An
unsentimental elegy to the American West, SWEETGRASS follows the last
modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s
breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer
pasture.
Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor completed SWEETGRASS in early 2010 and spent the past year screening the film in festivals and theaters. Producer Ilisa Barbash answered some questions from LEF Program Assistant Nellie Kluz
Nellie: What was the biggest surprise you had while recording SWEETGRASS?
Ilisa: It’s got to be how fascinated we became by the sheep.
Seriously, they have played a significant role in human history, and
religious iconography. Individually sheep are at once docile and
stubborn, funny and bland. En masse they are a force to be reckoned
with. Aesthetically they are remarkable from the texture of their wool,
the deliberate strides of their hooves, to their almost fluid like
formation when they swarm together through the ranch gates.
The themes of the film shifted
surprisingly as we edited. We always imagined that the sheep drive into
the mountains would be the central thread of the film. We also supposed
we wouldn't use any narration. I was not sure about interviews. As
outsider, though, I thought that we needed to explore some kind of
contentious issue in the film—a debate about land use. The ranchers had
government permits to herd their sheep into public lands. There were
environmentalist groups in the area, and East Coast hobby ranchers who
objected to that use. Initially I imagined that some of these
controversies might make an interesting film and so I filmed appropriate
sequences in the flatlands. But as Lucien filmed separately in the
mountains, and as we watched the footage he brought down, we realized to
our surprise how interesting and almost viscerally satisfying the sheep
drive was — the people, the sheep, the landscape. And so we went back
to our simple thread, and made a film that is more experiential and
nuanced than the issue film I’d first imagined.
Nellie: Can you talk a bit about the
distribution strategy that’s been used for the film? As a team, you’ve
made other films that were placed more within an ethnographic film
context - what made you feel that something different was in order for
SWEETGRASS?
Ilisa: Our earlier film, In
and Out of Africa, has found its best reception with an academic
audience. We have to admit that this time around with SWEETGRASS
we decided to just make a film we liked, rather than cater to any
particular audience. As we edited we realized that sound and image were
as or even more important to us than a story, so we raised money (most
from the LEF Foundation) to blow the film up to 35mm from the video we
had shot it on. And because of that it has had a much more successful
festival and theatrical life than we could ever have imagined. It’s a
world that appeals to Americans—a contemporary Western, or as one
reviewer put it “a grand documentary Western.” Westerns belong in
theaters on big screens, with popcorn.
Nellie: From a lot of reviews, it seems like SWEETGRASS has
ended up bridging different worlds: the rural Western sheepherding
lifestyle of your subjects and the audiences that see it in a context
like New York or Boston, or internationally. How have the people in the
film responded to the critical acclaim surrounding SWEETGRASS, since it’s so linked to the movie versions of themselves?
Ilisa: This is a tricky issue
because of course, one cannot really do justice to anyone through a film
portrait. So much gets left out and anything you do only touches
superficially on any kind of reality. I think that question is best
answered by the people themselves. When the film first came out it was
reviewed in the New York Times, and people wrote in, commenting on the
moment when Pat, one of the herders calls his mother in a moment of
distress. Pat’s 16 year old daughter immediately penned a letter to the
New York Times, saying:
"Pat Connolly which is one of the sheepherders
in SWEETGRASS is my dad. I encouraged everyone to watch SWEETGRASS i
believe it will give people a sense of the reality of the "frontier". I
have in a Frontier Lit. class in highschool right now and our whole
theme is "What is the frontier"? I do not think some people realize that
this movie is not all about the landscape, but the hard work. In the
trailer of the movie my dad breaks down on the phone with my grandma.
This is the reality, he is not being a baby. At this time he was trying to raise me and it was hard for him cause he was not making a lot of money and it was hard work....
I look up to my dad for spending all summer in the beautiful,
lonely, endless mountains with stubborn sheep. I am sure my dad cussed a
lot knowing him but, i hope people do not think he is a bad guy. Its
just the reality. Try to imagine how frustrated he was. Through all the
hardships and good times that came a long with this trip i know its
something my dad will never forget. I hope everyone enjoys this movie
and learns a little bit from. I cannot wait till it comes to theatres
here! My dad and i are sure tickled about this and wish Lucien the best
luck and we hope to see you soon!"
Nellie: You’ve been working on this film since 2001 – what’s next for both of you?
Ilisa: It's hard for us to talk about future projects before
they've become something tangible. We've embarked on a new project on
the East Coast that, to our surprise, raises many of the same issues as SWEETGRASS.
The main subjects may even end up being Norwegians again! Lucien's
also been filming various pastoral pieces in the Alps and the Pyrenees
and I am working on two books about still photography.
SWEETGRASS is now available on DVD: http://sweetgrassthemovie.com/
LEF grantees Priya Giri Desai and Ann Kim are the directors of MATCH+: A STORY ABOUT LOVE IN THE TIME OF HIV, a narrative documentary film-in-progress about the growing movement for HIV-positive matchmaking in India. LEF Program Assistant Nellie Kluz spoke with the filmmakers.
Nellie: What has your production schedule been like, and what’s been your most challenging shoot so far?
Ann/Priya: It’s taken us 3 trips to India, of meeting people and getting comfortable to prepare for our upcoming 4th and most involved trip. All the shoots are challenges, but the biggest challenge is access – we’re dealing with stigma and HIV, and some people fear that being seen talking to us will “out” them. For instance, we showed up for an interview at a man’s house as he had agreed, assuming we could film right away. But it took another 2 hours to reach a 
comfortable level where we could actually film. Having to communicate through translators is an added level that puts us in the position of outsiders; we’re grateful that people trust us in a way that they feel like we’ll handle the material carefully and tell their story as reliable translators.
Another challenge is the cultural pace there that’s different from the US. Here you call or email to set up a meeting and a shoot happens. In India, everything takes longer. You show up and they don’t want to talk right away; people invite you to a meal first, or their mother is there and they don’t want to discuss anything in front of her. We’ve had to build patience into our own way of working, since we’re used to producing in a more highly scheduled way and we have to get used to a different pace of working.
The HIV/AIDS clinic we’re working with is used to some media attention – they’re used to people parachuting in with cameras, doing a quick story and leaving. The idea of a story that would take multiple trips was different for them, but on the second or third trip they realized we were still there and taking time to get to know patients, so having the clinic’s trust has been an added layer that makes the film possible.
Because we’ve been going to India once every 6-8 months, it’s given us time to work with what we’ve captured so far – right now we’re working with our material over here. With a first-time independent feature documentary, it’s great to have that space to see what we have. We’ve been working with Robb Moss, Jocelyn Glatzer, Bill Anderson, taking time to assess what we have (and don’t have). Our production time in India is so intense - with limited time it feels like every moment counts, which can be stressful.
Nellie: How have your relationships with local crew and translators been working?
Ann/Priya: the city of Chennai is, after Bombay, the home of the second-largest film industry in India, the Tamil film industry, so there is a lot of really top-tier talent here. And we’ve been committed to working with local people – we wanted subjects to be able to talk to the crew without translators so that subjects could feel at ease with them. It’s also more financially feasible for us work with crew in Chennai on an as-needed basis, rather than flying people in from the US for weeks at a time.
The way we’ve been working has been different for our crew, whose definition of a documentary is the more traditional interview-based or nature documentary. The idea of spending extensive time with subjects and filming in a verité style is interesting to them. And our film has been eye-opening for some of the crew members, who’ve never met people who are openly HIV-positive before.
The crew has also been helpful as cultural informants. For instance, we really want the city to be a character. (It’s impossible to say “this is India” in a single story; it’s much too diverse of a place and it’s more powerful to tell a more specific story.) It’s been great working with local crew because we’ve been able to ask them about local love songs, where couples go to meet in secret, stuff like that.
In the time we’ve spent waiting for subjects to come through, we started interviewing local contacts like our driver, friends’ parents, friends’ kids etc., asking them why it’s necessary to get married. It’s an accepted fact but everyone has different reasons. We’ve also been asking people whether people with HIV should be able to get married and have kids, and we’re thinking about using this “man on the street” footage as a way of creating the larger cultural context against which the HIV-positive matchmaking is happening. We want the audience see that the pressure to get married is very real. If you are in your 20s, even if people don’t know you that well, it’s very culturally normal to ask you if you’re married and if you have kids.
Ann: Even as a foreigner, especially as a woman, you get asked about marriage. When I was studying abroad in India in college, I was visiting a small, very rural village and came across an elderly woman whose first question for me was: “did you come to India to get married?”
People might feel that HIV doesn’t affect them directly, but marriage in India affects everyone. We gained a lot of our sense of that from local crew, their families and their social circles. We have a local producer who grew up in Chennai, and has really helped us out through her network. She also has the sensitivity that we require to the stories we’re hearing. She’s been invaluable.
Nellie: How have you been dealing with the privacy needs of the subjects you’ve been working with?
Ann/Priya: Some people face significant hurdles to talking on camera – because if people find out they have HIV, there is a real possibility of losing their job, being ostracized by their communities, even hurting the marriage prospects for others in their family. One way we’ve been getting around this is through audio diaries. For example, while we’re in the US, we have a call with one of our characters every so often, voice recording our conversations. We’re exploring animation for visuals to the audio diaries. Also, we’ve been filming people in such a way that we can get inside their world to the extent that we can without showing faces.
Nellie: Not too long ago it wasn’t even legal in India for people with HIV to get married – what kind of response has Dr. Solomon’s clinic gotten from the community? (NB: Dr. Suniti Solomon is one of the film’s main subjects, a doctor and researcher who runs an HIV/AIDS clinic and does matchmaking on behalf of her patients)
Ann/Priya: The clinic is very careful about privacy – everyone knows that they work with HIV patients. Dr. Solomon doesn’t go to any of her patient’s weddings so as not to tip everyone off that these are her patients. She’s lost friends through her work. She has these two golden retrievers that she adores, and once when the vet came to her house the matchmaking came up and she questioned whether Dr. Solomon’s actions simply brought more orphans into the world. Her answer was essentially that people want to get married, they have the pressure to get married and, as a doctor, it’s her job to help them because it’s relevant to their health. She doesn’t really see herself as a social revolutionary – at the end of the day it’s about her work as a doctor and helping people lead healthier, happier lives.
She has powerful anecdotes to back up her work: once people get married, their stress goes down and their white blood cell count goes up. She and her son (also a doctor) live with a certain kind of stigma, but their conviction really anchors them.
Nellie: Have you been able to attend any weddings of HIV-positive couples?
Ann/Priya: Not so far; the reality is that these wedding don’t happen every day. But as part of the visuals of the film we want to include some of the awesome details of Indian weddings. We went to a flower stall that has enormous photo albums of different kinds of garlands and marriage-hall decorations you can get – really fascinating stuff. It would be great for some of that to make it into the film. All of these physical representations of weddings, the garlands, the saris, the music – they are all symbols of what HIV+ people are striving for in trying to get married and create “normal” lives for themselves.
Ultimately, we’re trying to make an unexpected and hopeful story of HIV in the developing world.
MATCH+ is currently in production, with plans to finish shooting in early 2011.
LEF Program Assistant Nellie Kluz interviewed Verena Paravel, co-director of Foreign Parts, which recently won Best First Feature and the Special CINÉ CINÉMA Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Foreign Parts will have its US premier at the New York Film Festival.
Nellie: How did you come across the junkyard originally and decide to make a film about it? When you were starting out, how did you become immersed in that environment?
Verena: I was shooting my first short video 7 Queens, which consisted in filming my fleeting encounters from Flushing Queens to Time Square, all along the elevated tracks of the 7 Train. There are 150 nationalities living along the line, I wanted to walk under those tracks and cross almost the whole world. On my way, I saw the junkyards of Willets Point. I came back obsessively every day to hang out with people, learn about them and the place, and film. When you spend enough time in a place you end up being part of it.
Nellie: What was the nature of your collaboration with JP Sniadecki? How long did you spend shooting Foreign Parts, and did you have any other crew?
Verena: It became rapidly too hard for me to be alone in the junkyard and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay late at night. It is also physically complicated to carry all the equipment, talk to people, be there, and focus on what and how you are filming. It is a very overwhelming environment for the senses and also socially, emotionally. I asked J.P if he would like to share the experience with me. I took him to the junkyard, and from that day on, we shared seamlessly the camera, the microphone, the computer mouse, the beers, the food, the small room to sleep in in Flushing, etc. We were the crew. We speak the same visual language and we never had to argue, sometimes we just had to look at each other and the camera would move from one pair of hands to the other. And we learned from each other. We trust each other.
Nellie: Can you describe your experiences as a fellow at the Harvard Film Study Center? Has the fellowship aided you in making Foreign Parts?
Verena: It always helps to have people critically looking at your work. The Harvard Film Study Center is the perfect place for that. But more substantially, the Sensory Ethnography Lab is the place that equipped us intellectually.
NB (Nellie) Link: Sensory Ethnograpy Lab »
Nellie: You did an in-progress screening with Artists in Context at Aladdin Auto, a garage near Cambridge – are you planning to make use of more settings like this? Can you talk a little bit about your plans for festivals and distribution?
Verena: We plan to screen the film in the junkyard, before all. Then, will follow the festivals that invited Foreign Parts. It will do its American premiere at the New York Film Festival, then Hamburg International Film Festival, Vancouver International film Festival, Valdivia, Viennale, Festival dei Popoli, BAFICI, etc.. Hopefully we will screen in other garages, chop shops, junkyards, roofs, bars, streets, wherever the film takes us.
Nellie: What has been your personal progress from an academic anthropology background to documentary filmmaking?
Verena: Both ethnographic work and documentary practice require being “in the field.” I was trained by an anthropologist who took us everywhere, streets, bars at night, markets, harbors, and was expecting from us to observe but also to experiment with our own life. I feel the same when in the field making a film, except that the camera, at the end, manifests a sense of “being there”, rendering a human experience that fits the unstable, opaque, ambiguous nature of the real. Filming can be one way of escaping one of the academic bad habits: the pedagogical desire, the desire for transparency. With a camera, I don’t feel the atrophy of the senses that I encounter in the writing process. Making film opens up a space between art and anthropology where, rather than following the canons of an academic work, you can recreate connections between forms, genres, where ethnography, comedy, art, melodrama, can communicate in unexpected ways.
Nellie: Did you learn anything about auto repair while shooting this film?
Verena: I always have been the one who teach mechanics to the rest of my family. If you want your timing belt to be changed, I can give you a good price.
August 2010
LEF Program Manager Sara Archambault recently caught up with TURKEY CREEK director Leah Mahan to talk to her about the film and its outreach project.
TURKEY CREEK received a pre-production grant from the LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund in 2003, when Leah was based in Boston.
Sara: Can you give a brief synopsis of your project? The 10-year trajectory is pretty extraordinary.
Leah: I first started telling this story because I knew
Derrick Evans, who was a teacher in Boston, and he told fascinating
stories about the community Turkey Creek, where he was from, and it
always sounded very intriguing to me.
In
2001, he asked me to visit there with him because he wanted to try to
document the oral history of his family and neighbors. The city of Gulf
Port had grown up around [Turkey Creek] and it looked like it might not
exist much longer. His ancestors settled the place after the Civil War.
They bought 8 forty-acre parcels in the late 1860s and for generations
it had been their home. It was really kind of an isolated rural area,
but in the 1990s, with legalized gaming on the Gulf Coast, Gulf Port
grew rapidly and became a modern city and now this place is surrounded
by an airport, Walmart, and 2 highways and there’s also an industrial
canal right next to it. That was the original reason for going there.
We were telling a story that was a very local story with a lot of
interesting characters and the story was very much about local politics
and this one community. And then I thought I was wrapping up that story
in 2005, just before Katrina. But with Katrina, I just had to keep
following it. Then after Katrina, Derrick became a regional
spokesperson and a nationally-known activist around issues of
sustainable development and recovery on the Gulf Coast.
Sara:
His story is pretty remarkable, particularly the sacrifices he’s made
to give back to this community. It feels like you are trying to strike
a balance between a real character-driven story and a story about
issues of sustainable development.
Leah:
It’s a balance we’re constantly struggling with and will until the
final edit. I do feel that, in the end, it will be a character-driven
film because that is the real strength of the story. I wouldn’t have
even been there to tell the story except for my connection to Derrick.
In a way I feel like this film is about the making of an activist and
the kind of personal choices that people make to dedicate themselves to
something like this. I think what’s interesting about Derrick is that
he’s really conflicted. There are a lot of ways in which he is not cut
out for this role and it’s hard for him. At the same time he feels
really committed to it and it’s clear that once he set out on this
path, he couldn’t turn back. And then, of course, events just kept
happening and are happening as we speak.
Today
in Mississippi there is a meeting called the Gulf of Mexico Alliance
and it’s the 5 governors meeting to talk about water issues. And so
Derrick and the Turkey Creek Watershed team are getting an award at
this event. At the same time Derrick has been involved in organizing a
group of fishermen who are very dissatisfied with the 5 governors and
are making a statement about how they think the way the clean up and
recovery of the disaster should happen. So he is both on the inside and
outside of things.
Sara: Thinking about your
experience as a filmmaker telling this story over time and distance,
what would you say were the most challenging aspects of your production
to date?
Leah:
My children. In 2006, I had twins. It’s been hard because, as I said,
in 2005, I had kind of a parallel track to Derrick in that he’s been
anxious to resolve things and get back to his life. And I had the same
experience, thinking I had a conclusion to the story and then Katrina
making it obvious that this story needed to go much further. Having a
family, it’s been really hard to work in another region and keep on top
of the story. So partly I’ve had to do a lot of work with field
producers working there and me going down there when it was critical
for me to be there, but it has been hard. My next documentary will be
local!
Sara: Tell me about your outreach plan.
Leah: We’re calling our outreach plan BRIDGE THE GULF (http://www.bridgethegulfproject.info/).
It grew out of the TURKEY CREEK documentary because Derrick Evans, the
main character that I’ve been following for almost a decade, became
connected to a lot of grassroots organizations on the Gulf Coast facing
issues similar to those he’s been addressing in his community. After
Katrina, these communities found each other and started working
together. The Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological
Health is a primary partner in this effort. They are a unique
organization because it's a philanthropy where the decision-making
comes from grassroots leaders who are working in communities and
heading small organizations. So the people on the ground make decisions
about where resources should go. We developed this idea of both a
website and a training program to help these organizations to use video
and use the web to tell their stories. Just about the time we were
about to get the website underway and in production, the BP disaster
happened and so we ramped up our efforts and we are just now launching
this site that had in fact been in the works. Now we’re going to be
focusing more on post-production but there’s a lot going on in the
region so we can’t stop and need to keep being in touch with what’s
happening there.
Sara: So you’re at this interesting point where you’re creating, recording and you’re
responding all at the same time. It’s an interesting phenomenon that
reflects the demands on media makers at this cultural moment.
Leah:
Exactly. It’s a new world. Outreach has always been a big part of my
interest. My past two films, I put a lot of time and effort into
community engagement and outreach, but it’s evolved so much. I’m
learning new things all the time.
Sara:
I’m sure the recent Producer’s Institute you attended at the Bay Area
Video Coalition was part of that learning experience. Tell me a little
bit about the support you’ve been getting for the film.
Leah:
Yes, we were at the Producers Institute through BAVC in San Francisco
and that was just a really great experience where we were able to pull
together our ideas for the outreach project and the website and work
really closely with our partner organizations, the main one being the
Gulf Coast Fund, to come up with a great web concept. And they have
been a really great resource for the project.
The
Kellogg Foundation funding was critical in 2009, which really allowed
me to focus on the project and gather the creative team to move it
forward. This happened right when I was ready to give up on
fundraising. I was about to turn it into a web-based/webisode project,
but it happened that program officers from Kellogg were visiting the
Gulf Coast and found out about Turkey Creek. They ended up meeting with
Derrick and seeing some of the footage and Derrick called me up and
said, “some people from the Kellogg Foundation were here and you might
want to call them.” So that came at a critical moment when I was
thinking about going in a different direction.
And
of course the LEF Foundation provided us a critical grant to keep the
momentum going at a time when I thought the story was done.
Sara: How does this film fit into your documentary work over time?
Leah:
I think that my first film HOLDING GROUND about the Dudley Street
neighborhood initiative was very much an issue-driven film with strong
characters. And then SWEET OLD SONG was much more character-driven
film. (See info about Leah’s other projects here: http://www.turkeycreekproject.org/)
TURKEY
CREEK ideally is going to combine the strengths of each of those. I’m
trying to figure out how I’m building on both of those experiences and
finding a way to tell a really important social justice story through
the lens of one individual’s life. So I’m building on my storytelling
skills. I think even just on the level of building my relationship with
the community, because Derrick is a strong personality and some people
have problems with him and therefore they have problems with me. So it
has its strengths and weaknesses to have such a close relationship with
one character because the bridges that they burn are also your
bridges…But I do feel that Derrick’s story is the one to help tie all
the pieces of this tale together.
Turkey
Creek is the recipient of a 2010 Sundance Contemporary Issue Doc
Grant - check out Leah's website for further developments.
In Production/In Festivals
The Balagan Film Series is hosting the Boston premiere of filmmaker Robert
Todd's latest work
Master Plan at the Brattle Theatre on November 1st at 8pm.
LEF Program Manager Sara Archambault caught up with Rob recently and
discussed his film, his process, and his thoughts about non-fiction cinema.
SA: Your original idea for MASTER PLAN was to look at the different ways we structure and organize spaces for living, examining a variety of places from gated communities to prisons. How did you translate your idea for this story into a visual strategy for the film?
RT: Although the central concept for the film has remained, initially I had a very different storyline in mind than the one that I eventually discovered through making the piece. In other words, I scrapped my initial STORY in favor of letting a narrative emerge from the characters I encountered as I sought to construct a survey of "managed" housing. The "characters" were to be both the housing itself and those who managed it. So the shots of the housing would determine the visual design, the interviews would dominate the audio design.
It became clear rather quickly that the differing housing scenarios each suggested a different approach to gathering footage. After the first fewshoots, I noticed shifting dynamics in terms of lens use and color/light palettes that matched my perceptions of opulence or impoverishment, as well as changes in the shape language of shooting that seemed to me to be based on the design of the spaces. My shooting began to shift to address this dynamic, as well as my sense of the structure that was taking form within the interviews. I was discovering that housing was serving more as a metaphor for social "design”: as a way of talking about how we structure our lives within a society to create an effective dynamic social architecture. So I gradually introduced sync shooting, and began to de-emphasize constructed housing as an aesthetic determinant, increasingly allowing the human narrator to dominate the imagescape.
There was, of course, the question: how do you create an architecture out of existing architecture? How do you define housing issues visually? One way is to just show a house. You indicate the type of house and you just show it and there it is. Or you can flow through the space and feel it. But the problem with that I realized is that the cinematic space is created as you watch it and informed by your memory of what you’ve just seen. So let’s say you start with something yellow. That’s your first stroke on the canvas. With something like a painting you can take it in all at once. But with film you can’t. You’re actually taking it in over a huge period of time, so your memory is building these chunks. Therefore, what is happening in the first part of the film begins to form subconscious associations and, you subconsciously begin to understand that the language of this film is yellow. And as the film goes on and yellow is disproven or usurped by other colors, there is a question – you can’t remain conscious of color evolutions when the film throws out all this other information at you, but you can feel it. And that’s what I’m talking about. So in that cinematic experience, my feeling is that over time we start to develop a spatial language that we’ve come to understand as we watch the film. So this is a chance in some ways to create a village. You can listen to the voices describing the spaces, but for the most part I left those voices out so you can place your own understanding through that cinematic experience.
But it’s also in your imagination. I don’t have the same relationships that you will to the color changes or the light changes or how the saturation feels. I just know that I’m creating something that will allow you to have your own emotional experience based on this spatial construction.
SA: How does this film fit with your past work, or is this a new direction?
RT: I've made similar films on a smaller scale, and my last longer format film also used sync, but this is the first long-format, interview-based piece that I've made in which I've edited directly after I've shot each scenario, allowing the edit to inform my ideas as I've moved on to the next shoot. And it's certainly the first piece I've made where I've had the chance to revisit the locations to gather additional material as my ideas have changed. What it mainly shares with my past work is its form being discovered as it's being made.
SA: What have you learned about your own process in the making of MASTER PLAN?
RT: I didn't expect to completely scrap the initial storyline. I had thought that I would make this "survey" piece of the film, and while making that, I'd prepare the production for the other parts. It was great (and true to my nature) to allow the piece to develop organically, with one shoot leading to the next - I'd often think about a new subject/character while in the midst of a conversation with the place or person I was shooting/recording, and that would be my next subject. This reconfirmed for me that I should just keep things simple, spread just a very few seeds, and huge bushels-full of crops would be likely to grow.
At times I thought that I was extremely lucky to find or gain access to certain characters, but looking back on it, what seemed like magic was really just a consequence of an internal logic to the piece: questions that I would ask were always rooted to the main and rather simple idea of how housing stands as a metaphor for comfort and the-space-for-creativity, and I was directed to the subjects I found most exciting either by people who had good answers to those questions, or through the memory of someone with whom I'd had contact with who was connected to a place where I might find more good answers to those questions.
I should have kept a journal, but I'm recalling that I had several places on my list that I thought would be fantastic and necessary to the overall structure of the film, but now I cringe at the thought of including them. I've had other films where this has been the case, but it's been a while since it's been so embarrassingly obvious that those ideas would really not work in the film - either too overbearing, too obvious, too much of a distraction, things like that. I can't say that "keep it simple" has been my mantra, but I've tried to keep things relevant to a certain line of thinking/perceiving, and that's enough for me to call it "working".
Another thing: for a number of months I had promised myself that I would watch it without sound to see how the visuals were working, and I wasted these months refining dialogue without that sound-free viewing. I learned a ton from that simple silent screening. I had been concentrating so closely on the evolution of ideas that had been building in the vocal track and how the visuals supported those ideas, that I totally forgot my original idea (about letting the image sets establish an overarching architectural mileu). That’s the problem with sound, it can dominate. Then going back, I was able to say –that shot doesn’t go with that shot, and these pieces work better together. Suddenly, you’re crossing a threshold. I ended up cutting about 15 minutes out of the film following that. I also cut a very large amount of dialogue out following that event.
SA: What camera are you using?
RT: I mainly used the Bolex 16mm camera because it is lightweight and versatile, and I've been shooting with it for years. That last part is important: my comfort with the camera allows it to become almost like a prosthetic extension - I find myself reacting to what's in front of me in as direct a manner as I've found possible with a motion picture camera. We used an Arri SR1 for the sync shoots because it's reliable and the operator was most comfortable with this camera.
SA: Where does your work fit into documentary?
RT: I think of myself more as a portraitist. For me it’s linked to Aristotle’s idea about how we perceive, as opposed to later philosophers who talk about how we receive information.. We actually physically look out. Our vision is directed out. So the camera is an odd thing. It makes it so you have that sense that your vision is directed out. It enhances that idea of active direction and, at the same time, the idea that the lens gathers light inward. To some degree that is the same recipe for portraiture. In portraiture, the idea is that the artist encounters a subject and in between them is the medium - paper, sculpting material, what have you. That medium captures the process of discovery that the artist is involved with. However that does not reflect a couple of things, like what the subject is experiencing. Are they relaxed, or maintaining a pose or an attitude? So they too have an active role in the medium. But the most interesting thing is what happens in the medium itself. The person who is drawing sees the drawing directly. The figure doesn’t really have the same relationship to this. However, when the artist is forming their action they’re aware that what is happening with the medium is possibly different than how they would have anticipated it. And so some people are really hung up on the idea of getting the image right. And so when it’s not doing that, what do you do? And others are more apt to say - I’m just going to see what happens. And that’s wonderful and we’re left with the results of that discovery and need to adjust our expectations accordingly.
SA: So do you think of yourself in that more interpretive mode?
RT: Well, I see myself as being part of a triangle between what seems to be out there, what kind of notion I have of what I’m feeling about what’s out there, and then what the camera and the sound will do. The camera makes this magic with you and the character. It transforms whatever you thought you were going to get into this other thing.
You see a lot of lock down documentaries where they never move the damn camera and it’s just this wonderful still frame. That can be a great still photograph, but I’ve lost a little bit of the understanding of what was at risk in that relationship. Where did the camera have any kind of risk potential for me as the viewer in that relationship?
SA: It seems that formal concerns are as significant as those of story in your work.
RT: I think experiential concerns, is how I think about it. For example, everyone says that your art direction should serve story. Your sound design should serve story. Your cutting should serve story. Well, that may be true. But it is a certain impoverishment of a person’s experience when the story is dealt with in such a way that those other concerns are not seen as significant quarters of the pie. Yes, there’s a story; let’s take that for granted. But one quarter of the pie is the performance of the characters, another is this atmospheric thing, another is the sound evolution, and the last quarter is that sort of mysterious other thing that happens in editing. All of those things together are actually the story. But people commonly say that the story is these people walking around telling us this stuff. But that doesn’t take into account that it’s a movie. Part of what makes it a really compelling experience is that the story takes place in just this way. It takes place because the filmmaker paid attention to the movement of the camera, the position of the subject in the environment, the sense of sound being in my head and then it’s suddenly at a distance. All of those things together are storytelling.
Film is a phenomenological process. We say it’s discovery; we say it’s transformation; but in a way it is just the magic of life. Now that said, it’s only going to work for me if there’s magic in the experience of the film in the theater and that’s kind of a strange thing. That’s got to be the hardest part of making films. You go too far and over-determine the audience’s reaction or you don’t go far enough in telling the audience (and I mean other viewers as much as myself) where to go. And I think that’s the risk in nonfiction. If we use the camera as a recorder, we’ve got the wrong idea. But if you use the camera as some sort of extension of your heart and mind, then you’re on the right track.
MASTER PLAN will have its Boston premiere as a part of the BALAGAN FILM SERIES at the Brattle Theatre, Tuesday, November 1st at 8pm. Find more information here: http://www.balaganfilms.com/?q=node/29