Since its inception in 2002, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé programme has been granting young artists the gift of knowledge and time to unleash their creativity

If you’re a teacher and you’re not learning from your students, then you’re not really teaching, are you?” challenges filmmaker Spike Lee during a Mentor Panel Discussion of the Rolex Arts Weekend celebrated at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) this past September 10, 2022. Affirming the fluid and collaborative aspects of mentorship, the multi-awarded director and professor is one of four extraordinary personalities perpetuating the tradition of cascading knowledge and wisdom of their craft to young artists as part of the 2020-2022 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. “The next generation are all important to me, and I look to them as my mentors,” echoes British director Phyllida Lloyd, the genius behind the hit musical Mamma Mia! and mentor for the Theatre Category, who shares her excitement to work with protégé Whitney White, a multi-gifted musical theatre artist.

Related: Why Every Successful Entrepreneur Has a Mentor

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The moderator, Gina Duncan, with panellists Lin-Manuel Miranda, Spike Lee, Phyllida Lloyd and Carrie Mae Weems
Above The moderator, Gina Duncan, with panellists Lin-Manuel Miranda, Spike Lee, Phyllida Lloyd and Carrie Mae Weems

Lloyd exudes, “Maybe she doesn’t need a mentor, but I do, and she could be it. She can sit down at the piano and blow you away with her compositions, direct a play, act in it; there’s not much she can’t do.” Throughout the weekend’s series of talks, intimate conversations, and a multi-disciplinary showcase of the fruit of their two-year-long artistic collaborations, this feeling of mutual respect and admiration was palpable in both mentors and protégés. Other notable mentors in this cycle were artist Carrie Mae Weems for Visual Arts and singer, songwriter, director and producer Lin-Manuel Miranda for the Open Category.

Other protégés included Native American filmmaker Kyle Bell, Colombian mixed media visual artist Camila Rodríguez Triana, and Argentinian filmmaker Agustina San Martín. “One of the things that were so exciting about Agustina was that she makes everything art,” expresses the Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy and Tony award winner Miranda, about his protégé. “She manages to see poetry in the every day.”

The Open Category was just launched this year to promote interdisciplinary dialogue. Miranda, known for his smash Broadway hit Hamilton and creator of the Disney phenomenon, Encanto was in the process of directing his first feature-length live-action film during the two-year mentorship programme and expressed how excited he was to learn from San Martín as well.

In case you missed it: From Cinderella to Encanto: Have Children's Films Evolved to Empower the Youth?

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Camila Rodríguez Triana’s haunting, handcrafted mixed media exhibit is quite literally woven together by intricate thread work
Above Camila Rodríguez Triana’s haunting, handcrafted mixed media exhibit is quite literally woven together by intricate thread work

“She mentored me a lot more than I mentored her. When we were working together on Tick, Tick... Boom!, I was surprised that editing is a lot like writing music. I didn’t realise how comfortable I would feel in the post-production process because you are, in fact, using the same skill set you would use if you were writing songs. It’s all rise and fall, tension and release. It’s the same way you would take an audience through an evening of musical theatre but with different tools. This was a moment when I realised that filmmaking was analogous to what I do.”

Known for her dark and surreal films, San Martín, on the other hand, recognises that she used to overthink things. “[Miranda] said: ‘Don’t overdo it. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most powerful.’ This is from someone who has been creating things way longer than I have,” she said. The festival also showcased three films. The first was San Martín’s novel hybrid of documentary film and magical apparition named Childhood Echoes. The film installation projected holograms of individuals upon clouds hovering in space as they shared the memories evoked by their favourite childhood songs. This work explores our shared humanity and what San Martín describes as that “happy-sad feeling”. The following two were by Thlopthlocco Mvskoke Creek filmmaker Bell, who presented a documentary, Lakota, and his first-ever narrative short film, Spirits. The former is the story of a young woman grappling with mental health issues in her family and how she rises to become a positive influence within her local community, while the latter explores a Mvskoke Creek youth’s anxiety about leaving behind his land and loved ones to pursue a career in basketball.

See also: Lin-Manuel Miranda on Directing ‘Tick, Tick…Boom!’, A Story He Knows Well

“One of the most important things that Spike instilled within me is just showing how hard you have to work to make this a career,” shares Bell about collaborating with his mentor. “There has to be an urgency to make your film.” Lee underscores these difficulties: “Filmmaking must be one of the harshest professions known to humankind. What I try to do with my students is give knowledge, my own experiences and confidence, but there will always be challenges.”

Bell expresses that the wisdom he’s gained from this experience is invaluable and goes beyond the craft: “Through this mentorship, everything I’ve learnt with Spike, not only in my career, just as a person, as a friend, I’m always going to take with me wherever I go. To give back to my people and pass down to the next generation of future filmmakers in my tribe.”

The biggest hurdle for many artists is reconciling their art with the necessity to earn a living. White is grateful for the time the Rolex programme has given her to explore and create simply for creation’s sake. “One doesn’t get many opportunities to just develop themselves and their craft,” she explains. “When you’re in a career-oriented space, how do you grow, how do you experiment, how do you fail? You’re supposed to be on a trajectory.” White’s relationship with her mentor revolved around a more personal axis. Lloyd is an exceptional example of an empowered woman in theatre who embraces and integrates all aspects of her life, and she has long promoted theatre-making that supports women and families.

White was pregnant during the programme and was being pulled in all directions, inundated with incredible offers and opportunities. “The fear for a young artist, and I’ve been through this”, draws Lloyd from her own experience, “is if you turn somebody down, will you ever work again? Part of my job as mentor is to express, ‘It’s fine to say no. They will ask you again because you’re a great artist’.” The Rolex Mentor and Protégé programme has been giving artists since 2002 a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from some of the world’s greatest artistic minds and create without restraint.

More from Tatler: Rolex Sponsors The Governors Awards, Honouring Great Names in Cinema

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Lin-Manuel Miranda and Agustina San Martín both expressed their gratitude for the fluid nature of their mentor-protégé relationship
Above Lin-Manuel Miranda and Agustina San Martín both expressed their gratitude for the fluid nature of their mentor-protégé relationship

“I feel that this time in my life has been like a time of empowerment”

- CARRIE MAY WEEMS -

Triana’s exceptional and moving installation, Patrimonio Mestizo, is a testament to this. “I feel that this time in my life has been like a time of empowerment,” she explains. “I see it as a long road. Many hours of work, much persistence, and I look at today and see how I have grown.” Her past work was limited to smaller and more intimate installations, while this mixed media exhibit at the BAM was an all-encompassing experience on a much grander scale. Here the audience could be fully immersed in her handcrafted and esoteric universe.

“I admire how she works with her hands,” shares Triana’s mentor, Weems. “To use a craft that has been associated so much with women and push it beyond those bounds is important. This programme has given her an opportunity that she would not have had in any other way.” Weems further elaborates: “Many young artists have the habit nowadays of throwing the baby out with the bath water. ‘I’m done with that project. Next.’ Let’s not think ‘next’ but ‘more’. We must think big and grand and ask ourselves: ‘What is it that I want to see in the world?’

Then fight for the time to have that thoughtfulness.” Supporting the emphatic sentiments of Weems, this is precisely what the Rolex Mentor and Protégé programme bestows to rising artists: the luxury of time.

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