INTERVIEW: North Philadelphia, through one family’s eyes
Quest, the new documentary from director Jonathan Olshefski, details the triumphs and tribulations of a family living in North Philadelphia. The audience comes to know many members of the Rainey family, including Christopher (“Quest”), who juggles many jobs to pay the bills; Christine’a (“Ma”), who works at a women’s shelter; and William, who undergoes cancer treatment while taking care of his son.
The Raineys have a lot of good times in their house, especially since it’s the site of a hip-hop recording studio, meaning the community often comes over for some creative sessions. There may be some great challenges in life, but the Raineys are brought together by music, healing and optimism.
“In 2006, I was teaching a photography class in North Philadelphia to grownups,” Olshefski said in a recent phone interview. “At that time, I had really fell in love with North Philly and was just looking for ways to contribute, and so I was teaching this class. In the spring of 2006, after class one day, this guy named JC after class was like, ‘Hey, you know my brother runs a hip-hop studio out of his house a couple blocks away. Do you want to meet him?’ I was like, ‘OK, sure.’ So JC walks me over a couple of blocks. We knock on the door, and who answers it but Christopher ‘Quest’ Rainey.”
At first, Quest was a bit confused at what Olshefski wanted to do, so it took some convincing. They talked about a potential photography project, and within a couple of weeks, he was back at the Raineys to begin his documenting.
“So when I first got to the studio, I was really blown away by the community, the passion, the grassroots, DIY vibe that they had there,” the filmmaker said. “So I kept coming around, and then I heard that Quest didn’t just make money from the studio. But he had a side job delivering papers, and at the time, I was working construction by day and doing art stuff on the side on the weekends and evenings. So I kind of related to that working life versus the creative passion sort of thing, so I asked him if I could come out with him on his paper route and maybe do a little photo essay of the working life versus the creative life. So kind of did this photo project for about a year and a half, and during that time, I would sleep over the house in anticipation of Quest going out on the paper route at 3 in the morning.”
After spending so much time in the Rainey’s household, Olshefski got to know the rest of the family. He started to realize that the project, in his mind, was expanding beyond still photography.
“I sort of felt like still photo maybe wasn’t the proper medium to tell this story of this family,” he said. “They’re taking care of each other just as a household and daily routines, but there’s also this really interesting paper route thing and then the music studio. And so I sort of proposed in 2007, ‘Hey, why don’t we make a short, little documentary to kind of go along with the photo project.’ It ended up being a much longer process than any of us sort of realized. We just kind of went through and just started filming. …Our friendship got deeper and deeper, and I think we had a shared vision that we wanted to tell a story of North Philly from the perspective of North Philly as opposed to kind of taking an outsider perspective. Those depictions in the mainstream media comes to define the place as maybe being a scary, depressing, unrelatable community. It’s completely not true, and we kind of wanted to tell the true story.”
Olshefski came to realize that the Raineys were dealing with some great struggles, but there was plenty of beauty and amazing people to focus on as well. This full picture — both the ups and downs — is often missing from the mainstream news, the director said.
“There’s this incredible ability of people to take care of each other and show kindness to each other when sort of the system fails, and that’s just something I’d experienced even before I met the Raineys living in different parts of North Philadelphia,” he said. “It’s sort of a community under siege in a lot of ways, and you have these individuals and these families just helping each other get through it. And the dominant culture kind of turns a blind eye when they’re not sort of actively pillaging the place, so, yeah, that’s something that I sort of had in my heart and in my mind even before I met the Rainey family.”
Olshefski wanted to capture the family’s vulnerability and intimacy, and he wanted to showcase these qualities as universally human. Anyone with a beating heart, the director said, should be able to relate.
“Like the situation with … William can relate to caring for somebody and being worried about someone and having to witness somebody have to go through something difficult and not being able to do anything about it other than be a presence while they have to kind of endure that journey or endure that treatment,” Olshefski said. “Or connect to Quest and Ma and their relationship, and how they’ve had different journeys that they’ve taken until they came together, but then they decide to really take care of each other and stick by each other through thick and thin. These are universal human moments that I would hope that the reddest Republican would be able to see this and connect to and not think about politics, but just think about humanity.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Quest, directed by Jonathan Olshefski, is currently running in movie theaters. Click here for more information.
