New documentary, ‘The Negro Artist,’ depicts a poet on the rise

One night of adventure between two artists during an off-season writers retreat in Okoboji has led to a documentary.

The Negro Artist first premiered at this year’s Okoboji writers retreat, two years after the subject, Caleb Rainey, and the filmmaker, Nik Heftman, met. The pair became friends when Rainey lost the keys to his cabin and Heftman let Rainey crash on his couch after a booze cruise on the lake.

Heftman had been captivated by Rainey’s spoken word performance.

“I came to the retreat as a guy who wasn't necessarily into poetry, or I hadn't really been exposed to it properly, and then just hearing Caleb speak about experiences that I could relate to in such a powerful way really drew me to him, like a lot of others,” said Heftman, an Emmy award-winning film producer. “After he had lost his key that night and stayed at the place that I was staying at, after that our friendship kind of grew, and I got to learn a little bit more about his story, and it was really captivating for me.”

Heftman had been producing a series of short documentary videos on Black entrepreneurs in Iowa, and he wanted to challenge himself with a bigger project telling Rainey’s story.

Rainey was surprised by Heftman’s pitch.

“My response was, ‘If you think I'm cool enough,” he said. “... I don't feel like a big enough deal to be a documentary. And I have to admit, the documentary makes me think I'm cooler, like it convinced me a little bit more.”

The title of the film is also Rainey’s stage name, which is inspired by Langston Hugh’s essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Rainey gave himself the name in college when he was writing poetry about race relations and thinking about how his writing and Black identity were linked.

“To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!'” Hughs wrote in the essay.

The documentary reflects on Rainey growing up as a young Black man in Columbia, Mo.

Heftman said he related to Rainey’s experience navigating covert racism in the backdrop of his life.

“I wanted to show people where that powerful poetry came from, why he's so strong when he speaks and where some of that power comes from,” Heftman said.

When Rainey arrived in Iowa City to study at the University of Iowa, he discovered there wasn’t an established space for spoken word poetry in the writing community. At the recommendation of Lisa Roberts, founding director of Iowa City Poetry, Rainey began teaching spoken word poetry to students and creating those spaces himself. He founded a program called IC Speaks, which introduces students to slam poetry.

Rainey said at that time in his life, he didn’t feel like he knew what he was doing, so it was interesting watching it back through the documentary.

“It's so funny to think at that point that I was fraught with insecurity about this, and now I realize, like this is definitely what I'm supposed to be doing,” he said. “And thank goodness other people saw me and knew what I was supposed to be doing before me.”

As much as Rainey has grown as an artist, teacher and community builder, he is still a young artist. The documentary doesn’t depict the end of his story.

“All it's done is put a fire under me. There's more work I need to do,” Rainey said. “Because if I seem this kind of cool on the screen, I've got to keep going.”

The Negro Artist is screening at FilmScene in Iowa City on Dec. 11. Rainey also founded the Mic Check Poetry Festival in Iowa City, which is held Nov. 8-9.

To hear this conversation, listen to Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe. Dani Gehr produced this episode.