United’ offers alternative coverage of Atlanta’s response to Ferguson

While covering two different Atlanta rallies organized over the past two weeks in response to Michael Brown’s death and the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., I ran into a familiar face. Both times local filmmaker Artemus Jenkins had his camera with him and was busy shooting footage.

“I was out there shooting for myself and people like me so we can have control over our stories,” he later informed me via text. His reasoning resonates with the strong critiques of mass media coverage of Michael Brown and Ferguson — from rapper Talib Kweli challenging CNN’s reporting during an on-camera interview last week with Don Lemon to Monday’s social media uproar resulting from the New York Times’ characterization of Brown in a profile published on the day of his funeral. The critique has even gone meta with other media outlets, from the Washington Post to Vanity Fair, coming to different conclusions over the racial bias alleged against the Times for its usage of the descriptor “no angel.” In a piece defending the overall tone of the Brown profile, the Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan called the “no angel” characterization an “ill-chosen” phrase in this case. Sullivan has also criticized and defended other Ferguson-related coverage by the paper.

All of which makes for interesting backdrop to consider Jenkins’ short film titled United, which ironically includes scenes of the thousands who rallied last week on the steps of the CNN Center yet received no media coverage from the cable news behemoth.

Jenkins’ filmography includes the independently produced 2012 docu-series P.O.P., which gave a behind-the-scenes peek into the lives of Atlanta strippers, and the 2013 fictional web-series “Smoke and Mirrors,” in which he also played the lead role of a protagonist juggling the trials and trysts of love and bachelorhood.

The same indie streak that fueled those projects drove him to produce and shoot United in the span of seven days.

“Upon learning that elements of this murder were not getting covered properly, it dawned on us to ensure our story was properly documented,” reads Jenkins’ artist statement about the film on YouTube. “There needs to be as much VIDEO footage out there as possible for all cities doing anything around these events. Moving images controlled by the people as opposed to mass media provide a broader opportunity to draw real conclusions. I encourage every and anyone who is able to film and upload what is happening in your city. Everyone, specifically the residents of Ferguson need to see the support we all have for them and a large amount of that support is not letting the momentum subside as the news cycle moves on to another story.”

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