds them.

“In the beginning she’s broken-hearted and self-absorbed, and in the end she realizes that community is the most important thing,” Kayla told me. 

In the latter half of the series we see how art and community heals. In episode four, a tribute to Salonathon, a performance art “open mic” run by Jane Beachy, Joe Varisco, Will Von Vogt and Bindu Poroori, Annie gets her nails done by Gigi Lara during a performance by Darling Shear. This scene recreates a typical night at Salonathon, which was a hub for dozens of emerging queer artists in the city, including many that would have shows on OTV (Darling was perhaps the most frequent performer at Salonathon, and Gigi did nails nearly every night). 

Annie processes her hardship with Gigi, who quietly affirms her sadness. In a testament to the power of nail artistry, when Gigi is done we see Annie look at what she painted: “UR OK,” two letters on each hand. 

The next episode blends sitcom and documentary, featuring Chicago’s real queer theatre group, About Face, and its youth program. Annie joins Snatch Magazine writers Sheila (Maura Kinney) and Andy (Rolando Rodriguez) to interview young queers. Listening to young people who have persisted despite discrimination inspires Annie. One youth tells her that “time heals” and another says, in response to a question about how they got over a breakup: “Understanding that it’s never really their intention to hurt you. It’s more there’s some things you have to take care of yourself first before being with another person.” Here, a young person reminds Annie that she is not the only person in a relationship, that everyone has their own journey. 

“Totally organically they hit all the themes we were trying to hit in the web series,” Kayla said of the About Face participants.

The healing power of community is reflected in how talking to other people about what ails us gives us a broader perspective on our pain, which makes it smaller and more manageable. 

After leaving the theatre, Snatch Magazine writer Sheila says: “That group seems like they really look out for each other, kinda like a family..No man is an island.”

“And no queer is either,” Andy responds.

Watch Afternoon Snatch on OTV!

Brown Girls

Brown Girls (2017)

Created by: Fatimah Asghar & Sam Bailey

Written by: Fatimah Asghar

Directed and produced by: Sam Bailey

Brown Girls remains OTV’s most-watched series and one of the most revolutionary series ever released independently on the web. Co-created by writer Fatimah Asghar and director-producer Sam Bailey, Brown Girls is first-and-foremost an artistic achievement, even before it was nominated for an Emmy and purchased for development by HBO. 

Brown Girls is the story of Leila, a Pakistani-American writer, and Patricia, a Black American musician, as they navigate the romantic and professional dramas of their twenties. It’s an open-ended premise that allows the characters and their relationships to drive the plot, rather than the other way around as is typical in short-form dramas. 

Premiering on February 15 on Elle.com and in over dozen cities around the worldwide amid a torrent of advance press, “Brown Girls”’ was the most electric, successful indie TV releases I’ve seen in over fifteen years researching the medium. It proved how developing small-scale stories can position creators for big-scale development. OTV supported Sam in developing two seasons of her first series, the Gotham Award-nominated “You’re So Talented,” contributing production funds through non-exclusive licensing, organizing screenings in Chicago, and assisting with online marketing. Sam developed as a director, producer, and marketer of her work in Chicago and online, which she put to great use in “Brown Girls.” They didn’t need much of my help.

How did they do it? In addition to what every great show needs – a fantastic script, cast and crew – Sam and Fatimah maintained a clear artistic focus and cultural ethos through every stage of developing the show. From the idea and script to its production and release, the creators understood how to center their communities as much as possible, which resulted in a sincere, cohesive product that rallied thousands of fans to evangelize the show. 

Pre-Production 

Fatimah invited me and Sam to a reading of the script – always a good idea if you can make it happen – in early 2016. Instantly I could hear how her natural, humorous, and crisp dialogue would translate beautifully on screen. With Sam in the room as a potential director I know the series would look gorgeous. Already at script stage I could see Fatimah making a crucial decision that eventually helped the show when it was released: all characters with speaking roles had to be people of color. There are so many great actors who rarely have the chance to play complex characters, and the series would showcase them in an act of solidarity with communities who have been excluded from Hollywood. A number of media outlets picked up on this and it became a selling point of the show.  

Financing is always a challenge but the creators used all resources available to them in their cities. “Brown Girls” was primarily funded by a grant from the Voqal Fund administered by Chicago Filmmakers specifically supporting digital work made in Chicago. 

The team crowdfunded almost all the rest of the budget, rallying their communities as key stakeholders. OTV offered minor financial support. The creators were smart to the word out about their production before and while they were shooting. “Brown Girls” had just a temporary title card before shooting; with that and a strong pitch they crowdfunded for the remainder of the budget. Crowdfunding is not always ideal, but it allows you to identify key supporters and get buy in before the release.

Production 

Another selling point was that most of the crew were women, queer or POC-identified. When NowThis Her covered “Brown Girls” right before its release, they mentioned this fact and the video was seen over 2 million times on Facebook. Sam has spoken extensively about how important representation is behind the camera and how it actually improves the artistry of what you’re making, not only because there are tons of talented crew, but also for the ways it helps bring out great performances, as star Nabila has described in an interview. As Sam told Okayplayer:

To the best of my ability, I try to make sure the people in my production crew mirror the story they’re helping to tell in front of the camera. With Brown Girls, I made that a really strong goal. I wanted the actors to feel like they were entering a safe space to tell this story without being exoticised or judged. I don’t know if other people are doing that on their sets besides Ava DuVernay, Issa Rae and Jill Soloway. I don’t think it is happening on a lot of indie projects, but I’m also not spending a lot of time on other people’s sets. I hope that it becomes more than a trend. I hope that it becomes the status quo. So much of the talk surrounding diversity in media begins and ends with the characters but I think we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t extend that to the people crafting the stories behind the scenes. It’s just as, if not more so, important.

Fatimah agreed that the culture of the set shapes the final product: “Everyone was so open, and I’m a huge believer that process is as important as product. So I felt really proud about the way that the process went, and that makes me really excited to release the product,” she told Black Nerd Problems. 

In production Sam and the team worked to create a distinct world. They shot in Pilsen, a predominantly brown though rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago. The wardrobe, from Vincent Martell of VAM, and production design, Suzannah Linnekin, specifically and artfully represent the complex lives and worlds of the two leads. 

Post-production

The music of “Brown Girls” is intimately tied to the story. The central friendship is loosely based on that of Fatimah and Jamila Woods, a Chicago-based poet and singer whose album “Heavn” comprises the bulk of the soundtrack. Jamila’s stunning album, named one of NPR’s 50 best albums of 2016, serves as the perfect score as it is rooted in black feminism. For the trailer, which dropped in fall 2016, Jamila collaborated with Lisa Mishra, who is Indian, for an original theme song that perfectly reflects the symbolized the bond between black and brown women that is the core of story.

Marketing and Exhibition

When the team released the trailer, they reached out to writers who wrote for publications specifically focused on brown people and women. That was essentially their only press outreach. From those few articles in places like Black Nerd Problems, Role Reboot, and Remezcla the mainstream press started to pick it up. “Brown Girls” eventually snagged coverage from over 50 publications including TIME and The Guardian. 

Filmmakers always want mainstream press, but seeing where the views were coming from, I can say that targeted press is in many ways more helpful. Sites like Out magazine and Autostraddle, which focus on queer communities, and Remezcla that focuses on Latinx culture, were better traffic drivers than bigger sites like Vice and NBC.

Indie creators should get creative about harnessing press. OTV has had a lot of success coordinating exclusive premieres with various sites, where trailers and episodes are only viewable on specific websites for a limited time. “Brown Girls” premiered a scene from episode 4 exclusively with Out magazine and premiered the first episode exclusively on ELLE magazine’s website. With so much competition for attention online, media outlets want exclusive content, and indie creators need their viewers. It’s win-win.

After releasing the trailer, Fatimah also reached out to her network and asked friends to help spread the word. The result was artists, many of them artists, hosting screenings in over dozen cities internationally on February 15, the night of its release. I counted 16 premieres in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Seattle, Puerto Rico and London. Of course, Chicago was one of the biggest premieres – though 100+ people showed up in NYC, LA and Seattle.

The “Brown Girls” showcased the talents of brown women. Both Chicago and New York invited artists across disciplines of dance, comedy, and music to perform and attract crowds. Both premieres also have local vendors who were women of color selling jewelry and t-shirts. In Chicago, as prologue to the screening, the stars of the show danced to Bollywood classics (Nabila Hossain) and performed stand-up (Sonia Denis), whereas Jamila Woods, a Chicago-based singer-songwriter, performed original music she curated for the series (Fig. 4). Black burlesque performers Jeez Loueez and Po Chop, both innovators in the form, also performed. Local venders from activist group Assata’s Daughters to jeweler Mashallah, designer Samantha Jo, and bath & body brand Sugar & Scrub, sold their wares, connecting TV fans to local, small businesses run by artists from the communities represented. New York featured similar arts, including live body painting by non-binary artist Anuva and stand-up from people like Aparna Nancherla (Late Night with Seth Meyers).

Interviews with event producers suggest local artists and activists used Brown Girls to: provide rare opportunities for women and queer people of color to come together; solidify bonds between communities of varying racial and ethnic identifications; celebrate and promote original art by women of color across the fields of music, fashion, visual art, comedy, dance, and poetry; inspire and educate youth and young producers; engage in discussions around local political issues related to their communities; and allow communities to engage culture through embodied, interdisciplinary performance. In Atlanta, Jovan Julien, whose friend tagged him on Asghar’s Facebook request, knew of Brown Girls beforehand and was present for filming: “It only felt natural to support my friend’s work in more ways than posting it online,” he said in an interview, indicating the significance of off-platform engagement. As a regional organizer for Project South, which advances social justice and governance, new economies, changing paradigms and narratives around the U.S. south, Julien said the Brown Girls screening fit within a local series of events to create community and bring awareness to the group’s efforts: “The work we do works to promote safety for brown and black communities,” Julien said, making Brown Girls’ intersectional representation especially potent given the dearth of mainstream programming that bridges black and brown representation. In Miami, Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, who knew Asghar from an Asian American poetry retreat and works for the Miami Book Fair, wanted to organize a screening through the Fair, but it fell apart, so she convened five or six of her students at Florida International University. Though small, the screening had deep value for those who attended, many of whom went back to their homes to re-watch it with friends who didn’t attend: “I think it was important for the people that showed up that they were able to watch it other people…who might be struggling with being a queer brown girl in Miami. It can be very isolating,” Cancio-Bello said. The community-building aspect of screening the series also served as development for burgeoning, young artists, she said: “having it be that this was written by someone who was young and women of color, it was a new idea for them. They were used to seeing that you have to be 40 and established to do something like this.” Brown Girls’ Seattle organizer noted: “People were laughing. People were clutching the heart, dancing to the music.” Such deep, embodied connection to stories is invisible to platforms and their algorithms.

The local premieres helped #BrownGirlsTV trend on Twitter on the night of its release. The creative team asked a couple of friends to live-tweet the day of the premiere, notably Eve Ewing. Getting folks who are already known among the communities you’re represented to talk about your show the day of its release is key, but many of the tweets for “Brown Girls” came from everyday fans who connected with key moments in the show and showed their enthusiasm by posting GIFs and pics.

While all of this was happening, Sam and Fatimah were taking meetings in Hollywood. They had interest before they released. I credit their success first with their incredible talent and artistry, but also that they very intentionally worked to serve communities who are underrepresented. In a “peak TV” environment, where hundreds of series were being released every year by major corporate TV networks, serving the under-served was a viable strategy for getting attention to your work. It’s also a critical practice at a time when so many communities with intersecting struggles are fighting for their legitimacy and right to exist.

Conclusion: How They Did It

Tell a story that has never been told on TV. Make sure it reads as sincere to the people represented but relates to folks across identities. Represent community in front and behind the camera. Treat production, writing, directing, design and music as crafts in conversation with the everyday lives and artistry of the communities you’re representing. Keep fans updated on social media from production through release. Solicit coverage in publications relevant to that community. Premiere in the city or cities where there is demand to see your story and plan to engage viewers on social media by watching the story with them in real life.

It truly takes multiple communities to advance the art and business of television!

Brown Girls Data

AWARDS

5th International Academy of Web Television Awards, Best Dramatic Series, Best Directing, Best Writing (nominee)

7th Streamy Awards, Best Indie Series (winner), Best Drama Series (nominee)
69th Emmy Awards, Outstanding Short Form or Drama Series, (nominee, Brown Girls)

PRESS

Brown Girls is OTV’s most widely covered series in the press, with over 85 separate articles written about the series.

“Brown Girls is revolutionary—and that's not hyperbole. Shows like Girls faced criticism for their limited depictions of women of color in the city. And although more series depicting women of color have emerged in recent years (such as the delightful and absurd Chewing Gum or the smart and frank Insecure), it's still rare to see women of different racial backgrounds as best friends.”

Elle Magazine, February 15, 2017

“On one hand, Brown Girls is a classic story of friendship between two young women. But on the other hand, we witness these women moving through spaces and realities defined by queer people of color — spaces not often represented on television with the texture and complexity that Brown Girls achieves.” 

Blavity, February 16, 2017  

“The show's existence is something of a rebuke to the sort of institutionalized sexism and racism that is still commonplace in Hollywood.”

Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2017         

“The new web series Brown Girls tells the story of two twentysomething women of color navigating their sexuality on Chicago’s South Side. The show not only brings to life the Chicago roots of its creators but gives a voice to women and queer communities of color everywhere.”

Time Out Chicago, February 16, 2017     

“The web series, which debuted in February, has delivered on the promise of its trailer. It’s a show that feels both refreshing and familiar to audiences..”
Mic, July 19, 2017     

LIVE SCREENING ATTENDANCE

Brown Girls screened in 17 towns and cities across the world, almost all within 24 hours of its release on February 15, 2017. To my knowledge, this was the most extensive release of an indie web series in the history of the form dating back to 1995. Because there were so many, I was unable to get a full account of how many people showed up.

According to Facebook Event RSVPS, 1,840 people said they were “going” to a Brown Girls premiere in 2017, compared to 3,602 who said they were “interested. We estimate Facebook Events has around 59% accuracy, so we estimate more than 1,000 people showed up to watch Brown Girls in February 2017, with an additional few hundred for a screening in March at the Brooklyn Museum. In addition, because of the complexity of the premeire, OTV was not able to get accurate demographic information for all attendees. However, Dr. Christian did attend the Chicago, for which over 100-150 additional people showed up beyond the space’s capacity (our 300 person estimate is who showed, but only about half were able to attend). Both in Chicago, and New York, organizers estimated that a majority of attendees were women of color.

CHICAGO (Chicago Art Department)

300

NEW YORK (New York University)

400

NEW YORK (Brooklyn Museum, March)

300

SEATTLE

100

BALTIMORE (Baltimore Museum of Art)

40

OAKLAND

30

DETROIT

20

ATLANTA (Project South)

15

MIAMI (Florida International University)

6

LIVE SCREENINGS – COMMUNITY FEEDBACK

What stood out to you in the series?

“The story feels more real than what you may see in television.”

“An honest yet loving representation of queer brown people in my city. People who are like me and my friends, struggling with the same questions and insecurities I do, about identity and culture and relationships and race. Also, I used to live in Pilsen and have history here (my mother lived here in the 60s), so of course seeing all the places I know was very cool.”

 “a woman of color accepting her sexuality in the context of her culture and tradition”

“I really liked the friendship between the two main characters and I also liked that it was mostly about lgbt and women's sexuality and relationships.”

Watch Brown Girls on OTV!

Kissing Walls