Michigan’s Davy Rothbart is Coming Home

And he's bringing his film, his adopted D.C. family, and 50 or so kids from the inner city with him.

By Patrick Sullivan | July 20, 2019

There are several reasons why this year’s appearance at the Traverse City Film Festival will be special for filmmaker and FOUND Magazine founder Davy Rothbart.

The Ann Arbor native will host the Michigan premiere of his film, 17 Blocks, a project that’s been in the works for 20 years.

He’s also bringing 50 or so guests with him to northern Michigan. His nonprofit, Washington to Washington, organizes an annual camping trip for kids from the inner city who might not have experienced nature before. For Rothbart, who grew up taking camping trips to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, it means a lot to take this group to his beloved park.

Making the week even sweeter, though, is how these two events will intersect: Both his 17 Blocks film and his Washington to Washington nonprofit grew out of a two-decades-long relationship he’s had with a family in Washington, D.C., the subjects of his film. To be able to bring the realization of both dreams together in northern Michigan, Rothbart expects, will be magical.

Northern Express chatted on the phone with Rothbart about his film and upcoming whirlwind of a trip.
 
Northern Express: Tell me about the camping trip and what you’ve got planned this year.
 
Davy Rothbart: The family that I’ve been working on this film with for the last 20 years, we started an annual camping trip for kids from their neighborhood in D.C. We usually go to, like, Virginia or West Virginia, but this year we’re going to northern Michigan on the same weekend as the film festival. So, the entire family from the film — like 12 of the family members — plus about 50 other kids from our camping trip are going to be in Traverse City that week. And beyond the screening, we’re planning on doing an afternoon event beforehand that’s open to the public.
 
Express: Tell me how this got started.
 
Rothbart: It’s really intertwined with the film, my connection with the family. I met the family in ’99. I’m from Michigan. I grew up in Ann Arbor, and I went to college there. I moved to D.C. after college, and on a basketball court, I met these two teenagers — Smurf, and his little brother, Emmanuel, who was 9. I had just gotten my first video camera because I was interested in filmmaking, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.
 
Express: That’s when you began work on 17 Blocks, though you didn’t know it at the time.
 
Rothbart: I was teaching myself how to use the camera, and the kids took a real interest, so we kind of learned together. And we started just kind of interviewing each other, wandering around the neighborhood to interview people we met. And their sister Denise and their mom, Cheryl, kind of got into it, too. The way I like to explain it is the family kind of adopted me. I was maybe a little lost and in need of family at that time, and they really took me in, and a friendship formed. So, one of the things we did among many was to film each other and to film in their house and just around the neighborhood. And that continued. We haven’t stopped for 20 years.
 
Express: But there was a particular event that was the catalyst for 17 Blocks and Washington to Washington.
 
Rothbart: Everything changed about 10 years ago. [The family lives] in a neighborhood that’s 17 blocks from the U.S. Capital building, but it’s also known as one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. Ten years ago, one of their family members was killed. I was actually home in Michigan at the time, but I was there the next day, just to help out any way I could. And Cheryl, the mom, she said to me, she’s like, “Where’s the cameras?” I didn’t know what she meant at first. But she just said, “This is so common. This happens so much in our neighborhood. But no one’s been documented as thoroughly as my family.” She had the wisdom to recognize that what’s normally a statistic or just an abstract idea — all these deaths in inner cities — she realized that it would really resonate with people if they saw footage of someone from when they were a little kid, throughout their life.
 
Express: So, you kept on filming, despite the tragedy.
 
Rothbart: She was like, “We have to film all of this.” So, me and her and the rest of the family, we just kept filming in the days and weeks following the family member’s death. I’m being a little bit vague just because the family likes people to experience the film without knowing who dies, because they want people to be as shocked as they were.
 
Express: I understand that that act of violence also led to the annual camping trip.
 
Rothbart: After this family member passed, we were talking, and they remembered that I had been talking about doing a camping trip with them because I grew up in Michigan, and I love camping and hiking every summer, and it was a big part of my life. And I regret I never did that before then. But they said: “What can we do to change the outcomes and just change things up for kids that grew up in this neighborhood? Broaden their perspectives. Expose them to some new things. Give them sort of a bigger sense of possibility.”

So, Cheryl’s idea was, why don’t we take some of these kids camping? That first year we took about 12 kids from their block in Washington, D.C. to Mount Washington in New Hampshire and we called it Washington to Washington. Now every year we go somewhere different. And we’ve added a group from the Detroit area and also New Orleans, where one of my friends from college is a teacher now, so he brings a bunch of kids from the city there. Every year it’s grown. Last year we had 55 kids that came on the trip. It’s amazing. You see how transformative it is for kids to have a week in nature. It really opens their eyes and gets them excited.
 
Express: These kids, given where they come from, must be fish out of water when they go camping in the woods.
 
Rothbart: One thing that I always take notice of is that, literally, these kids are from some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. I remember, the New Orleans group in particular, there was a boy whose father was killed about two weeks before the trip. That gives you a sense of just how rough his neighborhood is. And yet they were terrified when they got out to the woods. Hearing all these sounds. Every time a squirrel makes a sound next to their tent, they think it’s a bear. You see how, at first, a place so different can be really scary to you. But then you see that melt really quickly, too. Many of the kids have not been outside a 10-block radius. And so, just for them to meet each other is cool. Even things we take for granted as really ordinary are new to them. The stars at night. Often the Perseid meteor showers are in August, and we get a chance to see those.
 
Express: What have some of the surprising moments during the camping trips been like?
 
Rothbart: One thing that’s really cool — two years ago we were camping in Virginia. Actually, only an hour from Charlottesville, Virginia. It was the same weekend as all the conflict in Charlottesville, all these right-wing groups were there, and the guy killed the anti-Nazi protester. Well, we were in a campground in rural Virginia. Forty-five to 50 African American kids. And I honestly didn’t know how a lot of the rural white folks that came to the campground were going to receive us. We walk out, and I have to check my own prejudices because you’ve got a lot of folks in mullets, flipping burgers on a grill. But what was so cool was, like, within half an hour, all of our kids were playing in the water, running around playing Marco Polo and doing flips off of our trip leaders’ shoulders and stuff, and before you know it, the white kids and the black kids are playing together, having fun, and then the dads flipping burgers end up inviting everyone to come over and join them for food.
 
Express: That’s really moving. Tell me about what’s planned for this year’s trip.
 
Rothbart: We’ve always done the trips sort of with serendipity, but this year it’s going to be more intentional. Our screening of 17 Blocks is at the festival [6pm Thursday, August 1, at Traverse City Central High School auditorium]. It’s a special year, being the 10th annual trip.
 
Express: Where are you staying?
 
Rothbart: Seth Bernard and his family are hosting us at Earthwork Farm, where they hold the Harvest Gathering every year. That’s extremely generous of them to host our group. And we’re going to go to the Sleeping Bear Dunes, which are a special place to me. That’s where I camped when I was 10, 12 years old. So to be able to bring all of these kids not just to a beautiful national park somewhere, but to the park that I grew up going to, that was the most special place that I ever camped when I was a kid — I mean, that’s incredible, you know? And beyond that, to be able to bring all the family to be there, to share the film with Traverse City audiences, with Film Fest audiences, that’s really meaningful. I’m a very proud Michigan native. Even living in L.A. for 10 years, I wear some kind of Michigan shirt every day. This is the Michigan premiere of the film that I’ve been working on for 20 years, so that’s really special.
 
Express: And you’ve got something special planned before the screening, you said?
 
Rothbart: The film is at 6pm, but at 3pm we’re going to have a beach day and cookout, open to the public at Bryant Park. Kids or families, grownups, whoever. We just want people to come and get a chance to hang out with some of our kids and then hopefully come see the movie afterward, you know?
 
Express: You’re best known as founder of FOUND Magazine, which publishes the random detritus of everyday life that's scribbled in abandoned notes and journals and left behind. Does 17 Blocks signal that you have shifted your career to focus on filmmaking?
 
Rothbart: I still love FOUND, and I still do events sometimes, and I still put the magazine together periodically, every year or two. But I’ve always loved movies, and I love making them, too. That was always a dream of mine. My last movie was Medora, about a high school basketball team in rural Indiana. Between that and 17 Blocks, I love making films, and I hope to continue making a lot more films. And being at the film festival is a huge deal to me.

I have never been to it, but I’ve been following the festival. I look and see what movies are playing, and those are the ones that I seek out. The only thing I’m a little disappointed about is I won’t really be able to participate in this festival weekend, because I know what a great experience filmmakers have. We’re going to be having a really fun week out camping, but other than our screening, we’ll be at the Sleeping Bear Dunes and canoeing the Manistee River and stuff like that.

Give City Kids the Gift of Nature
Want to help Rothbart and his Washington to Washington nonprofit bring this year's kids to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore? Every little bit helps! Click here.