17 Blocks
Emmanuel Sanford-Durant in 17 Blocks
Photo courtesy of Davy Rothbart
A Conversation with Director, Davy Rothbart
A year or so go, there was a brutal stabbing of a woman jogging in a wealthy neighborhood of Washington, D.C. I recall the horror of the story, but I also remember discussing it at work where a colleague of mine stated, “I would never expect something like that to happen in that neighborhood.” She said it with an emphasis on “that neighborhood.” I thought to myself, where is a neighborhood that a heinous murder like that would be expected? This was one of the many moments that illustrates which citizens were allowed empathy.
Fast forward to the DC premiere of 17 Blocks at the 2019 AFI Documentary Festival - a 20-year profile of a family who lived 17 blocks from the U.S. Capitol in Southeast Washington, D.C. 17 Blocks centers on the story of the Sanford-Durant family - their matriarch, Cheryl and her three children, Smurf, Denice, and the youngest Emmanuel.
Emmanuel Sanford-Durant in 17 Blocks
Photo courtesy of Davy Rothbart
The Sanford-Durants live in Southeast D.C. - a world entirely different from the world of politicians, gentrifiers, and every other personality who comes to DC for change and opportunity. We had a conversation with 17 Blocks director, Davy Rothbart, about his inspiration and mission behind the documentary.
Rothbart, who has a unique bond with the Sanford-Durant family, met Cheryl’s two sons, 9-year-old Emmanuel and 15-year-old Smurf while playing basketball at a nearby court in 1999.
“It’s a special relationship, Cheryl likes to say that they adopted me. I think it’s pretty accurate the way it went down,” said Rothbart. “I was in my early twenties and was a little lost and far from my own family. And felt like I could use some family around me, then I met Smurf and Emmanuel.”
At the time, neither of them realized that an enduring friendship was forming or that they would be collaborating on a future documentary. Rothbart had just purchased a small hand-held camera that he was teaching himself how to use and Emmanuel was immediately interested in the camera. Jokingly, he admitted that he might have used the camera as a distraction, so the big kids could play ball interrupted.
“He really took to it. I could see that he had a poetic eye and the footage he would shoot was pretty - footage of leaves swirling in the wind,” said Rothbart. “He would sometimes walk around and interview people in the park.”
Seeing how much Emmanuel enjoyed it, Rothbart would leave the camera with him for days and weeks at a time. Even Emmanuel’s siblings, Smurf and Denice, shot footage and interviews of their family with the small camera. The home videos included goofy moments among the family and even intense times like Cheryl’s battle with drug addiction while we watched the kids grow up and move from one neighborhood to another.
Then, in 2009 tragedy hit the Sanford-Durant family in the form of gun violence. During that time, Rothbart moved back to his hometown of Anne Arbor, Michigan. He immediately returned to provide moral support for the family. Realizing that there was already nearly ten years of footage of her family, Cheryl insisted that Rothbart continue filming in the midst of the family’s grief.
“I could see Cheryl’s point that this was a tragedy in her neighborhood. And yet it was rare to have that kind of footage of their whole life,” said Rothbart. “We just kept filming and we didn’t really know where to stop. It wasn’t until Smurf and Denice had kids, and they got to be 8, 9, 10, and 11 years-old that we realized these kids are now the age that Emmanuel was when we first started filming.”
They completed the film 2 months prior to their Washington, D.C. premiere where we viewed the film in a packed auditorium. There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience. In a time where #DontMuteDC is trending, the Sanford-Durant family is giving a voice to the many other families who reside in DC and cities like it, whose pain and struggle are often ignored because the world has grown to expect it without questioning why it’s acceptable for one group of people to suffer and not another.
Inspired by the Vietnam Memorial, Rothbart and the Sanford-Durant family, are using 17 Blocks as a vehicle of change for other families who have experienced gun violence. At the end of the film, the name of every person who has lost their life to gun violence in D.C. since 2009 is listed on the screen.
“I think the family’s goal is that they’ve experienced this first-hand and they don’t want other people to have to go through it,” said Rothbart. “So their feeling was if people could just wrap their heads around what it’s like to go through this that maybe they would be moved to action.”
They have teamed up with organizations like Every Child for Gun Violence and Black Lives Matter to continue addressing this issue. They’ve also formed Washington To Washington, an organization which brings groups of kids from their D.C. neighborhood on a week-long camping trip each summer to visit some of America’s most beautiful National Parks and Forests.
Click here to find a screening of 17 Blocks near you.
