About The Film
The extraordinary life of Regina Jones is one not only shaped by history, but also one that made history. From pregnant and married at 15, through the middle of the Watts Rebellion of 1965, to emerging as a groundbreaking newspaper publisher, Regina is a testament to the American experience.
That lived experience, as a Black American woman raising a family of 5 children, stepping in places where she was not wanted, and navigating a world that offered her no favors, is one that is still too often overlooked. Who in the Hell is Regina Jones turns a lens on Regina's remarkable journey - the invisible labor, the turmoil, struggle and the joy of a modern-day Black woman.
Meet Regina
In August 1965, Regina Jones was just 21 years old. She and her husband Ken, an aspiring news reporter, had five small children and they were broke.
Ken worked a series of odd jobs. "He was a dreamer," Regina says. And he aspired to be the first Black news anchor in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Regina worked as an LAPD dispatcher on the second shift. On August 11th, 1965, she took a call she'd never forget. "I can still feel it in my chest." It was the first distress call in what would become the Watts Rebellion - six days of violent turmoil, an uprising by a long disenfranchised and brutalized community that became a defining moment of urban unrest in the 20th century. Neither Regina nor her family's lives would ever be the same again.
On that night, recognizing an opportunity, she told Ken to go out in the streets and be the reporter he so badly wanted to be. Throughout the six days of rioting, Ken's reporting would appear on the radio. As he veered out among the flames that were devouring his neighborhood, Regina recalls, "he wondered what he could do for his people in his neighborhood that would bring them some hope.”
Less than a year later, SOUL newspaper was born. In 1966, Ken and Regina started SOUL newspaper in the dining room of their home to showcase the musical achievement of the Black community with Black leadership running the show. SOUL, of course, predated the creation of Rolling Stone and Creem. By the 1970s, SOUL newspaper was a nationwide publication, scoring scoop after scoop with some of the era's biggest artists, like Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder. SOUL was where Black artists could get coverage. But by the early 1980's, SOUL would be shuttered and her relationship with Ken, over.
Regina, resilient as ever, was left to pick up the pieces, to pick herself back up, a process she was no stranger to. She'd been knocked down before and she was going to get back up again.
Meet
The Filmmakers
Billy Miossi (Co-Director) is an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
His film It's Quieter in the Twilight - about the small, dedicated team piloting the Voyager mission through interstellar space - premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival, where it was nominated for a Grand Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary. It went on to screen at film festivals around the world, including DocEdge in New Zealand, The InScience International Film Festival in the Netherlands and the Newport Beach Film Festival. The film was acquired by Gravitas Ventures and released theatrically in May of 2023.
Billy's short film Goldie, a documentary about a nursing home entertainer, premiered at the 2023 Cleveland International Film Festival and was published by The New Yorker in October 2023. Past projects include Operation Greylord, a short documentary about one of the largest corruption cases in FBI history. In 2017, Billy directed Eye on the World: The Rise of Walter Cronkite and The Evening News, an examination of the arc of trustworthiness in television news.
Billy lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife and four kids.
Soraya Sélène (Co-Director) is a director and cinematographer working in documentary and narrative works.
Born in France and raised on NYC’s lower east side, she is passionate about social justice and feminist and humanist stories that shed light on intergenerational trauma; stories that also inspire transcendence and change. Her work has screened at festivals around the world. She is co-cinematographer on documentary Half The Picture, about women directors and gender issues in the film industry, which premiered at Sundance in 2018. Her project Normal Never Worked (entering post-production), is a personal lyrical documentary that explores the legacy of her mother, the actress Marpessa Dawn (Black Orpheus, 1959), executive produced by Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster (Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, 2023)
Soraya received her MFA in Directing & Cinematography from UCLA and her BA from Wesleyan University. She is a member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia and a founding member of the International Collective of Female Cinematographers (ICF+C). Soraya is also an educator, teaching documentary and cinematography as faculty at CalArts.
Soraya lives in Los Angeles with her twin children, who inspire all her work.
Emmy award-winner, Nancy Novack (Editor) has been editing documentary and feature films for over 25 years. Her work has appeared on HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, PBS, Hulu, and Starz, and has been featured at the Sundance, Venice, Tribeca, HotDocs, Telluride, Bergen, DocEdge and New York film festivals. Her films have received numerous awards including: Emmy, Peabody, Dupont, and the George Polk award for Journalism.
Recent feature documentary credits include All Static & Noise (Editor and Co-writer,) Battleground (Editor and Co-Writer,) All In: The Fight for Democracy (Co-Producer and Editor, ACE Nominee: Outstanding Editing of a Theatrical Documentary Feature,) Grass Is Greener (Co-Producer and Editor;) Take My Nose… Please!, Words From A Bear (Supervising Producer and Editor.)
For television, Nancy has edited many noteworthy series’ including: Soundbreaking: Stories From the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music (Emmy and Grammy nominated,) Ken Burns Presents, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (Emmy nominated,) My Lai (Emmy and Peabody award winner,) Broadway: The American Musical (Emmy winner,) and Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, which earned Nancy an Emmy award for Outstanding Picture Editing of a Nonfiction Program. Nancy received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Alisa Selman (Co-Editor) is an editor with over ten years of professional experience in documentary, weekly news and promotional content. These productions have aired on HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Prime and PBS, as well as screened at a variety of film festivals including Sundance, Venice International, HotDocs, SXSW and Doc NYC. Alisa strives to craft stories that dig deep into the human experience and illuminate the ways in which we can collectively embody a more equitable and empowered existence. She is currently living in upstate New York with her partner and pup, exploring nature and learning how to create a permaculture food forest in her backyard.
