Experiencing Interruptions?

Get On The Bus!

In May of 2022 on the James Taylor Justice Coalition's second Justice Day event, participants collected a sample of soil from the site where Mr. Taylor was hanged. With money raised from
individuals and organizations in our community a busload of over 50 youth and adults left Chestertown, MD in the wee hours of August 25 to transport the soil sample to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery. The trip included visits to important civil rights sites in Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery and Atlanta. Participants were confronted with a reality not often taught or talked about, and subsequently witnessed, processed, and transformed their perspectives on both Black History in the USA of the past, and the African American Experience of today.
Get on the Bus! is a film about this trip.

  • Justinian Dispenza
    Director
    One World Everybody Eats, The Darkness of Zion Minor, Save the Maumee, Permaculture in Hong Kong, Echo Hill
  • Phil Dutton
    Producer
  • Tanner Presswood
    Producer
    One World Everybody Eats, The Darkness of Zion Minor, Save the Maumee, Permaculture in Hong Kong,
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Genres:
    HIstory, Culture, african american history, civil rights
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 8 minutes 26 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 4, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    11,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital (Sony A7sii)
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • N/A
Director Biography - Justinian Dispenza

Director Justinian Dispenza got too lucky too early. Only a few months after graduating from Indiana University with a degree in Film Design and Production (a school obviously not known for its film program) he got a film internship in Beijing working for the Environmental Education Media Project. This organization acted as a jumping off point for filming in over 25 countries on a variety of topics as unique as the countries he was filming in. He uses his camera to document and highlight the good, the bad, and the ugly about where we as a species were, are, and are going. He loves spending time in nature and playing music and hopes to continue his film work in order to 'reduce, or reverse the negative impacts human beings have on the planet, each other, and this beautiful marble we all still call home".

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Director Statement

I always try to maintain a distance between what I'm filming and what I'm feeling, but directing Get On The Bus! ripped those boundaries apart in a million and two ways. It's always hard to understand the stories from the past, especially if you're removed from them in your personal life, but the 50+ people who decided to "Get On The Bus!" were faced over and over again with difficult truths about our country's past, present, and what it truly means to be an American. At its heart, this is a film about a group of really nice people working together to conceptualize and come to terms with a not-so-nice past, and it is an important journey for us all to take. Doing this trip taught us all, in a very visceral sense, that everything is not Ok. And that it takes an effort from each one of us to check our privilege, to check our past, and to check our perspective.