Quiet Voices in a Noisy World: Alan Govenar on Jasper, Texas

What happens when a town known for one terrible crime starts telling its own story?

That's the heart of Quiet Voices in a Noisy World: The Struggle for Change in Jasper, Texas, the documentary Alan Govenar built from about 30 years of work in Jasper. The world knows Jasper for the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. Alan's film follows the Black volunteers, many in their 70s and 80s, who are reclaiming their community's history with roadside markers and memorials. He gave them a kind of veto power over the title. "They are people with quiet voices who are making a huge difference in their world," he says.

In Episode 267, Christian sits down with Alan, a writer, folklorist, photographer and filmmaker whose career spans 44 years. He started a novel at 18 and published it 52 years later. He made his first film with Les Blank, who shot it, lent him the money to finish it and premiered it at Film Forum in 1981. Along the way, Alan gave up all ownership of that film for 10 years. In 1985 he founded the nonprofit Documentary Arts, and in 1984, he says, there were no known Black photographers in any public collection in Texas. So he went looking for them in business directories.

That search led to Jasper. Alonzo Jordan was a photographer and barber there. After his death, a storm ripped the roof off his barbershop, and his widow gave his collection to Documentary Arts. Alan talks about a 1907 lynching postcard that a white woman found among her mother's things and handed to journalist Bob Ray Sanders, about shooting his last three features largely on an iPhone, and about the John Lomax recordings made in Jasper, which he calls a breakthrough for the film. "What makes them art for me is when you create this kind of tension between fact and feeling," he says.

WATCH THE FILM: Quiet Voices in a Noisy World is distributed by First Run Features. Screenings and viewing options are on the film's site, quietvoicesinanoisyworld.org.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Alan believes "experience is documentary"
• How a 50-pound Sony Portapak led to his first little video
• What Les Blank taught him about mentorship, money and audience
• Why he gave up ownership of his first film for 10 years
• How Documentary Arts was built to last as a nonprofit
• How he found Black photographers missing from Texas collections
• Why the people of Jasper had a say in the film's title
• Why the film has no narrator, and how he and his editor write it together
• How he shoots features on an iPhone
• How Library of Congress recordings shaped the film's music

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is Quiet Voices in a Noisy World about?

Alan Govenar's documentary is about Black volunteers in Jasper, Texas, many in their 70s and 80s, who are reclaiming their community's history. It sets their work against Jasper's long history of racial violence, including the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. Alan says the film covers about 30 years of his work there and ends in hope, because of the resilience of the people who live there.

Who was Alonzo Jordan?

Alonzo Jordan was a Black photographer and barber in Jasper, Texas, and he's part of the subject of the film. Alan Govenar says Jordan was a church elder and a Prince Hall Mason who understood photography as a way to bolster self-esteem. After his death, a storm ripped the roof off his barbershop, and his widow gave the collection to Documentary Arts, which is now giving the digitized photos back to Jasper.

How do you fund a documentary through a nonprofit?

Alan Govenar founded Documentary Arts in 1985 as an umbrella for his work, so he could apply for grants. By design, he says, he was never its full-time executive director. He and everyone else who works for it are contract employees, and projects ebb and flow. Films made with grants through Documentary Arts are copyrighted to the nonprofit, which he hopes can be a sustainable model.

Can you shoot a documentary on an iPhone?

Alan Govenar says his last three features were shot largely on his iPhone. It works for him because it isn't intrusive and the picture quality is great, as long as you understand its limits. For Quiet Voices in a Noisy World he also had a cameraman he has worked with in France come for Juneteenth, plus a local cameraman he has worked with for many years.

DOCUVIEW DEJA VIEW PICK

• Night and Fog (1956), directed by Alain Resnais. Alan's pick, a 32-minute film about the Nazi camps, with narration written by camp survivor Jean Cayrol. Alan says it showed him the power of the interplay between words and pictures.

See every guest pick on the DocuView Deja View page.

SPONSORED BY VIRGIL FILMS ENTERTAINMENT

Virgil Films has more than 25 years of experience in film distribution and works directly with filmmakers and streaming platforms. Learn more at virgilfilms.com.

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ABOUT THE GUEST

Alan Govenar is a writer, folklorist, photographer and filmmaker, and the president of Documentary Arts, the nonprofit he founded in 1985. He is a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, has made more than 20 documentary films and has published about 30 books, among them Stoney Knows How: Life as a Tattoo Artist, Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper's Daughter and Stompin' at the Savoy. His film Stoney Knows How, made with Les Blank, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art. With his wife, artist Kaleta Doolin, he founded the Texas African American Photography Archive in 1995. He also writes musicals, including Texas in Paris, starring Tony Award winner Lillias White. Alan's bio

ABOUT DOCUMENTARY FIRST

Documentary First is a weekly podcast about the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them. Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom, talks with filmmakers, distributors, entertainment lawyers, actors and more, from Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy to first-timers, across nearly 300 conversations. Each week brings one of two formats: a long-form conversation with the people behind films for HBO, Netflix, PBS and independent film, or The Deep Dive, where Christian takes one insight from a recent conversation and follows it wherever it leads. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide. New episodes every week.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Documentary Arts: documentaryarts.org
• Texas African American Photography Archive: documentaryarts.org/archive
• Truth in Photography: truthinphotography.org