John Shearer: No Right Angles

A documentary film portrait of a great, unsung African-American artist.

John Shearer may be the most important photojournalist you've never heard of.  Shearer’s work—beautiful, wrenching, vibrant, raw—is well-loved by a tight circle of curators and admirers, yet all but forgotten by the wider public.  In this new documentary by Academy Award nominee James Spione, the photographer looks back at an astonishing career—one which broke racial barriers, while at the same time capturing and helping define black identity in 1960s and 70s America.  Featuring candid interviews with the artist at his lakeside home in upstate New York, and intercut with Shearer’s unforgettable imagery, NO RIGHT ANGLES presents an intimate portrait of an African-American pioneer.


Who is John Shearer?

Son of beloved syndicated cartoonist Ted Shearer (best known for “Quincy”), John grew up on Edgecombe Avenue in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, surrounded by black American luminaries from sports stars to jazz musicians.  In the 1950s, the family moved to Parkway Gardens, an exclusive African-American enclave in suburban Westchester County—yet, in reality, one of just a few places where blacks were allowed to buy a home at the time.  Here, John met the man who would shape his career: legendary photographer/filmmaker Gordon Parks.  John remembers his first meeting with Parks.  His idol looked quickly through John’s stack of prints, selected one, and then methodically tore up the rest. “This is your first lesson,” Parks said. “Only show your best work.”  This was a particularly powerful lesson for an aspiring young man of color.  There was no such thing as good enough.

After winning a series of honors from the prestigious Scholastic Art Awards, Shearer was asked to accompany a senior photo editor at Look Magazine to John F. Kennedy's funeral. As fate would have it, the young cameraman was perfectly positioned outside St. Matthew's Cathedral to capture the moment when little John Kennedy, Jr. saluted his father's casket. The heartrending image was soon published in Look, and John's career was launched. He was all of 16 years old.

As a rising young photographic star, Shearer was quickly drawn from his relatively sheltered existence into the front lines of civil rights unrest, facing unpredictable racist violence from both random white citizens as well as the police.  In between these dangerous assignments he also photographed many of the era's show business stars--Joan Rivers, Melvin Van Peebles, Michael Jackson among others. 

Folk singer Richie Havens

Over time, John’s career produced a series of iconographic images of American life, from the wry smile of Abbie Hoffman to the penetrating gaze of Muhammad Ali, from the stunned faces of African-American women lining the street at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral, to the bullet-riddled windows of New York’s Attica Prison after the infamous, murderous police assault on an inmate uprising.


Attica Prison Riot, 1971

John eventually joined his mentor Parks in side-by-side offices at Life Magazine, which at the height of its popularity was read literally by 50% of the country.  But by the mid-seventies Life had folded, and John recalls that “there was no place else to go.” The heyday of American photojournalism was over.

Now in his seventies and battling serious health issues, John is currently organizing several museum exhibitions, featuring both his seminal photojournalistic pictures as well as his more recent work, a deeply personal series of multi-layered digital images, hoping to finally secure his legacy among the finest American photographers.

John Shearer at Look Magazine offices, 1966


Who is James Spione?

James Spione has been a documentary maker for more than two decades. His last film, "Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock" (now on Netflix), is an innovative collaboration with environmental filmmaker Josh Fox and indigenous media maker Myron Dewey about the historic Native resistance to an oil pipeline in North Dakota. His previous feature, the whistleblower documentary "Silenced," premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Mr. Spione’s earlier work "Incident in New Baghdad" won Best Documentary Short at Tribeca and earned the director an Oscar nomination. His other films include "American Farm," about the demise of his family’s fifth-generation dairy operation in upstate New York; as well as an ongoing series of docs exploring the Eastern Shore of Virginia, one of the few remaining rural coastal regions in the continental United States. Spione has also written and directed several fiction films, including the Sundance short "Garden," starring Oscar winner Melissa Leo. His first film "Prelude" won a Student Academy Award and is currently being digitally restored by AMPAS.

How will these funds be spent?

Filmmaking—even small scale, independent filmmaking—is expensive. And while kickstart funding campaigns like this one rarely can cover the entire cost of a movie, what they do enable is crucial: the ability to start and maintain early production on a project while more conventional sources of support, such as arts foundations and eventually, a distributor, can be sought out and secured. The money raised here will go directly to the film, to pay for personnel like camera and sound people, equipment rental, attendant shooting costs like travel and food, as well as early post production editing work. Especially in documentary, when the real world does not wait for business plans and budget proposals, it is critical just to be able to "be there" as the subject's life unfolds. (And in the case of Mr. Shearer, the subject's health struggles make it an absolute necessity to record as much as possible, as soon as possible.) Time is of the essence. 

A note from the filmmaker...

This is my fourth crowd fundraiser! And the truth is, the best films I have produced all started with people like you. People connected around common interests and values on social media, willing to contribute to advance the cause of independent film/journalism. My last feature, "Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock," began right here on gofundme with an urgent need for funds to travel to North Dakota—and quickly evolved into a unique collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous media makers. I also used crowdfunding to get my Iraq War film "Incident in New Baghdad" into a Los Angeles theater to qualify for the Oscars—and we ended up being nominated! My feature documentary about national security whistleblowers, "Silenced," was launched with critical startup funds from backers like you; that film eventually was seen by millions around the world on broadcast and online platforms, and was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy Award.  It's no exaggeration to say that none of this would have happened without the support of backers who knew my work was important long before the distributors did.

I hope you will join me again--this time in bringing John Shearer's amazing life story to the world.

With many thanks for your help, I am

Gratefully yours,


James Spione
Morninglight Films


To learn more about my work:

Official website for Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock 

Official website for Silenced

Official website for Incident in New Baghdad 
 
My IMDb page


John Shearer at the Neuberger Museum, Harrison, New York. November 2018.