SXSW | Docs on Screens

One Man and His Shoes, a new feature length doc from South London filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, tells the often astonishing story of the rise of the Air Jordan brand, the first mega superstar endorsement that remains a cultural phenomenon. Thanks in large part to a series of iconic ads made with director Spike Lee, the shoes became a highly coveted status symbol which has endured for decades, and taken some dark turns, not least the murder of teenagers for the trainers.

Made independently over seven years, Bamiro interweaves a number of themes, from America’s love affair with consumerism to the mass-market 1980s breakthrough of African Americans such as Jordan, Eddie Murphy and Prince. In the wake of its screening at the BFI London Film Festival, I spoke with Bamiro via Zoom about the making of it. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Carol Nahra (CN): I enjoyed the film and as an American of a certain age this is my era. But how did you, a much younger Brit, come to be telling the story?

Yemi Bamiro (YB): I guess I started thinking about the story in 2012-2013 when I was thinking up ideas for longer form films. I had always been interested in trainers. The first iteration of this film was going to be about Air Jordan collectors because I felt that I had never seen anything like that before – I was interested in the culture and their enthusiasm and their obsessiveness over this one brand. So I started to make that film, and some of the collectors that I profiled are actually made the cut for the feature film. But I realised maybe after a year that I needed more to sustain a feature length narrative arc. So then I started thinking about the origin story of the Air Jordan. I started to seriously think about Michael Jordan in terms of marketing and how much that has given the world, given that that was the first foray into superstar endorsement deals. And that’s pretty much how the story came about. I knew that it was an idea that I wouldn’t get bored of after a couple of years, that it would be something that I would be able to stick with. And I thought that was important given the fact that I realised it was going to be take a long time to make this film independently.

CN: How easy was it to get access to your interviewees? What was that like as an outsider?

YB: The access was pretty straightforward but I only say that because we had the luxury of time. Everyone that you asked to put in your documentary is not necessarily going to say yes straight away. They want to know who else is in your films. I think if someone had given us a pot of money in 2013 and said deliver this film in 2015 I think you know we might not necessarily have had the contributors that we ended up having in the film. Because when you ask somebody to be in your documentary they might say no and you have to persevere and keep knocking and gently knocking until they say yes. I am not really a person who goes away easily given I was so invested in this project.

An Air Jordan collector in a still from the film

CN: Did you try to get Michael Jordan or Spike Lee?

YB: I never entertained the idea of getting Michael Jordan because it would’ve completely changed what the film is. The film is about Michael Jordan in part, but it’s essentially about his sneakers; it’s about marketing; it’s about all of those interesting facets centred around this phenomenon. You couldn’t have Michael Jordan in your film as a talking head: he would have to be beginning middle and end. We did definitely try to get to Spike Lee but he is an Oscar winning director and he’s got lots of things on. So we didn’t get him.

CN: You made this independently. Where did you get money from?

YB: We self-funded it for many years. After about two years I met this guy, James Ramkoleea, who is now really good friend of mine in my NCT classes. And he lives locally and is an Arsenal supporter and we just started speaking about our lives and I told him about this film. He said ‘I’ve always wanted to invest in film’. I kind of laughed at him and then over the next six months he kept prodding me about getting involved in this film. Then he gave us a chunk of money and invested in the film! And his contribution and him coming on board as an exec producer was the thing that allowed us to get the film across the line. We got in to SXSW and that pretty much changed everything for us.

CN: When did Christo (Hird, Dartmouth Films) get involved?

We met Christo in like 2016 when we got into MeetMarket at Sheffield Docfest. And I think we basically felt a little bit fatigued because we had met everybody, but we only met a few people who were really champions of the film, that really got it. And Christo was one of them. We made the decision in 2017 to go back to all the people who have just championed this film. Christo was one of the people that believed in the idea and bought into it so I think we formalised everything in terms of him coming on board with Dartmouth in 2018.

CN: At what point did you become aware of The Last Dance series? You must’ve both been moving ahead at the same time.

YB: I knew that ESPN and Netflix were making this mammoth 10 hour special on Michael Jordan. I think I became aware of it maybe two years ago. I didn’t think anything of it because I always hoped that our film would be out in the world and we would be quite clear down the road before that mammoth came along, you know? But then the global pandemic happened and SXSW got cancelled and ESPN obviously pushed it forward because they had huge programming slots in their schedule because of no live sport.

It was like the number one trending topic on Twitter every week that they dropped an episode. It was too close to home for me – I couldn’t engage with it because I was thinking what’s the point of us even putting this film out when this thing has stolen all of our thunder? But thankfully the Last Dance team had a different objective. Their objective was about Michael Jordan and his last season with the Bulls and our film was completely different. So we are able to co-exist.

We then very much existed in the slipstream of The Last Dance because I think it showed that there was an appetite for all things Michael Jordan, nostalgia, 1990s NBA basketball. And we just happened to have a film that dealt with all of those things at a time when everybody was at home and wanting content so I think we got really lucky. That’s how we sold our US TV rights to Vice – they saw the reception that The Last Dance got.

One Man and His Shoes is playing in UK cinemas from 23 October, and on demand from 26 October.

March’s South by Southwest in Austin will host the North American premiere of The Last Man On The Moon, a stirring biopic of astronaut Gene Cernan, which needs to be seen on the big screen. In the film, Cernan looks back on his eventful life, and the highs and lows of being one of the first NASA astronauts – and the ensuing decades in the media spotlight.

Having sold out its world premiere screenings at Sheffield Doc/Fest, where it proved one of the most popular films, The Last Man on the Moon is sure to draw a great deal of interest when screening in Cernan’s home state of Texas. British director Mark Craig is a regular guest speaker for my documentary film students. They always are particularly moved by his short Grierson-award winning film, Talk to Me, where he tells the story of his life through twenty years of answering machine messages.

Last time Mark spoke to my class, I grabbed him for a few minutes to talk about The Last Man on the Moon:

What was it like getting Cernan on board?

It was tough, because you’re talking about a guy who’s at an elderly stage of life. He had had so many cameras shoved in his face for so many years, and asked the same questions again and again and again. He didn’t really feel the need to invest so much of his time on a project, I’m assuming. But we slowly managed to convince him that we wanted to do this in a much more vivid and immersive and emotive way. I didn’t want to dwell on all the history of the science and all the other stuff — I just wanted his personal story. And he began to see it as a legacy that he could offer up to future generations that weren’t around when he did go to the moon, or weren’t even born today.

What was he like to work with when he did come on board?

He is the most dynamic, energetic charismatic old man – if I can call him that – that I ever worked with. His energy levels were incredible. The filming day can be a very long one, and it starts before the sun comes up. He was a real trooper – he gave and gave and gave, of his time, of his energy, of his emotion and of his access.

The film has really stunning cinematography. Can you talk a little about the visual approach to making it?

Because we always knew that it would be a cinema documentary, I was always keen to get a cinematographer with movie credits, and a movie approach more than anything. I wanted it to really work on the screen. I had seen Tim Cragg‘s work in another documentary, at a previous Sheffield Doc/Fest. I could see he had great movement with the camera. He could really follow the action and had a great fluid panning style. Straight away he was just cinematic, and I thought he’s the man for me.

Was it liberating making a film without television money?

It was. In TV there is a lot of guiding and steering and mentoring from the channel, from the execs, to make it fit the remit of that channel. You’re always serving the requirements of that channel, of that slot, the ad sales, etc. So it was very liberating to be free of that and just be faithful to the story, and the character and tell that story in the most interesting and engaging way that one could. We didn’t know where it was going to end up, we just wanted to make it as pure a film as possible.

Who has funded it?

It was a mixture of private investors. A lot of whom came from contacts that our executive, Mark Stewart knew. Without him and his company MSP getting involved in the project I’m not sure the film would have ever happened. Certainly not at the scale it ended up being. After we then had a rough cut which we then began showing to people in the space community, a couple more investors emerged who were very keen to make sure it got finished to the standard we wanted it to be.

It’s got some great archive. Can you tell what it was like plowing through all the sometimes iconic space archive from the 60s?

The thing about Apollo and going to the moon, it was very well documented at the time. Hundreds of hours was shot over a whole decade. And a lot of that was being used in many other documentaries. But we didn’t want to just rehash the same old second or third generation stuff you see on TV. It was fantastic to be able to discover stuff that we hadn’t known of before, and that meant a lot of research, going through logs and liaising with NASA’s archive, and then a lot of time was spent making sure that archive was beautifully transferred and graded and woven with the stuff that we shot along with some animation and visual effects. So hopefully it’s a very rich mix of material to view and tell the story.

What’s been the most exciting moment related to LMOTM for you so far?

I so enjoyed the process of meeting some of these legendary characters. Inevitably there comes that moment where you take your film and show it to an audience for the very first time. And that’s always a big moment of excitement and nervousness. It just so happened that the first time we showed the film was on the occasion of Gene Cernan’s 80th birthday, and a surprise party was organised by his family. And we the filmmakers were invited to be part of that. So we all assembled at the Johnson space center in Houston and showed our film. And in the audience was not only Gene Cernan and his entire family, but three guys who had walked on the moon, Jim Lovell of Apollo 13, flight director Gene Kranz, and some extremely top brass NASA management. I was thinking: ‘Oh God, I really hope we’ve got everything right’. Thankfully they gave it the thumbs up and were quite moved by the film, and were glad that it had been made. We left happy – that was a big night.

The Last Man On The Moon screens Friday, March 13, Saturday, March 14 and Wednesday March 18 at South by Southwest.

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London Film Festival 2020 One Man and His Shoes Interview: Yemi Bamiro

SXSW Preview: The Last Man On The Moon