Dionciel, a.k.a. Donny, Armstrong has made a name for himself not only in the Detroit film market, but in the film industry as a whole. After successfully making his first film documentary Street Life in 2001, and then going on to sell forty thousand copies on his own, the filmmaker discovered that he had a nose for the business.

“It was so hard to be a filmmaker back then because there was no way to touch the market,” Armstrong admitted, “it was no way to get a film out there unless you did a movie like some ghetto crap that you’d sell to Maverick Entertainment. They only brought movies that were made on camcorders.”

After making Street Life and securing a distribution deal, Donny made the conscious decision to learn all he could about the film industry and technology as a whole. “I wanted to make movies,” he stated, “I didn’t want to make another Street Life. Everybody was like ‘hey lets do another Street Life’, but I didn’t want to do another documentary. I felt like filmmaking was going in to a whole other direction, the digital age, and I wanted to be a part of it.”

It was with that thought in mind that he took a trip to LA to research equipment and work on big sets to get as much hands on experience as possible. Finally in 2003, he purchased his first High Definition camera and returned to Detroit to continue building his film legacy and help other filmmakers achieve their goals.

Fast forward to 2008; Armstrong has built a studio, completed his first feature film, 5K1, and secured a distribution deal for the film with the Weinstein Company (Great Debaters and Hannible Rising), one of the largest companies in the business.

“With the deal, it’s like they never signed a person or company like me,” he explained, “but they want to take a chance because they said the story of the movie was good. They didn’t understand what goes on in the neighborhoods. And pretty much to me, 5K1 is a movie that I had in my life from day one.”

5K1, which is a reference to a motion used to give defendants reduced sentencing for cooperating in investigations, chronicles the life of Tiger, a drug lord who finds himself falling victim to betrayal at every turn. The film stars Clifton Powell, AJ Johnson, 40 the Great, Yukmouth of the Luniz, and Big Herk.

“I wanted to show people what it’s like in the streets and what the laws are of the streets,” Armstrong asserted, “and 5K1 is like another word for snitching. I just didn’t want to name my movie “snitching” because of the negative relation to snitching and the whole aspect of snitching. People take snitching out of character and out of context.”

Note: For those who are unaware, snitching is not the act of reporting a crime or wrongdoing that is done to you or someone else to the authorities. Snitching is act turning in people that you willingly participated in crime with to save yourself from doing time.

“I love filmmaking,” he concluded. “I love to be able to write something down and then I can put it on the screen, even if it’s my screen on my TV in my house. I’m satisfied with that, but that’s not where I want to be. I do want to do films and go to theaters. I think it’s a time and a place that every filmmaker is going to have their chance as long as they keep working.”