Jourden Fenner and Sidney Titus-Glover on Speaking of Freedom and their embrace of Middle America

By Evin Williams

On a late July afternoon in the East Village, I had the pleasure of sitting down with  Jourden Fenner and Sidney Titus-Glover, two of New Jersey’s up-and-coming wunderkinds and the filmmakers of Speaking of Freedom. The feature-length documentary, directed by Stephanie Warren, captures testimonies from dozens of Americans about their personal relationships to freedom. In collaboration with Warren’s direction, Fenner and Titus-Glover have journeyed  throughout the continental U.S.A. conversing with locals from every region imaginable. The film, based on Warren’s undergraduate thesis, Create Freedom, encourages subjects to actively define the concept for themselves. Throughout the afternoon, we chatted with the artists about the joys of their ongoing production process, their fondness of travel, and the unwavering pride that they both hold for New Jersey. 

Upon their entrance into Sara’s (Partager’s head designer) living room, we babbled about the heat outside and Fenner’s discovery of the magazine via an Instagram mutual. After a few minutes, and to my honored surprise, the pair proposed the idea of interviewing me and Nicola (Outreach Coordinator/ valued stand-in photographer) as subjects for Speaking of Freedom. We, of course, agreed and spoke about our own perspectives on freedom which served as a beautiful icebreaker into our own interview. 

Can you guys introduce yourselves and your roles in the film?

Titus-Glover: Soo…my name is Sidney, Sidney Titus-Glover. I am 22, I  just turned 22 Wednesday.  That was weird, (my) first time saying it out loud. I am the Executive Producer of this film which entails  finding people to be interviewed and making sure all of the clips that we get are consistent. I was given this project by Stephanie… who is awesome. She's my biggest mentor. She's the director of this film. I would just always bother her and be like, “yo, got any projects?” and she would be like, “yeah actually I do”. I met her at this coffee shop and she was telling me about this freedom project because she saw that we were doing short films. The second she said, “Oh, I need something filmed’, I called Jourden…. he was there in like 10 minutes.

Fenner: I'm Jourden… I'm 21. I'm the DP, Director of Photography on this project, but I mostly handle connecting with the people that we find through the cam(era)... making them feel comfortable, you know?... Like as if the camera's not in front of their face, you know? Picking the  location in which we film, how we film it, and  also finding some people, too.  I met up with Stephanie at the coffee shop because we had been doing short films and she had seen one in specific that we made  called Out of Town Kids. She loved it  ( both giggling). She was like, “Yo, do this” and then literally the next week we were doing interviews in the city and in Boston.  

What served as the motivator for you all to record such a wide demographic range throughout the U.S.? 

Fenner: Well, we really wanted to make it relatable. All over the States, different types of people, all different interests. It was mostly to capture everybody and everything… there's not a lot of people in other places who have time to be interviewed or want to be interviewed or want to talk to anybody about anything. A lot of the people we were talking to were unheard, you know? That was definitely why we wanted to go the route we did because we didn't want to talk to people you're familiar with. Titus-Glover: Everyone knows the New York City creative story (laughs). Everyone's done that interview a thousand times already…

Fenner: People don't know what people are like in Kansas City and St. Louis. We want everyone to be able to watch and learn. 

Sid, what have been your highlights as the Executive Producer on the film? 

Titus-Glover: I like hearing people’s stories who have previously felt unheard. People who have felt like they’ve never had a voice, especially a public voice… like they probably went to a high school with one-hundred people or something. (Also) just the general excitement about the film… even if people don’t want to be interviewed on camera, they’ll be like, “that’s a really cool idea”, and are excited to hear about it and want to see this being made. I’m just trying to make people comfortable about telling their story and I like getting on the most raw side of them as possible. A lot of people are scared that they might say the wrong thing and I try to be the person…we both try to be the person that says, “you can say whatever, you’re not going to get in trouble for telling us your life story”. 

Speaking of “raw”, the stills that you sent over from the film are so candidly shot, Jourden. The still of the flight attendant is my favorite, I’m actually in love with it. As the Director of Photography, what drew you to filming the subjects in that way

Fenner: We want it to seem like it's just a microphone you know, not a cam. We want to give everyone power in their time and let them know that their time is valuable and we want our audience to watch and listen. In our shots, it was like it's nothing but you and that person's testimony. It's nothing but you and them and you're supposed to listen because it's them who's talking right now,  like give props, you know? That’s pretty much why it’s framed in the way that it is. So that it can be all about them.

What have people's reactions been when you've come up to them? What has been the range of reactions? 

Fenner: All over.

Titus-Glover: Honestly, it’s usually always positive. Some people just don't like being on camera. I feel for the most part, a lot of people are just excited that this is being talked about in the first place. For a lot of people, this is the first time they’ve thought about it, like, “Am I free?”. When we ask them, “ Do you feel free right now?”, they're like, “Oh, I’ve never thought about that ever in my life”. 

Fenner:  And even if they don't want to be on camera, they're down to talk to us and have a conversation with us on a personal level and like every time it's like it's still as deep of a conversation as if they were on camera. 

How was your road-tripping experience?

Titus-Glover: It was awesome. 

Fenner: The craziest part of it was, because like every day we were on the move, we would change accents before the next sleep.  We were talking to people in Colorado and by the time we were in East Kansas like people were sounding different.  It just made us realize you can change accents driving in a straight line through the U.S., like the U.S. is huge.

Titus-Glover: Yeah, it definitely made me look at America in a different light. It almost made me more patriotic. I still don't rock with the government that much, but I like the people that live here. Like American citizens are so cool…. It made me never want to stop traveling ever in my life. That was one of the best experiences ever.

How has it been to collectively reflect on the project with one another?

Titus-Glover: I think my favorite thing has been receiving feedback from Steph specifically because I look up to her as a mentor and (I like) the fact that she's able to be comfortable enough to give me a lot of constructive criticism on how to approach the project. Like it’s a really fragile thing… we’re not going to go to a lot of these places again or going to meet these people ever again so she’s making sure that we’re doing our due diligence. 

Fenner: With Steph, it’s a checkpoint thing. Every time we Like, every time we tapped in with Steph, we got back and our next set of interviews were just slightly different. 

Titus-Glover: Slightly better

Fenner: Yeah, like, so, like, working with that was cool. Feedback from Steph was cool, but also feedback from the people we were talking to was cool. We were in different places getting feedback from people who were motivated by us, you know? People who want to watch the project when it comes out, and people who were back home watching us on the road. Seeing a lively audience watching it, breathing it, and like seeing it from the outside has been the coolest thing. 

Titus-Glover: I’m almost more excited about the whole progression of the movie than like the actual debut itself. I know for a fact we're going to be working on it for a very long time and that excites me a lot.

What has the outreach process looked like for you in order to find subjects?

Fenner: We were using Facebook, Reddit.

Titus-Glover: And cold call interviews where we just walked up to people. What I like is that it's anonymous, like on Reddit you don't know who these people are until they show up for the interview, you don't even have a profile picture. With the cold call interviews, it's a little bit different because we're kind of going off of what type of person in the past has said no to an interview. Like, what type of person are we more successful with? Whereas (with) Reddit,  we get a random demographic. They don't know who we are. Say… maybe we bump into someone who's racist…  they're not going to tell us, “I'm racist and I don't like to talk to Black people and I'm uncomfortable”.  That random person on Reddit doesn't even know what I look like so they're more focused on the project itself and they see it as, “Oh, this is an important concept that I should talk about”.... I think the Reddit interviews  have been a lot more in depth because we'll post the question two days before we travel there. So they have, like, two days to think about what they're going to say and like what they actually think about freedom, whereas, the people we just walk up on aren’t  really sure and don't even really want to think about it in the first place. 

Fenner: Like the dude in Vegas

Titus-Glover: Yeah, the vet. 

Fenner: He walked up to us talking already.

Titus-Glover: We didn't even get to ask him the question. He talked for 30 minutes straight 

Fenner: Just had to start rolling…30 minutes of like opinions and rants and it was perfect, like it was exactly what we wanted. He’s a Vegas native, talking about the rules in Vegas, and how Vegas is blood sucking. That was so perfect…. It (the film) is worth the wait. It’s worth the wait. you know what i mean it's worth the way it's worth like you know helping to fund if so you know it's worth being involved too i love well thank you guys so much this is like so fun i'm so happy that we got to learn more about it i like i mean i felt like you know the crowdfunding was so good with like all the descriptions and stuff but to like actually talk to

What has been your favorite attribute of Stephanie as a leader and a director? And what have been your favorite things that you’ve learned about each other’s creative processes working together? 

Titus-Glover: With Steph, she has no idea how cool she is. I don't know if she knows how cool this project is and she just views it as a project she’s been thinking about forever. I don't even think she's been able to see how much this project has affected us or the people that we’ve interviewed. We notice people… when we're interviewing them, they’re thinking on a deeper level (that) they probably haven't in many years. And then, with this guy (nods to Fenner), we're just getting a lot better. I've been watching some of the interviews back and every interview is better than the last and like every interview going on is me learning more about myself and  I'm learning more about how Jourden operates. 

Fenner: I learned a lot about Sid having moves as an artist. We have aligned goals like we're definitely getting better, dude. On this movie…  every movie we’ve ever made, like we've made movies for a year and a half now and,  with each movie we make, it gets better. I've seen how Sid can talk to people, how Steph can organize something, how to put people in place and delegation.  

What are you most excited for audiences to learn from Speaking of Freedom?

Fenner:I would say, calling it a  time capsule, I'm excited for audiences to see this time period of 2023, 2024. Not just necessarily what they say and think and what they're doing, and what their hobbies are right now, but what they're dressing like, you know, like what locations they're in, how they're wearing their hair, their makeup, whatever. Like, literally want it to be a timestamp for this year. I'm most excited for people to learn what other people have to say in different places. Especially people in places who won't leave, you know?

Titus-Glover: There's a lot of stories in here that I think no one has ever heard or maybe just a few people have only ever heard.  I want this film to live on forever and stamp what people thought about this particular idea at this time. It could change and the fact that it's going to change is probably the most exciting thing. Also, for selfish reasons, it'll make people view the art we make afterwards a lot differently… we'll be taken a lot more seriously. 

Following the interview, Fenner and Titus-Glover offered up some recommendations: New Jersey and New30 lifestyle, their collective creative social media platform. 

New Jersey:

Titus-Glover: Come to New Jersey. It’s so awesome

Fenner: Come to New Jersey.

Titus-Glover: Everyone in the world should come to New Jersey. It’s the best place in the world, I swear….. The thing I learned the most from the trip was how important traveling is in order  to build context for the world you live in because those places were cool, L.A. was cool, Vegas was cool, but it made me appreciate what I have in Jersey more. I think Jersey's cooler than L.A. personally, but that could just be me (smiles). Y’all gotta find out for yourself. Jersey's so cool. You gotta spend a weekend there. The shore is really cool, Asbury, Wildwood, and even just across the water. Jersey City and Hoboken are getting super lit right now and it’s totally separate from what’s happening in Manhattan.

(Nicola) How do you think Jersey is different from New York?

Titus-Glover: So glad you asked. That's such a good question. I was literally just thinking about that in the shower this morning because I got into an argument online ... Someone tried to tell me Jersey is just New York's backyard or whatever. New Jersey is not just next to New York. It's also next to Philly. And it's in close proximity to other cities. And you can get in and it’s like a middle ground. 

Fenner: For instance,  Bergen county, my county in Jersey, northeast tip, has a million people and is as populated as Manhattan. We're the most densely populated state so it's like you see it and you really feel it. If you go to upstate New York, you don't really feel New York City, but  all throughout New Jersey, you feel New Jersey. 

 New30 Lifestyle:

Titus-Glover: Go to @new30lifestyle on Instagram. That’s where we be at. If you’re interested to see what we have going on it’s always going to be on @new30lifestyle

Where did the name New30 come from?

Titus-Glover: It’s something we started saying as a greeting on the first of every month. 

Fenner: Sometimes you need a new 30, or a new 7, or a new 24. 

Link to donate to the film’s crowdfund: https://crowdfundr.com/12PKy2?ref=sh_6DV3ka_ab_A6875g1HwWxA6875g1HwWx