COLUMBUS, Ind. — Smaller-town America needs its turn in the racial spotlight, as Alyse Tucker Bounds sees it. And the 24-year-old biracial Columbus native and Indianapolis resident will give it precisely that this weekend via the free, inaugural Amplify Columbus Film Festival at YES Cinema in downtown Columbus.
She will do so through her 37-minute documentary “Crossroads Stories,” opening at 5 p.m. Saturday and featuring interviews with six local Black residents sharing their stories and three others discussing racial justice in Bartholomew County and how to get involved. To hear her passion, one would sense that it was far easier for her to spring into action last year than to sit back and bemoan the nation’s racial and ethnic divide.
“This past year was a huge moment for racial justice and for racial equity, and for conversations about policing and what it’s like to be a Back person in this country — what it used to look like, what it looks like now, and how much work we need to do,” Tucker Bounds said.
Focusing on Columbus and Bartholomew County is significant, she said.
“My Dad (Al Tucker) and I were discussing this,” she said, “and we were both frustrated that the story we always hear (on race) is metropolitan. It’s New York, it’s LA. Those are the stories that are on the news.
” … But what I really want to highlight is the Black experience. And not just the overall Black experience, but the Black experience specifically here in the (rural) Midwest, which is generally very different from the Black experience in the big city. That’s the goal.”
For the complete story, see Wednesday’s Republic.
