Filmmaker Marlon Reid Continues the HIV Awareness Legacy of Friend & Collaborator Haran Robinson

by Chael Needle

I watch everything! My friends think I’m crazy,” says Detroit-based filmmaker Marlon Reid, referring to a cinematic diet that ranges from Jean-Luc Godard to Japanese horror films. “That’s how me and Haran got cool.” The two future collaborators didn’t start off that way. Marlon and Haran Robinson initially met at a filmmaking workshop, but Haran thought he was homophobic. “He had seen me cuss someone out and became nervous about approaching me.”

Once his fears were assuaged and they moved beyond what might have been a straight/gay divide, the two “were pretty much inseparable because all we talked about was making films, watching films. We would watch trailers on my computer. He would call me at one o’clock in the morning and he would say, ‘Man, I don’t feel well, but I want to talk about this movie I went to go see the other day.’”

Haran’s partner initially mistrusted Marlon, and Marlon understands why he might question the affinity: “All Haran would talk about was me to his partner. And his partner was wondering what was going on. But I was just bringing the enthusiasm of filmmaking out of Haran.

“And it was something that was dying inside of him, because he had been burned by so many people who said they wanted to help him [with his dream]. And for him to meet somebody who was in the same trenches and struggling to get films made, we clicked. He was like a little brother to me.

“It’s a struggle being a filmmaker, no matter where you are,” says Marlon, a grad of Morgan State University. “But as long as you are able to create something visually entertaining and enlightening—without preaching—I think people will respond.”

A mostly self-taught auteur, Marlon knows a thing or two about struggle. His earlier efforts in the mid-nineties were “no-budget projects with a camcorder.” Says Marlon: “When you can’t pay anybody [in the cast and crew], but you have people who believe in your vision and do it just to be doing it, you have to do what you can and you go from there.” An angel loaned him the money to attend a four-week workshop at New York Film Academy, including room and board in the Big Apple. His passion—and the support of friends—paid off. Audiences and those in the film industry have responded favorably to his art.

One early project, The Visit, placed third at the AFI/SONY Visions of U.S. Home Video Competition. His short student film, The Last Condom, where an STD scare fuels a peek into one man’s future, was selected to be a part of the Simmons Lathan Media Group’s New Def Filmmaker Program and played at several film festivals. One of these festivals, the San Francisco Black Film Festival, warmly received his latest effort, too. Night, a thirty-minute short shot on mini digital video and written by Haran, picked up a community partnership from the Black AIDS Coalition. This triumph has been bittersweet. Haran died last May from AIDS-related complications before he saw the final cut or could bask in the positive attention the film has garnered.

Night follows Omar Jameson, an HIV-positive man who does not disclose his serostatus to his male and female partners. His conscience catches up with him, however. “Haran wanted to expose men on the DL,” says Marlon about the inspiration for the screenplay. “He contracted HIV from a married man.” The film stars Michael Turner, Janee Smith, Jermaal Davis, Martinez Brown, Isis, and Khandi Kassels.

Both Marlon and Haran wanted the film to help educate people about HIV/AIDS. “To me, people walk around with their ears covered and eyes closed, and they feel that it cannot happen to them,” says Marlon. Ears covered and eyes closed may have been the reason why a film festival on the East Coast accepted Night but backed out at the last minute, citing a couple of seconds of porn on a television set in the background of a scene. Even after Marlon said he would recut, the film festival stuck with its “No.” He feels that the HIV subject matter was at issue.

This attempt at erasure hit closer to home, as well. Says Marlon, Haran’s parents excluded HIV from the obituary. “I have a major beef with that. My ex-girlfriend gave a eulogy and spoke about how I had suggested to her that Haran come to her high school and speak to her students.” Before he became too sick to work, Robinson was an HIV prevention counselor at Horizon’s Project at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. “The funeral got quiet—a sudden hush came across [the crowd].” She told them that “he was an AIDS activist and he tried for the last six or seven years of his life to educate kids so they wouldn’t fall into the trap that he fell into, and to be smart and careful.”         

“I miss him a lot,” says Marlon. “And I plan to do a feature of Haran’s about people who try to spread the virus on purpose. It’s called Sick and I’m trying to raise capital for that right now.” Fresh off a stint as a set production assistant on Preston Whitmore’s feature, Crossover, he is continuing work on The Longest Twenty Minutes of My Life, a short film about a guy getting tested for the first time and reflecting on his sexual experiences.

After this trilogy of HIV-related films are complete, Marlon will probably move on to other subject matter and feature-length projects, but he is committed “to any way I can to incorporate HIV/AIDS into whatever I work on....I believe that if the government spent more money on educating people, then maybe something could change. Seeing my friend pass away like that...it opened my eyes. As long as I am on this earth I am going to do something to make my voice heard and try to inform more people.”

Chael Needle is Managing Editor of A&U.

September 2005