Kofi King has been telling stories since he was a little kid. The Southwest Atlanta native grew up recording videos of his action figures with his cousins, and made a short film that premiered at his school’s festival when he was a teenager before deciding to major in film at Columbia University.
Now, he has a new film called “Feng Shui,” that covers extremely personal ground. The film is a desktop documentary – a type of audiovisual essay that uses the computer screen as the camera lens instead of using a traditional camera – and will premiere at this year’s Changing Minds Young Filmmakers Festival in New York City on May 17.
The film is one of ten selected for this year’s festival, and examines the connection between dorms at Columbia University and students’ mental health. King was inspired to make the film after he lost two close friends while at school.
Rough Draft Atlanta recently spoke to King about his process making the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Have you always been interested in filmmaking? When did that interest first develop?
Kofi King: Since I was a little kid, me and my cousins would record videos with our action figures and make little stories about their lives and stuff. But I feel like the first time it formally came about was [in] two moments, the first of which was in middle school where I started a stop motion animation club with my friends. The second moment [was] when my mom bought me a DSLR sophomore year of high school. I shot a short film for high school and submitted it to our first film festival, and it actually won. So that was a pretty nice moment.
I know this is a very personal film for you. I wondered if you could talk about when you decided that you wanted to take whatever it was you were feeling and put it on screen. What made you want to communicate it that way?
King: I actually made this film as sort of a thesis project for one of the labs that I took, but I decided to go in this direction, because it was honestly a part of my grieving process. I felt that bringing about awareness to this, for me, helped me show respect to my friends that I lost, and made sure that their names won’t be forgotten, and their stories won’t be forgotten.
One of the interesting things about this film for me is the connection between mental health and space. When did that appear as a theme for you? When did you start thinking about spatial awareness, and how that connects to mental health?
King: So one of the two friends that passed away – I guess I was just thinking about all the factors that may have contributed to him making that final decision. I remembered him telling me that he had to buy a sun lamp for his room, because it didn’t get any natural sunlight. And that, for me, was just a really huge [moment]. It might sound small to some, but … just to imagine not getting that basic human need every day is something that can change one student’s year much more than another student who is receiving that. To summarize, I think that sun lamp comment that he made really made me think about that. I thought about how the dorm he lived in, his suite – it was larger individual rooms, [then] they cut them up to make more space, to be able to fit more people in there.
Over the course of making the film, how did you relationship to your own mental health, or mental health in general, evolve?
King: The first short film that I made at Columbia dealt with the same topics, but it was more so about silence and feeling lost and alone in a very busy city. I think from when I made that film to making “Feng Shui,” I had a firmer grasp about how we as individuals have control over the factors in our life. We don’t have to feel like we’re at the whim of these external factors. You know, “Feng Shui,” meaning how you arrange your room, can help a lot with how you feel – so, just emphasizing that autonomy, or agency, really.
Did that title come to you pretty early on?
King: It definitely came on a bit later. The film was very emotional at first, just given that it was a part of my grieving process. I showed it to my professor, and he basically told me that it was great, but he told me that for it to be effective to more people and outside myself, he said – you’ve got to include just facts. You’ve got to put the facts in there. That’s when the film evolved into having just the stats, the screenshots from Columbia’s website. I think “Feng Shui,” the idea of that for me completed the whole film in bringing that spiritual aspect to it as well. It was like the perfect trifecta, of personal, factual, and spiritual.
Could you talk a bit about what the actual work on the documentary was like? Did you make it completely by yourself, did you have other people around to help you with different aspects?
King: I made it entirely by myself … I think a big part of the process was just having restraint. Because I think the main thing I wanted people to feel was that staleness, that emptiness that me and my friends felt from living in these boxes. I think the main part of that process was trying to not put too many bells and whistles in there, and just showing restraint.
When did you first hear about this particular film festival?
King: I found it on FilmFreeway. I made a list of free film festivals. I think it’s just fantastic, because for so many student filmmakers, your pockets are just emptied by these film festivals that you probably have a shot in – you know, there’s always [the possibility] you have a shot. But we’re short on cash, and I just thought it would be a much better strategy to find festivals that are still related to the film that I’m making, but were at lower price levels.
How did it feel when you got the message that you were in?
King: Oh, man, it was a pleasant surprise, especially since it was a while since I submitted the film. It felt like I planted the seed a long time ago and then it came to fruition. I was ecstatic.
You’ve talked about how the previous short film you made was also about mental health – is that something that you hope to keep exploring in the future through your filmmaking?
King: I’m actually in pre-production for my first feature film. We’re following a struggling journalist. He’s on the brink of homelessness, and – this is a narrative film, by the way – one day, he receives a letter from his mother asking him to return home down South because his little brother, who’s the age of seven, has taken a vow of silence. This film is really about the power of communication, the power of silence. What does it mean when a kid of the age of seven has decided to not speak? What does that say about his level of emotional intelligence? And how can our protagonist figure out how to effectively communicate and learn more about himself from talking about it? I think that is one of my main missions, is to really show everyone – and especially black men – that it’s okay to be vulnerable. Through talking with each other, we can process these emotions and live better lives, and not feel like we have to exit this planet in order to find some sense of release.
