Image from May This Be Love, French’s first film. (courtesy of the artist)
The KC photographer/filmmaker has assembled a stellar cast for the love story, A Song For You
“I did it backwards,” says music photographer/filmmaker Diallo Javonne French. “Most filmmakers start as photographers. I started making films before I started still photography.” French is launching a Kickstarter Sept. 15 to finance his film, A Song for You, a love story about a soul singer and what inspires him to make music. With this new venture, which takes place between 1980 and 2010, in both Kansas City and Atlanta, he is excited about the potential of positivity in film and continuing the exploration of his ongoing love of music and musicians through photography and filmmaking.
French, “super laidback” a few days after his return from photographing the Newport Jazz Festival, says he segued from making music while a student at Clark Atlanta University, majoring in mass communications with an emphasis on radio/TV/film, into photography in the early 2000s as a form of helping him grieve after the loss of his mother in 2005. After completing a non-credit class at KCAI, French began taking his moody, black and white images of Kansas City musicians, many of whom appear in his unreleased documentary, Kansas City Dreamin.’
That documentary, on hold for release to streaming platforms until French secures the music licensing, as well as his fundraising for A Song For You, galvanizes him despite the challenge of getting calls to Hollywood returned.
“Filmmaking is an expensive artform,” says French. “It’s a lot cheaper to take pictures than to make a movie.”
French’s A Song for You fundraiser goal is to raise somewhere between $750,000 and a million. “People have raised that on Kickstarter, but it’s usually been celebrities.” He cites Spike Lee’s success in using the crowdsourcing platform to produce Da Sweet Blood of Jesus in 2014. “I tried the Hollywood route, but I don’t have a track record.” French says that Kevin Willmott, friend and cast member of A Song For You, has told him “that ‘the film you’re trying to make, Hollywood’s not interested. You’re going to have to figure out how to get it made yourself.’”
His hope is that his cast, standouts including Willmott, Oscar-winning screenwriter for 2018’s BlacKkKlansman; Michole Briana White of Malignant, Cat White of Bridgerton, and Kansas City native Erika Woods of Powerbook III: Raising Kanan, will spark his fundraiser, as well as rouse prospective producers.
French isn’t new to crowdsourcing his vision.
“Ten years ago,” he says, “I tried to raised $50 grand for this particular film and it was not successful. But it was a good thing because the story has evolved in these last ten years and I wouldn’t have been able to make the film I wanted to make with $50,000 dollars. It just would have been a shell of what I wanted to do,” says French.
A Song for You will join his burgeoning music-centric filmography. This year marks the 20-year anniversary of his film short, May This Be Love. That film, like his photographic work, is shot in black and white, influenced by films such as Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (1986) and Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues (1961). “I did it in black and white, and used jazz as the backing track because I kind of wanted it to be timeless,” he says. Helping him achieve the atmospheric, timeless visuals he plans to bring to A Song for You will be his longtime director of photography, Jeremy Osbern.
Speaking a few days before shooting his fundraising video, French examined the effect he wants his films to have as opposed to the films he sees trailers for when he sees films in the theater.
“One of the things that I notice (in movie trailers) is everything is very dark or gloom,” French said. “Everything is a sequel or a remake. Hollywood these days wants to stick to a property that already exists. It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of joy and happiness in films anymore. That’s going to be one of my selling points.”
Potential contributors can find French’s Kickstarter online after Sept. 15. He’s running it concurrently with his photography exhibit, “2 Decades in Focus,” at the Kansas City Community College through Oct. 2.
For more information, www.kickstarter.com/projects/1434354307/a-song-for-you-2026
