Hello Meltingpot Community.
I’m so excited to share my interview with Miles Marshall Lewis. A fellow writer/journalist/author who is now taking his storytelling skills to the screen, Miles, like me, is committed to chronicling the Black experience in Europe.
I invited Miles to the Meltingpot so he could tell you a little bit about himself, his connection to Paris and French culture, and his latest creative endeavor – a documentary about the history of French hip-hop.
Meltingpot Community, meet Miles Marshall Lewis.
Lori Tharps: Can you please tell my readers a little bit about you. What’s your day job? Your passions? Where are you from originally? Do you have kids and if so, how old are they?
Miles Marshall Lewis: This feels like speed dating. So, my name is Miles Marshall Lewis, I’m a Sagittarius. [laughter] My parents were music lovers who named me after Miles Davis and Jimi Marshall Hendrix. Since the early ’90s, I’ve been writing about the arts for websites, newspapers and magazines, including Essence, GQ, Teen Vogue and Complex. I’ve also worked as an editor for digital and print mags, including BET and Ebony. I was born near the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx. Going way back to inheriting my dad’s comics, I’ve loved reading and storytelling in all its forms. I lived in Paris from 2004-2011, where I met my wife and started a family. Our two boys—ages 12 and 14—were born over there in the fourteenth arrondissement.
LT: What’s your connection to France and French culture?
MML: When I first visited Paris at 23, I had already visited a girlfriend in Madrid and taken a trip to London after graduation. But Paris right away felt like somewhere I could relocate, because of the Haussmannian architecture of those beige buildings, the history of the place as a life school for writers, the fine food, the fashion. I was a die-hard New Yorker then, mainly because of the arts scene. But Paris was obviously a city just as likely to host Alvin Ailey shows and Basquiat exhibits and stuff, so I was in. I decided to move there 10 years later. As I did, I reconnected with a French ex and we fell in love, got married there and had kids. Doing an Ancestry family tree years later, I found a French great-great-great grandfather. He’d moved to Louisiana and married a biracial great-great-great grandmother of mine, she had some German ancestry. But I didn’t know anything about French roots until I was already over there.
LT: What was it like living in France as a Black American man compared to the United States?
MML: It’s been said before, but my experience was that the French see Black people as Americans first. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I defined myself first by being a Black man, or that people were defining me that way at first glance. It’s not some kind of burden I was trying to relieve myself of. But it took me back to the innocence of how colorblind I expected things to be when I was a little kid. It didn’t take long to notice however, that the Africans who live there get discriminated against in French hiring practices, they are twice as likely to get carded for ID by the police and so on.
“Someone said that being an African-American in France gives you what white privilege must feel like for the first time. I’d agree with that.”
LT: Tell us about your upcoming documentary film, Radical: The Savoir Faire of French Hip-Hop. What’s it about? What inspired you to do it? Who do you think needs to see this movie? Also, I thought you were a writer not a filmmaker. How did you make that leap?
MML: Radical: The Savoir Faire of Hip-Hop is the working title of a documentary I started to shoot in 2011. Radical is about the history of French hip-hop up through the year 2005, told alongside the history of the French rap magazine Radikal, which folded in 2005. The subtext of the film is about how French Africans with roots in French-colonized African countries use the African-American art form of hip-hop to give voice to their experience. Anyone interested in the diaspora would be interested in seeing Radical—anyone interested in hip-hop culture, in Black music, world music, or so-called Afropeans in France. Ever since high school, I intended to get into filmmaking. Of all the pipe dreams I had back then, making movies is the one that stuck with me. Frankly, it’s time for me to tell stories in a way that’s more lucrative than publishing, that reaches more people than a magazine cover story.
LT: I heard you were doing a Kickstarter for the film. How can we help you get this movie made already?
MML: On Kickstarter, I’m raising $25,000 to finish Radical and make it film festival ready. The ultimate goal is that Radical gets screened at Urbanworld, ImageNation, the Tribeca Film Festival and anyplace else film buffs can lay eyes on it, so we can find a distributor and get it shown nationwide next year. The film is 90 percent done, but we need to add some more French MCs for additional shooting, plus editing, music permission costs and eventual film festival fees. We’re about down to the last $5,000. Every pledge helps us move the needle forward, and we’re almost there. The last day to donate is April 10, 2020.
LT: Finally, besides working on your film, what are doing during #Corona2020 to stay sane?
MML: The coronavirus hasn’t freaked me out anxiety-wise. For most of March, I was into a 21-day guided meditation about abundance, so my mind has been more calm and focused on the fundraising I’ve been doing. Things change week by week. I went from covering a Disney World event three weeks ago, to self-isolation with a daily break in the park, to wearing a surgical mask and staying inside permanently except for supermarket runs. The most I can recommend is meditation and turning off the television. We all need to stay informed, but the New York Times site does that better than the alarmist stuff on TV’s 24-hour news cycle.
LT: Agreed. 100 percent!
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Miles Marshall Lewis. I hope his life experiences and stories inspire you to travel, follow your dreams and tell your own stories. To connect with Miles and/or follow his filmmaking journey, visit his website where you’ll also find links to all of his social media handles. And to support his Kickstarter campaign, go here.
