BUFFALO, N.Y. - Buffalo has a reason to watch the Oscars. Tanisha Fordham is one of the co-producers of My Nephew Emmett, nominated in the short film category.
The 20 minute narrative is told from a different perspective. Fordham calls the film director and writer Kevin Wilson, Jr. "genius" for the way he told the story "from the perspective of the uncle who had to watch his nephew dragged out of the house and to know that there was nothing he could do, it had to be so devastating."
14-year-old Emmett Till came from Chicago and was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he went to a grocery store and allegedly whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, three days later he was kidnapped, beaten and shot. It happened in 1955.
It's a story that needs to be told according to Fordham. "It reminds us of how much power we do have today because there was a time when they were ripping boys out of houses and there was nothing you could do. The people who stole Emmett Till they were tried and found not guilty."
Recently the woman who made the allegations about Emmett Till that led to his death said she fabricated being assaulted.
The short film was shot about a mile from where his body was pulled from the water. "We crowd funded," she said after location scouting in 2016. "We saw this sign that marked where Emmett's body was pulled from the water and it actually had been sprayed with bullets so Kevin posted it to social media and it went viral." As a result they were able to solicit fund to shoot the film in 2017.
Fordham grew up in Buffalo and graduated from Sacred Heart and North Carolina A&T. She is now a teacher at Newark Collegiate Academy in Newark, New Jersey. She is the granddaughter of the late Dr. Monroe Fordham.
"Buffalo taught me that you're speaking not on behalf of yourself, but on behalf of all of the people watching and saying please say it for me!"
Fordham and her husband will join the producer at the Oscars Sunday night in Los Angeles. "For us to be going to the Oscars this Sunday is like unbelievable and for the film to be such a little engine that could."