In the half-hour film 12 Minutes, a death-row inmate scheduled for execution at a quarter to midnight requests a face-to-face meeting with the son he’s never known. The 12-year-old sits across a table from him in a private room, filled with anger. Why now, after all these years? “You sent for me, and now you about to die.”
Raymond A. Thomas, a 36-year-old art director for Ebony, is earning some serious recognition for 12 Minutes, his first film. It’s been screened at festivals in Boston, New York, and Saint Louis, and it played here last August at the Film Center’s Black Harvest International Film and Video Festival. In November, at the International Jamerican Film & Music Festival in Montego Bay, Jamaica, 12 Minutes was named Best Effort Narrative Short and Audience Favorite Short, beating 14 other entries from Canada, Ireland, the UK, and the U.S. Earlier this week Thomas headed out to Los Angeles for screenings at the Hollywood Black Film Festival and the Pan African Film & Arts Festival.
Mill Creek was demolished to make room for the expansion of U.S. Highway 40; Beth and her younger brother, Mark, lived with their mother in Visitation Park, a primarily black neighborhood. At 13 she became mesmerized by 14-year-old Ray Thomas, who gave off “a kind of mystery of Malcolm X” with his quiet demeanor and penchant for tams and scarves. They dated for three years, then Beth discovered she was pregnant, and the two teenagers married. Raymond A. Thomas was born December 8, 1965, and a daughter, Delores, followed a year later. At first the family lived with Beth’s mother and brother in a two-and-a-half-bedroom apartment, Ray clocking hours as a welder at an auto plant and Beth working retail. By the late 1960s, Beth had earned her GED and the Thomases had moved into a two-story brick house in north Saint Louis.
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Neighbors in the apartment complex told her about Fahamme Islam, an Afrocentric faith that stressed the greatness of all people regardless of race and the interconnectedness of all religions. Though she’d been raised a Christian, Beth was intrigued and she began taking her children to a Fahamme temple in Saint Louis, where she and her daughter wore headdresses and Raymond a fez. At the temple they were given African names denoting an aspect of their character.
One night, as Ray was bringing his children home to their mother, the tensions between the two boiled over. Beth had been holding a Fahamme study session at her apartment, and everyone had left except for Khepera Ptah, who was waiting for his ride. According to him and to Beth, Ray showed up with the kids and a few male friends, spotted Khepera, and attacked Beth. Khepera defended her, and she escaped, crawling through the grass to a neighbor’s place. The neighbors called the police, who found Ray and Khepera fighting. The cops took both men to jail, but after Beth and her mother vouched for Khepera, he was released.
During the summer and on weekends Raymond would visit May C, his paternal grandmother. Reedy Thomas had died suddenly of a heart attack around 1973, and May C was just scraping by, battling obesity, emphysema, and heart disease. She’d moved out of her old apartment and into a rodent-infested place, and one of her children, a pimp, brought his women there to turn tricks, including a mother-daughter team. Raymond also visited his cousins, who lived in a downtown apartment complex near public housing. While playing outdoors they’d hear gunfire and run for cover. After the coast was clear they’d head for the crime scene with the other gawkers and check out the victim. “It wasn’t dangerous to me,” he says. “I was used to it.”
