Documentary revisiting ETSU ‘Monkey’ incident wins award

ETSU Department of Media and Communication students Caleb Neal, Lauren Lee and Alaana Patterson won second place in the documentary category of the Tennessee Communication Association’s Student Film Showcase for their documentary, “Monkey.”

Neal, Lee and Patterson made the short documentary for their video film techniques class in spring 2019. The film revisits an infamous ETSU incident that occurred in 2016, in which ETSU student Tristan Rettke wore a gorilla mask and dangled bananas on a rope in front of Black Lives Matter demonstrators on campus.

Neal was a freshman when the event took place and shot a recap video of what happened the next day, but when he received the assignment for his film class three years later, he said he wanted to revisit the incident to hear the activists’ perspectives. Knowing several of the students involved, he brought in Jaylen Grimes, one of the BLM demonstrators, and Leon Humphrey Jr., one of the organizers of the demonstration, to speak about their experience for the documentary.

Neal, Lee and Patterson set up lighting and a backdrop and brought the activists in for interviews. Neal said they did not ask them specific questions, but they simply let them talk about what happened the day of the incident.

“I think I may have asked one question to both of them,” said Neal. “I said, ‘September 28, 2016. What happened?’ and just let them go. And they really, now mind you this was supposed to be like a three to five-minute documentary, but they really talked for like at least 45 minutes a piece I think.”

Grimes said although they filmed the documentary three years after the incident, the details of that day were easy to recall and still present in his memory because it affected him deeply. He said it was also still very prominent in his life as court trials and hearings for Tristan Rettke’s charges were still being held into 2019.

For Lee, the first time she heard the story of the incident was while filming.

“I [could] just see the emotion in their face,” Lee said. “And that they’re still—you know—it’s a prominent issue in this world, and they’re still hurt by [it], and they’re still struggling with it. Just them going through the story and really seeing their emotion, and me getting informed of that story from a firsthand witness type of thing, it was really emotional, and it was intense.”

Although the documentary tells the story in only five minutes and 13 seconds, Grimes said he was impressed that it still captures the emotion and essence of the incident.

“It’s just truly phenomenal because it embraced all that emotion in a little span of time and those emotions are for a lifetime,” Grimes said. “And it’s like their film, you got to get a glimpse of how we really felt – the fear and anxiety, the anxiousness, just all those things. It’s just the pure confusion of why somebody would do that. You got to feel all those things in that short time and reliving it and telling that story over and over.”

Neal said they did not realize the documentary would live beyond their class, but it has been submitted to several festivals and competitions over the last year. They said they were excited when they learned they won a second-place award in the TCA Student Film Showcase.

“We were just excited it was in a festival in general,” Neal said. “But to know that it placed so high, that was really, really nice.”

Lee said aside the achievement of the award, she is happy to know that they were able to document an important event in ETSU’s history, so that future students can learn from it, grow and help build a better environment at the university.

“Just that we’re able to have that documented story of what happened,” Lee said. “And something that people can always go and look back to and remember and kind of just get informed and see the emotion that came out of that. So, I think it’s really cool to have.”

Grimes said it was great to see the hard work that went into the making of the film. Knowing that he was involved in something that won an award is a great feeling, he said, but what means more to him is the impact the story has on others and knowing that it has reached people beyond the university through festivals.

“It’s about the message that it gives off and it portrays,” Grimes said. “And I feel like if you can learn anything from me—like if I can affect one person—then that’s a win in my book, and the fact that it has reached other people besides the university, I mean, it’s great.”