Dave Chappelle Écrun de doc unpublished “ Live in real life ” in Mvaaff

In the summer of 2020, several relentless months in the cocovid pandemic, the actor Dave Chappelle decided that he had to do something to bring his community back to life. Like the rest of the world, Chappelle was kidnapped at home with his family, so he decided to use his resources to make a change. After having rented a field of corn on the street from his home to Yellow Springs, Ohio, Chappelle began to organize socially distant concerts with her friends, musicians and colleagues. He filmed the entire process of the independent documentary, “Dave Chappelle: Live in Real Life”.

The film, directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, was created at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, under its original title, “Dave Chappelle: this time, this place”. However, he failed to obtain the distribution after the counter coupling of his special stand-up in 2021, “The Closer”, in which he told a series of transphobic jokes. Now, four years later, the written documentary screened during the 23rd annual African-American film festival in Martha’s Vineyard (MVAAFF). After the credits have rolled, Chappelle took the stage to address the public and even spoke frankly about these badly received jokes: “I continued to be snubbed by the Grammys and the Emmys because someone thought it was a good idea to tell trans”, he said.

“Dave Chappelle Live in Real Life” seems to be a sign that the award -winning actor in the Grammy Award focuses on something new. The documentary is sincere and full of humor signature of Chapelle, presenting familiar faces – everyone from Kevin Hart, David Letterman, Jon Hamm, The Roots and Chris Rock – who stopped on weekends for Riff, discuss and dance with the public during these summer shows.

“It took a lot of courage for all these actors to come there because Covid was so new. Everyone was still so isolated, and it was a real fear,” said Chappelle during the post-screen talkback in which he took questions from the public (a closed window crowds that included a colleague actor David Letterman and Gayle King of CBS). “And the other thing is that no one had worked in a hundred nights. Everyone was stinking when they arrived, but it didn’t matter. It was so fun to be together again. It was just like when we all started in the comedy club, we realized how much we like to be with each other.”

The film screened MVAAFF as part of Chappelle’s efforts to collect funds for its Alma Mater, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC, the product ticket sales went to high school, that the actor credited for changing his life. “Ellington gave me a feeling of community,” he said. “It was a predominantly black school when I went there, and it was important because everything in the news was so negative.”

“Dave Chappelle: Live in Real Life” tells how the comedy show extended to a summer series with more than 50 shows produced to date, a phenomenon that has delighted some residents of Yellow Springs and has enraged others. It also highlights the lengths that Chappelle and its crew have gone to ensure that everyone in the public, as well as the artists and the team, remained safe and healthy.

“During the summer of 2020, he was about to be a massive exodus of the city,” he said, thinking about the economic state of Yellow Springs. “People wanted to sell their stores and businesses. The reason I knew it because everyone would see me on television and assumed that I had all this money … because I do it. So they came, trying to sell me all this shit. And I realized that I bought a lot of real estate in the city. This is not something I wanted. I did not charge a rent for two years. »»

Chappelle shared that not only summer shows have gathered safe people who were struggling in isolation, but they also contributed $ 9 million to the city’s economy. For him, the mission was simple. “If you want things to change, you have to change shit,” he said.