Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker Melanie Jeffcoat is our latest video addition to the Creators Across America series.

Melanie says her mother describes her as an “arts activist,” which seems an accurate description. She has produced documentary films to promote racial tolerance and voting rights education. She says being born in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles during that area’s historic race riots foreshadowed her later advocacy.

For several years she served as a founding member and artistic director of Circle X Theatre Company in L.A., but for the last several years Melanie has called Alabama her home, and has produced documentaries about the state and its history. She loves the artistic community in Birmingham, which she says is not sufficiently recognized nationally.

Melanie says her filmmaking benefits from talented editors and other artists in her community. She is the creator of a three-part documentary titled Show of Hands: The Legacy of Voting Rights in Alabama, and her most recent documentary, Open Secret, won the Audience Favorite Award at the 2010 Politics on Film Festival in Washington, D.C.

Melanie tells the story of Open Secret in our video better than I can, but let’s just say it has opened many eyes to the creation and language of the Alabama state constitution, which she documents as reflecting the racism and sexism of the time. Melanie is part of a grassroots movement to rewrite that constitution.

Lucinda Dugger interviewed Melanie while she was in town for the Politics on Film Festival, and we were grateful she could make the time. We’re particularly grateful because she articulately explains in the video how critical copyright is to her and her professional success. She also explains how she goes out of her way to respect the rights of other copyright owners, including when she is making a documentary and wishes to use someone else’s work in her production.

I’m going to give away my favorite line of the video: “I think the perception of artists is everybody loves them, but nobody really wants to pay for them.”

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 11:22 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under 1, creators across america. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.