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