YOU DON’T KNOW MY NAME
A DOCUMENTARY FROM TOMMY FRANKLIN
Throughout the month of June in honor of Juneteenth, HAUS Salon is seeking to bring awareness to the importance of Black voices and artists in our community. This year, we are highlighting local Black artist Tommy Franklin via the Film Independent's Fiscal Sponsorship program. Tommy is working on an important film documentary titled You Don’t Know My Name. After being separated from his incarcerated mother at birth, Tommy Franklin documents his journey as he searches for her identity while uncovering deep ancestral bloodlines. As he gets closer to this life-altering truth, he must navigate his way through systems designed to keep him in the dark. Through sharing his own story, Tommy highlights the generational trauma inflicted upon the Black community by the prison industrial complex and the epidemic of prison birth that has resulted from it.
This June we are seeking donations in support of Tommy’s work to help him in the completion of this impactful project. Donations are collected through the Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program which opens the door to nonprofit funding for independent filmmakers and media artists such as Tommy. The projects and makers participating in the program express a uniqueness of vision, celebrate diversity and advance the craft of filmmaking through the creation of these special works
Tommy Franklin is a filmmaker, writer, producer, creator of Weapon of Choice Podcast and Special Menu Productions. He was a founding board member of All Square, is a founding board member of the Ostara Initiative, and is a creative and communications consultant at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). His documentary work in progress You Don’t Know My Name has been supported by Sundance, Kartemquin Films, Jerome Foundation, Film Independent, CNN, and True/False Film Fest. Tommy is a 2023 Big Sky Pitch participant.
His pilot Intrepid was a finalist for 2021’s Sundance Episodic Lab, and he was a 2022 Sundance BIPOC Mentorship Program Mentee. Tommy made three off-the-wall narrative short films, and he collaborates in philanthropic and grassroots organizing communities to produce nonfiction content he believes in, indiscriminate in form or medium. A survivor of incarceration (born in prison and having served time in adulthood), Franklin works along creative culture lines to radically reimagine power structures, focusing on Black liberation.