00:00I'm really curious how you arrived at this subject matter.
00:03I mean, what was the process?
00:05What gave you the idea?
00:08Well, I mean, Orlando von Einstedele, who's our executive producer,
00:15had made a short film, I think his first, but I can't remember,
00:19called About the Beginning of Skadistan,
00:21and that was on the festival circuit with my first film.
00:27But I've been working in Afghanistan for a long time,
00:29and we always hear, I always heard about it.
00:34And then, you know, A&E contacted Grain, which is Orlando's company,
00:39because they wanted to do the girls' side of it.
00:43But Skadistan is very private.
00:46You know, they don't let anybody in.
00:48You know, they really protect their girls, they protect their teachers.
00:51And so I came on.
00:52I had been working in Afghanistan, and as a woman,
00:56in a lot of the situations I was in,
00:57I could go into the women's room from these very formal men's things.
01:02It was like walking into the bathroom at high school, you know what I mean?
01:07It was like suddenly a baby would hand you a baby,
01:09some old lady would put stuff in your mind.
01:10It was like so different.
01:12And I always desperately wanted to somehow get that,
01:16what the women's room is really like,
01:18and what the girls are like, you know, really get it,
01:22so that you could meet them clean, you know, for them,
01:26not with the male gaze on them or the respectfulness.
01:30So when they came to me with the Skadistan thing,
01:35I was like, that's it.
01:36That's exactly the way to do it.
01:38Because I can, you can just meet them
01:41and see them behave in the way they behave
01:44without having to ask them all kinds of crazy questions
01:47about what they think about war.
01:49You know, it can just be them.
01:52And that was kind of the seed was A&E wanting to do it.
01:55And my, the time I've spent so much time there,
01:59I could calculate and figure out how to make it happen
02:04and look a lot easier than it was.
02:08Yes.
02:10Do we have any other questions?
02:17Well, I guess not.
02:19Congratulations.
02:21Oh, I'm sorry, 43.
02:23Here we go.
02:26Thank you so much and congratulations.
02:29What kind of advice would you give to filmmakers,
02:32young filmmakers in documentary as far as...
02:37Sorry, any specific sort of in the shorts world or...
02:43Just generally.
02:45Yeah.
02:45Yeah.
02:46I would say make sure you have to really question
02:49you have to really make sure that you're the right person to tell the story.
02:55You know, it's very common that you read a New Yorker article,
02:57oh my God, that's so cool, that would make such a good movie.
03:00But why are you the one to tell it?
03:01Mm-mm.
03:02Because nowadays, you know, with cutting documentaries and how so much you're...
03:08You can replicate your own misjudgment in the way you present the material if you're not willing to put in the time to figure out where your blind spots are and how to close them.
03:20So, you know, access is the keystone to documentary, but you have to understand the nature of that access.
03:31Are people talking to you because you're an American and they think they can get a visa or a job from you?
03:37Are they talking to you because they want you to be an arbiter in some...
03:42You know, you really have to enter a situation and deal with it and know that you don't always know what's going on.
03:50And that's a good place to be.
03:53I had a guide in Afghanistan who used to say to me,
03:57in Afghanistan, Carol John, if you think you know what is happening, you are about to buy a very bad rug.
04:05And it was true, you know.
04:08So I would say question why you're the one to make that movie.
04:13And the answer may not be immediate.
04:16And just know that you don't know and keep trying to find out.
04:19That's what I would say.
04:22And we do have one more question for you right here up front.
04:25Number six.
04:26Hi.
04:27Congratulations.
04:27This is Estefania Iglesias from Univision.
04:30I want to know, how did you get inspired to tell the story about this little girl
04:34and to empower this little girl to become a better person?
04:41Go ahead.
04:42Yeah.
04:42So just to sort of cut quite a long story short,
04:46A&E came to us at Grain Media in the UK.
04:51They wanted to tell a really powerful story about girls, young girls in Afghanistan.
04:55And we are very fortunate in that we had an existing relationship with this wonderful NGO called Skatistan.
05:04Skatistan started out as one skateboarder coming to Kabul, skateboarding on the street,
05:11and realizing that kids were interested.
05:13And he just started teaching them right there.
05:16You know, he was like, okay, you want to learn to do a nolly?
05:18Sure.
05:18Let me teach you.
05:20He realized that a lot of kids were hanging around.
05:22They weren't going to school, and he was troubled by that.
05:25And he started this wonderful organization that we've been very fortunate to be able to make a film about.
05:32This is an organization that we've known about for some time.
05:34But the time came when the lovely female executives at A&E also expressed their interest,
05:42and so our interests aligned, and that's how it came about.
05:46It was, you know, I suppose less of a grassroots kind of start,
05:51but it was something that allowed us to finally bring those stories to light,
05:55and through Carol's, you know, enormous experience in Afghanistan.
05:59But I think the thing that's really, and I've seen a lot of NGOs in Afghanistan,
06:04and the military have a great phrase, the good idea ferry is flying around.
06:09You know, when people come up with something that has nothing to do with the place that you're in,
06:13it's not rising from a problem.
06:16They fall in love with the solution and not the problem.
06:18So the thing that Afghanistan does that's so brilliant is they take poor kids who have not had,
06:26have not entered school at the appropriate age because of poverty, internal displacement, whatever,
06:32and they give them the first to third grade curriculum in one year.
06:36And to keep them from going insane, they teach them how to skateboard, right?
06:40So they learn quickly, and they learn physical courage, right?
06:47And then they can enter their own school system.
06:52It's not saying, hello, let me pluck you from a village and make you an eye surgeon.
06:56It's saying, like, okay, we're just going to get you to the next step.
07:01So what inspires me about it is there's so few programs that solve that tiny little problem,
07:10like the nail in the shoe of the horse that lost the battle.
07:14Like, they get that nail right.
07:16And that's what SCADA stand does.
07:18And I'm just, there's so few of these things that really just go,
07:21okay, if we fix this one little thing, we won't see the results immediately, but they will occur.
07:28And I find that kind of thinking very inspiring.
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