Slave One: The Kung Fu Judge Story
This was a completely accidental project. One Sunday while walking down Fulton street in Brooklyn, I saw an open door where there's usually a closed one. I noticed this because it happened to be the door of the Slave One theater. This theater had a marquee that always intrigued me(as many other). What does it mean? Is it still operating? Who runs this place? What happens in there?
This is when Omar Hardy came out of the darkness to greet me and my(soon to be) wife. That was it, the moment this whole adventure started. After being given a tour of the inside, I had to know more. The interior was just as wild looking and it only left me with more questions. The lobby and main theater had strongly worded scriptures and imagery from floor to ceiling. The doctrine did not mince words. There was something big here.
I recruited a friend to go on this journey with me. We figured with his editing and my animation/film background we could make a real go at trying to unearth this story.
The story was complicated and access was was extremely difficult due to the legal nature of events. Phone calls, door knocking, police reports and library microfiche fueled our research. On top of this, we were our own tiny crew. We set up and filmed nearly everything ourselves. What started as no more than an interesting looking building turned into a long, tragic tale of greed, betrayal and elder abuse. All this to the man who tried to hold a community together through some of its darkest years.
This truly was a labor of love that totally consumed me for a couple years and I’m very proud of what we were able to achieve working nights and weekends with no budget. I wish everyone would see this film and know just a little about an incredible man named John L. Phillips.