Cali M. Banks is a photographer and filmmaker specializing in auto-ethnographic experimental film. She is a member of the Abortion Film Collective and an instructor for the Department of Film and Media Arts at Syracuse University. Banks’ film Catch Us On The Way Down explores reproductive health restrictions in North Carolina. 

 

Hannah Campbell, WOEFF: You use Super 8 and 16 millimeter film for this project. There are shots of city objects interrupted by blood and hair, what inspired your use of this collection of mixed media? 

 

Cali M. Banks: I knew that it was kind of an experimental documentary approach and I knew that I kind of had to keep it anonymous due to the nature of the topic and keeping the safety of the women I was working with, kind of, that was the most important part to me so that’s why there's not really people or faces or talking heads like you would usually see in a documentary. I was in North Carolina, my mom lives there, so that’s my connection to it. One week, I went to visit her and filmed all around different places in North Carolina to add to that. There is a lot of barbed wire and fencing in it that I was kind of thinking, I personally love the texture of fencing and barbed wire but I was also thinking of barriers to access, barriers to entry, kind of keeping something contained but also in a more violent way so that's kind of where that motif came from and then the blood and the hair that's what the 16 millimeter film is, I painted on it. And that was actually a part of my MFA thesis in 2021 and I just loved the process, and I was thinking of ways that I could talk about the body and bodily fluids, but also bloodshed in general. That's kind of what I was thinking with that.  

 

HC: That's so interesting that you bring up the violence of those shots, I specifically thought about isolation in connection with those shots and specifically the shots of furniture, wire, flags and the image that stuck out most to me was the flashing open sign and that seemed to me to point to the absence of, I guess the invisibility of choice that women face in this country. That's kind of how I interpreted that. You talk a little bit about the importance of oral storytelling, and some of the stories overlap a little bit and make parts of it unintelligibleand I was wondering how that influenced the structure of the piece.  

 

CMB: The first part of the film is going through all of the restrictions of reproductive care and abortion care in North Carolina as a state. There were so many that if I just read them out it would take up the entire film, unfortunately that’s how many restrictions are in place. I just thought that was insane because North Carolina isn't one of the most restrictive states like it’s pretty restrictive but it's not another state where everything is banned and restricted. I was just surprised to see how many bullet points of restrictions there were so once I started researching and looking into that. I was then also surprised and off put that some of the restrictions are due to structures of the building like the closet in the hallway has to be a certain dimension and other things like that so it was making things start to not make sense and it was frustrating. I thought it's kind of frustrating and overwhelming, so I'll layer all the voices together, so that's where that first came from. When it's more anecdotes, that's when it becomes more clear, when one or two voices overlap, where it's more clear than restrictive language.  

 

HC: It kind of reminds me of opening birth control and reading that really long list of side effects. Issues that only affect women and men don't have to think about. This film is part of the Abortion Clinic Film Collective. Will you tell me a little about that?  

 

CMB: Yeah! It's a really interesting group of people. There are 13-15 of us now. Everyone works in an area or state across the country and now we have opened it up as well but mostly the United States and they are working within states that have restrictive laws for abortion. I found out about them at my job at Light Work so we have a sister organization called Urban Video Project so we had a commissioned artist Lynne Sachs who made a film related to reproductive health in Syracuse and then she brought on the Abortion Clinic Film Collective as a panel for her screening and I was just really moved by all of the films. There were some from Kentucky and North Dakota, a bunch of different places that I don't think about all the time, and it's not always on people's radars. I was really moved by everyone's films and how they were speaking so I wanted to see if I could be part of it, I have an idea and my mom is in North Carolina even though I'm in New York so I have this idea and everyone was super open so it was really great and actually one of the filmmakers who is in this film festival Kelly Gallagher is also in this collective. We met maybe once every month on zoom because we are all over the place, there's people in Los Angeles, Texas, New York, some midwestern areas so it's nice to come together and talk through different things sometimes if we see something crazy in the news, we will send each other articles, but it's nice to meet as a group to talk through different scheduling, we will schedule a lot of events for screenings and a panel after. I recently scheduled a screening in Wilmington, North Carolina, back in October, and after that, there was a moderated conversation with a woman from Planned Parenthood, so it mixes both community and filmmaking aspects together, which I really like.  

 

HC: That's really cool! Jumping off of that, I was really impressed in this film and on your website and Instagram your commitment to teaching young girls to fight for autonomy over their bodies, so I guess I'm wondering how your advocacy work fuels or influences your creative vision as a filmmaker.  

 

CMB: I feel like it kind of stems from my own experiences and experiences I’ve seen friends and family members go through also I’ve worked a lot of odd jobs over the years, maybe not odd jobs, some of them are, but just a bunch of different gigs here and there and I was in New York City for a period of time and I worked a lot with high schoolers in filmmaking but it was mostly in Harlem, Washington Heights and the Bronx and schools that didn’t have art programs at all or film was new to them so working with them for three years at a bunch of different places. Sometimes I’d work a couple of years in a row with some students in schools but especially working in the documentary sphere, seeing such a lack of access and education in certain areas really inspired me to do more research and look into how I could tell stories. Especially using my voice if people aren't comfortable sharing and using a platform of privilege to share stories or being able to use that to get people's stories heard so I think that working in two folds so my experiences and working with a lot of these kids in New York City made me realize there is a large gap in education and understanding bodily autonomy. Even in films that we weren't talking about bodily autonomy it was just talking about film but as you get to know students they will start to open up to you and share things and you're like wow there is such a lack of access so that really fuels my work and a lot of stuff that I didn't know growing up, just from partially having a conservative family where we didn't talk about anything bodily related and a lack of education on that part too which shocks me bit. It also makes me angry which makes me want to put that into my work. 

 

HC: Definitely. I think that with films specifically geared toward female facing issues, there seems to be a lack of male audience, how would you approach that conversation?  

 

CMB: That's a great question. . . 

 

HC: Right now I’m working on a film about domestic violence, which isn't a woman’s issue, but with female facing issues, men seem to not want to watch the film. Women know what happens; men are the ones who need to watch the films, so I'm just interested in your take on that.  

 

CMB: Yeah, I do think about that. That's a really great point because I’m trying to think about a lot of feedback that I've gotten on different films that I've made. Whether it's related to reproductive health or just women in general how it really is more of a female audience and it's hard to get attention or recognition from male counterparts just because I think again it kind of stems from a lack of education and access to knowledge where it's kind of like this is a thing we can do who cares, there's so many other options in regards to abortion, there's so many other options so why are we putting so much pressure or focus on abortion. Really, it is just kind of about the lack of education for women's issues too. I was looking at an article recently where male pattern baldness is studied more than endometriosis, and I think it's layered, there's almost uninterest in women and their pain and things they go through, so it's almost subconscious from a generational lack of education. I don't know if that answered the question. 

 

HC: No, it totally did. I also think that there isn't an answer, it's an ongoing conversation, but I'm always interested in speaking with other filmmakers, especially female filmmakers, about how to make men see films that they don't think is for them.  

 

CMB: I know that's tough. I feel like sometimes with my films since there’s really not, I mean there's a couple of shots of a doctor’s office but it’s not super apparent what the film is about unless you read the description so I feel like sometimes that could maybe draw in an audience where they are like “oh I have no idea what this is”, and it is just scenes of plants or city and things like that that might draw in a different audience and they might sit and watch it more maybe in comparison to very straightforward documentaries like this is the outside of a clinic or something like that. It kind of sounds like I'm tricking them into watching it. 

 

HC: Whatever works. 

 

CMB: Right. It sounds so bad now that I'm going to say it, but maybe like simplifying the content, which is awful to say.  

 

HC: Which is crazy.  

 

CMB: But I think to make it more easily digestible to men, that's just kind of going back to this layering of patriarchal norms, which is so gross. 

 

HC: It's crazy that we have to do that . 

 

CMB: I know, just thinking that these are just daily things that women go through, and you are trying to make it digestible for men to care.  

 

HC: Outrageous.  

 

CMB: Yeah, it's an ongoing tough question.  

 

HC: It is. I'm hoping years in the future, it's less of a conversation that we have to have. To switch gears a little bit, I noticed that obviously in this film, Indigenous representation is really important to you. Can you tell me a little bit about the representation in the work that you do?  

 

CMB: My mom and my family is Lenape and my dad’s family is Scottish so I try to combine the two in my work so I'm trying to expand westernized views of what Indigenous art might look like. That started with certain classes in undergrad and especially in grad school where I was like how do I know if it is Indigenous work which I think was pushing my point further, it’s inherently Indigenous because that's who I am so that's kind of where the thought of representation started. I was like, what does it mean to have native looking work which is also a very gross question and that could be for any race, like how do I know this is xyz. Again I think that just comes from a lack of education or a lack of access to education but that's kind of where it started. I use a lot of blacks and reds and white colors in the work because those are Lenape tribe colors. I do a lot of traditional bead work that's through many indigenous tribes and sometimes in my photography if I'm doing bead work I will put a little blue bead in it as a nod to historic bead work where you can't sign it like a painting so people would use an offskew bead or a bead of a different color as a signature. That was also my grandfather's favorite color, this really specific blue so I would use it but I really use a lot in the colors. Now I'm incorporating more Lenape weaving techniques and weaving and beadwork patterns into different work across photography and film. I think it's just really important to have representation of all sorts throughout the work and what feels genuine to that person and their lived experiences.  

 

HC: I saw that photography is a big part of your work, is that how you got into filmmaking?  

 

CMB: Yeah! I went to graduate school in the general area called Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and I was in the photography subarea of that. I did mostly photography when I was in undergrad. I had a very interdisciplinary degree so I had some video knowledge but not too much. I was mostly self taught with editing and I took this seminar that was for the film grad students called Image Maker Seminar. I think it was my second semester into grad school and it was very avant garde and experimental and a bunch of things I've just never seen before or had never interacted with and I just fell in love with it and I remember going up to my professor Jeanne Liotta and I was like “I think I’d like to be a filmmaker do you think I could do that” and she was like “yeah, it would be interesting to see how these still images are moving in a moving image process” so that’s actually where, in grad school, where I got into filmmaking, just from taking this one class and then of course I continued with film classes throughout because I was so intrigued but photography was definitely the entry point to it.