Someone else’s choice can change the trajectory of your life.
This Thanksgiving felt a little lonelier than many of us would have liked. We made the best of it: Zooms with parents over pie, phone calls with relatives we haven’t seen in too long. But while we were physically distanced, it was also an occasion to discover a different kind of closeness. A chance to reflect on who we are, how we got here, and who made us this way. |
In our latest Op-Doc, “A Concerto is a Conversation,” the ascendant Black Hollywood composer Kris Bowers (who scored the Oscar-winning film “Green Book”) does exactly that. In one intimate conversation, Bowers interviews his grandfather Horace Bowers about his perilous solo journey hitchhiking through the Jim Crow South when he was just a teenager to a new future in Los Angeles, where he and his family built a dry cleaning business. |
The film, which had its world premier last week on The New York Times, explores how one man’s courage decades ago changed his family’s trajectory forever, creating a runway to success for his grandchildren in arenas that were never available to him. The result is a generation-spanning family history, told in duet. |
 | | Breakwater Studios |
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As the producer of Op-Docs, I’ve worked on every one of the more than 350 short documentaries in our collection, and they’re all compelling in their own way. But this one was special. Directed by Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot, it does everything a good short film should: It helps us engage with some of the most important issues in our nation by telling a powerful, personal story that we can all connect to. And it does so beautifully (Bowers scored the film, as well). |
These days there’s more digital connection — and less physical connection — than ever before. But the screens between us don’t have to divide us — not in the most important ways. Even the conversation in this film was shot by both men looking into cameras, rather than at each other. So maybe our screens can help us foster new, unexpected connections. Maybe they can actually bring us closer. |
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