Logline: Three people are torn from their families during the Salvadoran civil war and attempt to find reconciliation.

¿Dónde Están? is a documentary about the search for children who disappeared during the Salvadoran civil war. Many were survivors of massacres carried out by US-trained battalions of the Salvadoran army; they were taken from the scene by soldiers, to grow up in orphanages or be raised by strangers, not knowing their true history or identity. Through three separate yet intertwined journeys, ¿Dónde Están? tells the story of war survivors whose lives reflect the troubled reality of a country still in transition from war to peace. Jamie, 28, was adopted from El Salvador as an infant and raised in a Washington suburb; she searches for her birth family. Miguel, 26, was separated from his father after an army attack killed his mother; unable to earn enough to support his own family, he illegally immigrates to the US for work. His father, survivor of a massacre in which his previous family died, searches for justice. Margarita’s mother was murdered in a massacre and her four siblings, children at the time, disappeared; she’s an investigator for Pro-Búsqueda, a human rights organization that tracks down and reunites disappeared children with their families. Their stories of struggle and hope reveal the larger issues of how a society heals itself from the scars of a civil war.

Links:  (More to come in the coming months!)

www.probusqueda.org – Pro Búsqueda
www.museo.com.sv – Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen

Other Articles

• Muhammad Yunus Banks on America (WT)
• Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
• Why War?
• Howl
• Meet The Filmmaker — Julia Bacha
• Recycle
• Where Soldiers Come From
• Cinema Jenin

As a literature and fine arts major in college, I was drawn to film for its ability to combine story and image in a way that had a unique immediacy and sense of shared experience and could be as profound as great literature and great art.  And not just story, but story with all the nuances, layers of meaning, metaphors and similes, voice and tone – like literature; and not just image but gorgeous tones whether black and white or color, as well as the manipulation and selection of image to mirror and further the narrative.  I grew up in a small town with a sleepy movie theater, but a boyfriend from Philadelphia took me to the Band Box revival house in the city’s Germantown neighborhood – where people brought their dogs and someone sold gingerbread and cider at intermission – and introduced me to Jules and Jim and Juliet of the Spirits: I was hooked.    Then, when I saw Don’t Look Back and Titicut Follies, both about subjects that I cared intensely about, I saw the potential of documentary to be all the best of fiction – but real life on top of it. That’s stayed with me: that a great documentary film can give us all that we crave from story, can bind us to our communities whether electric Dylan or our vulnerable humankindness,  and can move us to action. I was working in a state mental hospital when I saw Titicut Follies, some years after its release; the universality of experience that poor and minority people had in the mental health system, in Wiseman’s searing commentary and the hospital where I worked, encouraged me to become an activist on behalf of the patients.

Which artists have inspired you the most in your life/career?

Robert Frank and Susan Meiselas in photography, both masters of documentary work; Frank for his unfettered vision in The Americans and Meiselas for her courage. Frederick Wiseman, in his choice of subject matter. D.A. Pennebaker, for the look and feel, particularly of  Don’t Look Back. Charles Burnett, for the sensation of blurring fiction and documentary in Killer of Sheep, even though it’s a fiction film. The Exiles by Kent McKenzie, which is a complete mix of fiction and non-fiction, is fabulous, so complex and moving, such a subtle but powerful message that depends entirely on that mix. I am enamored with Alekandr Burov’s cinematography, particularly in The Italian. Claire Denis’ Chocolat and Brigette Rouan’s Overseas are fiction but come out of their life experiences in a way that you really absorb them as fictionalized reality; both deal with gender and politics indirectly but very intensely.  It’s a time of opportunity for women filmmakers now, with many, many fine documentaries in recent years. But these excellent films I mention really shaped my vision of what documentaries can look like and tell about.

When did you decide to make Donde Estan?

I was working in El Salvador from 2001-2007 funding grassroots development as a representative of the Inter-American Foundation, and as I travelled to small rural communities all over the country to talk about development projects I learned about a military strategy in the early 1980s, during the Salvadoran war: the massacre of civilian populations in areas controlled by the guerrillas.  One piece of that story was what happened to children who survived and were taken away by soldiers, often to grow up in orphanages or be adopted by families in the U.S. or Europe. I thought the story of the children was a way into the story of the massacres and then into the struggle for justice and reconciliation in places around the world that suffered large scale human rights abuse.

Who do you hope your film will reach when it’s complete? What kind of impact do you hope to have?

KAYE AND MARIA: The U.S. government was complicit in the human rights abuses in El Salvador, so we think it’s important that we as U.S. citizens take a new look at that – as a history lesson but also as a reminder that a moral compass can be overridden by politics but not destroyed. It’s important that Salvadorans, especially youth, both in El Salvador and those living in the U.S., know what happened; because of the lack of independent press in El Salvador, even people living there during the war didn’t necessarily know about the human rights issues unless a friend or family member disappeared or was tortured or murdered.  The transition from war to real peace is a long process, requiring multiple actors, with the possibility of redress always there, even if only at the edge of memory. We hope that people will be inspired to revisit that time as a springboard to the present, through discussions within families, communities, work groups, schools and religious centers; to address the specific situations related to the film but also to extrapolate to other related issues like immigration reform, family reunification, cultural identity, economic opportunities and rule of law.

It’s easy to keep going when things are going well. What keeps you going when things are difficult?

Working on a long term project about human trauma is hard; no way around it. But our protagonists are very much alive, survivors in their own particular ways, who make me laugh as well as cry. Their wit and spunkiness invigorate me, always.

As we reach the end of the decade and look back on the changes that have occurred in the world of documentary film, can you identify a film or an event that changed the way you thought about documentary?

As the screens shrink, there’s the danger that film, including documentary, will adapt by emphasizing action over reflection and by obliterating the spaces and silences, so important in all kinds of film. That impossibly long and sensuous shot in I Am Cuba would be reduced to five-second cuts! Russian filmmaker Pavel Medvedev tells simple stories of workers that are stories of Russia, stories of relationships, stories of oppression and endurance and hardship and joy. His beautifully filmed documentaries impressed me with the power of indirect narrative and reminded me of what I initially loved about film and still do: the ability, like literature and art, to reach beyond the limitations of language and affect us deeply.

Other Articles

• Q&A with directors Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer
• A Small Act
• Meet The Filmmaker — Dara Kell
• This Is My Picture When I Was Dead
• Applications for The Good Pitch at SILVERDOCS Now Open
• Meet The Filmmaker — Heather Courtney
• Stories of Change Convening at SFF Twenty Ten
• Al Gore presents 2009 REEL Current Award to Sundance Documentary Program Fellow Mai Iskander

Why documentary? As a child, I was fascinated by history and personal stories;  I was often found with my nose in a book- one series of books I remember devouring in elementary school (often to the detriment of my math homework) was the “Childhood of Famous Americans”.  While I love literature, especially poetry, it’s the non-fiction stories that I’ve been most drawn to since I can remember.  So it’s not surprising that I spend a good portion of my time now immersing myself in other people’s histories and lives- most recently focusing on untold stories of Latinos in the Americas- and figuring out how best to visually translate those stories to the screen.  Documentary has taken me to places both emotionally, politically  and geographically that I can’t imagine going in any other profession.  It’s an honor  – and a responsibility- to accompany my subjects on their journeys and to develop a relationship with them.  And in documentary I have the ability to be a visual storyteller, while at the same time, hopefully creating change on a personal, and maybe even a political level.  Ideally the stories and issues raised in my work will challenge the way an individual looks at an issue,  a community, at themselves.   So to answer the question, I’m passionate about the fact that film allows me to be an expansive storyteller- didn’t Eisenstein call it the greatest of the art forms? It certainly is one of the most collaborative, and in the best collaborations lie untold possibilities.

Which artists have inspired you the most in your life/career?

A difficult question! I have so many influences from artists in different disciplines, and perhaps as much influence from people who don’t consider themselves artists. My parents came to the US to begin anew from Colombia and Ireland, and as their first “American” born child,  their stories and lives have influenced me in a myriad ways.   As a teenager I spent many hours in the theater (the role I remember most vividly is Emily from “Our Town”), and I thought that was where I would make my home until I took a film course my senior year in high school- which changed everything.  The university I went to didn’t offer production courses, so as an undergraduate, I spent hours tucked away in the campus movie theater, taking every film analysis course that was offered-reading, writing, watching, reading, writing and watching again. I remember being enthralled by Maya Deren, Vertov, Brackage, Fassbinder, Truffaut, and so many others. I immersed myself in art history (falling in love with the Baroque), Latin American history (it was the 1980’s, – watching history as it was unfolding) and English literature (modern American poets, and Anglo Irish literature). And  although I was disappointed at the time not to be making films (I had to wait until graduate school), I realize that it was a blessing in disguise: my base in the humanities is my base as a filmmaker.

When did you decide to make ¿Dónde Están?

I decided to make ¿Dónde Están? in 2007, when my co-producer Kaye Pyle approached me with the idea of making a documentary about the disappeared children in El Salvador. It was fortuitous timing as I had just finished a project, and the subject matter appealed to me on various levels. Through personal stories,  I saw the possibility of not just highlighting the plight of children who were separated from their families during the war, but exploring the ramifications of that separation and the government policies after the war.  It occurred to me that the US mainstream media had devoted very little time to El Salvador  since the Peace Accords of the 1990’s, despite the fact that over a quarter of the Salvadoran population now resides in the US. I also thought that the program could speak on a very personal level to those Latinos whose families  have been torn apart by war and forced economic migration, and who now live a transnational existence. Most importantly the documentary could explore the question that many Latinos grapple with: how does a country, a family, an individual, really transition from war to peace?

Who do you hope your film will reach when it’s complete? What kind of impact do you hope to have?

KAYE AND MARIA: The U.S. government was complicit in the human rights abuses in El Salvador, so we think it’s important that we as U.S. citizens take a new look at that – as a history lesson but also as a reminder that a moral compass can be overridden by politics but not destroyed. It’s important that Salvadorans, especially youth, both in El Salvador and those living in the U.S., know what happened; because of the lack of independent press in El Salvador, even people living there during the war didn’t necessarily know about the human rights issues unless a friend or family member disappeared or was tortured or murdered.  The transition from war to real peace is a long process, requiring multiple actors, with the possibility of redress always there, even if only at the edge of memory. We hope that people will be inspired to revisit that time as a springboard to the present, through discussions within families, communities, work groups, schools and religious centers; to address the specific situations related to the film but also to extrapolate to other related issues like immigration reform, family reunification, cultural identity, economic opportunities and rule of law.

It’s easy to keep going when things are going well. What keeps you going when things are difficult?

Belief in the project itself keeps me going when things get difficult.  Documentary filmmaking is not for the faint of heart. It’s all about perseverance- and the belief that the story we have invested years in, is a story that deserves to be told.

As we reach the end of the decade and look back on the changes that have occurred in the world of documentary film, can you identify a film or an event that changed the way you thought about documentary?

One moment that stands out for me -although not recent- is watching Michael Apted’s  “28 Up” on PBS with my father one Sunday afternoon when I was in high school.  I remember being captivated by many of the subjects and struck by the possibilities of personal stories to comment on larger social forces- possibilities in documentary that I had never considered before.  It was a life changing moment, and unlike anything I had seen to date when I was 17.

Other Articles

• Position of the Stars
• Where Soldiers Come From
• Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter
• Sundance Institute Announces Final Grant Award Recipients For Stories Of Change
• The Seekers/ Nostalgia de la Luz
• The Georgian Year
• Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita
• The Fire This Time

More than 75 DFP Fellows from across the US and every corner of the globe took planes, trains and automobiles to join the snow covered festivities in Park City, Utah. Representing nine film premiers and 23 Works-In-Progress, some were nurtured by DFP from early development through post production.  DFP filmmakers promoted projects addressing social justice and human rights issues worldwide. They attended panels, participated in curated and hosted industry meetings, enjoyed social networking, fundraising, and hopefully caught a few screenings in between.

DFP grantees at this year’s festival gave voice to the Native American community, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) communities, and to women who have been silenced, as they shed light on untold stories of global injustice, fearless activists and unsung heroes around the world. These filmmakers continue to champion issues of immigration, border struggles, racial discrimination, military recruitment, effects of war, and so much more.

For those of  you who joined us at this year’s festival, we hope that you sought them out, tracked them down, and engaged them in conversation. For any who missed speaking to them in person, DFP staff conducted interviews with each Fellow, to share their thoughts with readers. Find out more about these filmmakers by clicking on the interviews below.

25 TO LIFE
Michael L. Brown (Director)  Q&A with Michael

William Brawner was infected with HIV before he turned two and kept it a secret for over twenty years. Now he seeks redemption from the women of his promiscuous past and embarks on a new phase of life with his pregnant wife, who is HIV-negative.

AN AMERICAN PROMISE
Michèle Stephenson & Joe Brewster (Co-Directors / Co-Producers)  Q&A with Joe and Michele

Follows the educational journeys of two African American boys from kindergarten to high school at an elite prep school. A n intimate glimpse into universal issues facing African American boys from their earliest experiences in school.

AS NUTAYUNEAN
Anne Makepeace (Director)  Q&A with Anne

Jessie Little Doe Baird, of the Wampanoag nation (Rhode Island and Massachusetts), revives a silenced indigenous language that was out of use for more than 150 years. The film unravels the disappearance of the language, while telling a contemporary story of unprecedented cultural revival.

BUDRUS
Julia Bacha (Director)   Q&A with Julia

Budrus follows a Palestinian leader who unites Fatah, Hamas and Israelis in an unarmed movement to save his village from destruction. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter jumps into the fray.

CAMP VICTORY, AFGHANISTAN
Carol Dysinger (Director)  Q&A with Carol

Camp Victory, Afghanistan tells the story of the Afghan officers charged with building a new Afghan National Army and the U.S. National Guardsmen sent to mentor them.

CESAR’S LAST FAST
Richard Ray Perez (Director) Q&A with Richard
Molly O’Brien (Producer)   Q&A with Molly

A documentary film about Cesar E. Chavez’s intense commitment to farm workers, and the dedicated people leading the fight today.

CRIME AFTER CRIME
Yoav Potash (Director/Producer)  Q&A with Yoav

The successful legal battle to free an incarcerated survivor of domestic violence after decades of wrongful incarceration.

DEAR MANDELA
Dara Kell (Co-Director) Q&A with Dara
Christopher Nizza (Co-Director)  Q&A with Christopher

Chronicles the year leading up to the 2010 Soccer World Cup through the eyes of three young leaders in South Africa’s Shack Dwellers Movement as they face mass evictions, assassination attempts and a betrayal of Nelson Mandela’s promise of a ‘better life for all’.

¿ DONDE ESTAN?
Maria Teresa Rodriguez (Producer/Director)  Q&A with Maria
Kathryn Smith Pyle  (Producer) Q&A with Kaye

Margarita, Jamie and Miguel, separated from their families during the Salvadoran war, seek identity, security and justice as the country struggles toward reconciliation.

FAMBUL TOK
Sara Terry (Director)  Q&A with Sara

Victims and perpetrators of Sierra Leone’s brutal war come face to face in an unprecedented reconciliation program of grassroots truth-telling and forgiveness ceremonies. This film will change the way viewers think about Africa, forcing them to examine their own lives – and what the power of forgiveness can accomplish.

MY GOOD NAME IS STALIN
Kavita Pillay (Director)   Q&A with Kavita

This tragic comic look at notoriously named men in Kerala, India, offers a case study in the consequences of emigrating for work.

SEMPER FI: ALWAYS FAITHFUL
Rachel Libert & Tony Hardomon (Co Directors)  Q&A with Rachel and Tony

Jeff Key, at thirty-four years old and gay, joined the Marines to fulfill his life long dream.  After 9/11, Key was sent to the Iraq war.  Having returned home with shattered ideals and broken hearted by what he had witnessed, Key turned his experiences into a riveting one-man play.

THE FIRE THIS TIME
Blair Doroshwalther (Director)  Q&A with Blair

Seven young women were threatened and attacked by an older man in New York City in 2006. They defended themselves and were sent to prison.

WAITING TO INHALE: MARIJUANA, MEDICINE AND THE LAW
Jeff Riffe (Director/Producer)  Q&A with Jed

Waiting to Inhale explores the battle between patients, doctors, activists and the United States government over the legalization of medical marijuana.

WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM
Heather Courtney (Director)  Q&A with Courtney

A four-year journey that takes teenagers from rural northern Michigan to the battlefields of Afghanistan and back, Where Soldiers Come From follows five high school friends who join the National Guard to pay for college. The film is an intimate look at the young men who fight America’s wars.

Other Articles

• Cooked
• The Truth Will Set You Free
• Sundance Documentary Film Wins 2008 Emmy Award
• Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita
• Beijing Taxi
• Meet The Filmmaker — Rick Perez
• 2009 Documentary Edit and Story Lab Fellows Announced
• Reporter

Film  provides us with enormous opportunities to communicate across many of the boundaries that keep us separated.   Once this link has been made an infinite amount of disparate stories can be told and sometimes the truth can be exposed for the world to see.   When a film really works we spend the days and weeks after watching reflecting on our own role in the story.  As mainstream media distributors are further concentrated, the spectrum of stories and ideas seems to narrow accordingly.  I think this provides a glorious opening for documentary filmmakers to reach those who are dissatisfied with what they are seeing and reading from day-to-day.

Which artists have inspired you the most in your life/career?

The Maysles Brothers showed me that poetry can be found in some of the least likely places. Barbara Kopple proved that working with a community and coupling extraordinary courage with stellar storytelling can yield a powerful testament.  Getino and Solanas showed that even in repressive, dire situations, film can affect hearts and minds to change that reality.  Werner Herzog wrapped much of this up for me when he said that when judging a film he meditates over whether the work is honest and if it is daring.

When did you decide to make Dear Mandela?

It seems to me that the current global migration from rural areas to cities is one of the defining characteristics of our time.  From the photographs of Salgado to the writings of Mike Davis and others we are presented with a bleak picture of what life is like for the majority of the almost 7 billion people who inhabit Earth.  I consider the fact that ordinary people do not have a say in how governments, private interests and many NGO’s make decisions that directly affect them, to be a grand cause of this situation.

Further study into South Africa revealed that after a decade since liberation from the brutal apartheid system a high level of political awareness exists among the citizenry.  For the first time since democracy people were marching against the ruling party who was at the forefront of the revolution.  When we read about and visited a social movement of shack dwellers called Abahlali baseMjondolo, we were inspired to see a challenge to the exclusion of the masses coming from below.  The chance to tell this story and counter all of the negative stereotypes about poor people that spread in South Africa and all over the world continues to be a major factor motivating me to make Dear Mandela.

Who do you hope your film will reach when it’s complete? What kind of impact do you hope to have?

It is my hope that Dear Mandela will play for the wide audience of dedicated documentary viewers and those who are interested in stories showing the impacts of socioeconomic policies around the world.   In this realm we hope to challenge the notion of the “other” and create a space where the audience feels their own struggle is intertwined with the struggle of the characters in the film.  We also plan to bring the film to places around the world that share similarities with the shack settlements and shanty towns of South Africa.  It is very rare that the residents of places like these are depicted in films as more than gangsters or game show winners.  We feel the characters in Dear Mandela have the potential to touch and inspire so many people who experience a comparable plight.  These hopes and the opportunity to work with amazing people keeps me sane when things aren’t going all that well.

As we reach the end of the decade and look back on the changes that have occurred in the world of documentary film, can you identify a film or an event that changed the way you thought about documentary?

It’s been in the past decade that documentaries have really taken off as far as gaining a larger audience.  Now we see films like ‘Food Inc.’, ‘Grizzly Man’ and ‘Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room’ draw many more folks into the theater than they would have 10 years prior.  Of course the revolution in digital distribution gets the films out to many more people than even this.  The millions of people from over 200 countries who have checked out The Story of Stuff project are further proof that as the avenues are created, there will be a broad audience for powerful storytelling.  Towards the end of the decade films like ‘Iraq In Fragments’, ‘Manda Bala’ and ‘Burma VJ’ contributed to an overarching raising of the bar in documentary filmmaking craft.  Also the team at Skylight Pictures and the filmmakers of ‘Made in LA’ and ‘The Cove’ are among those finding innovative ways to use films in the fight for social change. These are exciting times indeed!

What’s the best advice someone has ever given you? About filmmaking or in life in general?

I have a good friend and colleague who when parting often says ‘Keep on keepin’ on.’  I think about that sentence all the time.

Other Articles

• Meet The Filmmakers!
• A Warm Congratulations to all of our DFP grantees nominated for an Oscar!
• Sundance Work-in-Progress Screening, May 19th at Hammer Museum in Los Angeles
• Spring 2009 Grantees Announced
• Full Battle Rattle
• Camp Victory, Afghanistan
• Meet The Filmmaker– Maria Teresa Rodriguez
• The Visitors

As a first-time filmmaker, who’s coming into this field at mid-career (after starting as a print and public radio journalist, and then becoming a photographer), I can’t say that I’ve been passionate about docs all my life, or that I’ve always wanted to direct/produce a doc.

But I have always been passionate about social justice issues, and over the past decade, I’ve become deeply involved in post-conflict issues. I didn’t expect to direct this documentary; for me, it began as a still photography project. But what’s happened over the last two years, as we’ve worked, is that I’ve completely fallen in love with the medium of film – including the capacity it has to create a world that viewers come to inhabit, and also the outreach it has in terms of bringing an issue to a broad audience (far more than anything else I’ve ever done including writing a cover piece for the New York Times Magazine, and also creating a photo book about the aftermath of war in Bosnia).

So, I guess the answer is that I’m passionate about exploring issues that give us a better understanding of what it means to be human, that re-frame how we think about possibilities for justice and social change. And what I’ve discovered is that documentary filmmaking is easily the most satisfying medium I’ve worked in, as a way of articulating and exploring those issues.

Which artists have inspired you the most in your life/career?

Again, I can’t cite doc world artists who’ve inspired me the most (though I’ve immersed myself in documentaries over the past few years and have a deep admiration for many of the greats who would top any doc filmmakers best-of list). But my main inspirations come from other places – as a photographer, I’ve been most influenced by the Old Masters, and their use of light, color and gesture; as a writer/journalist, I’m always amazed by the work of Lawrence Wechsler; and as someone who’s also worked in public radio, and understood the influence of sound and music in storytelling, I’m deeply inspired by works like Gorecki’s Symphony No 5 and its heart-wrenching exploration of the depths of human despair and the endurance of hope, and also by the brilliance of my ex-husband, guitarist Reeves Gabrels, who helped me understand the dramatic curve that can be achieved through tension and release.  As for doc influences, right now I’m learning from every documentary I watch.

Who do you hope your film will reach when it’s complete? What kind of impact do you hope to have?

I hope Fambul Tok reaches a wide general audience and causes people to do two things:

1. Consider the power of forgiveness in their own lives.
2. See Africa in a different light – not as a place that needs to be “saved” by the West, but as a place that has answers to its problems, and lessons that the West can learn from.

On a more specific level, I hope the film continues to be part of a conversation that it has already been part of in the post-conflict international policy community – which is having to address its failures in helping create sustainable peace in many post-conflict countries, particularly in Africa. I hope the film helps inspire a humility in a community that all too often seems to think it has all the answers, and that only the Western way of doing things is the right one.

I bring more than 20 years of experience as a journalist – in newspapers, magazines, and public radio – to the story-telling aspect of the film. The narrative reflects my own conviction as a journalist that great stories move deep beneath the surface of traditional “conflict-driven” approaches, and that deeply moving, engaging story-telling evolves through exploring layers of emotions and ideas as felt, articulated and experienced by the story’s characters.

The end result, I hope, will be a movie that doesn’t allow a viewer to sit back and “watch” the film – but draws them in to experience a world they’ve never encountered before, a world that values the wholeness of community and the restoration of relationships over revenge and punishment, a world the viewer will contemplate long after the movie ends.

What’s the best advice someone has ever given you? About filmmaking or in life in general?

It wasn’t really advice, per se, but I was raised with a very strong conviction of the goodness that is inherent in people – and to keep believing in that goodness, no matter how much evidence piles up to the contrary.

Other Articles

• The Pit
• Position of the Stars
• Four Wives- One Man
• Bombhunters
• Sundance Supported Filmmaker Released in Nigeria
• Stories of Change Convening at SFF Twenty Ten
• Meet The Filmmaker — Julia Bacha
• Watchers Of The Sky

I like to cook. I especially like cooking elaborate dinners for large groups because there’s the challenge of coming up with an idea and planning and organizing and sometimes improvising, sometimes failing, and then presenting the final product (which may resemble the initial idea or may have morphed into something else) to an “audience” of eaters / viewers, who are offering you their time and trust as well as an essential organ or two – their stomachs, their minds. Eating and watching films are also multi-sensory, short-lived experiences, but I think that whatever you ingest (visually or otherwise) transmits something to your cells and stays with you in some way. Even if you forget about it entirely later on, it has had some small role in shaping you.

Why documentary? We all like to be listened to, we are all the heroes of our own stories, and documentary film is a chance to reveal those stories in a way that goes beyond the black-white-Republican-Democrat-communist-capitalist-straight-gay-Red Sox-Yankees binary worldview that often defines American media. Today’s documentaries seem to be the visual iteration of the New Journalism movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s. But I especially like Ira Glass’s idea that documentarians work in the tradition of Scheherazade, who spent 1,000 nights telling story after story, and in doing so, manages to turn a murderous misanthrope into a decent human being. At the very least, I’d like to think that working in documentary has made me a little more compassionate and a lot less judgmental.

Which artists have inspired you the most in your life/career?

In 1997, I saw Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? and Taste of Cherry. I came out of the theater feeling annoyed and deprived because the end of each film felt not like an ending but like the beginning of a whole new story. But for that reason, they stayed with me long after the last frame. 13 years later, I still think about those films.

A few years later I saw Kiarostami speak in Washington D.C., and when people asked him questions about the significance of a particular character or scene, he replied by asking, “What do you think it means?” He seemed like a gentle man, very interested in hearing what the audience saw in those images and very uninterested in telling people what to think.

As of late, I’ve been amazed by some of the documentaries I’ve seen by young filmmakers from former Soviet Bloc countries. I’m thinking in particular of Andrey Paounov’s The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories and Juraj Lehotsky’s Blind Loves, both of which are composed of these visually stunning vignettes that are funny, sad, quirky, touching and occasionally disturbing all at once. I really like how both of these filmmakers hone in on the humor lurking within unfunny situations and how they cross between genres, to the point where you sometimes wonder whether you are watching fiction or documentary.

When did you decide to make My Good Name Is Stalin?

I spent about a year in Kerala in 2005 – ‘06. Soon after I arrived, I met a very sweet, shy, 14-year-old boy named Stalin. I was both disturbed and intrigued, especially when his mother mentioned that there were many Lenins and Stalins in their hometown of Thrissur. Soon after that, I heard about a reunion of Malayalis with Russian names in a village in central Kerala called Moscow Junction, and that’s when I started thinking that a film about Malayalis with Soviet names was a way to approach a larger story about Kerala. I did not realize that the larger story was about the so-called Age of Migration until I got back to the U.S. and could see things from half a world away.

Who do you hope your film will reach when it’s complete? What kind of impact do you hope to have? It’s easy to keep going when things are going well. What keeps you going when things are difficult?

I’d think that any story that allows a viewer to see the world in a more complex way has a social impact. And like most filmmakers, I want my film to eventually reach as many eyeballs as possible. Maybe an American viewer will be surprised to see communism and Christianity co-existing within the world’s largest democracy. Maybe a viewer in the Philippines or Cape Verde will see similarities between how outmigration has affected Kerala and how it has affected their own society. I was recently in Finland, and as in much of Europe, their discussions about immigration are continually taking on new and more complex dimensions, so maybe a European viewer will get a different perspective on the consequences of migration as seen from the global south.

Things going well is definitely the exception to the rule. Most of filmmaking seems to be problem solving, which is a big part of what I love about it. But in those especially difficult moments, I chant this Errol Morris quote to myself: “If everything was planned, it would be dreadful. If everything was unplanned, it would be equally dreadful.”

What’s the best advice someone has ever given you? About filmmaking or in life in general?

This Kierkegaard quotation came to me by way of either a fortune cookie or a birthday card: “Be with what is so that what is to be may become.” I think of it as the little black dress of good advice. It’s always in style and it can be applied in good times and in bad and everything in between.

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Rachel Libert: I really enjoy the process of immersing myself into someone else’s life.  I dive into a subject that I know nothing about and it consumes me for the duration of the project and beyond. Making documentary films satisfies my curiosity about other people’s lives and enables me to advocate for issues that are important to me.

Which artists have inspired you the most in your life/career?

Tony Hardmon: I’ve been inspired by the life and work of photographer, filmmaker and author, Gordon Parks, the work of  photographer Roy DeCarava, and  photojournalist James Nachtwey.  All three of these men capture reality with a level of honesty and clarity that I aspire towards. There are three things I’m trying accomplish when I’m working: infuse artistry into a naturally evolving scene, make each shot convey as much story as possible and maintain the dignity of those I’m documenting.

When did you decide to make Semper Fi: Always Faithful?

Rachel & Tony:  In the spring of 2007, the sister of our main film subject Jerry Ensminger, approached us about making a film about the  Camp Lejeune situation. To be honest, we were initially a little skeptical but agreed to film an event  that they were having. In doing so, we met Jerry and several other key players. After spending a few hours with them and viewing the evidence they had compiled, we left convinced that we needed to make this film. Jerry’s complexity and charisma was immediately apparent. We loved talking with him which is a good thing because we now speak to him on the phone almost every day.

Who do you hope your film will reach when it’s complete? What kind of impact do you hope to have?

Rachel & Tony:  Semper Fi: Always Faithful addresses the issue of military pollution and it’s health effects. This issue does not just affect soldiers.  It affects all Americans.  1 in 10 Americans live within 10 miles of a military site that is on the EPA’s priority clean-up list and military contamination has polluted municipal water supplies in towns across the country. We hope that Semper Fi: Always Faithful will raise awareness amongst legislators and the general public about the health threat posed by contaminated military sites. We also want to inform former Camp Lejeune residents of their exposure to toxins and to educate and empower residents of other contaminated military bases.

As we reach the end of the decade and look back on the changes that have occurred in the world of documentary film, can you identify a film or an event that changed the way you thought about documentary?

Rachel: I think that the proliferation of social networking has had a huge impact on documentary filmmaking. Outreach campaigns have always been a goal but a challenge for documentary filmmakers.  Social networking has provided an easier path to promote one’s work and engage niche audiences that may not watch traditional outlets of distribution for documentaries.   Websites, blogs and social networking sites are also very useful in the production of films.  I often research stories and contact potential film subjects through these avenues.

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There are so many aspects of filmmaking and media-making that interest me. Foremost, the venue to tell stories that are largely ignored or not heard in mainstream media or mainstream cinema. I essentially view filmmaking as one of many tools for activism. It is an amazing platform in which you can engage, inform and entertain all the while conveying an important message or story.

Documentaries are particularly exciting to me because it is an opportunity to document an important story or event in our history. It provides a space for people to be apart of recording this history and important issues in an interesting and visual way, creating an opportunity for history to be told through diverse voices and told in non-linear ways.

I am also attracted to film because I find it hard to articulate in a linear and cohesive way on paper. For me, documentaries are congruent to non-fiction poetry. I do not have to write word for word about a certain event, yet I can capture and create images and put them together to get across the visceral emotion that will in turn be translated by each viewer through their own experiences and lives. There is something very holistic about this format of storytelling.

Lastly, filmmaking is just plain fun and exciting!

When did you decide to make The Fire This Time?

I was first interested in the case of what later became known as the NJ4, when it first hit the news. I read every outrageous article about that night. I went to community meetings where people asked questions such as, ‘What do we do when attacked? What do we do when the victims are the accused? How do we protect ourselves when the police won’t? So, for the first two years I was interested in this case and active around it, on and off, writing letters, fundraisers, things like that. The idea of a documentary came up pretty quickly and there was a “film collective” formed. I went to one meeting, but was disillusioned and unsure if it was the most productive way to be involved at the point. I very much felt a documentary should be done on this case, but originally didn’t think I should be the one to tell it. Then, two years later, four of the women’s appeals were coming up and no film had begun. I started fishing around a bit. Someone made a comment to me stating that, ‘’This case is not a matter of public concern, and that it was in fact an isolated incident.’ I decided to do the film right then and there, and never looked back.

If you had/have a kid that told you he or she wanted to be a filmmaker, what would you tell them?

Run like hell!

Actually, I think it is extremely important, especially for youth, to get involved in filmmaking. The more voices added to the world of filmmaking, the better! I would tell them to study everything they can, determine distinctively what type of filmmaker they want to be and why. And then realize what they can bring to a film that will make it new and captivating.

As we reach the end of the decade and look back on the changes that have occurred in the world of documentary film, can you identify a film or an event that changed the way you thought about documentary?

I think it is exciting to view a documentary film, particularly one that is addressing a social issue, not as a stand-alone medium, but as one of multiple tools to increase visibility, awareness and understanding.

There is not necessarily just a film that has changed the way I think about documentaries, but the way in which documentary films relationship to activism by partnering with other technologies is continuously evolving. For example organizations such as Brave New Films, which creates numerous short documentary web-videos that are distributed regularly along with coinciding campaigns with instructions on how to become active. They are not the only organization partnering documentaries with investigative journalism by utilizing viral marketing as their main outlet, but they are an example of filmmakers being dedicated not solely to the art of documentaries, but the documentaries themselves are dedicated to action in a very public, pro-active and conscious-raising way.

One thing that separates documentaries from narrative films is the opportunities for wider audiences to see them. Beyond the few television stations that are dedicated to broadcasting documentaries, filmmakers are increasingly creating new ways to get their films out there, particularly if their doc is there to incite social justice or action. To me, if documentary filmmakers don’t utilize other forms of technologies then their film has much less of a chance to be seen, which, ultimately is the point.

I think that documentaries partnering with various forms of technology are an exciting way to expand not just being a filmmaker, but a media-maker.

It’s easy to keep going when things are going well. What keeps you going when things are difficult?

Its sort of a strange question to me, ‘what keeps you going when things are difficult,’ for me the whole motivation to keep going when things are difficult, is that they will get easier if you keep working at it. Its seems a lot more foreign to me to be creating a documentary with the ease of ‘’things going well.’ Maybe that is apart of the thrill of it.

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What makes me passionate about film is being able to tell the stories of people whose stories are never told, whose voices are never heard, and to tell these stories in a sincere and honest way.  As a documentary filmmaker, I feel lucky to have the opportunity to meet so many incredible people from all walks of life and all regions of the world.  I am most interested in telling the stories of regular people, who fight their everyday battles, and most often do not get recognition for it.  Ordinary people do extraordinary things everyday, and I hope by putting their stories on film, we can all learn from them.

When did you decide to make Where Soldiers Come From?

I had some 16-mm black-and-white film that had been sitting in my refrigerator for a few years. After working on a documentary in another country the previous year, I had a desire to go back to my hometown, a small town on the shores of Lake Superior on the northern-most tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to film some of the abandoned copper mines and beautiful stark winter landscapes. In February 2007, I traveled north with 16mm film and camera in tow.  Once there, I realized that I wanted to do something more in-depth, that it was time to tell a story about the place I come from and the people who live there.  I had read an article in the local paper about a local National Guard unit who had just returned from Iraq, and it was possible they would be deployed in the future.  I went to their monthly drill that February.  I started talking to a 19-year-old whose name I recognized, and it turned out that his Dad and I had stood in the same wedding 19 years earlier.  When he then turned to the group of five other teenagers standing next to him and said, “and these are all my friends from high school, we joined the National Guard together” I knew I had the possibility of a story.

That’s all I knew at the time, that there was a possibility.  Beginning a documentary is almost always a leap of faith, so I took the leap, just as these boys were leaping into the unknown of transitioning from teenagers to young men.  But that’s the beauty of cinema verite documentary – sometimes the unknown is better than anything you could have planned.

It’s easy to keep going when things are going well. What keeps you going when things are difficult?

What keeps me going when things are difficult is the belief that I owe it to the people who have opened their lives to me to finish their story.  I owe it to them to press on, to continue forward on the project, even as I run into obstacles, which happens all the time.

Also what keeps me going is having faith in the process of cinema verite filmmaking.  You have to be patient with it, and trust that observing and filming what is happening, rather than directing or dictating what should be filmed, will allow for great story-telling, as well as open up new avenues to explore within the story.

Who do you hope your film will reach when it’s complete? What kind of impact do you hope to have?

Once the film is finished, I hope it will be used in a constructive way, that audiences and viewers will see a bit of themselves in the people on the screen, and in so doing, change the way they had thought about something before.  I see film as a tool to create personal connections between people who would not normally connect, and a tool to open up avenues of communication.

If you had/have a kid that told you he or she wanted to be a filmmaker, what would you tell them?

If I had a kid who wanted to be a filmmaker, I would tell her or him to go for it, but to make sure its something they really want to do, because the financial rewards are slim, and the hours are ridiculous, and the lifestyle does not lend itself well to settling down, and having a family, house, etc.  But on the flip side of that, I would tell him or her to get ready for a grand adventure, and a life full of love and joy and incredible people.

What’s the best advice someone has ever given you? About filmmaking or in life in general?

The best filmmaking advice I’ve received was given to me by my thesis advisor in grad school – do not think about your film as a documentary, he told me again and again, think about it as a story, you’re just telling a story, whether its narrative, documentary or whatever, is beside the point.  Just tell a good story.

He also gave me the second best piece of filmmaking advice — shoot scenes, not b-roll and voice-over, but organic scenes with their own beginning, middle and end.

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