Antonio Tarrell is a native of Bruce who currently resides in Little Rock, Ark. Formerly a longtime resident of Oxford, Tarrell has produced and directed several short documentaries about Mississippi subjects. His first feature-length doc, Cole: Bridge to Justice, will premiere at the Oxford Film Festival Feb. 26 as the opening night selection.
What’s your background, and the path that led you to being a filmmaker?
My full name is Antonio Tarrell Thornton, but most people in the industry know me as Antonio Tarrell. I was born and raised in Bruce, Mississippi, in Calhoun County. And then later I moved to Oxford. I lived in Oxford for about 20 years. I relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas. I come back and forth from Little Rock to Mississippi a lot.
After high school, I went to massage school and became a beauty industry educator that traveled around to different trade shows teaching the latest trends and product knowledge. One day at one of the trade shows, a colleague of mine had all this new video equipment. She told me she was in film school, andthe school gave her all this equipment. She was studying digital cinematography at Full Sail University.
And I will never forget this–it was on Sunday, and I went in the hallway and called Full Sail, and they said yes, we’ve got a class starting Monday. Do you want to sign up?
And I said, sure! But I had been out of school for like 20 years. I had never gone to college. I had to take an exam to be considered, so I did the exam over the phone, and she called me back to tell me I was accepted.
Class started that Monday night. Honestly, I had no interest in film school or being a filmmaker. I just wanted to get that equipment. (laughs) But unfortunately, when I started, they stopped giving out the equipment to students when they signed up. They’re like, yeah, you have to go to school for a year and have a passing grade, blah, blah, blah.
Long story short, my GPA six months in was like a 3.98 so I ended up getting the equipment. I started out using it as a tool as an educator in the hairdressing and beauty industry. I ended up being the salutatorian of the class, which was amazing because, again, I had been out of school 20 some years, never went to college, and I learned everything on the fly. I didn’t know anything about filmmaking.
Later I got involved with the Oxford Film Festival and the community of filmmakers. I worked on local film projects. And I was like, okay, this stuff can be kind of amazing.
I ended up working on a project for the Oxygen network about Jessica Chambers in Batesville. I started taking it more seriously after that. And I met Wayne Andrews at The Powerhouse in Oxford and who allowed me to create a lot of the Arts Council video content. Things seemed to just skyrocket after making that connection. I tip my hat to him.
Most of your recent work is documentaries with a social justice theme, how did you become involved in that world?
Well, I did some work on projects as crew for Hallmark movies, Bluff City Law, and reality TV projects. Working on crews like that, it was very cool. But coming from the beauty industry, it was different from what I was used to. It was long hours – which is OK, because I’m a workaholic. (laughs)
But really, documentary work pretty much found me. I was really looking at how I could break in to the “big” industry, you know? Large-scale moviemaking.
But through Wayne and through the arts community in Oxford, I started meeting a lot of people that had a lot of great stories. And then also, getting jobs with production companies coming in from out of state – thank God for you guys (Film Mississippi), because being listed on the site has gotten me a lot of gigs as a cinematographer.
Most of those jobs were documentaries about Mississippi stories. I started looking at it like, why are these people from out of state coming in to tell our stories? I thought, I can do the same thing. And then I connected with Castel Sweet at the university, who is co-director and producer of the Cole film, and we started collaborating on telling Mississippi stories.
Your film Cole: Bridge to Justice is premiering as the opening night film at the Oxford Film Festival. What can you tell me about that project?
It’s a feature length documentary tracing University of Mississippi professor Dr. Donald Cole’s journey from being expelled from the university as one of the Ole Miss Eight in 1970 to today. He’s now a national leader in the STEM world and a well-known figure in Oxford.
It was time for someone to tell and preserve Dr. Cole’s story. I lived in Oxford for nearly 20 years and knew little of his story or about the Ole Miss Eight. Late last year they placed a Mississippi Freedom Trail marker outside Fulton Chapel to honor their courage for the Black Student Union protest. Out of the eight protestors that got expelled, Don was the only one who came back to the university.
We started filming in March last year and we’ve finally got a solid director’s cut. We filmed throughout Mississippi. We filmed in Georgia, Florida and Virginia too. This is my first feature length doc. I usually try to keep them under 30 minutes. (laughs) But we interviewed over 30 people for this documentary. We went back and forth over if this should be a series because we did so many interviews and had so much footage and material. Ultimately, we decided to make it a feature documentary and keep it under 90 minutes.
I’m sure it was honor to get selected as the opening night film at the festival given your dedication to it over the years. What does the festival mean to you?
Oxford is one of the leading towns in the arts community of Mississippi. The festival was once recognized as one of the top 50 small festivals in the U.S. It’s a really, really great festival. The hospitality is amazing. I’m a former board member and was on the staff of the documentary crew. And to be selected as the opening film was a huge honor. I was not expecting this at all. Like, honestly, I had no idea. It’s great to know that how we told Don’s story is that compelling.
Film festivals are super, super important for any kind of filmmaker. Same thing as trade shows in the beauty industry. That’s where you meet other creatives. You meet collaborators. We learn a lot from festivals through workshops and training. And it’s important to support other filmmakers. To be part of this community, having a space to gather and support other creators, that’s a huge thing.
What are some common challenges you face as a documentary filmmaker?
I think because a lot of the documentaries I’ve done have been so low budget, a big challenge is that you’re doing a lot of it yourself. Even on the Cole project, it was just me and a sound guy on the tech side. The principal photography, editing, the post, all that stuff was pretty much done by me.
Another challenge is always funding. That’s a huge thing. You want to be able to pay crew for their services. I want to pay people what they’re worth. And there also seems to be a lack of networking opportunities like the film festival, particularly in north Mississippi. I’d love to see more of that.
But as far as filming in the state, I’ve never had any major issues. People I’ve worked with who came in from New York and other places were pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to film here.
That said, working on documentaries that deal with sensitive issues, particularly surrounding our racial history, requires you to slow down. You can’t go in and bum rush people and expect them to be comfortable with what you’re doing. Sometimes a white crew member will have to talk to somebody first, sometimes I need to go in and explain our project first. But I think overall people recognize we’re Mississippians helping to tell our own stories and that may make them less hesitant and open up more.
If another filmmaker asked, what would your advice be for filming in Mississippi?
The first thing I would tell them is to connect with Film Mississippi. Honestly, you guys provide a lot of information and can connect people with a lot of resources. And of course there’s the rebate incentive.
I always tell them when they come to Mississippi to stay open-minded. Enjoy the culture. Usually, they’re surprised by the beauty and the hospitality of this state. And there’s a lot of interesting Mississippi stories that have yet to be told.
