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.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Beth Murphy talks about making "Beyond Belief"
In July 2000 I was teaching a journalism class at American University Paris and brought my students to Amnesty International for a conversation about genocide. As we were wrapping up, the Amnesty representative ushered us into a room and over to a large cardboard box with a bright blue fabric peeking out. Have you ever worn a burqa before? she asked. As I pulled the tent-like garment over my head and imagined being forced to wear it, I thought about what it would be like to be invisible to the world. That’s when I knew I wanted to produce a film about Afghanistan and help Afghan women to become visible again. The challenge was finding a way for the film to resonate with an American audience.
A year later, after the attacks of September 11th, the ability to draw the connection between Afghanistan and us seemed obvious. Three months later, I traveled to Afghanistan to film the growing humanitarian crisis and the aid workers who were struggling to respond to it. I was looking forward to seeing women shedding their burqas, liberated from the medieval laws of the Taliban. But when I arrived, all the women I encountered were still covered head-to-toe, allowed only a small mesh patch for their window to the world. When the documentary I was working on failed to sell, I vowed to return to this place that captured a piece of me with its beauty, isolation and sorrow.
What I could never have imagined then is that as I was filming in Afghanistan, there were two women living in my own backyard who were opening their eyes to the world in new and profound ways after losing their husbands on September 11th. Four years later I would return to Afghanistan with Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, whose loss gave them permission to shut out the world, but whose compassion forced them to have a leadership role in it.
It was important to me to tell their story because as the world has become increasingly divided by politics, ethnicity and religion, Susan and Patti affirm a common humanity that we all share. From the beginning, they recognize their Afghan counterparts as individuals—women they identify with and feel a connection to—rather than a monolithic, nameless, faceless group, as often happens during the world’s tragedies.
I was struck by Susan and Patti’s ability to recognize Afghanistan for all of its complexities. True, it is the country in which the terrorists trained to kill their husbands, but it is also a place that had been used as a pawn during the Cold War, only to then be abandoned by the international community – sparking a civil war that would last another decade. The effects were especially cruel for women. Banished from public life by the Taliban, they’ve suffered staggering declines in health. (Afghanistan is still one of the only countries in the world where women have a shorter life expectancy than men.) And when we arrived in Kabul in May 2006, the burqa still defined public life for most
women.
Susan and Patti’s mission is simple: to make life better for these women. And so is their message: hatred is the root of terrorism. They aren’t naïve enough—nor do they have enough hubris—to think they can stop terrorism in its tracks. But they do have enough optimism—and enough faith in humanity—to believe that the War on Terror cannot be fought with bombs and bullets alone.
A year later, after the attacks of September 11th, the ability to draw the connection between Afghanistan and us seemed obvious. Three months later, I traveled to Afghanistan to film the growing humanitarian crisis and the aid workers who were struggling to respond to it. I was looking forward to seeing women shedding their burqas, liberated from the medieval laws of the Taliban. But when I arrived, all the women I encountered were still covered head-to-toe, allowed only a small mesh patch for their window to the world. When the documentary I was working on failed to sell, I vowed to return to this place that captured a piece of me with its beauty, isolation and sorrow.
What I could never have imagined then is that as I was filming in Afghanistan, there were two women living in my own backyard who were opening their eyes to the world in new and profound ways after losing their husbands on September 11th. Four years later I would return to Afghanistan with Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, whose loss gave them permission to shut out the world, but whose compassion forced them to have a leadership role in it.
It was important to me to tell their story because as the world has become increasingly divided by politics, ethnicity and religion, Susan and Patti affirm a common humanity that we all share. From the beginning, they recognize their Afghan counterparts as individuals—women they identify with and feel a connection to—rather than a monolithic, nameless, faceless group, as often happens during the world’s tragedies.
I was struck by Susan and Patti’s ability to recognize Afghanistan for all of its complexities. True, it is the country in which the terrorists trained to kill their husbands, but it is also a place that had been used as a pawn during the Cold War, only to then be abandoned by the international community – sparking a civil war that would last another decade. The effects were especially cruel for women. Banished from public life by the Taliban, they’ve suffered staggering declines in health. (Afghanistan is still one of the only countries in the world where women have a shorter life expectancy than men.) And when we arrived in Kabul in May 2006, the burqa still defined public life for most
women.
Susan and Patti’s mission is simple: to make life better for these women. And so is their message: hatred is the root of terrorism. They aren’t naïve enough—nor do they have enough hubris—to think they can stop terrorism in its tracks. But they do have enough optimism—and enough faith in humanity—to believe that the War on Terror cannot be fought with bombs and bullets alone.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Geralyn Pezanoski talks about the experience of making "Mine"
Like millions across the country I was profoundly affected by the startling images I witnessed during coverage of Hurricane Katrina: people stranded on rooftops, suffering crowds at the Super Dome, and the decimation of one of America’s most culturally vibrant and diverse cities. And like millions of others I was devastated as well by images of the thousands of animals in distress – their helplessness bringing into even greater relief the chaos and overwhelming scope of the tragedy. So when I read about a nascent but quickly growing rescue effort being carried out by animal lovers from across the country and the world, I decided to go to New Orleans to document this incredible undertaking.
During the ensuing six weeks I filmed dozens of intrepid rescue workers, devoted animal rights advocates, and thousands of animals in need of saving - even after they were ‘rescued’. While a few residents trickled back into New Orleans and managed to reclaim their pets, most were displaced and barred from entering the city, so I watched day after day as these unclaimed animals were loaded onto trucks and planes and sent to shelters across the country, their fates uncertain. While the hope was that many of these animals would either be fostered until their owners claimed them, or adopted into new homes, the reality was that many of them would meet the same fate as millions of other animals around the country: being euthanized before the year’s end. It was this horrific thought that lead to my decision to foster (and eventually adopt) a Katrina dog, a pointer mix I called Nola. She was skin and bones when I met her, and she refused to leave my side for more than a couple of seconds. It didn’t take either of us long to bond.
As the months went on, my crew and I began to see an increasing number of residents returning to New Orleans to try to rebuild their lives. It became apparent that legions of them - people who had lost everything – were desperate to find their pets. We heard about hundreds of other cases across the county: people who were still displaced but on the hunt for their animals. But as broad and deep as the story went, there seemed to be strangely little information about it in mainstream media. I had many questions: Why hadn’t people been allowed to evacuate with their animals? Now that these animals were adopted into new homes, who had the authority to decide whether they should be left where they were or returned to their previous owners? Why were original owners running into such resistance in trying to find and reclaim their pets? What would I do if someone came looking for Nola, to whom I had become so attached?
I explored these questions and many more during the three years I spent making MINE. My primary focus was on a handful of extraordinary Katrina victims committed to finding their animals even years after the disaster, but the story extends to rescue workers and new adoptive guardians, who, like me, decided to take in pets left behind and care for them as their own. We met and interviewed hundreds of people over the years, and what emerged was a profound story of the bond between humans and animals, and the power of that bond to ameliorate human suffering. Equally striking, however, were stories both of the continuing prevalence of racism and classism in America, and the incredible power of compassion in the wake of tragedy. All of these stories become one in MINE.
I hope that MINE puts a human face on issues that may seem far removed from the lives of most Americans, but in fact affect us all - and that the film will promote much needed dialogue not just about how we treat our animals, but how we treat each other.
During the ensuing six weeks I filmed dozens of intrepid rescue workers, devoted animal rights advocates, and thousands of animals in need of saving - even after they were ‘rescued’. While a few residents trickled back into New Orleans and managed to reclaim their pets, most were displaced and barred from entering the city, so I watched day after day as these unclaimed animals were loaded onto trucks and planes and sent to shelters across the country, their fates uncertain. While the hope was that many of these animals would either be fostered until their owners claimed them, or adopted into new homes, the reality was that many of them would meet the same fate as millions of other animals around the country: being euthanized before the year’s end. It was this horrific thought that lead to my decision to foster (and eventually adopt) a Katrina dog, a pointer mix I called Nola. She was skin and bones when I met her, and she refused to leave my side for more than a couple of seconds. It didn’t take either of us long to bond.
As the months went on, my crew and I began to see an increasing number of residents returning to New Orleans to try to rebuild their lives. It became apparent that legions of them - people who had lost everything – were desperate to find their pets. We heard about hundreds of other cases across the county: people who were still displaced but on the hunt for their animals. But as broad and deep as the story went, there seemed to be strangely little information about it in mainstream media. I had many questions: Why hadn’t people been allowed to evacuate with their animals? Now that these animals were adopted into new homes, who had the authority to decide whether they should be left where they were or returned to their previous owners? Why were original owners running into such resistance in trying to find and reclaim their pets? What would I do if someone came looking for Nola, to whom I had become so attached?
I explored these questions and many more during the three years I spent making MINE. My primary focus was on a handful of extraordinary Katrina victims committed to finding their animals even years after the disaster, but the story extends to rescue workers and new adoptive guardians, who, like me, decided to take in pets left behind and care for them as their own. We met and interviewed hundreds of people over the years, and what emerged was a profound story of the bond between humans and animals, and the power of that bond to ameliorate human suffering. Equally striking, however, were stories both of the continuing prevalence of racism and classism in America, and the incredible power of compassion in the wake of tragedy. All of these stories become one in MINE.
I hope that MINE puts a human face on issues that may seem far removed from the lives of most Americans, but in fact affect us all - and that the film will promote much needed dialogue not just about how we treat our animals, but how we treat each other.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Johan Norberg, Author of "Financial Fiasco", on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The Mysterious Ways Of Fannie And Freddie
Johan Norberg, 01.15.10, 05:10 PM EST (re-printed from Forbes.com)
Why aren't any of the companies' agents at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission?
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has started its work with a highly publicized two-day hearing in Washington, D.C. The Commission is supposed to find out what caused the financial crisis, but it seems like they are trying to enact Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Among all the bankers and regulators on stage during the hearings, there was not a single representative of the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were major causes of the housing bubble.
The reason for the omission is disturbingly obvious. When Congress created the Commission they wanted a crisis narrative of greedy bankers and passive regulators. In other words, they wanted to put the blame somewhere else. Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ) are creatures of Congress and it was Congress that pushed them to undermine underwriting standards and increase lending to low-income households while stalling reform.
Fannie and Freddie regularly let members of Congress announce large housing developments for low-income earners in exchange for political and financial support; over the past decade the two GSEs spent almost $200 million on lobbying and contributions to both parties, but most of all to Democrats, the present majority. Politicians wanted scapegoats on stage--Fannie and Freddie representatives would have functioned as a mirror.
Fannie and Freddie had an implicit government guarantee that made it possible for them to borrow cheaper than other financial institutions, and with those thousands of billions of dollars they bought mortgages from primary lenders, so that these got their money back and could lend even more to other prospective homebuyers.
In 2004, almost at the peak of the bubble, the Bush administration increased the ambitious targets for GSE lending of the Clinton Administration. It said that within four years, 56% of Fannie's and Freddie's mortgages should go to low-income households and 28% of the mortgages to those with a "very-low income." In plain English this means households that could not afford that mortgage the moment the interest rate returned to a more realistic level. The only thing we ever heard from Congress were demands to increase lending even more aggressively.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pioneered securitization of mortgages, whereby they re-packaged loans and sold them to investors. Increased political pressure to serve low-income households meant that they soon began to buy mortgage-backed securities on an enormous scale themselves. After 2004 the market could make almost any kind of loans, knowing that the government-sponsored enterprises would buy them. About 40% of the loans were junk. "We didn't really know what we were buying," admits a former director at Fannie Mae.
Investment bankers have been publicly scolded by the Commission for taking on so much risk, with leverage ratios around 30 to 1. Shouldn't they ask how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up with a leverage ratio closer to 60 to 1?
As a result of their losses, Fannie and Freddie blew up in September 2008 and were in effect nationalized. The Treasury Department implemented $200 billion caps on government aid to each company, which have just been removed. The worst consequence of removing caps is not potential cost of hundreds of billions to taxpayer, but the effect on the rest of the market. The GSEs showed Wall Street that subprime lending was encouraged by the government; they made it profitable for lenders to make bad loans to sell them; and they pushed up house prices by opening up the market for owning homes to people who had previously rented.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission couldn't care less. Granted, government-sponsored enterprises are mentioned in the 21st of 22 areas of inquiry for the Commission, but even there it is an afterthought: "financial institutions" in general is the object of study in No 21. And, as previously mentioned, no representative from Fannie or Freddie was invited to the hearing.
Today, former executives at the two GSEs say that the firms made so many bad loans because Congress constantly leaned on them to buy more mortgages from low-income borrowers. It is no surprise that Congress does not want anyone to hear that message. But it makes a mockery of their pretention to examine all possible causes of the crisis in an even-handed and objective way.
A former GSE employee recently said, self-critically: "It didn't take a lot of sophistication to notice what was happening to the quality of the loans. Anybody could have seen it. But nobody on the outside was even questioning us about it."
Apparently the outside world still isn't.
Johan Norberg is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis.
Johan Norberg, 01.15.10, 05:10 PM EST (re-printed from Forbes.com)
Why aren't any of the companies' agents at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission?
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has started its work with a highly publicized two-day hearing in Washington, D.C. The Commission is supposed to find out what caused the financial crisis, but it seems like they are trying to enact Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Among all the bankers and regulators on stage during the hearings, there was not a single representative of the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were major causes of the housing bubble.
The reason for the omission is disturbingly obvious. When Congress created the Commission they wanted a crisis narrative of greedy bankers and passive regulators. In other words, they wanted to put the blame somewhere else. Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ) are creatures of Congress and it was Congress that pushed them to undermine underwriting standards and increase lending to low-income households while stalling reform.
Fannie and Freddie regularly let members of Congress announce large housing developments for low-income earners in exchange for political and financial support; over the past decade the two GSEs spent almost $200 million on lobbying and contributions to both parties, but most of all to Democrats, the present majority. Politicians wanted scapegoats on stage--Fannie and Freddie representatives would have functioned as a mirror.
Fannie and Freddie had an implicit government guarantee that made it possible for them to borrow cheaper than other financial institutions, and with those thousands of billions of dollars they bought mortgages from primary lenders, so that these got their money back and could lend even more to other prospective homebuyers.
In 2004, almost at the peak of the bubble, the Bush administration increased the ambitious targets for GSE lending of the Clinton Administration. It said that within four years, 56% of Fannie's and Freddie's mortgages should go to low-income households and 28% of the mortgages to those with a "very-low income." In plain English this means households that could not afford that mortgage the moment the interest rate returned to a more realistic level. The only thing we ever heard from Congress were demands to increase lending even more aggressively.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pioneered securitization of mortgages, whereby they re-packaged loans and sold them to investors. Increased political pressure to serve low-income households meant that they soon began to buy mortgage-backed securities on an enormous scale themselves. After 2004 the market could make almost any kind of loans, knowing that the government-sponsored enterprises would buy them. About 40% of the loans were junk. "We didn't really know what we were buying," admits a former director at Fannie Mae.
Investment bankers have been publicly scolded by the Commission for taking on so much risk, with leverage ratios around 30 to 1. Shouldn't they ask how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up with a leverage ratio closer to 60 to 1?
As a result of their losses, Fannie and Freddie blew up in September 2008 and were in effect nationalized. The Treasury Department implemented $200 billion caps on government aid to each company, which have just been removed. The worst consequence of removing caps is not potential cost of hundreds of billions to taxpayer, but the effect on the rest of the market. The GSEs showed Wall Street that subprime lending was encouraged by the government; they made it profitable for lenders to make bad loans to sell them; and they pushed up house prices by opening up the market for owning homes to people who had previously rented.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission couldn't care less. Granted, government-sponsored enterprises are mentioned in the 21st of 22 areas of inquiry for the Commission, but even there it is an afterthought: "financial institutions" in general is the object of study in No 21. And, as previously mentioned, no representative from Fannie or Freddie was invited to the hearing.
Today, former executives at the two GSEs say that the firms made so many bad loans because Congress constantly leaned on them to buy more mortgages from low-income borrowers. It is no surprise that Congress does not want anyone to hear that message. But it makes a mockery of their pretention to examine all possible causes of the crisis in an even-handed and objective way.
A former GSE employee recently said, self-critically: "It didn't take a lot of sophistication to notice what was happening to the quality of the loans. Anybody could have seen it. But nobody on the outside was even questioning us about it."
Apparently the outside world still isn't.
Johan Norberg is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis.
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