Meet The Filmmaker — Kathryn Pyle
What is it about film that you are the most passionate about? In other words, why film and why documentary?
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.