'Medicine' For Identity Lost

In Medicine for Melancholy, the debut feature film from director-writer Barry Jenkins, what begins with the messy morning after of a one-night stand turns into a love triangle between two characters and the city where they live — San Francisco.

The film, shot in de-saturated nearly black and white tones, took one month to write and 15 days to shoot.

"If I took any longer I would have lost the passion," said Jenkins.

It follows Jo and Micah (played by Tracey Heggins and Wyatt Cenac) as they dance, bike and weave their way through the city while exploring questions of race, gentrification, class and identity. Jenkins, a Miami native, moved to San Francisco by way of a girlfriend three years ago.

"It was a rude awakening how few African-Americans were walking on the street," said Jenkins, who talked to Tonic about his need to tell this story. "A lot of my personal shit is in this movie. It's about my city and my own dementia."

Tonic: This film brings up issue of identity and what it means to define oneself. Why is this important to you?

Jenkins: Because information is more easily accessed now than it's ever been at any point in the history of our species; people's identities are more and more within their own control. If you want to know about a certain piece of news or history or a kind of music or a certain period in cinema, you can use Wikipedia or Google to research it or iTunes or Netflix to find it. Things are available in ways they just were not 25 years, as recently as a decade ago.

In 1990, you could reasonably expect a high school kid growing up in the inner-city to not know anything about the French New Wave — this is just an example. Even if a professor mentioned it in a class, to track down viable information on New Wave Cinema would mean a trip to the local library, a video store, both of which being in or near the inner-city likely wouldn’t stock anything related to the New Wave.

Today? A kid from the projects could literally "stumble upon" a blog about the New Wave (or in a more old fashioned sense be guided by a teacher), order it on Netflix or see scenes from Breathless on YouTube, could order the DVD or a book on the subject from a library on the other side of town, all through the public computers at his or her school library. When information is that readily available, it creates the possibility of carving out a much more unique, personally driven identity. You tailor yourself to the cultural traits of your own choosing, whilst still maintaining the communal identities we’re born with whether we be the descendants or slaves or the early arrivals at Ellis Island. Those things form the foundation, and then one can take them into these other realms previously restricted by the limitations of access, creating a more dynamic version of Jewish or African-American identity.

Tonic: The film very successfully blends a love story with a story about class, race and gentrification in San Francisco. What can be learned about these messy emotions and how can people make a difference in their own communities?

Jenkins: The main thing to be learned is that these very different things are all related. Love, class, race and place are all related. They affect one another endlessly, and being aware of that is the first step towards making a difference in your community. Most times, the tensions in a community aren’t addressed because people don’t give due notice to how these things effect the collective consciousness.

If you live on a block where 80 percent of the residents were not living there the previous census and earn double the wages the 20 percent who've lived on the block two decades earn ... if you live on that block and yet are oblivious to how this shift in the makeup effects the collective consciousness, that's a problem. And if you're a part of that 80 percent who's moved in and you're not aware of the role you play in the scenario and are not concerned with the impact your life is having on that other 20 percent, you're irresponsible.

Tonic: What actions are people taking in your own community in San Francisco to deal with the issue of gentrification?

Jenkins: People are rallying here, definitely. Everyone openly acknowledges what happened in the Fillmore District and how that led to the "out migration" of African-Americans here in the city. I think it's because of the undeniable truth of the effects re-development had on the city that people are outspoken and fighting about what could potentially happen here again. Gentrification ... I think is unstoppable here. Displacement, however? That’s unacceptable. And I truly think that’s where San Francisco is right now, pushing back so that gentrification doesn’t have to become displacement. The community groups here won’t stand for that.