Filmmaker Anjanette Levert has won big this year. An alum of City College’s MFA Documentary Film program, the documentary, “The Only Doctor”, won a Peabody Award for Public Service category. As co-producer of the film and working alongside director and co-producer Matthew Hashiguchi, the film documented the realities of rural healthcare in Clay County, Georgia over three years. It is an area where poverty and poor health issues are prevalent.
Presented as part of PBS’ documentary series Reel South, “The Only Doctor” follows Dr. Karen Kinsell who, for the last 20 years, has been the only practicing doctor in her county. Volunteering her services full-time, she grapples with the idea of closing her clinic due to bankruptcy. As a potential merger with Mercer University is placed on the table and Covid-19 begins to impact the nation, Kinsell remains adamant on providing affordable health care for Clay County residents.
This wouldn’t be the first time Levert would step into the documentary space. Her career spans nearly three decades and across various fields. Wearing multiple hats such as Professor of Documentary Film at Spelman College, Associate Director of The Documentary Forum at CCNY, and working in broadcast production at CNN, ABC, and BET, Levert has used her diverse background to craft powerful stories about marginalized communities.
Levert’s diverse career journey within journalism and documentary filmmaking began during her time at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Although majoring in journalism, Levert did not shy away from taking a wide range of classes, including a high-level anthropology class where she saw the connections between ethnography, broadcast journalism and documentary filmmaking.
“I got into the class and seeing the different ethnographies, I really was just struck by how I could see a direct connection between journalism and the moving image.”
Enamored by the study of people and culture through visual forms, she would find herself working at CNN in broadcast news years later. While there, she took notice of how marginalized communities were often covered on the news, especially the Black community. It was an eye opening experience for Levert that left her questioning the industry.
According to a 2023 Pew Research study on Black Americans’ Experiences With News, 63 percent of U.S. Black adults found news coverage on Black communities to be negative. 50 percent agreed that news outlets missed important information when covering Black centered stories and 43 percent agreed that news coverage perpetuates stereotypes of the Black community.
“I was working at CNN and I was really just dismayed by the – well dismayed is quite PC. I was really angry with the portrayal of the African American community when we were in Atlanta over what then existed, which was Freaknik,” says Levert.
Freaknik was an annual event held over Spring break at historically Black colleges and universities in Atlanta. The event, which took place during the 1980s through the 1990s, saw the likes of performers such as Outkast and Notorious B.I.G.. It garnered national and even international attention, drawing in thousands of people every year.
Having grown up in Atlanta and bearing witness to the lively event that celebrated Black culture and expression, she noticed the difference between what was happening in real life versus how it was being portrayed in mainstream media outlets at the time. “That was the beginning of the disillusionment of journalism [for me],” reflects Levert.
In an effort to showcase the realities of Freaknik, Levert bought herself a camera, assembled a team and got to work on her first short documentary film, “Shake It Up! Shake it Down! AUC Students‘ Perspectives on Freaknik.” Working on this from 1997 through 2000 and covering out of pocket costs, the journey to present the realities of her communities would subsequently lead her to pursue an MFA in Documentary Film at The City College of New York.
While attending the Sundance Film Festival the same year she took notice of other documentarian’s cinematic approach. “I saw these wonderful documentaries and I was like ‘these are movies and my film is like news’’, Levert shares. “I talked to so many people around CNN and we didn’t know how to make it like that – much more fluid, much more cinematic.”
Levert’s time at CCNY would prove to be fruitful as she went on to film her second documentary, “The Wedding Proposal”, a personal account on her journey through singlehood and exploring the concept of marriage. Narrating the film, she interviews family, friends and community members to get their thoughts on the institution of marriage. Strengthening her skills for balancing journalism, filmmaking and storytelling, she would go on to join Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a documentary collective for women and nonbinary filmmakers of color, and film her third documentary “The Grand Marshall of Mobile.”
Reflecting on her journey, she stresses the importance of making connections when it comes to documentary filmmaking.
“Once you graduate, ain’t nobody looking for your film,” says Levert. Relying on school structures to keep up with deadlines can be useful, but once out of that environment, it can be easy to fall off track. On that same note, students who go on to produce documentary films may lack the accessibility to networks of people who can help push their films into the public sphere.
Helping to cultivate the Documentary Forum at CCNY alongside her former professor, Andrea Weiss, was a way to bridge the gap between filmmakers’ access to resources and visibility that will help push their films to the finish line.
As the Associate Director, Levert used her experiences to budget and raise funding for the forum while creating signature events such as ‘Life After Film School’ and ‘Eat Films’. She helped nurture a peer network for members of the Documentary Forum to be able to hold space with one another as they watched films, screened their own documentaries, and had discussions.
Partnering with local organizations such as Maysles Documentary Center and Harlem Stage, film collective Third World Newsreel, and the New York Latino Film Festival, Levert and the forum were able to build a network that bridges documentary work with professional opportunities not only for CCNY filmmakers, but Harlem filmmakers as well.
While it can be challenging to get exposure for the film, half the battle is making the film exist. Having the financial means can often be the deciding factor for the film’s existence. It’s become a big component to what Levert has taught members at the Documentary Forum and what she teaches her students at Spelman University.
“I do not subscribe to the starving artist,” says Levert in regards to the idea that in order to make documentary films, or art of any kind, one must devote their entire days to creating. This notion, however, often puts people off from wanting to delve into the arts or humanities for fear of lack of security.
Levert shares that having a job, whether in or out of the creative sector, can be beneficial in terms of helping to fund one’s film. She also shares that creating an LLC can help establish project credibility.
“One of the things that I’m doing with my own students is really having them see this is a business and then how are we going to be about our business?”
You can watch Levert’s documentary “The Only Doctor” on PBS.
Leandra is an early career journalist with an M.A. in Arts & Culture Reporting and Documentary Filmmaking from The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. With experience reporting for community news outlets such as The Riverdale Press and The Mott Haven Herald, Leandra currently writers for CUNY academic publications The RICC and Research in Focus.