Filmmaker dream hampton’s new project is a meditation on Detroit

In her graceful, mournful new short film “Freshwater,” dream hampton shares her childhood memories of walking downtown in Hart Plaza with her grandmother and taking in the panoramic view of the Detroit River.

“And I just remember being at the river and looking out at Windsor and her telling me that water never stops moving — and how profound that was to me,” says the multi-hyphenate artist from Detroit, who directed, wrote, co-produced and narrated the project.

As a filmmaker, author, cultural critic and activist, hampton (who spells her name in lower-case letters, inspired by trailblazing feminist author bell hooks) is unceasingly herself in her explorations of crucial issues.

Her 2015 documentary “Treasure” told the story of Shelly Hilliard, a Black transgender teen from Detroit who was brutally murdered in 2011. It sensitively covered the traumatic story and also tackled broader themes on the prejudice and dangers faced by the trans community.

In 2019, hampton helped draw national attention to persistent allegations of sexual abuse by a music superstar through “Surviving R. Kelly,” the Lifetime docuseries she executive-produced. A ratings hit, the six-part documentary earned an Emmy nomination and won a Peabody Award for “its exploration of the power of celebrity and the double standard of justice around gender and race, and for effecting change.”

Two years after it aired, Kelly was found guilty at his federal sex-trafficking trial in New York.

In the wake of the docuseries, hampton was included on Time’s 2019 list of the 100 most influential people. As Me Too movement founder Tarana Burke wrote for the Time 100 issue, “At her core, dream hampton is a community organizer from Detroit alerting us all to a crisis and that we have a role in solving it. Because she believes that we can.”

These days, hampton isn’t looking back at what she has achieved. She has turned her gaze inward for “Freshwater,” which opens Friday at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and will be screened inside MOCAD’s black-box exhibition space through Aug. 14.

“Freshwater” also will be shown at the Freep Film Festival on April 30 in a program of short films that includes “Swollen,” which hampton executive-produced. “Swollen” explores race and climate change by giving a voice to residents of Detroit, Milwaukee and Cleveland as they deal with flooding homes and racial disparities in their neighborhoods. The Motor City segment is directed by Desmond Love, one of two Detroit artists who did the cinematography for “Freshwater.”

hampton, who has mostly focused on telling other people’s stories, pours her personal memories into “Freshwater.”

“This piece is definitely about looking back on my own life. It’s probably the most personal thing I’ve done,” she says.

The short experimental video weaves together evocative images that range from old family photos floating in clouded water (the sort that’s found in basement floods) to a bus rolling through a water-covered Detroit street to a young girl riding around Belle Isle in a vintage car driven by her father.

The film “unveils the fluid nature of memory within familial and geographical legacies” and “the intersection of the personal and the political,” writes MOCAD senior curator Jova Lynne in the museum’s description of the film. “‘Freshwater’ is a 2022 work that is a tale of remembrance, flooding basements and maintaining connections in the wake of ongoing climate catastrophe.”

During the nearly nine-minute video, hampton’s narration recounts her family’s relocation from Alabama to Detroit’s now-demolished Black Bottom neighborhood, her trips to Belle Isle as a child with her father and the emptiness of city streets that appear almost rural because they’re missing so many houses.

“The flooding eats your memories. It destroys them. It literally takes your old photographs, your prom dress, your father’s boots,” says Hampton in the narration.

Speaking by phone, Lynne says the film’s multi-layered meanings and messages will allow everyone to derive something different from it. “I’ve known dream for a long time, and I’m so honored she trusts me to present this film at MOCAD. … dream is a storyteller. I think that’s what makes her artwork so beautiful, and that’s what makes this film so beautiful.”

hampton says she was drawn to making “Freshwater” after devoting extensive time to three separate 2019 documentaries. In addition to “Surviving R. Kelly,” she was an executive producer of the BET docuseries “Finding Justice,” which examined efforts to fight injustices in Black communities, and HBO’s “It’s a Hard Truth, Ain’t It,” which followed 13 incarcerated men as they studied how to make films.

After becoming so immersed in the literal side of storytelling, hampton says “Freshwater” is her attempt “to remind myself I’m an artist … (and) to do this deeply personal love letter to Belle Isle and to my childhood and to the east side and to think how vulnerable it is in all of these ways.”

Another driving force was the reality of filming limitations during the COVID-19 pandemic. As other potential projects got postponed, hampton found that “Freshwater” was something she could go out and do with a streamlined team of three or four friends.

“It felt like my NYU days. We cold just get our cameras and do it,” she says

The graduate of Cass Tech High School left Detroit in 1990 to study film at the undergraduate and graduate level at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In the years since then, she has accumulated a list of credentials that seems long enough for several people.

She has written about music and culture for top magazines and literary anthologies, and was an editor for the Source and a contributing writer for Vibe. She also collaborated with Jay-Z on “Decoded,” his 2010 autobiography.

Her short scripted film “I Am Ali,” which dealt with the lead character’s mental illness, debuted in 2002 at the Sundance Film Festival. Its cast included 2022 Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis (“King Richard”), and it was filmed by “Daughters of the Dust” cinematographer Arthur Jafa.

In addition, hampton is known for being an associate producing for the Emmy-winning VH1 documentary “Behind the Music: Notorious B.I.G,.” about the life of rapper Chris Wallace, and co-producing a feature-length documentary on him as well.

And this doesn’t even cover her impact as an activist, a commitment that holds a strong influence on the sorts of films she does. Although hampton says she’d love to make a feature-length narrative movie, “all of a sudden, instead of doing a narrative scripted piece … I’m back into the documentary world advocating for an issue.”

“Freshwater” has vital concerns at its core, namely the devastating flooding of Detroit of the past few years and the climate crisis that is driving it. Filming took place across Detroit during 2020 and 2021.

Although hampton had a strong vision of what she wanted, she speaks admiringly of what her small crew of fellow artists brought to the filming. In the ego-driven art world, she is noticeably interested in nurturing the talents of her colleagues.

“dream is a genius and a friend and somebody who really has an uncanny ability to really see you as a person. She knows that lens-based art is important to me,” says Erik Paul Howard, who did the cinematography for “Freshwater” along with Love.

Howard, a co-founder of Inside Southwest Detroit, which promotes youth and community development through cultural initiatives, was hesitant to jump into a filming role at first. “I was kind of doing the disclaimer friend thing where I said, ‘You know, I don’t know that I can do this or do that to the degree at which you’ll like it.” he says.

However, hampton’s approach assured him that he was the right person for the job. “She said, ‘You do know that I know what I need, right? … And I’m telling you that I would love you to work on this. It’s simple. Do you want to do it or not?”

Howard is glad that he said yes. “I don’t describe a lot of my friends as genius, but dream is a genius and she’s insightful. … Taking opportunities to work in the community with folks where you share values and about topics that are important to you, I can’t stress enough, that was the formula for this project. … That’s the kind of work I always want to be doing.”

Another aspect of hampton’s schedule is lending her expertise to several cultural institutions. She is a board member at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, a unique program that offers business and artistic training toward a bachelor’s degree in recorded music.

She also is part of the national advisory board for the Hip Hop Initiative of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. Launched in May, the initiative has sought out leading hip-hop artists and thinkers in a quest to become a globally known site for hip-hop studies.

More: Detroit stories abound in Freep Film Festival’s 2022 short documentaries lineup

More: R. Kelly allegations addressed in Detroit writer’s Lifetime docu-series

In 2021, hampton joined MOCAD’s board of directors, a move the museum praised in a statement for “bringing her social justice-oriented perspective to the museum’s executive lineup.” Her presence there speaks to MOCAD’s efforts to address and move forward from 2020 allegations that it was a toxic workplace where staffers encountered racial harassment.

hampton says she knows how crucial such institutions are to documenting and preserving the contributions of minority groups whose whose history is often erased or co-opted by others.

“I see how things disappear. … Just being a native Detroiter, I’ve experienced and seen erasure happen so often that I know how important it is to do this kind of record-keeping, which is connected to memory, which is what ‘Freshwater’ is about,” she says.

hampton has enjoyed some of her brushes with Hollywood since “Surviving R. Kelly.” In 2021, she was enlisted to join the production team for the Oscar telecast conceived by director Steven Soderbergh. Although critics were harsh about Soderbergh’s nontraditional approach to the ceremony, hampton loved his “Ocean’s 11”-worthy opening shot of actress Regina King striding into Union Station in Los Angeles.

hampton’s onscreen credit ran during that opening. “They spelled my name in lower case, and it was in cool colors. So it was a high point. It was fun, she says with a laugh.

But she is frank when asked whether “Surviving R. Kelly” changed her life, at least within the movie and TV industry. If it opened any doors, it was a very narrow opening. “It opens up a road to true crime.” she says, referring to the murder and mayhem genre that’s popular on network and cable TV.

Hampton prefers to stay on her own artistic path, which isn’t about plotting her next career success. She’s more interested in creating art “steeped in unveiling truths”, as Lynne writes of “Freshwater.”

“You do the work and it goes out into the world and you don’t know how it’s going to be received,” says hampton philosophically. “But by then, you’ve moved on to the other thing.”

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.