- Welcome to POV.
I'm Pete Schwaba,
host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
"When my son was murdered,
I had the choice of doing either one of two things:
I could have stayed in bed in a fetal position
or get out here and make a difference
in the lives of someone else's kids."
That is a quote from the subject of tonight's film,
Murders That Matter.
The film provides a look
into the world of Movita Johnson-Harrell,
a black Muslim mother from Philadelphia
who lost her 18-year-old son to gun violence.
If that wasn't horrible enough,
it was a case of mistaken identity.
Charles Andre Johnson was in a car,
waiting to pick up his sister
when two men walked up and opened fire, killing him.
To help her and her family
through the grieving process,
Movita founded the Charles Foundation
and became a relentless gun control activist.
Although her story is centered in Philadelphia,
the film also touches on
the wake of escalating gun-related deaths
that are plaguing Black communities
throughout the United States.
It touches on the tragic murders
that have caused public outrage over the years...
including the murders of Trayvon Martin,
Renisha McBride, and Michael Brown.
Murders That Matter was directed by Marco Williams.
Led by his own family's experience with gun violence,
Williams creates an intimate portrait
of a community in crisis
centered on family, redemption, grief,
and determination to save others from the same fate.
Williams is an award-winning filmmaker and a professor
of Communication and Radio, Film, and Television
at Northwestern University.
His films The Undocumented and Banished
also screened on PBS,
and his film Two Towns of Jasper
won a Peabody award and was nominated
for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
Williams said a viewer once told him,
“You make films about the stories
we prefer to keep hidden.”
I' sure that made a documentarian's day.
Murders that Matter starts now
on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.