From left to right, “Color Book” stars actors Jeremiah Daniels (Mason) and Will Catlett (Lucky) as a father and son traveling through the Atlanta metro area to attend a baseball game. (Nikolaus Summerer/TNS)
ATLANTA — “Color Book,” a feature film written and directed by David F. Fortune, tells the story of a widower on Atlanta’s east side raising a son with Down syndrome.
The 115-minute film, which explores the setbacks a father and son experience when they try to attend their first baseball game together, had its world premiere last weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, as part of the festival’s “Viewpoints” competition. .
“Color Book” stars actor Will Catlett as Lucky, father of 11-year-old Mason, played by actor Jeremiah Daniels, who lives with Down syndrome. The story takes place throughout the greater Atlanta area, including several MARTA stations and near Truist Park.
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“Atlanta is such a beautiful community and I really wanted to tell a humble and intimate portrait of Atlanta that we often don’t get the chance to see,” Fortune said.
Fortune discovered her passion for film while she was a student at Morehouse. He began studying the craft of film-making, starting with Spike Lee and then studying international filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Alfonso Cuarón. Through his work, Fortune learned to create films at a slower pace, which allowed him to tell character-driven stories.
“The power of film allows you to see an entire world that is totally different from your own and find common ground,” Fortune said.
Fortune creates compassion with “Color Book” through the use of extended flashback sequences, slow trailers, and pleasingly soft camera shots, inspired by portraits captured by Black photographers such as Gordon Parks and Carrie Mae Weems.
Fortune told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “Color Book” was intentionally filmed in black and white.
“Black and white is a narrative choice that helps viewers focus on the characters instead of the world,” he said. “It enhances the characters’ relationships rather than what’s going on around them.”
It adds criticism to the rise of film and television projects in Atlanta, which often neglect to make the city a character in the narrative, he believes. “There are a lot of productions that take place in Atlanta, but there are no stories told about Atlanta,” Fortune said.
He hopes his film is different and that the public identifies with “the space that raised me.”
Fortune came up with the film’s premise in 2018, while finishing film school at Loyola Marymount University. She wanted to tell a story about a black father raising his son and one of his teachers encouraged him to follow his dream.
“I just wanted to take that lens, apply it to East Atlanta and Decatur, and bring something that’s a little more nuanced,” he said. “I wanted to see people with disabilities in the black community improve their stories.”
The aspiring author interviewed metro Atlanta parents whose children were affected by the disease before writing the script.
“I grew up here and saw the humanity, the struggles, the joys, the ups and downs in everyone. “This was the place that taught me life lessons and now I can depict those humble beginnings in my films,” he said.
Fortune was accepted into the directing labs of Netflix, Paramount Television, Village Roadshow and Urbanworld Film Festival. Her relationship with the Tribeca Film Festival began in 2021 during a fellowship with Indeed x Hillman Grad Productions’ Rising Voices program, founded by Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Lena Waithe.
The incubator program funded and supported his short film “Shoebox,” which premiered at Tribeca. Fortune says the director’s labs taught him to be intentional with creative choices and business decisions.
“They provided me with a canvas and a platform to nurture my voice,” Fortune said. “He knew how to budget, schedule and analyze the big picture of what was needed to complete a professional project.”
In 2023, Fortune won a $1 million grant as the sixth winner of the festival’s “Untold Stories” competition to produce his feature debut for one year. Even before Fortune applied to participate in Tribeca’s “Untold Stories” program, he was confident that “Color Book” met the submission criteria, but ran into production challenges.
After securing funding to make “Color Book,” strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild delayed his schedule. He was able to cast actors, hire crew and start filming in January, but deadlines were tight, as “Color Book” had to be submitted to the Tribeca Film Festival in May.
“I only had five weeks to edit the film, and that’s almost impossible for a feature film,” Fortune said. Still, he didn’t let lack of time stop him from meeting his deadline. “If you give me a million dollars, it’s up to me to deliver it.”
Plaza and Tara Theater owner Christopher Escobar, one of the producers of “Color Book,” helped Fortune with financing and organized events to support the project.
“David is a fantastic cinematic talent and it was a privilege to help make his vision come to life,” Escobar said.
Catlett agreed. “Making movies is painful. Playing characters is painful. The process is painful. If you’re growing up in Decatur or any part of the central United States, it’s painful. But if there is no pain there is no joy. If there is no pain, there is no beauty,” she insisted as she described the process of bringing Mason’s father, Lucky, to life on screen.
“There is beauty hidden within your pain; You just have to go through it. This is what Lucky discovers. “Most fathers can’t come forward because of the pain, but if they stay, they can find the joy and love of raising a son like Mason.”
Daniels said he was grateful for the opportunity to work on “Color Book” alongside Catlett, whom he described as an incredible actor, while praising Fortune’s leadership on set.
“I am honored to be able to bring David’s creation to life in a realistic and relatable way,” Daniels said. “This experience has changed me forever… ‘Color Book’ is family.”
Fortune accepts the praise, saying the goal of “Color Book” was simply to have impact.
“If I can walk out of the theater knowing that the audience spent time with these two characters, that’s all I can ask for.”
© 2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
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