(yawns) Damn.
Well, hey there. What's goody-good, y'all?
You know Craig has been your inter-gablacktic guide
through the multiverse of epic blackness
that is Your Attention Please for two years now.
Hulu's Your Attention Please
is a dope show
about cutting-edge, innovative
Black people in their industries.
Craig: And while I was cookin' up season three for you,
I realized that for the past year,
a bunch of elves must've been hard at work
because there are 10 mind-blowing shorts
about Black excellence that I have not seen.
Initiative 29 takes that
and says Black stories should be heard
throughout the year, every year, um,
and not just in the month of February,
the shortest month of the year.
Instead of looking at our past
and reliving traumas...
we decide to look forward,
and write our own history.
I'm just gonna get comfy while I... take in
all these powerfully inspiring stories.
Black excellence... take me away.
Ría Thompson-Washington: I come from a long line
of unbothered women,
Black women who fought
injustice on reflex.
Side-eyeing Jim Crow and Uncle Sam,
daring their fingers to pull the trigger.
I try to focus on the people
whose rights are being taken away
to teach them how to fight that system.
When I first watched Your Attention Please,
I was so excited to learn about people who were doing things
that I would otherwise never have heard of.
Jerome Foster II: Environmental justice
is about equity.
How do we make sure things
are more fair for countries
that have been impacted so heavily by colonialism,
compounded on top of climate change?
Vladimir Minuty: If you don't see yourself in certain areas,
then you don't think that you are able to actually
go and do those things.
That mentality is prevalent within the culture
because we don't see ourselves very often
in certain roles, in certain places.
And so, for me, Your Attention Please
is about possibility,
and breaking that mental construct,
and it's about Afrofuturism.
Now, it wouldn't be Your Attention Please
without some joy for your ear holes.
Right there are the irrepressible
ladies of New Orleans' Original Pinettes,
and their big, brassy sound.
Woman: The Pinettes are Black female musicians,
playing brass band music.
It's a collective of all
our individual experiences.
Sisters, mothers. It's a labor of love.
Leighton Pope: I think it's extremely important for people of color
to tell our own stories and to write our own history
because it gives us the opportunity
to take accountability.
If we truly wanna be inclusive
and more diverse with the content,
it, it will only behoove us to have Black creators
behind the camera as well.
Kayla Gore: We started the tiny house project
to provide homes for Trans people in need.
We just wanted to make sure that people felt like
they could thrive, and felt like they could live,
and know that somebody cared about them.
Whitney Clinkscales: It's so important to tell stories,
especially stories by and about Black and brown people.
We, as storytellers and filmmakers,
do ourselves a disservice when we leave out the truth.
We're always looking for truth,
and we're always looking for authenticity.
People need to be celebrated.
People need to have someone in the room
when they're not there who cares, and says,
"I can speak for you,
and I will do your story justice."
Mm-hm, mm-hmm! I like that.
And we also got Tao Leigh Prof. Goffe, PhD,
as in DJ
who drops knowledge.
Tao Leigh Goffe: I am the sedimented sum
of four islands:
the Caribbean, Hong Kong,
the British Isles, New York City,
archipelagos, all of them.
(upbeat music playing)
♪ ♪
Craig: And looks like we took some trips, too...
into nature.
Mélise Edwards: I've been rock climbing for about 13-plus years,
and I'm currently a PhD student in neuroscience.
I didn't necessarily identify as biracial.
I just felt like society
had to let me know that I am Black and that's it.
Once you put all these tools that you've been,
you know, studying and putting into practice,
and, kind of, are able to tackle
these things that once made you really fearful,
it kind of makes you think, like, "Well, what else is possible?"
It just makes me wanna push even further.
Craig: Are you trippin'?
You went to Loíza, the ancestral heart
of the Afro–Puerto Rican community,
and you did not invite me?
Man: Specifically, here in Loíza, there's the music,
there's the art, and the spirituality.
They all come together.
(speaking native language)
Man, that crab thing looks delicious.
Speaking of tasty food,
that looks like Chef Eric Adjepong in Ghana.
Eric Adjepong: When I think about
West African Ghanaian food, I think about
my mom and my grandmother making all these things that
I grew up eating, and... that was really
the spirit of my restaurant.
I'm so happy that I'm here
because it gives me a full sense of,
uh, who I am as an African and as an American,
and those worlds kind of collide
into this one space here in Cape Coast.
Vladimir: Being able to tell these stories
and show the next generation
that all of this is possible has been a gift,
and this opened me up to thinking about other stories
that I might be able to tell and bring to the screen.
Craig: And yes, indeed.
Toasting a seriously fine year of films
with brewer Khris Johnson.
Khris Johnson: I didn't realize that there were pathways
for me to make an impact on my community that I live in.
The only way we're gonna tell history correctly
is if we actually tell everyone's experience.
We can make sure that our future
and our tomorrow is way brighter.
Woman: It was here, New Orleans...
a brutally disfigured body
was found in a warehouse near Chalmette.
Although Detective Griffin would not admit it,
he was up against something malevolent...
something unearthly.
Phillip Youmans: Voodoo, in this case, is about balance,
is about a spiritual balance.
And so, it's this idea
of combining voodoo
and looking at it as this metaphor
for cultural appropriation.
When in, you know, the right culture,
the hands of the right culture that made it,
something can be very beautiful
and about balance, and about spirituality.
When in the wrong hands,
it's something that can be
weaponized and used for evil.
But this piece is about bringing voodoo,
bringing New Orleans,
and reclaiming that aspect of our culture
in the 21st century.
Whitney: Initiative 29, for me,
was an opportunity to really see
so many different styles and tastes of
how to tell a story on display.
It's really cool that...
it doesn't feel like it's any one thing,
but has the opportunity for so many different voices
and so many different styles of how to tell a story
come together in a really harmonious way.
Leighton: If we see these stories,
and we, and we could, we can touch them,
and they're close to us, they're real to us,
then we begin to live it ourselves.
Vladimir: It's been really a joy to go
and learn from all of these people,
and to see the impacts
that, that they're having in their communities,
in other people's lives, in the world.
I find that being able to be a part of that...
It's just priceless.
That feast of inspiration has left my soul full,
but I can make room for more because season three
is right around the corner.
It's gonna be crazy.
We got bugs, dogs, pizza, cowboys.
They're all part of the stories about people
who are building things and realizing their dreams.
Oh yeah, we have an actual architect, too.
Metaphorical and literal building.
Don't put your tray tables up yet,
and from the bottom of brother Craig's heart,
I wanna thank you for coming along on this journey.
We are living Black history
when we tell and share these stories.
By lifting these folks up, we're lifting all of us up.
And if you leave the world a little better than you found it,
then you a success in my book.
So, like I always tell you,
don't be afraid to find what you love,
share it with the world, and scream from the mountaintop,
"Your Attention Please."
See you February 1st for season three, y'all.
(contented sigh)