Episode 5/Takin A Walk at Lower Mills in Boston with Thato Mwosa

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Taking a Walk, an excursion to converse, connect, and catch up at a cool location with some of the most interesting people you can find here’s Buzz Knight.

Buzz Knight:

Taking a walk is an amazing journey, no matter where you take it and no matter who your co-pilot is. As the Vietnamese monkThich Nhat Hanh says in his journal How to Walk, when we walk with others, the collective energy of mindfulness we generate is very powerful. It helps heal everyone. When we walk together producing the energy of mindfulness, going home to the here and the now, we can feel paradise right under our feet. You can see the paradise all around you. I’m Buzz Knight, and today on Taking a Walk, I’m excited to explore an area of Boston, believe it or not, I’ve never adventured to, with someone who was on an incredible adventure of their own.

Buzz Knight:

I’m here at the historic Lower Mills Industrial District, which borders Dorchester and Milton, just on the outskirts of the city of Boston. This is a historic area located on both sides of the Neponset river, an area with its own stories to tell about native American inhabitants, early settlers, chocolate factories and more. I’m about to take a walk with a woman who has her own story to tell, Thato Mwosa is a Botswana American writer, director, illustrator, playwright, educator and game inventor.

Buzz Knight:

She has amazing film credits going back to 2005 with her short film Don’t Leave Me. There is an incredible buzz about her latest feature film called Memoirs of a Black Girl. I heard her story on the radio some weeks ago, and I was fascinated by her story, her storytelling, her creative drive and her many collaborations. I’m excited to be taking a walk at Lower Mills with Thato Mwosa. Thato, it’s so nice to meet you. I appreciate you taking a walk.

Thato Mwosa:

Oh, thank you so much. This is awesome. I like taking walks. I love walking and talking and making new friends, so thanks for the invitation.

Buzz Knight:

This is so great with such a beautiful day and we’re at Lower Mills. Do you take a walk in this vicinity from time to time?

Thato Mwosa:

Yes. I love the park. They just built it a couple of years ago. That’s where we bike, that’s where we run. It’s a long path that connects Milton to Dorchester, and it goes along the trails. It’s a wonderful nature walk. You feel like you are not in the city because there’s a lot of green space in there.

Buzz Knight:

The hot story, this is how I first heard about you was Memoirs of a Black Girl, which is getting a great buzz and reviews, and you must be just terribly excited about how that’s going. So let’s talk about your projects starting with Memoirs.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah. What do you want to know about Memoirs?

Buzz Knight:

Well, tell me first of all how long the process was from start to finish, the creative process, the casting, just everything that went into the work.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah. First of all, Memoirs is a coming in of age film that focuses on a young Black girl. Her name is Aisha Johnson and Aisha is up for a prestigious scholarship, but a decision she makes changes her life drastically and she has to learn to survive in the hallways of Dudley High and also on the streets of Roxbury. That’s essentially what the film is about. I wrote it when I was teaching at Madison Park in Roxbury. I had been teaching that for maybe five years as a film teacher. One of the things that I do as a film teacher, because we spend a lot of time in the classroom, it’s a vocational school, which means the students are with me sometimes for seven hours in the classroom. I have to figure out the way to make them create stuff, but we have enough opportunity to watch stuff as well. A lot of movies, analyze movies because they’re creating movies.

Thato Mwosa:

I found that I was running out of things that interest my students. I think the root of the problem was they did not see themselves reflected on the screen. If I’m bringing a coming of age story that is set in a suburb, or that is set in a world that they’re not familiar with, they would watch it but quickly lose interest because it’s not their issues, they don’t relate, the people don’t look like them. So I found that there was actually very few coming of age stories that are set in cities, especially in a city high school.

Thato Mwosa:

When I noticed that, I started to think about maybe that’s the opportunity to actually create a story for them because I’m a filmmaker after all. I’ve learned that if you don’t see a movie that you like to watch on the screen, you make it just like if you don’t see a book that you like to read, you write it. I decided, and at that point I had not written a feature. I’ve done shorts and I was like, “Okay. I’m going to make a feature.” So I wrote it and it took a while. It took probably four years of writing, not writing nonstop, but writing, looking at it, forgetting about it, coming back to it because I still came back to it. I’d write other stuff and I’d come back to it because I love the story and I think it was necessary.

Thato Mwosa:

Eventually, I got into this program, the MFA program at Lesley for creative writing where they actually teach you how to write]. When I came in, I said my biggest thing is I can write a short film. That is just my comfort, but I don’t know how to write a feature film. It’s so overwhelming for me. I was able to get some training and tools on how to strategies, how to write a feature screenplay. I went back to it, then I worked on it.

Buzz Knight:

Were there moments that you just said, “I hate this. I can can’t really deal with this?”, that you were so frustrated with it or that you were blocked on it? That happened, yeah?

Thato Mwosa:

Yes.

Buzz Knight:

What did you do then to break that?

Thato Mwosa:

With the artist as well, sometimes you’re painting or you’re writing and you’re like, “Oh, this sucks.”

Buzz Knight:

Right.

Thato Mwosa:

Whenever you feel like something sucks, you put it away, but then months later you come back to it and you look at it with fresh eyes, and then it makes sense to you and then maybe somehow something sparks. Yes, even now I’ll go through watching this film and I’m like, “Oh, this sucks.” I don’t want to say this.

Buzz Knight:

Or you would do something different or whatever.

Thato Mwosa:

Exactly. Artists are very hard on themselves. I bet you even Basquiat or Monet, if they were to look at their paintings, they will find something that they can fix. I cannot help myself. I cannot watch the film right now because I have to step away just because there’s so many things I could have done better. I’m that way.

Buzz Knight:

That’s how you’re wired. Yeah.

Thato Mwosa:

Yes. I’m wired that way. Anyway, I fall out of … Because I think what it is is when you’re stuck, you start to hate something because we get stuck as artists. You get to a point where something makes sense and then something doesn’t click and you’re trying to figure out, but we can’t. I’ve learned to leave it alone, let it marinate, step away from it.

Thato Mwosa:

Another thing is to bring in somebody else who will look at it, give it a new perspective, and they can maybe see something that we haven’t seen from a different perspective. I’ve learned that even workshopping or sharing with friends may just help with the process of your creation. To answer your question, many times. That’s why it took about four years because there were moments where I was like, “Hey, I cannot do this. I don’t know if I got it right.”

Buzz Knight:

Back to those other collaborators that you mentioned, I think that’s a really important point to highlight in the creative process because it can be I’m sure from your perspective, a very solo, lonely process when you’re working something and then you get frustrated and then you have to take that step back and really put it away for a while. How do you choose or feel confident that a certain collaborator can lend that help and different perspective?

Thato Mwosa:

What I’ve done over the past couple of years is because I went to a program where I was in session with a lot of writers and we kept in touch to help each other because we all go through this. What I meshed from that training was the networking. We started to create our own groups, our own feedback because after college, when you’re in college, it’s formal, you have workshopping. You bring your script, that’s your day, everybody pitches in, but then after we graduated, we’re like, “When are we going to get the opportunity to do this?” Because workshopping is really good. I’m part of three writing groups, and that’s what we share. Whenever something comes up, we are like, “Hey, do you mind if we have an hour to read this? And then, these are my questions,” and then we spend that hour.

Buzz Knight:

Okay. It’s a formal … It’s a group.

Thato Mwosa:

Not really, but it’s mostly just friends coming together, helping each other because we are all writers. I think it is important because to write solo and not get any … I always feel like writers are actually not your best people to go to. Writers are great in maybe helping you with structure or development of characters. They’re great for that kind of stuff, but we don’t write for writers. We write for the audience. For Memoirs, for example, I actually had my students read it several times and then they picked up some stuff. They’re like, “Oh, I don’t talk like this. I would say it this way.” As soon as they say, “I’ll say it this way,” I’ll write it down and correct it.

Thato Mwosa:

I feel like it is important to have writers, people that are technically writers to help you, but it’s even more important to actually have your audience read your thing, just like a film has a test audience, a book, you work with an editor, but I think it’s important to have other people that are … I was listening to a master class by one of the screenwriters. He called civilians. He was like civilians. I was like, “Oh, that is so funny.” He’s like, “I’ll go to a civilian and have them read my screenplay.” I cracked up because I don’t know, normal people, your audience, your potential audience.

Buzz Knight:

A real unscreened focus group.

Thato Mwosa:

Exactly.

Buzz Knight:

Rather than screened focus group.

Thato Mwosa:

People that are not going to be too hung up on the technical, but they’re going to be hung up on maybe the emotion of the story or whether they get it, what’s important for them.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. We’ll go straighten that up.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah.

Buzz Knight:

That’s fascinating.

Thato Mwosa:

That way it’s Milton, and that way was Dorchester. I actually like the Milton] because it’s much more, very green. Once you get past the light and you get into this water thing.

Buzz Knight:

I’m just looking at the sign here. It says that there was something called the Baker Chocolate Company that used to be here.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah.

Buzz Knight:

Neponset river’s home to the first chocolate mill in America. I have to think that if it were still up and running, that we would be smelling the chocolate right now.

Thato Mwosa:

We would be in the factory right now eating.

Buzz Knight:

We would be in there. Yeah.

Thato Mwosa:

I would be in there for sure.

Buzz Knight:

You would be workshopping in there. Yeah. Well, I think it’s great too that you had your students involved because to get that collaboration from those brilliant minds there is pretty cool.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah. It’s been doing well, and I think Pan African Film Festival is where we go our interest from distributors right away. That was our first festival, and right away we started talking to distributors.

Buzz Knight:

To think too that you probably received some interesting inquiries or incoming from people around the film industry during all of this.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah. I’ve had talks with a couple of people that reached out. Right now, with the film industry, they actually, when they have interest, it’s not about the current film. It’s about what’s next for you.

Buzz Knight:

Got it.

Thato Mwosa:

I’m already looking forward because I have a screenplay that I wrote called Blue Dawn that’s set in Botswana. That’s the kind of conversations I’m having with the potential producers. Right now, we’re just looking ahead, but I’m also doing the promotional tour of the Memoirs of a Black Girl.

Buzz Knight:

Oh, boy. That’s so exciting. It’s a whirlwind for you. In the midst of all this, you’re teaching regularly at Emerson and also in Brookline. Is that correct?

Thato Mwosa:

Yes. I have two jobs teaching film, and I teach visual media arts at Emerson, which is a class, it’s a foundational class that includes filmmaking, photography, graphic design. So they get to be introduced to different mediums. At Brookline, I teach primarily filmmaking and TV production, documentary filmmaking.

Buzz Knight:

You have some things that you can always bring them in on, whether it be a new project. You’ve got to tap the minds there, but you also have so many multidimensional aspects of your work, your artwork, which is beautiful.

Thato Mwosa:

Thank you.

Buzz Knight:

And just so impactful. Also, you created a game too. Tell us about that.

Thato Mwosa:

SAWA Trivia is the first African trivia card game. It came about when my husband and I were looking for a game to play that taps into our African culture. We found out that there’s no real games out there at the time. We were looking primarily to do trivia. When we Googled, we figured out that there’s nothing, and I’m such a creative that whenever I find that there’s a lack, I want to create it just like the film and also the book, which we can talk about later. I see an opportunity where there’s lack and I’m like, “Okay. So no one ever thought to do a Trivia game.” It is important for us Africans to somehow conserve our culture and also educate people about our culture and be in control of it, be in control of that narrative and promote the positive stories from Africa, or the point of the game, just to promote Africa in a positive way.

Thato Mwosa:

We have different categories. We have geography, politics, entertainment, movies, music, business. I think it’s five categories. Business? I’m missing something. Yeah. We have all those categories, and one of the things that when we are creating the game, especially when we did the business part of it, we were surprised about the innovation that’s going on in Africa. I’ve been here for 24 years. My husband has been here longer, and somehow we didn’t know that there were hybrid cars being developed in Africa that are on the road that are commercial, that you can buy African made cars. We didn’t know that there were smartphones that are being developed in Africa that had been used. Rwanda made the first African made smartphone. It’s called the Mara phone. Looks like an Apple, just like Huawei from China, Rwanda has their own brand.

Thato Mwosa:

Uganda made the first commercial hybrid car that you can buy and drive. Really, our minds were blown by all this information. We’re hoping when we package the game, people will get to see another side of Africa other than the story of Africa that we know that the West always want to focus, the Western media always wants to focus on, the poverty, the war, the deprivation. What we wanted to present was a new narrative, a counter narrative with the game to say Africa is developing, is rapidly developing. There’s innovation happening in Africa, there’s music, movies, people are creating stuff and making history. So that’s what we wanted to do with the game, to just have it be entertaining and educational. We call it an edutaining game because you get to have fun as you play, but you get to learn a lot about Africa as well.

Buzz Knight:

Right. That’s great.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah.

Buzz Knight:

Go back to the book again that you touched upon as well.

Thato Mwosa:

Yeah.

Buzz Knight:

Yes.

Thato Mwosa:

14 African Women that Made History is just based on the research from the game, getting to know the wonderful things that are happening, especially for me as an African woman, I was impressed with all the strong phenomenal women that are making change in the communities, that are contributing to developing, to transforming the communities. I wanted to celebrate them because there was no book, no [inaudible] book that also highlighted these women as a collection. I decided to identify 14. There were a lot. There’s hundreds. I had 100 names, but at some point I knew I couldn’t write all those stories. I could make volume one, volume two. So I started with 14 women that I know made history.

Thato Mwosa:

That includes Wangari Maathai who won the Nobel peace prize. That also includes the first woman, female president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia. She was the first female present in Africa. She led Liberia for many years. That included Winnie Mandela who fought to free her husband, Nelson Mandela because her story is always overshadowed by Nelson Mandela. While he was in jail for 27 years, it was Winnie who worked hard to travel across the world to galvanize people to free him. Otherwise, if it wasn’t for her activism, Mandela would’ve been forgotten because he was in jail.

Buzz Knight:

Right.

Thato Mwosa:

And she would not give up. She was out in the streets galvanizing, protesting. She’s to me a phenomenal woman. She’s controversial. People have opinions about her, but I think she should be commended for the work that she did and be remembered as one of our heroes.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah.

Thato Mwosa:

That’s one of the women that I included, and there’s several many women including young women, Lupita Nyong’o who’s the first Black African woman to win an Oscar. She made history. She’s an artist. I had to also diversify so I’m not just choosing one type of woman. I had to choose young women and older women. I had to choose political activists and environmentalists and doctors and artists, writers. Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi, isn’t it? She’s a phenomenal writer, well known writer. It was hard to choose, but I’m happy with the choices that I made. I made the book really for young people across the world so they know that African women are movers and shakers too.

Buzz Knight:

Yes.

Thato Mwosa:

They are transforming and changing their communities and their societies and changing the world.

Buzz Knight:

That’s great. Congratulations on that. Wow. That’s sensational. Well, as we close, there’s one thing about you that really strikes me and it even strikes me more now that I’ve had the opportunity to be taking a walk with you. You’re an amazing storyteller. Your ability to tell each story clearly and illustrate it and cinematically as well, obviously, is astounding. How were you first influenced as a storyteller? From who and in what way and how did it shape you?

Thato Mwosa:

Oh, man. I grew up in a family of storytellers. First and foremost, my dad was a journalist in his youth. He was a well known journalist who traveled with the first president of Botswana at the time. He was in his twenties. And then, after doing political coverage in a government newspaper, he decided to actually get into politics. He actually became a member of opposition and he was the first city mayor of Gaborone because before then, Gaborone was a town. During my dad’s tenure as a mayor, that transformed into a city, Gabarone. This is our capital, the capital of Botswana. He was mayor for 10 years. I grew up with him just being …

Thato Mwosa:

As a politician, he would go across the country and I would watch him give speeches. He was on a radar just like I watch Martin Luther Kng speeches and all of that. People absolutely loved to listen to my father because he was fun. He was a comedian in a way because he would just make people laugh, but make people see sense, but also in a humorous way. I grew up around him and he used to just … We’ll sit around him and he’ll tell stories, and then my uncle was a playwright. He wrote a play, published a play that was used by schools in Botswana. It was called [foreign language].

Thato Mwosa:

And then, my aunt also published children’s books in Botswana. Storytelling is in my genes. I feel like it was natural that I decided to take this route. Also, when I first at Emerson, I was actually studying TV broadcasting. So essentially I was following my father’s footsteps, but then I fell in love with the fictional side because he’s nonfiction, he was a journalist, he published books, but mostly in the nonfiction side.

Buzz Knight:

Well, I have to tell you, one of the beautiful things about taking a walk is conversation, is new conversation, meeting someone new, learning and being inspired. I’m coming away with all those feelings from meeting you on this walk here in Lower Mills. It’s so wonderful. You have such an amazing group of things going on. I think the beautiful part about all this is how you’re also in the midst of it. You’re impacting the next generation of creatives, which is amazing, but you’re also celebrating your country. I think that is beautiful in the full circle nature of things as well. I think you have a lot to be proud of and I know you have many more things you’re going to accomplish.

Thato Mwosa:

Thank you. Thank you so much for this invitation to take a walk and talk. It’s been good. I feel like I’ve exercised. I’ve done my exercise for the day and I came to my favorite place which is the path. Milton [inaudible] is a path, and I got to make a new friend. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Buzz Knight:

I’m very grateful. I think we should stop over at the Mexican restaurant over there and grab some tequila and do some workshopping.

Thato Mwosa:

Okay. Absolutely. Yellow Door Taqueria is one of my favorite places. It’s two minutes away from my house, and I love this area.

Buzz Knight:

Exactly. It’s beautiful here. I’m glad to have found a new spot and made a new friend. I wish you continued success and I know you’re going to have even greater success than you’ve already had. Thank you for the time and thank you for taking a walk.

Thato Mwosa:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Taking a walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.