Creating Perspective.

By extending my access to advanced storytelling methods to historically neglected peoples and/or subject matters, JCL Films tells refreshing stories to wider audiences and amplifies under-heard or otherwise misunderstood voices in an otherwise impossible way. By using vérité documentary, JCL Films can step out of the way as the filmmaker and let people tell their stories themselves while still showing them in a visually appealing and exciting way.

“Her Story = History” Trailer

Trailer for the upcoming feature documentary following the US Senate campaign of Marquita Bradshaw. Marquita Bradshaw grew up in a marginalized community affected by toxic chemicals from a military landfill and she refuses to allow future generations to tolerate the same. With the close friendship and guidance of her campaign manager, Ken Taylor, Bradshaw hopes to be the first African American woman to reach the US Senate in her state as the first US Senator in the nation ever to run on a platform of Environmental Justice principles. This project embeds with her and her grassroots campaigns it travels across all 95 counties of Tennessee in her effort to uphold her principles and “create healthy and safe communities where people live learn, worship and recreate.”

We Are the 22 (short sample)

Mikel Brooks is the founder of We Are the 22, a verteran organization specializing in peer-to-peer veteran suicide response founded on the principal that nobody can help them better than themselves. By sending in two-man teams of combat veterans and getting veterans in suicidal crisis the help the so desperately need and ultimately recruiting them into their ranks to help other veterans themselves.

Rock the Culture (short assembly)

When Blake, Twan and Q started the Rock the Culture podcast where they discuss “all things Little Rock and all things The Culture” they didn’t know just much they would rock the culture of Little Rock socially and politically. When they and other members of the “brain trust” begin to shape local politics, they begin to be the change they want to see in their community.

Ice and Steel: LR Public Works vs Icebound Infrastructure (short sample)

Sample from the upcoming Documentary Short “Ice and Steel,” detailing the story of the Little Rock Public Works department’s battle with an ice storm that local meteorologists called a “once in a generation ice storm.” Members of the Public Works team take us on a tour of their facilities, equipment, and view of the city as they work to make the streets safe again.

Black Glow Matters: A Short Film By Crystal C. Mercer

ABOUT BLACK GLOW MATTERS BLACK GLOW MATTERS is a conjuring of poetry, legacy, and soul, Black Glow Matters is a melodic concoction of African rhythms and Southern charm. The film is scored by the spoken word EP with the same name, a soundtrack of the Diaspora, combining sounds and narratives from the coastal country of Ghana. It chronicles Crystal C. Mercer, a vibrant Black woman from the American South who travels to the Motherland as a graduate student, pursuing her love of service and textiles. Inspired by her sojourn, Mercer pens poetry that is a love letter to her lineage, herself, and her late father. Lovingly, the voice of her late father, Civil Rights lawyer, Attorney Christopher C. Mercer, Jr., intertwines his life story with her current experiences. The Black Glow is generational!

Music produced by EDWVN. Recorded in Ghana. Vocals, EDWVN & Crystal C. Mercer. Additional Production, Mixed, and Mastered by QNote. Video Production and Editing by J Cole Lansden Films.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES BLACK GLOW MATTERS is a story about lineage and legacy. A story about honoring the ancestors, raising the dead even, to pay homage to those who have paved a path of resistance and resilience. A story of survival. A story of sensuality. A story of illuminating from the inside out. BLACK GLOW MATTERS is a story about a cotton blossom of a girl from Little Rock, Arkansas who fully blooms into her freedom in Accra, Ghana. This film pays homage to all of the ways I found myself when I was able to sojourn to the realm of my origin.

#BlackGlowMatters EP streaming EVERYWHERE.

Why Voting Matters

Meet Dwight Pridgeon and Harper Hicks— two Little Rock voters who share their unique stories about the extreme importance of voting in this election… and every election.

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