Empathy, curiosity, connection

“Hope is real. Hope is alive.”

Those are six words one would never expect to hear from Cheryl Sanford, a mother mourning the death of her son by gun violence in Washington, D.C. But hear them you will in the powerful documentary “17 Blocks,” an unconventional film shot between 1999-2019 by writer/director Davy Rothbart, BA ’96. Critics have likened the film to Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” which featured one company of actors over 12 years. Another writer described it as “‘Boyhood’ meets ‘Boyz n the Hood.'”

“Cheryl likes to say the family adopted me,” Rothbart says. After all, he was far from his Ann Arbor roots for the first time, still fresh from the Residential College where he’d studied writing under Charles Baxter, Ken Mikolowski, Eileen Pollack, and Warren Hecht. “Of course, I had my own family back home, but Cheryl could sense I needed someone.”

The aspiring filmmaker began hanging around the house, sometimes leaving his camera with Cheryl’s kids, Emmanuel, Denice, and Smurf. Pretty soon, they were documenting their daily lives, producing shorts and other wacky little movies for their own entertainment. There was no grand plan for making an actual film. A decade passed, and footage accumulated. Then, Emmanuel died by gun violence.

“Cheryl had a vision at that point,” Rothbart says, noting her request to keep filming after the tragedy. “She said to me, ‘You know, so many of my friends have lost kids in this way, but none have been documented throughout their entire life.’ And she saw the value in putting an individual face on something that can seem so abstract, like gun violence in inner-city America.”

Getting personal

The grieving mother wanted people to walk in her shoes. She wanted to go beyond the violence to illustrate the inequalities and economic challenges her family endured. Rothbart easily aligned with her vision. He’d always favored stories that showcased the universal through the personal, a trait he first learned from his parents, both natural storytellers.

Rothbart, pictured here with director Spike Lee, received extremely positive notices on the festival circuit. (Image courtesy of Rothbart.)

His gregarious father, Hal, who “talked to everyone,” worked for 25 years as a facilities manager at the University Health Service. He founded a small publishing company in his retirement, encouraging people to record their stories before losing them to history. His mother, Barbara Brodsky, was an original Freedom Rider and founder/guiding teacher of Ann Arbor’s Deep Spring Center for Meditation and Spiritual Inquiry. She had experienced hearing loss due to complications from childbirth and often relied on young Davy to act as an intermediary with clients seeking counsel about failing marriages, runaway children, and more.

“People would come to her with a lot of heavy baggage,” Rothbart says. “Being on the front lines of these intense conversations when I was just a kid probably developed my empathy and curiosity.”

Rothbart took note when his mother shared her own stories about the Civil Rights movement. The narrative was always more interesting when she played a role.

“Oddly, the more personal a story is, the more universal it can feel,” he says. “’17 Blocks’ is very tight in that way. There’s a specific focus on one family, just a handful of people. It’s about their daily lives, but it ripples out. You can trust an audience to put the pieces together and discover the truths within. It’s a very emotional film with a lot of hope and resilience.”

A young Denice Sanford would grow up before Rothbart’s eyes, and camera lens. (Image courtesy of Rothbart.)

There’s also plenty of laughter, he says, especially when it comes to the dated outfits and hairstyles.

“Cheryl was so brave about spilling the most difficult, private parts of her life on camera,” Rothbart says. “At the same time, she really resisted a few of her outfits, like ‘I cannot believe I had that on. What was I thinking?’ Her kids and I had to convince her that no one would be too focused on what she was wearing.”

A decade after Emmanuel’s death, Cheryl’s grandson Justin turned 9. He was the same age and eerily similar to the Emmanuel that Rothbart met so long ago. That seemed like an appropriate endpoint, and the director walked away with a thousand hours of footage that he and co-writer/editor Jennifer Tiexiera condensed into the 98-minute film.

“17 Blocks” played the festival circuit to rapturous reviews in 2019, and MTV Documentary Films picked it up for wide distribution soon after. Sadly, plans for theatrical release in April 2020 were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, nonprofit partners like Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action have picked up the momentum, supporting nationwide community screenings.

Coming home

(Picador; Reprint edition, 2013)

These days, after 13 years living in LA, Rothbart is back in his hometown and studying at his alma mater, this time as a Knight-Wallace Fellow. When Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House, learned about “17 Blocks,” she helped arrange a screening at the Michigan Theater on March 18. Members of the Sanford family will be in Ann Arbor for the event, getting a glimpse into Rothbart’s life this time.

As a Knight-Wallace fellow, Rothbart is collaborating with law professor David Moran, co-founder of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, and other members of the team. He’s interviewing several of the clinic’s wrongfully convicted exonerees with the goal of writing a book or producing a future documentary.

The artist was accepted into the competitive U-M program following a productive career across multiple forms of media.

As a student at LSA’s Residential College, he won nine Hopwood writing awards, which remains a University record. After graduation, he published a collection of short stories titled “The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas” and a book of personal essays called “My Heart Is an Idiot.” He won a 2015 Emmy Award for his film “Medora,” about a small-town basketball team, that he co-directed with childhood friend Andrew Cohn.

Rothbart is also a contributor to NPR’s iconic storytelling series “This American Life,” learning from the show’s legendary producer Ira Glass, as well as producer Julie Snyder (co-creator of the groundbreaking podcast “Serial.”) Of the 10 pieces he’s created for the radio show, Rothbart’s favorite features Mr. (Fred) Rogers, the popular children’s TV host whom he’d met as a child after his brother wrote him a letter.

‘Found’ magazine features all sorts of discarded ephemera, like this note from a chamomile tea drinker who wants you to know “I am a good person.”

As adults, Rothbart and his brother Peter would go on to create the magazine “Found,” a whimsical showcase of discarded ephemera that his mother describes as “people-watching on paper.” Reader submissions include random and bizarre notes, lists, drawings, photos, letters, and flyers. The magazine spawned a book in 2004, “Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World.” Two editions followed.

Rothbart and his friend Sarah Locke still publish “Found” magazine, which has since inspired a six-episode TV/streaming series, currently in production and funded by Hollywood stars Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass. HBO and Netflix are among its most likely home. With each episode, Rothbart and crew travel to the destination of a “found” item, detailing its often-poignant origin story. One item, a sealed letter that never reached its destination, had stymied Rothbart for years. It was intended for a waitress who worked in an unnamed diner in small-town Oregon.

“With the other items, we figured out most of the story before we traveled to shoot the episode,” he says. “But not this one. So we decided to go to the town anyway and try to find the people. And we actually did. And it was … it was crazy.”

As the March 18 screening for “17 Blocks” approaches, Rothbart hopes to reconnect with old friends from his Ann Arbor childhood. His college crew will be represented, on-screen at least. The documentary team includes producer Rachel Dengiz, music supervisor Mike DiBella (his college roommate), and photographer/videographer A.J. Wilhelm (a neighbor in East Quad)

(Lead image courtesy of Rothbart.)