It started with a holiday trip to Vietnam, in December of 2008.
As I usually do, I spent hours deciding which books to take. Among the first to make the cut was The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam’s 1969 bestseller about the folly of our military action there.
As our family traveled through Vietnam and saw the sights, we talked to the people and began to understand, viscerally, the impact our war and policy had on the Vietnamese people and culture. It was surreal for the adults among us to be visiting, as tourists, places whose names we remembered from nightly newscasts that featured military pronouncements and body counts: Saigon, Da Nang, Hanoi. In Hanoi, we celebrated Christmas Eve among thousands of locals on motor bikes, shouting, singing, waving flags and generally embracing the “Santa Claus” consumerism of our holiday.
It felt surreal as well to be reading Halberstam’s book, which, despite its publication date, began to seem frighteningly prescient about our country’s current military involvements. The Best and the Brightest details the mistakes made by smart leaders who failed to consider history, overestimated our supposed military superiority, and stubbornly insisted on strategies and tactics that failed to take into account how the people of an invaded country view the occupiers—A policy that was guided by a mistaken notion about international communism and the Domino Theory.
When I returned to Los Angeles with page after page of the book underlined, I began to read the stories about Afghanistan in a new light. I began to worry, deeply, about our new administration’s plan to send more troops to that country, to escalate the war and “finish the job” that had been sidetracked by the “wrong war” in Iraq.
This was not the policy of a “change” administration.
This was not the policy that would lead to the better and more hopeful world we wanted.
This was NOT going to make us safer and more secure.
My colleagues at Brave New Films and I began extended debates and conversations. We were not getting fundamental questions answered, such as: How many troops? How long? At what cost? How do we get out? What is the end game? Is this really the way to deal with terrorists? Why invade the sovereign country of Afghanistan when the enemy is Al-Qaeda?
We came to believe very strongly that these questions had to be asked, and they had to be asked of this president, Barack Obama, whom so many had worked so hard to put into office. And they had to be asked now.
Our way to raise questions and raise issues is through our work in media. So, Rethink Afghanistan was born. We wanted to raise the key conceptual questions. We wanted to activate people. We wanted to provide information.
And we wanted to do this with Afghan people–Afghan experts who are on the ground, in country–in the film. One of the many tragedies of the Iraq War was the fact that Iraqis themselves were often invisible to us Americans. We vowed not to let that happen.
Almost as soon as we began, we were attacked by friends and allies. No one wanted to question the new administration’s plans. Many people still believed the war in Afghanistan was a just war, the right war. We lost funding. But we continued.
My trip to Afghanistan in March further reinforced our concerns about the advisability of our country’s military strategy. It was more than obvious to me, bumping over the dirt roads of Kabul in the third poorest country in the world, that the solutions to social, political and economic problems are not military solutions.
We pushed ahead without funding. We could not afford to wait until a full-length film was finished. We were simultaneously fundraising, filming, interviewing and editing. We then posted sections online as soon as we could finish them.
We built each section of the film around key issues:
1. The Troops – We laid out the arguments and information to make clear that more troops would not solve the deep-seated problems of Afghanistan.
2. Pakistan – We needed people to understand the critical role of Pakistan to everything in the region. It was important to gain a sense of Pakistan’s views of its own national interest. The world can’t only be seen through United States eyes.
3. Cost – As the economy got worse, the economic arguments against the escalating costs of war got stronger and more potent.
4. Women – Many strong progressive allies were so blindsided by the awful things the Taliban were doing to women; they were missing the large picture that this was not (in the words of Tom Hayden) “a war to protect feminists.” The Karzai government and its warlord allies were responsible for terrible attacks and destruction, and the many women in Afghanistan we interviewed made this very clear. They wanted the troops out.
5. Civilian Casualties – A young Afghan man tracked me down through Facebook and insisted on meeting me at the airport as I was about to fly out of Kabul. He gave me devastating video footage of a refugee father offering to sell his young daughter because he couldn’t care for her. There was much more similar footage. Between my interviews, the news footage, and this footage, we created another section.
6. Security – National security is the core fundamental argument for the war among those who support it. As Halberstam says over and over, Vietnam was a tragedy both militarily and politically because people didn’t challenge the assumption that “all communists are the same.” All communists are not the same, and all so-called “terrorists” are not the same. We missed numerous opportunities in Vietnam to negotiate peace because of our simple minded view of communism. In this section seasoned former CIA experts challenge the notion that this war for national security is making us safer. They argue that our fundamental misreading of terrorism is making us less secure as we create more people willing to attack us every day.
7. Solutions – We wanted to provide some simple, common sense stories of people doing what is really needed in Afghanistan: creating jobs, running schools, and providing medical care. We chose the few that we could quickly get on camera, but there are still many more.
Thank you for supporting Brave New Foundation and thank you for your efforts in spreading the word to Rethink Afghanistan.
Robert Greenwald
Monday, July 25, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Q and A with Andrew Nisker, Director of Chemerical
Q: What inspired you to make this film?
A: “The inspiration for Chemerical came from research I did during the production of Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home. In that film I had a family keep their waste for three months to connect the dots between the pollution we create at home and to show how their lifestyle affects
the environment.”
“One of the areas we explored, for Garbage!, was the effects that cleaning products have on our water and the environment. Through that analysis we discovered that waste water and air quality in the family home are affected by cleaning and personal care products. I thought this subject alone was worthy of further examination and I came up with the idea to have another family rid their home of all toxic cleaners and personal care products and figure out how to live without them or make their own.”
Q: What are some of the issues you discovered with these products?
A: “Well, I just looked at the labels. I saw what was in these products and I started to do research on all the common ingredients. Why are they in there? What do they do? However, the majority of the products don’t list their ingredients so I had dig elsewhere to find most of that information.”
“One of the great resources I found was the cosmetics database (www.cosmeticsdatabase.com) online, which is an incredible web resource. It goes behind the scenes to explore the ingredients in your personal care products.”
“In the process of doing the research, we discovered a tremendous amount of these chemicals are rushed to market and they’re self regulated, which means the government doesn’t require corporations to submit the chemicals for testing. In our society, it’s good enough for these companies to just say that these chemicals are safe for human use. We tend not to ask questions.”
“Some of these chemicals, such as ammonia and chlorine, were initially developed for industrial purposes. Chlorine and Ammonia were mixed together to form Chlormine Gas as a chemical weapon used in the First World War. After the war there were stockpiles of these chemicals and scientists had to figure out ways to repurpose them so they started infusing them in cleaning products.”
“Before the introduction of these chemicals in our homes we used simple products like vinegar, water, lemon, baking soda and salt.”
Q: How hard was it to find a family to volunteer for three months and rid themselves of all their cleaners?
A: “It wasn’t that hard at all actually. We were on TV promoting Garbage! and mentioned that our next film was going to be focused on chemicals in the home. We had hundreds of families respond to us, via email so we put on Craigslist to find families. These families submitted video auditions to showcase all of the toxic products they keep in their homes, and we ended up choosing the Goode’s because that had a tremendous amount of these products and were also a fun group of people.”
Q: Were there any exceptions on what sort of chemicals they had to remove from their home?
A: “We didn’t go hardcore. Chemicals are good and bad, so we like to say they removed “toxins” from their home. When it came to personal care and cleaning products, we got rid of everything. We introduced them to people who could help them replace the products with natural and homemade alternatives. At the end of the process the family felt better physically, and were happy with the money they saved.”
“They made their own dishwashing and laundry soap, window cleaner, deodorant, toothpaste and shampoo. Strangely enough, the majority of these things were all made with the same ingredients.”
“- And guess what, they didn’t lose any friends in the process. They smelled good and felt good!”
“It’s a funny thing, and we talk about this in the movie, but we’ve become accustomed to smelling like things we actually aren’t. A couple hundred years ago people would rarely take baths. They’d wash their hands and in order to look clean and neat they’d wear pressed, clean, white linen and change their clothes when they got dirty. They were afraid to take baths because they though the hot water would open their pores and let in diseases and germs. Our natural smells were common back then but today we’ve gotten used to smelling like something from another planet. We don’t smell like human beings as Katherine Ashenberg tells us in the movie.”
Q: What did the family do after filming finished?
A: “They’ve stuck with it, but it’s only been a few months. Time will tell.”
Q: What sort of devices do you use in the film to get your message across?
A: “We created the Chemerical brand, which is a combination of the words chemical, America, and miracle. We thought this film would be an opportunity for people to re-think the way they clean their homes, and it would be our opportunity to re-brand the way we all clean. After all, the way we clean and learn to clean has been shaped by how everything is marketed, which started in the 1940s.”
“The creation of the soap opera brought an avalanche of cleaning ads into the home, targeted at housewives.”
“We have animation in the film, and what we’ve done is gone back to the old cartoon ads, that used to pitch cleaning products in the home, and we’ve given them a fresh look. We’ve created a new Chemerical family with a new pitch person, and we’re re-defining clean for a new generation throughout the film.”
“These ads are a tongue-in-cheek ode to the way we clean. For example, the revolutionary new Chemerical air freshener is called OTW, which simply stands for Open The Window.”
“There are other products we’re pitching throughout the film that are just as simple, oldfashioned ways of cleaning: vinegar, water, baking soda and essential oils. That’s it. That’s the way Chemerical cleans.”
“It’s a counter-reaction to the over-saturation of the cleaning market, to which we’ve been subjected to for the past 60 years.”
Q: What’s the target audience for Chemerical?
A: “Similar to Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home, we feel Chemerical will appeal to a broad audience, especially those of us who take care of the cleaning in our homes, and all of us who use some sort of commercialized form of personal care product.”
“Chemerical makes you question the usefulness of the ingredients inside your products and how at the end of the day using these products 24/7 could have an adverse effect on your health. So I concluded, why take the chance and use products full of toxic ingredients when it’s far safer for you and your family to go natural. It does the same job yet it doesn’t hurt you or the environment.”
Q: Do you show how to make these natural cleaners in the film?
A: “Yes. As I mentioned earlier, the Goode family made all their own personal cleaning products, and we follow along as they do it, to see how it turns out.” “We’re also going to be releasing a Chemerical cookbook. I know it sounds strange, but yes, making cleaning products is kind of like cooking. You add a dash of lemon and some water and vinegar and it’s as simple of making a jug of lemonade, or in the case of making lipstick, like mixing up a batch of caramel or cookies. For example all that’s really in lipstick is wax, oil and natural coloring.”
“The cookbook will be offered with the film, and it’ll show you how to make these products.”
Q: What’s next for you?
A: “Hopefully a vacation!”
A: “The inspiration for Chemerical came from research I did during the production of Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home. In that film I had a family keep their waste for three months to connect the dots between the pollution we create at home and to show how their lifestyle affects
the environment.”
“One of the areas we explored, for Garbage!, was the effects that cleaning products have on our water and the environment. Through that analysis we discovered that waste water and air quality in the family home are affected by cleaning and personal care products. I thought this subject alone was worthy of further examination and I came up with the idea to have another family rid their home of all toxic cleaners and personal care products and figure out how to live without them or make their own.”
Q: What are some of the issues you discovered with these products?
A: “Well, I just looked at the labels. I saw what was in these products and I started to do research on all the common ingredients. Why are they in there? What do they do? However, the majority of the products don’t list their ingredients so I had dig elsewhere to find most of that information.”
“One of the great resources I found was the cosmetics database (www.cosmeticsdatabase.com) online, which is an incredible web resource. It goes behind the scenes to explore the ingredients in your personal care products.”
“In the process of doing the research, we discovered a tremendous amount of these chemicals are rushed to market and they’re self regulated, which means the government doesn’t require corporations to submit the chemicals for testing. In our society, it’s good enough for these companies to just say that these chemicals are safe for human use. We tend not to ask questions.”
“Some of these chemicals, such as ammonia and chlorine, were initially developed for industrial purposes. Chlorine and Ammonia were mixed together to form Chlormine Gas as a chemical weapon used in the First World War. After the war there were stockpiles of these chemicals and scientists had to figure out ways to repurpose them so they started infusing them in cleaning products.”
“Before the introduction of these chemicals in our homes we used simple products like vinegar, water, lemon, baking soda and salt.”
Q: How hard was it to find a family to volunteer for three months and rid themselves of all their cleaners?
A: “It wasn’t that hard at all actually. We were on TV promoting Garbage! and mentioned that our next film was going to be focused on chemicals in the home. We had hundreds of families respond to us, via email so we put on Craigslist to find families. These families submitted video auditions to showcase all of the toxic products they keep in their homes, and we ended up choosing the Goode’s because that had a tremendous amount of these products and were also a fun group of people.”
Q: Were there any exceptions on what sort of chemicals they had to remove from their home?
A: “We didn’t go hardcore. Chemicals are good and bad, so we like to say they removed “toxins” from their home. When it came to personal care and cleaning products, we got rid of everything. We introduced them to people who could help them replace the products with natural and homemade alternatives. At the end of the process the family felt better physically, and were happy with the money they saved.”
“They made their own dishwashing and laundry soap, window cleaner, deodorant, toothpaste and shampoo. Strangely enough, the majority of these things were all made with the same ingredients.”
“- And guess what, they didn’t lose any friends in the process. They smelled good and felt good!”
“It’s a funny thing, and we talk about this in the movie, but we’ve become accustomed to smelling like things we actually aren’t. A couple hundred years ago people would rarely take baths. They’d wash their hands and in order to look clean and neat they’d wear pressed, clean, white linen and change their clothes when they got dirty. They were afraid to take baths because they though the hot water would open their pores and let in diseases and germs. Our natural smells were common back then but today we’ve gotten used to smelling like something from another planet. We don’t smell like human beings as Katherine Ashenberg tells us in the movie.”
Q: What did the family do after filming finished?
A: “They’ve stuck with it, but it’s only been a few months. Time will tell.”
Q: What sort of devices do you use in the film to get your message across?
A: “We created the Chemerical brand, which is a combination of the words chemical, America, and miracle. We thought this film would be an opportunity for people to re-think the way they clean their homes, and it would be our opportunity to re-brand the way we all clean. After all, the way we clean and learn to clean has been shaped by how everything is marketed, which started in the 1940s.”
“The creation of the soap opera brought an avalanche of cleaning ads into the home, targeted at housewives.”
“We have animation in the film, and what we’ve done is gone back to the old cartoon ads, that used to pitch cleaning products in the home, and we’ve given them a fresh look. We’ve created a new Chemerical family with a new pitch person, and we’re re-defining clean for a new generation throughout the film.”
“These ads are a tongue-in-cheek ode to the way we clean. For example, the revolutionary new Chemerical air freshener is called OTW, which simply stands for Open The Window.”
“There are other products we’re pitching throughout the film that are just as simple, oldfashioned ways of cleaning: vinegar, water, baking soda and essential oils. That’s it. That’s the way Chemerical cleans.”
“It’s a counter-reaction to the over-saturation of the cleaning market, to which we’ve been subjected to for the past 60 years.”
Q: What’s the target audience for Chemerical?
A: “Similar to Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home, we feel Chemerical will appeal to a broad audience, especially those of us who take care of the cleaning in our homes, and all of us who use some sort of commercialized form of personal care product.”
“Chemerical makes you question the usefulness of the ingredients inside your products and how at the end of the day using these products 24/7 could have an adverse effect on your health. So I concluded, why take the chance and use products full of toxic ingredients when it’s far safer for you and your family to go natural. It does the same job yet it doesn’t hurt you or the environment.”
Q: Do you show how to make these natural cleaners in the film?
A: “Yes. As I mentioned earlier, the Goode family made all their own personal cleaning products, and we follow along as they do it, to see how it turns out.” “We’re also going to be releasing a Chemerical cookbook. I know it sounds strange, but yes, making cleaning products is kind of like cooking. You add a dash of lemon and some water and vinegar and it’s as simple of making a jug of lemonade, or in the case of making lipstick, like mixing up a batch of caramel or cookies. For example all that’s really in lipstick is wax, oil and natural coloring.”
“The cookbook will be offered with the film, and it’ll show you how to make these products.”
Q: What’s next for you?
A: “Hopefully a vacation!”
Friday, May 13, 2011
Director's Statement from Mark Achbar about "The Corporation"
My father was a successful small businessman, so I personally have had a life of relative privilege because of the financial circumstances of my family. I've always felt an obligation to try to use that privilege responsibly. In addition, filmmakers are very fortunate here in Canada, with (diminishing) public funding available to us and editorial freedom.
My overriding objective in making The Corporation was to challenge conventional wisdom about the role of the corporation in society, to make the commonplace seem strange, to alienate viewers from the normalcy of the dominant culture, allowing them to gain a critical distance on the corporations and the corporate culture that envelop us all.
When it comes to the fate of the Earth, I don't believe in legitimizing destructive forces by validating their perspective in a "balanced" TV-style journalism format. But I am interested in and, frankly, fascinated by the advocates of economic globalization and corporate dominance. It is essential, in a program of corporate literacy, to hear from them, and to understand their perspective. Reform comes from within as well as without, which is why The Corporation also tries to expose the institutional constraints many good people working inside big corporations struggle with.
-- Mark Achbar
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Director's Statement from Philippe Diaz about "The End of Poverty"
When we were contacted by a member of the board of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation and asked about our interest in making a film on poverty, several questions rushed to my mind. First, could it be more than simply "a" film on poverty? Could it be a film which would explain the true causes of poverty and moreover, the true historical and political causes of poverty?
The second question was: Are we ready to invest time, money and years of our lives to such a noble but seemingly impossible cause? This answer came quickly: 'yes' on all fronts. We created Cinema Libre Studio with the idea that movies can make a difference. And for the last six years we have produced and distributed movies to that effect.
On a personal level it was the same: I had started making movies when I was 13 and then studied the philosophy of art as well as political philosophy at La Sorbonne in Paris, instilling in me the belief that movies could make a difference in the world. As a young producer in Paris, most of the 25+ feature films I had made tackled world issues in one way or another. In 1999, I had returned to directing for Nouvel Ordre Mondial (Quelque Part en Afrique)( The Empire in Africa) a feature-length documentary that explains that famine and hunger are not a natural phenomenon, as many people believe, but rather a political one. We chose to film in Sierra Leone, which had been embroiled in a terrible civil war for nine years. We were there for a month. (Even if it was the most difficult experience in my life, it prepared me for this new assignment.) The success and impact of this film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and went on to garner many awards around the world, encouraged me to use documentaries as tools to make a difference.
So of course the answer was, 'yes'. I had spent most of my life using movies to try to make a difference in the world. After the screening of The Empire in Africa during the Cannes Film Festival a journalist asked me: "Why would you take so much risk to make a film?" I answered: because I am probably not courageous enough to take a weapon and fight against injustice like many people do, so I take a camera, it feels safer!
And of course this film is about injustice…and inequalities which grow wider and wider every year, and about answering the daunting question: Why, in a world of so much wealth, do we still have so much poverty, where billions of people live on less than one dollar a day? (This is also the introduction to the film as narrated by the wonderful Martin Sheen.)
In developing the concept for a poverty film, many other questions came to mind: Why is it that when we make all these technological advancements the poor grow poorer? Why, if we find more and more wealth every year, do the poor grow poorer? Why, when a company makes huge profits that their shareholders pocket, do the employees pay the price when that company fails yet the shareholders retain their profits? Why are the natural resources given to us by nature exploited -- to the extent of destroying the planet - by only a few people who reap the benefits while millions of others suffer as a consequence? It was clear to me that making this film would be a wonderful opportunity to dig deep into a system that has created so much suffering, a system which is still almost deified by so many.
After months of research, discussions and several proposals, the Foundation allowed me to expand the scope of the film beyond a narrow Georgist perspective, in order to explain the true historical and political causes of poverty in the world. Ultimately the goal of the film was to change the dialogue around the poverty debate from "poverty is a shame," to "poverty exists for a reason."
When we finalized the budget, it was clear that we would have to limit our travel to a few countries. That coupled with the fact that the issue of poverty is remarkably complex, meant we also had to limit the scope of our investigation to a few specific topics.
The production would eventually entail over one hundred hours of interviews and bring us to four different continents: South America (Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia), Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), Europe and North America. The criteria for the countries we chose were: countries with governments that were open to acknowledging and talking about the poverty challenges they faced; and secondly, countries that represented a specific issue in the thesis we were developing, such as land rights in Kenya. As absurd as it sounds, many Third World governments facing dire poverty are still ready to deny this even though one can see evidence on every street.
Originally I wanted to show both sides of the poverty debate. We even filmed several experts who were proponents of the "progress and technology will solve everything" mindset supporting the notion that mosquito nets and bags of fertilizer could solve the poverty conundrum. This is the theory that Bono's economic sidekick, Jeffrey Sachs, has touted all around the world. But the first cut of the film was more than three hours long, so many of these interviews were left on the hard drive of the editing system.
We decided to make the film with a small crew since we would be going into slums and the homes of poor people, which we knew to be small and crowded. Our itinerary was punishing and we planned to move fast and visit multiple cities in several countries, which required mobility.
The form of the documentary was of particular importance to me, not as much as the content of course, but we were going with a mission to change people's perception of the true causes of poverty. It was essential nevertheless because I saw too many documentaries ruined by their lack of form or too much of it. The stars of the film had to be the poor. And I knew that I couldn’t turn such a devastating subject into "cinema." I would therefore have to refrain from using zooms and any other effects unless they were absolutely necessary to the context of the scene. The camera would be mostly fixed on a tripod or handheld when necessary. I would create a totally different feel for the experts who would be interviewed in natural settings: it is easier to fight poverty from a comfortable office in a university or an international organization – which doesn't diminish the importance of what these experts who do – but it is another to live it on a day-to-day basis. To wake up hungry everyday without knowing where you can find enough money during the day to feed your family is simply not the same thing.
I decided early on that lighting choices would be my ally in this complex cinematic question. I would install my experts in a comfortable setting and light them with three to four light sources, ultimately using diffusion and colored gels. When filming those living in poverty we would use natural light, which very often, was almost non-existent. I also decided to shoot the poor subjects with a handheld camera, allowing me to follow behind them when they were showing us their miserable living conditions – unless the subject was seated. Our experts would be shot with a fixed and immobile camera.
Our experience in working with these poor people brought us to a level of understanding I never thought possible. Many of them had an understanding of their situations and of its causes that most experts would find accurate beyond belief. But the experts opened our minds in a no less interesting way. We started shooting in 2006 and most of the experts predicted an imminent financial crisis which would engulf the world, while most of our politicians and our media were glorifying the prowess of capitalism. One of the experts, Serge Latouche, put it in very simple words: Today 20% of the planet uses more than 80% of its resources. Moreover, every year we are consuming 30% more than what the planet can regenerate, therefore digging a giant hole under our feet and making it bigger every year. And of course, these resources come primarily from the countries of the (global) South. And the most condemning part is that in order to maintain our lifestyle in the North, we have to keep these countries at a level of dire poverty. Even worse, because the world's population continues to increase in order to maintain our lifestyle we have to plunge more and more people into poverty every year. Latouche makes the point that if everybody had the same lifestyle as the people in North America, we would need six planets.
I summarize here the main points made in the film. The question is: how did this catch all of our top economists by surprise last October (2008) when the global economy imploded? They had no idea and no way to predict. Funny isn't it?
Ironically, in the last year our movie became the film to explain the current economic crisis while it was touring the festivals. The Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival, selected the film when it was not even finished which started an international festival tour that has passed the 25 mark and is still counting. I've been invited around the world to present the film and explain why we have to change our understanding and our perception of poor people and of poverty. Because at the end of the day, as long as we remain rich, they will remain poor and we'll keep digging the gigantic hole under our feet… which one day, without a doubt, will swallow us all.
But we have to hope that we are more intelligent than to let that happen.
The second question was: Are we ready to invest time, money and years of our lives to such a noble but seemingly impossible cause? This answer came quickly: 'yes' on all fronts. We created Cinema Libre Studio with the idea that movies can make a difference. And for the last six years we have produced and distributed movies to that effect.
On a personal level it was the same: I had started making movies when I was 13 and then studied the philosophy of art as well as political philosophy at La Sorbonne in Paris, instilling in me the belief that movies could make a difference in the world. As a young producer in Paris, most of the 25+ feature films I had made tackled world issues in one way or another. In 1999, I had returned to directing for Nouvel Ordre Mondial (Quelque Part en Afrique)( The Empire in Africa) a feature-length documentary that explains that famine and hunger are not a natural phenomenon, as many people believe, but rather a political one. We chose to film in Sierra Leone, which had been embroiled in a terrible civil war for nine years. We were there for a month. (Even if it was the most difficult experience in my life, it prepared me for this new assignment.) The success and impact of this film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and went on to garner many awards around the world, encouraged me to use documentaries as tools to make a difference.
So of course the answer was, 'yes'. I had spent most of my life using movies to try to make a difference in the world. After the screening of The Empire in Africa during the Cannes Film Festival a journalist asked me: "Why would you take so much risk to make a film?" I answered: because I am probably not courageous enough to take a weapon and fight against injustice like many people do, so I take a camera, it feels safer!
And of course this film is about injustice…and inequalities which grow wider and wider every year, and about answering the daunting question: Why, in a world of so much wealth, do we still have so much poverty, where billions of people live on less than one dollar a day? (This is also the introduction to the film as narrated by the wonderful Martin Sheen.)
In developing the concept for a poverty film, many other questions came to mind: Why is it that when we make all these technological advancements the poor grow poorer? Why, if we find more and more wealth every year, do the poor grow poorer? Why, when a company makes huge profits that their shareholders pocket, do the employees pay the price when that company fails yet the shareholders retain their profits? Why are the natural resources given to us by nature exploited -- to the extent of destroying the planet - by only a few people who reap the benefits while millions of others suffer as a consequence? It was clear to me that making this film would be a wonderful opportunity to dig deep into a system that has created so much suffering, a system which is still almost deified by so many.
After months of research, discussions and several proposals, the Foundation allowed me to expand the scope of the film beyond a narrow Georgist perspective, in order to explain the true historical and political causes of poverty in the world. Ultimately the goal of the film was to change the dialogue around the poverty debate from "poverty is a shame," to "poverty exists for a reason."
When we finalized the budget, it was clear that we would have to limit our travel to a few countries. That coupled with the fact that the issue of poverty is remarkably complex, meant we also had to limit the scope of our investigation to a few specific topics.
The production would eventually entail over one hundred hours of interviews and bring us to four different continents: South America (Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia), Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), Europe and North America. The criteria for the countries we chose were: countries with governments that were open to acknowledging and talking about the poverty challenges they faced; and secondly, countries that represented a specific issue in the thesis we were developing, such as land rights in Kenya. As absurd as it sounds, many Third World governments facing dire poverty are still ready to deny this even though one can see evidence on every street.
Originally I wanted to show both sides of the poverty debate. We even filmed several experts who were proponents of the "progress and technology will solve everything" mindset supporting the notion that mosquito nets and bags of fertilizer could solve the poverty conundrum. This is the theory that Bono's economic sidekick, Jeffrey Sachs, has touted all around the world. But the first cut of the film was more than three hours long, so many of these interviews were left on the hard drive of the editing system.
We decided to make the film with a small crew since we would be going into slums and the homes of poor people, which we knew to be small and crowded. Our itinerary was punishing and we planned to move fast and visit multiple cities in several countries, which required mobility.
The form of the documentary was of particular importance to me, not as much as the content of course, but we were going with a mission to change people's perception of the true causes of poverty. It was essential nevertheless because I saw too many documentaries ruined by their lack of form or too much of it. The stars of the film had to be the poor. And I knew that I couldn’t turn such a devastating subject into "cinema." I would therefore have to refrain from using zooms and any other effects unless they were absolutely necessary to the context of the scene. The camera would be mostly fixed on a tripod or handheld when necessary. I would create a totally different feel for the experts who would be interviewed in natural settings: it is easier to fight poverty from a comfortable office in a university or an international organization – which doesn't diminish the importance of what these experts who do – but it is another to live it on a day-to-day basis. To wake up hungry everyday without knowing where you can find enough money during the day to feed your family is simply not the same thing.
I decided early on that lighting choices would be my ally in this complex cinematic question. I would install my experts in a comfortable setting and light them with three to four light sources, ultimately using diffusion and colored gels. When filming those living in poverty we would use natural light, which very often, was almost non-existent. I also decided to shoot the poor subjects with a handheld camera, allowing me to follow behind them when they were showing us their miserable living conditions – unless the subject was seated. Our experts would be shot with a fixed and immobile camera.
Our experience in working with these poor people brought us to a level of understanding I never thought possible. Many of them had an understanding of their situations and of its causes that most experts would find accurate beyond belief. But the experts opened our minds in a no less interesting way. We started shooting in 2006 and most of the experts predicted an imminent financial crisis which would engulf the world, while most of our politicians and our media were glorifying the prowess of capitalism. One of the experts, Serge Latouche, put it in very simple words: Today 20% of the planet uses more than 80% of its resources. Moreover, every year we are consuming 30% more than what the planet can regenerate, therefore digging a giant hole under our feet and making it bigger every year. And of course, these resources come primarily from the countries of the (global) South. And the most condemning part is that in order to maintain our lifestyle in the North, we have to keep these countries at a level of dire poverty. Even worse, because the world's population continues to increase in order to maintain our lifestyle we have to plunge more and more people into poverty every year. Latouche makes the point that if everybody had the same lifestyle as the people in North America, we would need six planets.
I summarize here the main points made in the film. The question is: how did this catch all of our top economists by surprise last October (2008) when the global economy imploded? They had no idea and no way to predict. Funny isn't it?
Ironically, in the last year our movie became the film to explain the current economic crisis while it was touring the festivals. The Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival, selected the film when it was not even finished which started an international festival tour that has passed the 25 mark and is still counting. I've been invited around the world to present the film and explain why we have to change our understanding and our perception of poor people and of poverty. Because at the end of the day, as long as we remain rich, they will remain poor and we'll keep digging the gigantic hole under our feet… which one day, without a doubt, will swallow us all.
But we have to hope that we are more intelligent than to let that happen.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Interview with Tim DePaepe, Director of Shades of Gray
Gray Matter
March 30, 2000
by Dan Lybarger
Originally appeared in the March 30-April 5, 2000 issue of Pitch Weekly.
"There were always eyebrows that went up when they said, 'What's your film about?' I'd say, 'Gay life in Kansas,'" recalls Shades of Gray director Tim DePaepe during a recent interview in Lawrence, Kan. "Three years ago, when I was in South By Southwest (a film festival in Austin, Texas) pitching this thing, showing the demo around, I remember one response I got from somebody was, 'How many gay people are there in Kansas? Three?' I hope that by making this film ... we would be showing the world that this is part of the Kansas landscape."
Shades of Gray, which debuts at the Tivoli Manor Square Theatre at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, with another showing at 11:30 the next morning, depicts the state as an eclectic place and includes a wide variety of narratives. There are intimate talking-head interviews with three gay men and two lesbians, re-enactments of their personal stories, news footage, and comments from the vehemently homophobic Topeka pastor Fred Phelps. It also looks at Kansas' long history of civil rights struggles.
DePaepe explains, "We were a free state (during the Civil War), but at the same time we are the state that recently tried to repeal the teaching of evolution. Kansas is a dichotomy. It's always been a conflicted state. Look at what Janet (one of the featured subjects) says in the movie. When people think about Kansas, they think about Bob Dole. They don't think about gays, lesbians, or bisexuals. Anywhere but Kansas. That's how a lot (of Kansas) gays and lesbians grew up. It's a great conflict for this story."
DePaepe frames the elements of the film around the successful 1994 proposal to add the words "sexual orientation" to Lawrence's discrimination policies and the disputes it generated. "I just lucked out. It started around the time I started to make the film," he says. "You can't sit on the fence on this issue. There are no shades of gray in terms of tolerance or intolerance. The gray area is created by fear. I call the film Shades of Gray because you can see all the levels of this fear. You have Bob Moody (a Lawrence city council member) saying that you can't legislate tolerance; you can only educate against intolerance, and he's right. But yet at the same time, he's voting in opposition. Figure that one out."
Although Shades of Gray has yet to be shown to the general public, it has already attracted controversy. After receiving a thank-you letter and a tape of the film from DePaepe, Phelps sent a vitriolic fax threatening to picket the Tivoli screening. In the message the pastor calls DePaepe "a mendacious little pervert" and "a theologian come lately." DePaepe takes out the message, points to a grotesque cartoon of a bandaged man with swollen eyelids, and says, "That's (hate crime murder victim) Matthew Shepard. Honestly, I don't care what Fred thinks. But it wasn't until I got this (fax) in my hands that I said, 'Oh, my God. He's really going to be there.' I honestly thought he was going to ignore me and that I was too small-time for him. His ego's just tremendous. He's been interviewed all over the world (by people like) Dan Rather and Hugh Downs on 20/20. He's been featured in other national documentaries on hate groups. I think he is taking this personally.
"He's extremely intelligent and very articulate, very much a Southern gentleman. My mother's from the South, and I grew up a Southern Baptist too. It's something he and I had in common. In all reality, I have more in common with Fred, as a white, heterosexual man in Kansas who grew up as a Southern Baptist, than I do with (the film's gay subjects) Janet, Lea, Michael, Bill, or Ben. Ben's Jewish, and Janet and Michael are Catholic. The difference between me and Fred is that I don't hate people," DePaepe says.
If DePaepe's work has incurred Phelps' wrath, it also has received some prominent support. Michael Moore, the director of Roger and Me and The Big One and the host of the television programs TV Nation and The Awful Truth, helped finance the film. DePaepe recalls, "He was in (Lawrence) giving a lecture. They had a receiving line, and I walked up and got him to sign a poster, and I just said, 'Hi, my name's Tim, and I'm an independent filmmaker.' He said, 'What are you doing?' He had just talked about the banned segment of TV Nation on Fred Phelps. I said, 'I'm doing this film about gay life in Kansas.' His eyes kind of perked up, and he said, 'Really?' He stopped the line of people behind us. I gave him the quick one-minute pitch, and he said, 'What do you need? What can I do to help?' I said, 'I need $75,000 to finish the movie.' He said, 'Do you really need $75,000?'"
After telling Moore about how much he had shot and the equipment he was using, DePaepe recalls, "(Moore) said, 'Yeah, you'll need $75,000. I'll buy your next 20 rolls of film.' He's that cool. I've corresponded with him (but) I haven't heard what he thinks of the film."
DePaepe has devoted much of the past few years to Shades of Gray. He estimates that he shot approximately 52 hours of footage and can recite and imitate many of the comments from the film with eerie accuracy. "I can almost channel Ben," he chuckles. Still, DePaepe credits his fellow Midwesterners (particularly the Independent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City) for inspiration and support.
"A film is never one person's film, even though it says, 'A film by Tim DePaepe.' The only reason we do that is because one person has to sell the film." In addition to his work on Shades of Gray, DePaepe, who graduated from KU's Film Studies Program in 1990, has worked on projects as diverse as the movie Kansas and the television series Rescue 911. He also made the short documentary Quiet Passages and contributed an episode of the cable series Split Screen, which dealt with the banning of the movie The Tin Drum in Oklahoma. "It's enough to make some people return my phone calls," he says.
March 30, 2000
by Dan Lybarger
Originally appeared in the March 30-April 5, 2000 issue of Pitch Weekly.
"There were always eyebrows that went up when they said, 'What's your film about?' I'd say, 'Gay life in Kansas,'" recalls Shades of Gray director Tim DePaepe during a recent interview in Lawrence, Kan. "Three years ago, when I was in South By Southwest (a film festival in Austin, Texas) pitching this thing, showing the demo around, I remember one response I got from somebody was, 'How many gay people are there in Kansas? Three?' I hope that by making this film ... we would be showing the world that this is part of the Kansas landscape."
Shades of Gray, which debuts at the Tivoli Manor Square Theatre at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, with another showing at 11:30 the next morning, depicts the state as an eclectic place and includes a wide variety of narratives. There are intimate talking-head interviews with three gay men and two lesbians, re-enactments of their personal stories, news footage, and comments from the vehemently homophobic Topeka pastor Fred Phelps. It also looks at Kansas' long history of civil rights struggles.
DePaepe explains, "We were a free state (during the Civil War), but at the same time we are the state that recently tried to repeal the teaching of evolution. Kansas is a dichotomy. It's always been a conflicted state. Look at what Janet (one of the featured subjects) says in the movie. When people think about Kansas, they think about Bob Dole. They don't think about gays, lesbians, or bisexuals. Anywhere but Kansas. That's how a lot (of Kansas) gays and lesbians grew up. It's a great conflict for this story."
DePaepe frames the elements of the film around the successful 1994 proposal to add the words "sexual orientation" to Lawrence's discrimination policies and the disputes it generated. "I just lucked out. It started around the time I started to make the film," he says. "You can't sit on the fence on this issue. There are no shades of gray in terms of tolerance or intolerance. The gray area is created by fear. I call the film Shades of Gray because you can see all the levels of this fear. You have Bob Moody (a Lawrence city council member) saying that you can't legislate tolerance; you can only educate against intolerance, and he's right. But yet at the same time, he's voting in opposition. Figure that one out."
Although Shades of Gray has yet to be shown to the general public, it has already attracted controversy. After receiving a thank-you letter and a tape of the film from DePaepe, Phelps sent a vitriolic fax threatening to picket the Tivoli screening. In the message the pastor calls DePaepe "a mendacious little pervert" and "a theologian come lately." DePaepe takes out the message, points to a grotesque cartoon of a bandaged man with swollen eyelids, and says, "That's (hate crime murder victim) Matthew Shepard. Honestly, I don't care what Fred thinks. But it wasn't until I got this (fax) in my hands that I said, 'Oh, my God. He's really going to be there.' I honestly thought he was going to ignore me and that I was too small-time for him. His ego's just tremendous. He's been interviewed all over the world (by people like) Dan Rather and Hugh Downs on 20/20. He's been featured in other national documentaries on hate groups. I think he is taking this personally.
"He's extremely intelligent and very articulate, very much a Southern gentleman. My mother's from the South, and I grew up a Southern Baptist too. It's something he and I had in common. In all reality, I have more in common with Fred, as a white, heterosexual man in Kansas who grew up as a Southern Baptist, than I do with (the film's gay subjects) Janet, Lea, Michael, Bill, or Ben. Ben's Jewish, and Janet and Michael are Catholic. The difference between me and Fred is that I don't hate people," DePaepe says.
If DePaepe's work has incurred Phelps' wrath, it also has received some prominent support. Michael Moore, the director of Roger and Me and The Big One and the host of the television programs TV Nation and The Awful Truth, helped finance the film. DePaepe recalls, "He was in (Lawrence) giving a lecture. They had a receiving line, and I walked up and got him to sign a poster, and I just said, 'Hi, my name's Tim, and I'm an independent filmmaker.' He said, 'What are you doing?' He had just talked about the banned segment of TV Nation on Fred Phelps. I said, 'I'm doing this film about gay life in Kansas.' His eyes kind of perked up, and he said, 'Really?' He stopped the line of people behind us. I gave him the quick one-minute pitch, and he said, 'What do you need? What can I do to help?' I said, 'I need $75,000 to finish the movie.' He said, 'Do you really need $75,000?'"
After telling Moore about how much he had shot and the equipment he was using, DePaepe recalls, "(Moore) said, 'Yeah, you'll need $75,000. I'll buy your next 20 rolls of film.' He's that cool. I've corresponded with him (but) I haven't heard what he thinks of the film."
DePaepe has devoted much of the past few years to Shades of Gray. He estimates that he shot approximately 52 hours of footage and can recite and imitate many of the comments from the film with eerie accuracy. "I can almost channel Ben," he chuckles. Still, DePaepe credits his fellow Midwesterners (particularly the Independent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City) for inspiration and support.
"A film is never one person's film, even though it says, 'A film by Tim DePaepe.' The only reason we do that is because one person has to sell the film." In addition to his work on Shades of Gray, DePaepe, who graduated from KU's Film Studies Program in 1990, has worked on projects as diverse as the movie Kansas and the television series Rescue 911. He also made the short documentary Quiet Passages and contributed an episode of the cable series Split Screen, which dealt with the banning of the movie The Tin Drum in Oklahoma. "It's enough to make some people return my phone calls," he says.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Production Notes from Simon Burrow, Producer of Beyond Borders
I have been interested in immigration since the 1980’s when I first had factories in Mexico. But I was busy with other things, like making money, and didn’t do much about it except argue until a series of unlikely unrelated events happened in the first few years of the 2000’s. Some of them were books, some were observations and they all culminated in what I have to call an epiphany in the spring of 2005. I’ll write about the various roots first and them the epiphany.
• In 2003 I sold my business for enough money that I never had to work for money again. I was 56 years old.
• I heard Warren Buffett talk at Caltech. In his speech he mentioned the “ovarian lottery.” According to his idea, the way your life turns out is mostly a result of where you are born.
• I read Fewer a book about population trends by Ben Wattenberg that showed that the worlds population is stabilizing.
• I noticed that there were more stories in the US press about obesity than about starvation.
• I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and realized that the immigration debate was reaching a tipping point.
• I heard Angelica Salas speak on the Al Rantel show on talk radio and was deeply moved by her calm assertion of the rights of migrants.
• I read Strangers No Longer a booklet written by the Catholic Church that stated “persons have the right to live where they choose..”
• I read in a novel by Alexander McCall Smith an idea that the ethics of a society adjust to the needs of the society.
• I read the story of the SS St Louis and the refugees from the Nazis who were not allowed into Cuba and the United States and
• I saw the movie Amazing Grace and saw the parallel between slavery in the 18th century and the right to migrate today.
All of these ideas were bashing around in my head in the May of 2005. I was driving through the desert near the Salton Sea and they synthesized.
• The worlds view on immigrants was based on a paradyme of shortages. We are entering an unprecedented time of prosperity and the rules will need to change.
• In a world of material surplus where people are in short supply we will adjust our ethics away from tribal xenophobia and toward welcoming.
• The ethic that says it is okay to discriminate against people based on where they were born is morally bankrupt.
• The world will be a better fairer place when people can vote with their feet and governments are forced to compete.
• There are ways that the settled people in an area can accept new settlers without slamming the door completely or being overwhelmed.
These ideas made me so excited I gave up my other avocations, teaching and sculpting, and began learning everything I could about the current immigration debate in the USA and around the world. By December of 2005 after struggling for a few months with how to promote my new idea I saw Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore and thought I could make a documentary. And so I did.
The Story Evolves
When I set out to make this documentary I envisioned a story telling the history of human migration:
This is the original treatment:
Scene One ”It is the Right of the State”
In this scene it is 1730 in central Europe. There are two families huddled on the village green. A man in an official looking uniform is speaking to them “I’m sorry” he says “the King has ruled that you will not be allowed to settle in the kingdom. You will have to leave.”
Should be clearly wrong, ugly but not violent.
Scene Two “The SS St Louis Story”
The SS St Louis left Nazi Germany with 1000 passengers mostly Jewish women and children. It was bound for Cuba but was denied entry there and then in the USA and other nations. Finally it was forced to return to Europe where hundreds of the passengers died at the hands of the Nazis.
There is a independent film about this story. Get one of the survivors to speak.
Scene Three “Free to Live”
It is Detroit and a black family is being kept from living in an all white suburb.
There is an important movie and or book about this story.
Scene Four “Dying at Borders”
Black Africa. This scene shows the misery of the camps on the Rwanda border. Perhaps with voice over from an aid worker talking about how people were turned back to their deaths.
Scene Five “Dying in the Desert”
Perhaps a series of interviews with survivors of the US/Mexico crossing saying how risky the crossing was is and why they attempted it. Show video and stills of the death
Scene Six “A Call to Action”
Oppose vigilanties (show Minuteman videos)
The underground railroad analogy?
Civil Disobedience. Stop the Wall!
What we actually made was completely different. Part of that was a result of events. Who would have guessed that 1,000,000 people would march in the streets of Los Angeles in the spring of 2006 and that we would be able to film it. And part of it was a result of the people I hired to direct the film. The first paid professional I hired was Dave Szamet. His first task was to put together a budget for filming the treatment shown above. Dave made it sound possible and I plunged ahead we hired Justin Daniels to be the director for a test of the concept. With Seth Orozco behind the camera Dave and Justin shot local scenes for a few months and made a five minute short out of it.
It now was the summer of 2006 and it looked possible that we could make the film and the political climate made it urgent. Dave dug into his bag of contacts and we interviewed several potential directors with experience. We settled on Brian Ging and after Brian wrote a revised script we started shooting again in September. For the next year the shooting went on intermittently all of the crew had other jobs or school or both and everything we did was the first time we did it. We fought, we argued, we complained about money, the schedule, the content and the methodology. But finally it was finished. We were able to interview lots of very smart people for the film and to get them to talk about whether there is a basic human right to migrate. The “B roll” was collected in three countries and six states and was a constant source of friction.
• In 2003 I sold my business for enough money that I never had to work for money again. I was 56 years old.
• I heard Warren Buffett talk at Caltech. In his speech he mentioned the “ovarian lottery.” According to his idea, the way your life turns out is mostly a result of where you are born.
• I read Fewer a book about population trends by Ben Wattenberg that showed that the worlds population is stabilizing.
• I noticed that there were more stories in the US press about obesity than about starvation.
• I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and realized that the immigration debate was reaching a tipping point.
• I heard Angelica Salas speak on the Al Rantel show on talk radio and was deeply moved by her calm assertion of the rights of migrants.
• I read Strangers No Longer a booklet written by the Catholic Church that stated “persons have the right to live where they choose..”
• I read in a novel by Alexander McCall Smith an idea that the ethics of a society adjust to the needs of the society.
• I read the story of the SS St Louis and the refugees from the Nazis who were not allowed into Cuba and the United States and
• I saw the movie Amazing Grace and saw the parallel between slavery in the 18th century and the right to migrate today.
All of these ideas were bashing around in my head in the May of 2005. I was driving through the desert near the Salton Sea and they synthesized.
• The worlds view on immigrants was based on a paradyme of shortages. We are entering an unprecedented time of prosperity and the rules will need to change.
• In a world of material surplus where people are in short supply we will adjust our ethics away from tribal xenophobia and toward welcoming.
• The ethic that says it is okay to discriminate against people based on where they were born is morally bankrupt.
• The world will be a better fairer place when people can vote with their feet and governments are forced to compete.
• There are ways that the settled people in an area can accept new settlers without slamming the door completely or being overwhelmed.
These ideas made me so excited I gave up my other avocations, teaching and sculpting, and began learning everything I could about the current immigration debate in the USA and around the world. By December of 2005 after struggling for a few months with how to promote my new idea I saw Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore and thought I could make a documentary. And so I did.
The Story Evolves
When I set out to make this documentary I envisioned a story telling the history of human migration:
This is the original treatment:
Scene One ”It is the Right of the State”
In this scene it is 1730 in central Europe. There are two families huddled on the village green. A man in an official looking uniform is speaking to them “I’m sorry” he says “the King has ruled that you will not be allowed to settle in the kingdom. You will have to leave.”
Should be clearly wrong, ugly but not violent.
Scene Two “The SS St Louis Story”
The SS St Louis left Nazi Germany with 1000 passengers mostly Jewish women and children. It was bound for Cuba but was denied entry there and then in the USA and other nations. Finally it was forced to return to Europe where hundreds of the passengers died at the hands of the Nazis.
There is a independent film about this story. Get one of the survivors to speak.
Scene Three “Free to Live”
It is Detroit and a black family is being kept from living in an all white suburb.
There is an important movie and or book about this story.
Scene Four “Dying at Borders”
Black Africa. This scene shows the misery of the camps on the Rwanda border. Perhaps with voice over from an aid worker talking about how people were turned back to their deaths.
Scene Five “Dying in the Desert”
Perhaps a series of interviews with survivors of the US/Mexico crossing saying how risky the crossing was is and why they attempted it. Show video and stills of the death
Scene Six “A Call to Action”
Oppose vigilanties (show Minuteman videos)
The underground railroad analogy?
Civil Disobedience. Stop the Wall!
What we actually made was completely different. Part of that was a result of events. Who would have guessed that 1,000,000 people would march in the streets of Los Angeles in the spring of 2006 and that we would be able to film it. And part of it was a result of the people I hired to direct the film. The first paid professional I hired was Dave Szamet. His first task was to put together a budget for filming the treatment shown above. Dave made it sound possible and I plunged ahead we hired Justin Daniels to be the director for a test of the concept. With Seth Orozco behind the camera Dave and Justin shot local scenes for a few months and made a five minute short out of it.
It now was the summer of 2006 and it looked possible that we could make the film and the political climate made it urgent. Dave dug into his bag of contacts and we interviewed several potential directors with experience. We settled on Brian Ging and after Brian wrote a revised script we started shooting again in September. For the next year the shooting went on intermittently all of the crew had other jobs or school or both and everything we did was the first time we did it. We fought, we argued, we complained about money, the schedule, the content and the methodology. But finally it was finished. We were able to interview lots of very smart people for the film and to get them to talk about whether there is a basic human right to migrate. The “B roll” was collected in three countries and six states and was a constant source of friction.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Q&A WITH FILMMAKER JOSH TICKELL OF FUEL
Q: What inspired you to make FUEL?
A: I made FUEL to show that there is a way for us to have all the energy we need without compromising peace and freedom.
Q: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?
A: Ten years ago, when I set out to make this film, the biggest challenge I had was getting people to buy into the idea that a movie could make a significant contribution to the world. But my green community saw the validity of these ideas, and with their encouragement I have overcome many obstacles along the way. Until recently, documentaries weren’t seen as vehicles for social change. That rapidly changed with Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, Born into Brothels and especially with An Inconvenient Truth. Suddenly, the little energy documentary I’d been working on for a decade became hot. By the end of this year when the film will be presented in theaters all over the country, the ideas and concepts in FUEL will become mainstream. That’s a powerful shift.
Q: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?
A: I wanted to make a film about the serious challenges we face and ultimately about the power of every individual to make a difference. The biggest challenge came after we won the audience award at Sundance. It was at that time that two camps emerged - those that loved biofuels and those that thought biofuels were awful. I made the difficult choice to re-cut the movie to incorporate not just the controversy around biofuels, but also the other energy solutions that exist. Like any renovation, we started re-cutting with an eye toward repairing a few flaws and ended up knee deep in a complete re-edit. The film that emerged kept the heart of the original movie, but was different enough in content and scope that it merited a new name and a new launch. Hence FUEL was born. Everyone who has seen both films agrees that it was worth the risk, the time and the energy to make the new movie.
Q: What is next for you?
A: My team and I are taking the film on a 25-city tour across the United States this year. We will travel in a convoy of biodiesel vehicles that will go to universities, schools, town halls and political events. Our goal is to “green the vote” of America by getting everyday people, along with politicians and energy companies, to sign onto a 10-year plan that will transition America to renewable energy.
A: I made FUEL to show that there is a way for us to have all the energy we need without compromising peace and freedom.
Q: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?
A: Ten years ago, when I set out to make this film, the biggest challenge I had was getting people to buy into the idea that a movie could make a significant contribution to the world. But my green community saw the validity of these ideas, and with their encouragement I have overcome many obstacles along the way. Until recently, documentaries weren’t seen as vehicles for social change. That rapidly changed with Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, Born into Brothels and especially with An Inconvenient Truth. Suddenly, the little energy documentary I’d been working on for a decade became hot. By the end of this year when the film will be presented in theaters all over the country, the ideas and concepts in FUEL will become mainstream. That’s a powerful shift.
Q: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?
A: I wanted to make a film about the serious challenges we face and ultimately about the power of every individual to make a difference. The biggest challenge came after we won the audience award at Sundance. It was at that time that two camps emerged - those that loved biofuels and those that thought biofuels were awful. I made the difficult choice to re-cut the movie to incorporate not just the controversy around biofuels, but also the other energy solutions that exist. Like any renovation, we started re-cutting with an eye toward repairing a few flaws and ended up knee deep in a complete re-edit. The film that emerged kept the heart of the original movie, but was different enough in content and scope that it merited a new name and a new launch. Hence FUEL was born. Everyone who has seen both films agrees that it was worth the risk, the time and the energy to make the new movie.
Q: What is next for you?
A: My team and I are taking the film on a 25-city tour across the United States this year. We will travel in a convoy of biodiesel vehicles that will go to universities, schools, town halls and political events. Our goal is to “green the vote” of America by getting everyday people, along with politicians and energy companies, to sign onto a 10-year plan that will transition America to renewable energy.
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