Today we’d like to introduce you to Joslyn Rose Lyons.
Hi Joslyn Rose, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Thank you for inviting me, I’m honored to be represented alongside such impactful artists that are featured on Voyage LA’s amazing platform. I studied film production and film theory at California College of the Arts and UC Berkeley. During my studies, I worked at an Emmy Award-winning production company on projects for Discovery Channel, MSNBC, PBS, and that’s when I started producing my first documentary Soundz of Spirit, the film explored the creative process and spiritual connection in Hip Hop with artists including Saul Williams, Common, Andre 3000, Cee-Lo Green, and Talib Kweli. The film premiered at HBO Urbanworld and screened at London’s Raindance and Black International Cinema Berlin, and won Best Music Documentary at the New York International Film Festival before being distributed worldwide with an original soundtrack by Jeff Clanagan’s (Code Black) Urban Works Entertainment. I was given a director’s seat at Simmons Lathan Media Group by my mentor Stan Lathan, where I directed HBO Def Poetry Jam with my long-time collaborator Rafael Casal (Blindspotting). I’ve always had a passion for music and exploring the creative process, so it was a natural progression for me to produce shows for BET, including Rap City with RZA/ Wu-Tang Clan. I produced the first Music Matters Grammy Showcase at Creative Artists Agency (CAA) with PJ Morton, Mack Wilds, Mali Music, contributed to The Message, a four-part documentary on the history of hip hop, and I produced the BET Awards Celebrity Basketball Game with Nick Cannon, Chris Brown, The Game, Victor Oladipo, Jemele Hill, Fat Joe, Angela Yee, Trevor Jackson, and Lil Rey Howery.
My work in music television led me to directing a number of music videos, which included Talib Kweli’s Cold Rain which was #1 music video on MTV.com, Prince Ali (aka Mahershala Ali) with Dilated Peoples, Quadron, Shafiq Husayn of SA-RA Creative Partners, and Chad Hugo (N.E.R.D./Neptunes), Too $hort, E-40, amongst others. I directed a viral video campaign with Mali Music on his ‘what it means to be beautiful’ featuring Brely Evans, and Wendy Raquel Robinson. It was an amazing opportunity to document Erykah Badu’s creative process on the making of her New Amerykah Part II album while on her Vortex Tour bus with Karriem Riggins, and Thundercat. My first short film starred Academy Award-winning actor Mahershala Ali and won at the Link TV: One Nation, Many Voices Muslim American Film Competition. For Grand Hustle founder Jason Geter and his longtime business partner Grammy Award-winning T.I., I directed a series of branded content and short films for their fashion and lifestyle brand Strivers Row. Jason had an incredible vision for this campaign, and my role as part of his Strivers Row TV Tribe was to interpret the brand through an Oakland lens. I produced a short doc for Academy Award-winning actor/rapper Common and his Imagine Justice organization, which is dedicated to empowering communities and fighting injustice
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Pressure makes the diamond, friction forms the pearl. So it’s all needed in order to make great work. Having a great crew is key, I’m grateful to work with amazing talent. Before Rafael Casal starred in ‘Blindspotting’, we were producing partners on many projects, since as far back as I can remember he’s been instrumental in my creative process. I have a great creative team, Director of Photography Boson Wang, producing partners Matt Smith and Marissa Unpincgo, Assistant Directors Hilton Day and Armin Houshmandi. We have chemistry and they are artists, we work together to birth the creative vision. There’s a book, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles and it says “The more resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you – and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.” So that resistance is often a sign that you are actually on the right path.
I recently directed Rap Noir: Playing in the shadows to find the light, a series of film-noir-inspired vignettes featuring the music from Rap Noir, AKA Tajai Massey, one of the four founding members of Souls of Mischief of Hieroglyphics. I’ve worked with Hieroglyphics and Souls of Mischief on many projects over the years, including the first music videos I ever directed which were for Prince Ali, aka Academy-Award-winning actor Mahershala Ali, that debuted on BET. Rap Noir was by far the most unique opportunity to create with the Hieroglyphics Crew. When Tajai first approached me about directing these films, I knew it would be a challenge to create in an abstract film noir-style series of 26 vignettes, with no dialogue, time-intensive blocking rehearsals so that we could capture the shots in one long continuous shot with no cuts, build an original set, that required lighting-intensive set-ups, and direct two dozen actors to tell these stories through series of black-and-white vignettes all via Zoom and during a pandemic.
Jallal, one of the lead actors in the Rap Noir film who also starred in my recent short film Looking Glass (which was featured at Sundance London this summer) shared his thoughts about working on my most recent production:
“It was amazing getting to work with all of them together. Tajai definitely has the vision and Joslyn is just amazing with the creative directing and understanding what she wants. She’s a strong woman who has rawness in this industry and has a strong hold on knowing what she wants. That’s needed to be a great director and what separates you from being great to being next. I’ve always seen her as being next. I met Joslyn Rose out here in San Francisco with my idols – my mentor, and my friend Mos Def. You definitely gotta give it up to the greats – Oakland is a city of music and political strife and people understanding what they want.”
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My most recent short film Looking Glass starred Los Angeles-based rapper and actor Jallal, and features an ensemble cast of amazing artists from the Bay Area including DJ Umami, Ryan Nicole-Peters, and DJ Ambush, and embraces the struggle to overcome complacency while visually embodying the spirit of Oakland’s creative community. At the time of conceptualizing this piece, I had just finished reading a book called The Big Leap which explores the concept of taking that courageous leap from your ‘excellence zone’ to your ‘genius zone’ so this was a concept also present when I wrote the short. I am working on a script for a narrative feature with similar themes, so this was in some ways a proof of concept. I have always been fascinated by the idea of time. Looking Glass was in some ways my love letter to time.
I shared the short with Sundance Co//ab and I was honored when I got a call to say that their artist-in-residence, Trey Ellis (HBO’s The Tuskegee Airmen, True Justice) had seen Looking Glass, and Sundance wanted to invite me to screen the film as part of their Sundance London 2020 virtual film festival. Looking Glass was positively received, premiering at Sundance London, and has picked up numerous awards at film festivals that include The American Film Award, IndieFest, TopShorts Best Female Director, The Berlin Flash Film Festival, Shorted Film Festival, One-Reeler Short Film Competition, The IndieFEST Film Awards and Focus International Film Festival amongst others.
I am inspired by the intersection of art and social justice. One of my creative partners is former NBA Champ Matt Barnes (Showtime Sports’ All the Smoke) and we produced a show for UNINTERRUPTED (LeBron James’ digital platform) called Same Energy. The series features Matt Barnes, Marshawn Lynch and 2Chainz and explores in-depth conversations about mental, physical, and spiritual strength, and what it takes to stand up for what you believe in. I’m also the Impact Producer on several hip hop and social justice projects, most recently Truth to Power, which profiles the courageous voice of Rep. Barbara Lee and features powerful interviews with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Van Jones, Danny Glover, Corey Booker and Alice Walker. I am also the founder of The Museum of Light (The Grammy Museum, Motown Music, Capitol Music, Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs, Trevor Jackson, Mali Music, JOI, Mila J, Angie Stone, Pharoahe Monch, Robert Glasper, Sheila E.), a digital content platform spotlighting the creative journey.
Some of my colleagues in the Bay Area have made some incredible films these past few years that have done just that, Boots Riley made Sorry to Bother You and Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs made Blindspotting. These types of films can spark change by opening up conversations we might not have had. Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary and seeing things in a new light. I love this quote by 2PAC: “I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.” That’s what I would want my films to do, create that spark that ignites an inner fire, and that fire can be a guiding light on your journey. Creating visuals allows me to let my imagination run free like a wild horse, and in that process I find a sense of freedom. I think we are drawn to things that allow us to feel freedom. For me, that’s what cinema does, it gives me a sense of freedom. It is a form of creative play, and when we are playing, that’s often when the most inspiring ideas can come. For me there has always been this feeling of freedom when I’m directing because I can be myself in that space. Cinema allows me to play in my own shadows and inspires me to keep searching for the light.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
Cinema speaks that universal language, it surpasses time and just like music, cinema makes you feel things. To me, the job of a great storyteller, or artist of any kind, is to help us feel something. Even if it’s just remembering what it’s like to feel, or getting us in touch with a thought, or an emotion that is maybe uncomfortable, or unfamiliar. I have always been drawn to expressing myself in the language of cinema.
I’ve been working with my producers on the polishing phase of a script for my first feature film. It’s been a creative and focused time for this process. It’s been a time of solitude. One of my favorite authors, Paulo Coehlo (The Alchemist) said this about solitude: “Without solitude, Love will not stay long by your side. Because Love needs to rest so that it can journey through the heavens and reveal itself in other forms. Without solitude, no plant or animal can survive, no soil can remain productive, no child can learn about life, no artist can create, no work can grow and be transformed. Solitude is not the absence of Love, but its complement. Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life. Therefore, blessed are those who do not fear solitude, who are not afraid of their own company, who are not always desperately looking for something to do, something to amuse themselves with, something to judge. If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself. And if you do not know yourself, you will begin to fear the void. But the void does not exist. A vast world lies hidden in our soul, waiting to be discovered. There it is, with all its strength intact, but it is so new and so powerful that we are afraid to acknowledge its existence. Just as Love is the divine condition, so solitude is the human condition. And for those who understand the miracle of life, those two states peacefully coexist.”
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @itsjoslynrose
- Clubhouse: @itsjoslynrose
- Website: itsjoslynrose.com
- Other: cr8lightagency.com // museumoflighttv.com // linktr.ee/Joslynrose
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1764418/
