RVA subcultural documentary four years in the making

Danielle Elliott

Staff Writer

The drag community, roller girls, Civil War re-enactors, burner and fetish groups are among the many subcultures explored in the documentary, “Identity Richmond,” which is a documentary about the various subcultures that thrive in and around Richmond.

Sera Tabb said she began the project with the help of an undergraduate grant from VCU’s School of the Arts and has been running with it since.

“We crafted an idea around that grant and from there, we’ve received other funding … and it’s definitely grown and changed as we’ve been working on it, so it’s become a film that really profiles subcultures specifically in the Southeastern United States,” Tabb said. “Things are growing and changing everyday so our goal has been to basically document as many of the subcultures in Richmond as we can and then talk about … what makes these subcultures Richmond subcultures.”

Tabb said she had little trouble finding people to interview. She began her search on the Internet and from there, word of mouth lead her from one subculture to the next.

“We had just moved to Richmond (be)cause we were students at VCU so … we started out by starting a Myspace page, and a lot of subcultural groups at that time were congregating on Myspace,” she said. “We sent out messages to people that were community activists, people that we talked to, or friends who had lived in Richmond for a long time.”

“We found that each subculture is aware of all the other subcultures and they would tell us, ‘We think you should profile these guys,’ ” Tabb added.

One major part of Richmond is VCU, and while there are many students in the film, the student body is not a group that Tabb defines as a subculture.

“We chose to define subculture as a group that’s strictly social, where people congregate to express themselves in a like manner. It’s more about self-expression within a group,” Tabb said. “That’s why we didn’t profile VCU students – because there are so many students that we profiled in the film that are expressing themselves in different ways, to sort of group them all together into a university didn’t make sense.”

Ben Muri is the editor of “Identity Richmond.” He started out editing a web show for RVA Magazine called “The Process.”

“We profiled local artists in Richmond, and the host of the show had the idea to interview Sera about her project,” Muri said.

By the end of 2009, Muri had been asked to join the “Identity Richmond” team as editor.

Both Muri and Tabb have had some struggles with the editing process. For Muri it is a challenge to work on something of this scale, while Tabb finds it hard to see certain scenes hit the cutting room floor.

“The editorial process and the time commitment of spending four years shooting and then having to go through and cut it down to one hour and 30 minutes is pretty difficult,” Tabb said.

“The scope of the project is a lot bigger and the amount of things I have to consider when cutting this film together is a lot more,” Muri said. “It’s a slower process because I had to take time to go through all the footage and basically learn it.”

Working on the documentary has been an enlightening experience, according to Tabb, who she said had less knowledge of Richmond culture at the beginning of her journey. It also brought a new light to Muri’s view of Richmond and its many subcultures.

“I had all of these ideas about what I wanted to do, and those ideas changed over the course of the project, and now they are kind of coming full circle again,” Tabb said. “So I kind of had a set of cultures we wanted to profile.”

Tabb and Muri wanted the documentary to change over the course of production. Tabb said they didn’t fight if the documentary wanted to go in a certain direction; they just went with it.

“I’ve always known about Richmond culture. I’ve always known what was out there, but the amount and the intensity of it is something that I did not know,” Muri said.

Muri and Tabb are currently editing the documentary in hopes to have a final cut by March, 2011 and a fully polished film by this fall.

“I think this project will really surprise a lot of people. It’s a project that has … people from all walks of life,” Muri said. “I think a lot of people will be blown away by how much they can be or already are a part of a subculture. I think that will help connect the film with a lot of people.”