- 3 days ago
THR gathered six nonfiction filmmakers — Evgeny Afineevsky ('Cries From Syria'), Greg Barker ('The Final Year'), Yance Ford ('Strong Island'), Matthew Heineman ('City of Ghosts'), Amanda Lipitz ('Step').
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Short filmTranscript
00:00:00Hello and welcome to Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter documentary and with me today are Yancey
00:00:13Ford, Matthew Heinemann, Peter Nix, Evgeny Afineski, Brett Morgan, Amanda Lippitz, and Greg Barker.
00:00:22The first question I'd like to ask you about is are you ever conflicted as filmmakers in that
00:00:27you're shooting a scene, things aren't going well for your subjects, but you know it's going to make a great movie.
00:00:35I mean that happened with you, your film about last year the State Department and you were filming at an election night party
00:00:43at Samantha Powers, former UN ambassador's house with Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem and they were expecting a celebration with the election of Hillary Clinton.
00:00:54It didn't go that way. How do you feel as a filmmaker when you're capturing a scene like that?
00:01:00Well I mean yeah I mean as a filmmaker obviously I could see what was unfolding and you know Samantha asked me that night
00:01:09what does this mean for your movie and I think so I think it got a lot more important.
00:01:14But as an American obviously we're all living through that. I mean there are people who didn't want us in the government
00:01:19who did not want us in that room so because you know they thought it was too political so they were like fights to even be in that room.
00:01:26And you know but clearly it was I knew as it was happening it was a momentous scene.
00:01:34But I think that's what we live for right? To kind of get in those moments and when things are unfolding in front of our eyes, in front of the cameras.
00:01:43And I guess sometimes there are moments that you know do you ever pull back? Is it too intimate? I mean that wasn't the case at that time.
00:01:50But I think we all do wrestle with that question depending on the circumstances.
00:01:56Peter, in your film you're following the Oakland Police Department and initially it looks like it's going to be a positive movie about police reform
00:02:05and then it goes off in a different direction. Was there a part of you that says this makes for a better movie?
00:02:10You know the first challenge you know for me personally trying to sort of reconcile sort of you know my role as a filmmaker and my role as you know being a part of this community was the view of this community through the eyes of the police was remarkably challenged.
00:02:29And these are people that we were capturing in moments maybe the worst days of their lives that did not necessarily make themselves or their community look good or portray them in a positive light when we're trying so hard to sort of break down stereotypes or reimagine you know stereotypes.
00:02:47So that was trying to figure that out in terms of how we represented that community or how to contextualize that in a meaningful way was incredibly difficult.
00:02:55On the institutional level we went in there part of our pitch was you know hey you know your story hasn't been told.
00:03:02You've been you know flattened out into two dimensional narrative.
00:03:06We don't we're not going to make a commercial about this department.
00:03:09We promise to tell your story.
00:03:10Don't shoot hands up don't shoot hands up don't shoot hands up don't shoot hands up don't shoot
00:03:28I'm hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly.
00:03:33What I like to say is that, you know, we promise to humanize, but humanizing doesn't mean making you look good.
00:03:47It means unpacking you in your full three dimensions, and that's, you know, for, you know, what we do,
00:03:55and we're doing a series of films in one American city, trying to maintain relationships with the city
00:03:59to do outreach work around our films.
00:04:01We wanted to maintain a relationship with this institution, so when things happened in the film, as they did,
00:04:08which went so horribly wrong, in the moment, yes.
00:04:11Does it make a more dramatic film? Absolutely.
00:04:13But long-term, you know, what does this mean, you know, for our relationship with the city?
00:04:18Was it both on the institutional level and on the community level?
00:04:21So it's something that you don't really know until that film comes out in terms of how people receive it,
00:04:26but it was something that weighed on us very heavily.
00:04:29I mean, you touch on the subject of how you win the trust of your subjects,
00:04:33which is something that I think everyone at this table probably had to go through.
00:04:37Could you talk a bit about the journalists from Raqqa that you cover in your film, City of Ghosts?
00:04:44They had every reason to mistrust folks because their lives are in danger.
00:04:50How did you convince them it would be a good idea to work with you?
00:04:53For me, trust is everything.
00:04:56I mean, that's like the bedrock for the types of films that I have made and hopefully will continue to make.
00:05:03And, you know, with these guys, the members of Raqqa being slaughtered silently,
00:05:08a group of activists who banded together to expose the atrocities of their hometown in Raqqa, Syria,
00:05:15after ISIS took over.
00:05:16You know, I really wanted to make this a character-driven, intimate portrait of this group
00:05:22as they were on the run, as they were moving from safe house to safe house
00:05:26after members of their group were killed and they were forced to flee.
00:05:30After the release of the war, for a month or two months,
00:05:39Da'Aqqa put money in order to provide any information about me or what they gave me.
00:05:52After that, when they saw me, they came to me.
00:05:58They left my father.
00:06:00you know that access doesn't come overnight it doesn't happen just by calling them on the phone
00:06:07and saying you know can i hang out with you for a week and it happens through weeks and weeks and
00:06:11months and months of rapport and trust building um and you know honestly becoming part of the
00:06:18fabric of their daily lives and you know as someone who who shoots and edits that helps you
00:06:24know i'm allowed and i'm able to just get in a room with them and so much of this film takes
00:06:28place in smoky dark rooms um that are not that cinematic and there's so much of the drama
00:06:34plays out um in the interior of their minds and and the fear and the hopes and the dreams and
00:06:41um and so you know there's a scene at the end of the film where one of our main characters breaks
00:06:47down and has a you know has a nervous breakdown and going back to the first question it was one
00:06:52of the hardest things my whole career that i've ever had to film because as a human being all i
00:06:56wanted to do was was give him a hug um i wanted to comfort him i wanted to um be a friend to him
00:07:03but my job was also to capture this moment i had originally set out to make this film about
00:07:07this this sort of rivalry this this sort of fight this information war between isis and this group
00:07:12uh iraq is being slaughtered silently but it became much more than that and part of what it became
00:07:17was the story of trauma and so this scene this final scene was so important to capture
00:07:21um and i filmed it and it was like one like 90 minute take in which i didn't cut and then
00:07:27afterwards you know i gave him a hug and we stayed up i think all night talking about it talking about
00:07:33what he had gone through and um it's an incredible scene it's just amazing you know and just that last
00:07:40shot you know i just felt like i was right there and i felt like i felt your conflict actually as you
00:07:45were there filming that because you could sense that you want to give the guy a hug you know and
00:07:50yet you also want to be in that moment it was extraordinary and again i mean you capture many
00:07:55of these moments too your film uh cries from syria you talked to a whole range of syrians and refugees
00:08:02um what were in particularly some very young children what were what were what was that like
00:08:09first of all i had the same uh situation like matt because you know what you're building this
00:08:14relationship with all these characters i've been in certain situations where people didn't wanted
00:08:19to trust us i had an issue not because my background being russian and for them russians are
00:08:25literally killing their own brothers and sisters but because specifically american because for them
00:08:32the revolution started with the all these inspirational elements of arab spring and the kids
00:08:38who did graffiti they were inspired by arab spring and up until 2013 people were believing
00:08:44that america will come one day and will help like and do some change like they did in tunisia or in
00:08:51iraq on all countries and for them and i guess it was more kind of towards the entire western world
00:08:57i think for them they felt like western world betrayed us western world neglected us and for them
00:09:04i think my kind of coming out to them and saying hey can i tell your story out they were like
00:09:11why you betrayed us you neglected us i had it with the kids i had it with the more grown-ups people
00:09:17you know what they all were like looking at me why why we should trust you as american who basically
00:09:22neglected us for a long time and i was explaining no we not i can't be responsible for my government
00:09:28i'm responsible for my people so i want to bring your story to my people because western world not
00:09:34neglected we not betrayed you we don't know anything about you and you know what and slowly
00:09:39with the long period of time i i started the movie in 2015 and i started major shooting only in 2016
00:09:46because it took time to research it took time to get close to my characters i i had a character like
00:09:52abdelbasid sarut with whom i spent it all ramadan in order to make him comfortable with me in the room and
00:10:00in front of the camera and open his heart because he was fearing the cameras he was fearing the western
00:10:05world and it was a long journey now kids you know what since i found myself in a situation with the
00:10:12kids since i saw that it started with the kids you know what i wanted to tell their story it's a lost
00:10:18generation of the young kids who've been betrayed by their own government but by their own nation
00:10:23and at the same time it's a future generation who will be rebuilding syria one day
00:10:27in some situations i found myself even giving them the camera
00:10:57and allowing themselves i've been in orphanages i've been in situations where kids not have
00:11:02family so i was giving them my cameras just to play with that and feel comfortable with me and ask
00:11:08themselves questions but was observing these as observer so i was working in a relationship with
00:11:14some people for weeks with some people like abdelbasid it took like six months and then a whole
00:11:19ramadan to create these kind of relationships but you know what the end product was mentioned
00:11:27to tell their story and i think also the trust because of the winch on fire that i did before
00:11:33helps me to create this ability to show them hey i took this nation i took ukrainian story brought it out
00:11:42so let me do the same with your voice because you needed this people don't know anything because for me
00:11:48who witnessed all the refugee crisis since 2015 european union and the headlines who were screaming
00:11:54they coming to take over our cities they it's islam whom they bring it's a terrorism
00:12:00whom they bring it and first of all people don't know much about terrorism people don't know anything
00:12:06about isis that we actually telling this story so at the end of the day i needed to bring these stories
00:12:11out so we can educate healthy people yeah i mean brett you face a different challenge in that you made a
00:12:19film about jane goodell she's had a lot of experience but you come along and you really
00:12:23want to tell a personal story about her did you have to work to convince her to uh well she had no
00:12:29interest in participating in the film um and to be quite candid when i was first parts nor did i
00:12:35uh you know and once i once i was able to look at the footage i i knew instinctively and intuitively
00:12:44what i'd have to offer in the canon of jane goodell films which was going to be quite different than
00:12:49anything we'd seen before which is to create a very immersive experience to try to invite the
00:12:55audience to feel what jane felt when she went into gombie for the first time but she didn't know that
00:13:00and so to her credit when you approach jane and you want to do a three-hour or two-day interview
00:13:07she's got to save the world she's got a lot of other things they're far more important in her mind
00:13:12and sitting down i i i i kind of felt like an eng camera crew you know and in fact they they started
00:13:19by telling me um jane once she said she's told so many stories about her past just use some of the
00:13:25other stuff and i'd already cut the movie when i did my interview i i i cut the film first and then i
00:13:31do the interview um and so i knew that wasn't going to work and i knew that a lot of what we needed to
00:13:36do was way off her regular script if you will and so it became it was a little bit of a frost nixon
00:13:44thing i mean i showed up the first question i asked her was do you get tired of telling your story
00:13:50and she looked at me and she said well depends on who's asking the questions
00:13:54there was no laughter and was like very sad and i went touche and uh at some point i felt that i
00:14:06needed to jog her memory because i was i was probing about some very personal stuff that she hadn't
00:14:11she doesn't discuss that often
00:14:13there were some who tried to discredit my observations because i was a young untrained girl
00:14:21and should therefore be disregarded
00:14:23the result of it all however was that lewis was able to obtain a grant from the national geographic
00:14:31society to continue my study
00:14:34in addition they would be sending out a photographer
00:14:40to document the chimpanzees
00:14:43specifically there's i was trying to jog her memory about hugo her husband
00:14:49and i showed us her showed her a sequence of hugo and jane falling in love through the lens of the camera
00:14:56and she'd never seen any of the footage before she had no idea it existed
00:15:00and you can actually see in her eyes her kind of warming up
00:15:04but to be totally honest it wasn't until the premiere of the film
00:15:09that she or you know when she saw the film for the first time that she embraced me
00:15:16yeah so and and and to be honest i wouldn't have had it any other way because i think if i had gone into the film with a deeper sort of if i was a sycophant
00:15:26or i was more sort of awe of her i don't think i would have been able to ask some of the questions i did
00:15:33and what i am so happy about both for her and myself because i don't think her interview would have been good if she was as warm and fuzzy with me as she is now
00:15:41and so the experience now being able to tour with the subject
00:15:48and to be able to experience the film through her eyes
00:15:52and to see how it's taken hold of her and light of her and and
00:15:56you know that's that now i i i i cherish every second i can be with her i mean she's she's really one of the most remarkable people i think
00:16:03that's walking the earth right now yeah definitely i mean amanda i mean you went into a school in baltimore
00:16:10they throw open the doors to you or did you have to talk your way in
00:16:15well i i you know had made over 30 short films about first generation students going to college and girls education and so
00:16:23they knew and had seen my other films they saw kids who looked like them mothers that reminded them of their mothers so
00:16:32um and they knew the tone of my storytelling um i was just making shorts with them for several years before
00:16:40um my lead in the documentary blessing who is the captain of the step team um invited me to come film the step team
00:16:48she said the next time you're in school with cameras i think you should stop by step practice and i'm a broadway producer for many years i produce musicals and plays and learned a lot from telling a story
00:17:02on the stage and that's really difficult you don't have a lot of the tricks that you have in film so
00:17:08it's really focusing on good characters and storytelling and i remember walking in with my cameras and
00:17:14they were stepping and i thought oh my god this is what happens in a great musical a character can't speak
00:17:21anymore so they sing and with every clap with every stomp with every breath they were telling the world who they were
00:17:28and who they were going to be i want them to understand that this is way bigger than stepping
00:17:34okay it's about not making excuses making sacrifices having a positive attitude i know what gets tough
00:17:42we're in baltimore city they come home to no lights come home to balance and they put not having food in the refrigerator
00:17:48not having a refrigerator at all but when they come to step practice all those things are erased out of their mind
00:17:56so that is why they can succeed because they can make it through step practice so they can make it through life
00:18:02and i was so excited to tell a story of young black women in this country because i don't think they see
00:18:08themselves in popular culture i don't think they look out and say that's me that's my mom that's my grandmother
00:18:14i'm also my hometown is baltimore so i wanted to change the conversation about baltimore and i was filming
00:18:20for two years when freddie gray was killed and i watched my hometown burn on tv and i knew right away
00:18:28i had to throw out all the footage i had had to start the story there when i saw that mother go in and
00:18:36you know grab her son and pull him out and hit him upside the head it was like those are my mothers
00:18:42and i was thinking so much about all of your films and i'm so grateful to be here with all of you today
00:18:47and i realized like they're the common thread between all of us is the mothers in our films you know the
00:18:53mothers who hold up the pictures of their sons that died in black lives matter and you know the chimpanzee
00:19:00mother and flo and jane and samantha powers and yancey's mother's you know still inside my soul and the
00:19:06mothers in syria and these children these orphans i mean the whole universe falls apart when
00:19:12flow dies um you know so i just i think that is the common thread and it's so interesting that these
00:19:21mothers these women are the ones that are holding these communities together that's very true it's
00:19:26interesting because when diane wrote me a song and she offered me to go to share i was like i need
00:19:32a mother figure that talking to the kids you have a great song but can we get shared to be a mother
00:19:38and she said just talk to her and you know what i was editing in prague because prague was located
00:19:43location where i can jump into the plane go to turkey then cross the border and in the middle of
00:19:47night i'm getting a call from share and i said share i need you other mother with the kids and share said
00:19:54i will do it because i'm a mother and we had an amazing conversation like 30 minutes and then she went
00:19:59a couple of times into the studio she did it for the movie and she did it for the kids and you know what
00:20:04the same email like for example i got from uh shayla shaylan evans she wrote me the same thing
00:20:09these kids voices need to be heard it's uh we as the mothers we need to bring this and one of the
00:20:15elements like why my movie is graphic and i'm not regretting that i brought quite a high level of
00:20:21graphic images there because i wanted to create this feeling that the mothers in syria having when
00:20:28they're bearing their kids yeah i mean amanda speaks of mothers and in many ways yours is the most
00:20:32personal film and that it's about the murder of your brother and the effect that it had on your
00:20:36family did you have to convince your mother to sit for for these interviews both your mother and your
00:20:44sister yeah you know i didn't have to convince anyone who participated in strong island to sit for
00:20:50the film they had at that point for 15 years lived with the silence of what had happened to my brother
00:20:58um their inability to tell their story in a court of law beyond a grand jury they felt very much that
00:21:07they had been disregarded and that the evidence that they had to offer um was of was not of interest to
00:21:14the police during the investigation um and so participating in the film became their way of
00:21:20providing testimony um in a way that they hadn't been able to um during the proceedings after my brother's
00:21:26death i wanted him to be angry i wanted him to be outraged i wanted him to i wanted him to get a gun
00:21:49to avenge my son's death my mother especially when she found out that i was making the film she never
00:22:02said no there was not a single instance um when my mother said no either to an interview or to us
00:22:07using her home as a staging ground now we shot for hours for days in and around the town where i grew up
00:22:14and we always used her house as a place to keep our you know as a place to keep our our gear but you
00:22:21know going back to your first question my my biggest challenge in in making strong island was actually
00:22:28having to decide um to shoot my mother dying in the icu right it took me a while to actually hear what
00:22:37people were saying right it took took me a while to hear um the neurosurgeons say it's inoperable
00:22:43and to understand that it's inoperable actually means she's going to die and when i when i put
00:22:49those two things together i immediately knew as a director that my main character's arc was playing
00:22:56out in front of me and that i had a choice to make right and i also had this that this tug of how can
00:23:04you be talking about your mother as a character when she's dying right but how can you not talk about
00:23:09your mother as a character because she is like the tentpole character in this film so my you know i
00:23:16blocked out five shots four of them made it into the film um and i realized that i the solution to the
00:23:23problem that i was having i could solve in the edit right the ethical decision for me would be made in
00:23:29the edit if i didn't have the material i wouldn't be able to make the choice um and so my dp came we shot
00:23:37those four you know blocked shots he then went and drove around the hospital grounds turned the
00:23:43camera upside down because he didn't have his tripod with him jammed it in between the the dashboard and
00:23:48the windshield and that sequence of of shots is presented as they were produced in real life in the
00:23:56film without that decision i think that strong island would not be um complete as a film it's
00:24:03interesting i think all of us face this dilemma as filmmakers particularly when we are making films
00:24:07about people we know and we come to know them the yours is the most intimate case of that you know
00:24:13but we all sort of have to decide how do we push ourselves how do we push these relationships with
00:24:17people that we spend a lot of time with they'll put a pair of glasses on you and they take you into
00:24:22the zahtri refugee camp okay thank you thank you wow it's very powerful and then they hook you up to
00:24:30talk to a person in the camp wow this is amazing ah helen i'm well brings home the serious stakes it's
00:24:38just right there and i'm going to try to go to the sg and get him to keep it because it's yes if we're
00:24:43trying to raise money and you know get people to support these people in the camps and you know when i
00:24:47started this film i hadn't seen samantha in in a couple of years because of her new job it was quite
00:24:52inaccessible but you know she was and others were very uncomfortable with the amount of time i was
00:24:58spending on the whole syria question for instance you know um because i mean i got to know these
00:25:04people but they're also politicians and government officials with an agenda and trying to you know
00:25:09kind of define their legacy but it's like if we find this all the time it's like when do we push
00:25:14because ultimately people can say you're pushing too hard stop and you know that's always kind of but
00:25:21you have to sort of take that risk to to to get what we need to kind of push through that barrier
00:25:26and and usually they don't say that but it's i've so felt that in your film there's just like this
00:25:31this intimacy with your own mother and yourself and your honesty having yourself in the film as a
00:25:36as a interviewee was just kind of groundbreaking i thought and really brave
00:25:52do you have to get releases from like the cops and and the forest when you're shooting that was
00:25:57actually a uh we hired a first amendment attorney um because we knew that we were going to be out sort
00:26:03of you know with the cops who were basically interacting with people who aren't going to look
00:26:10good who haven't gone through the justice system yet so if you're if you're filming somebody who's
00:26:14being detained by the police or even arrested that that person hasn't necessarily been that hasn't
00:26:19been adjudicated yet right and so we had to really figure that out from a legal point but the same
00:26:25thing that allows you to sort of film a cop taking an action also protects our ability sort of as
00:26:33filmmakers and journalists to record stuff out and also in in all in all the the protests because we
00:26:38filmed right after uh uh darren wilson was not indicted for the for the shooting of mike brown like
00:26:43that that that spawned weeks of protests in in oakland where we were out you know filming all that
00:26:49amidst people who didn't want to be filmed but at the same time we're raising their voice in
00:26:54protest and so we we um you know legally you have the right to do it but it really comes down to
00:27:00sort of ethically what are you communicating with the scene and so we had we there's so many moments
00:27:07that we chose you have to get it on camera because then you have to figure it out in the edit room you
00:27:14know how is this going to play how is this person going to be um perceived what does this communicate
00:27:20and that's your ultimate responsibility what impact is going to have on their life when the film goes out
00:27:24i had 19 minors in my movie so it wasn't just them signing release forms their families and parents
00:27:30their guardians whoever they were had to sign forms so it was going to every mother and father in
00:27:37whatever case i was and something that i think helped me understand my responsibility to the young women
00:27:45that every time like even if i was filming something that was uncomfortable it's kind of like what you were
00:27:49saying like if i didn't shoot it then i would never have it it would be gone forever so it was there was
00:27:54one circumstance where i had a conversation with one of the young women and i was like look we need to
00:27:59shoot this i'm not giving you editorial control over this film but i will cut this scene and then we can
00:28:06discuss it i think having that trust where you can have a very frank conversation and they trust you to
00:28:13not take advantage of the situation i think i think an interesting question is also not just subjects that
00:28:19you love or subjects that you care for um but you know in my last couple films i've spent time with
00:28:26subjects that i actively disagree with and uh or or don't necessarily empathize with per se but i think
00:28:33that's that's sort of the interesting conundrum that we find ourselves with in often in making these films is
00:28:40for me my my sort of north star is you treat everyone the same no matter how much i dislike like
00:28:46love hate the fact that they are willing to bear their soul the fact that they're willing to tell
00:28:51their story the fact that they're willing to go on camera um you have to treat with them with respect
00:28:57you have to treat them fairly and i think that's an important thing to to recognize it's a great
00:29:02privilege actually when people yeah it's a huge privilege and in my situation all my characters from
00:29:07previous movies and this movie they became like a part of my family and for example some of them
00:29:12still on the grounds of syria like hadi al-abdollah he is still there and he's still reporting from adlib
00:29:19or abdelbasid saroud he he just came out of the al-qaeda prison so i was like worried i was the one who
00:29:25was trying to convince him to get out of syria and he didn't want it and these people with whom i
00:29:29spend most of my time and it took some kind of uh time to build the relationships i'm i'm becoming like a
00:29:36brother to them one of the big challenges i think with in terms of the relationships we all have
00:29:42with our characters because whether we work archivally or or verite we we have that ongoing
00:29:48strong relationship like i lived with bob evans for a year when i was doing the kids days in the picture
00:29:53and during the time that we're making these films the people are as they're family to us they're more
00:30:00than family that we spend most of our waking hours with them i find one of the hardest things about
00:30:05being a documentary filmmaker is then you go on and you have to go on to the next film and particularly
00:30:11when the subjects aren't celebrities like when i did on the ropes and i'm sure you're dealing with
00:30:15this with your film for them that moment is so intense when they're in the limelight for that
00:30:21moment your film's coming out it's also challenging when they don't like what you've done with their
00:30:24stories too which often happens right before we sat down amanda showed me she's getting text messages
00:30:30from the students that are in her film we have a text group and they knew i was coming here today
00:30:36and they were texting me freak a leg and little emojis and um i mean i i think as documentarians today we
00:30:45have a very different responsibility than 20 years ago it's an incredible time to make documentaries
00:30:51millions and millions of people see these movies now and a lot of times i don't think subjects know what
00:30:57they're getting into my girls certainly did not think that anything that has happened with step
00:31:03was going to happen and you know when i made the film i made it so that they could go back to their
00:31:08hometowns with their heads held high that was the only thing i wanted for it and i just think now it's
00:31:13just a different you have a responsibility that you didn't have before and i don't know if that's
00:31:19i mean i don't really i don't i did on the ropes 20 years ago and it was the same thing
00:31:23that i think you're dealing with with step in terms of the relationship i don't think that's
00:31:26changed i'm talking what's changed is the amount of eyeballs that get deceived with you know the
00:31:33scale of which these people are all over the world watching your movies yes being recognized
00:31:39they didn't they you know i think that's i don't think that's a full i don't think people fully
00:31:43comprehend that even though we've had documentaries for some time and we always wrestle with that with in
00:31:51terms of when we go in and we're talking to subjects and we're talking about for us in my
00:31:55company it's a multi-year initiative maybe decades long thing where we have relationships with the
00:32:00entire community and you don't you don't know what's going to happen to your film you don't know if it's
00:32:04going to go to to sundance or whether 10 million people are going to see it or or 100 100 000 people
00:32:10but it does make a difference particularly when you're showing people in compromised situations or people
00:32:14who you know may be putting themselves at risk you know a hundred thousand versus you know 10 million
00:32:20people is it is a big difference and so how do we how do we communicate to them the potential
00:32:27consequences without undermining what we're trying to do in the in the first place which is gain their trusting
00:32:31yeah right the risk in strong island was to step forward after you know after many many years of
00:32:39silence and to trust me to be the person to tell the story me who none of these people outside of my family
00:32:46knew um that i was a filmmaker i hadn't spoken to my brother's friend who was with him the night he was
00:32:52shot um since that night um my you know his other friends and other characters in the film i hadn't
00:32:59spoken to them in over a decade um so part of the risk um for for those people was you know to to respond
00:33:08to a call literally from the past right asking them to step back into one of the most painful times of
00:33:15their lives with me actually not particularly interested in um or or not necessarily having
00:33:23the kind of dynamic that results in people feeling like family the kind of dynamic that that came out
00:33:29of strong island was that they felt like i had provided them you know the the platform to be heard
00:33:37and that is that's a really you know sort of deep responsibility that i took very seriously
00:33:42and some of the characters that are in the film weren't originally in the film my sister because
00:33:47of what happens to documentary you know subjects wasn't originally in the film i was being very
00:33:52protective of her um but i realized without her voice that that the story was incomplete um and i you know
00:34:00i wrestled with even though i shot the interviews i wrestled with whether or not to use them for years
00:34:06and i had thought you know because there are so many films about the you know black experience with
00:34:12violence that are so often authenticated by white characters i was trying to make this film without
00:34:17any white characters but david breen the you know the ada who who was shot at a bank robbery he is the only
00:34:25person that i know who can talk about what it's like to be shot and he acts as the proxy for my brother
00:34:33right and so there are those kinds of decisions you know and especially in a formal film as opposed to
00:34:41a verite film when when it's a very constructed experience you know everyone really is like a
00:34:48discrete chapter you know and in those discrete chapters those characters get to be their full selves
00:34:54um and i'm really glad that i made that decision because otherwise i would have been doing them a
00:34:58disservice and they would have done this done the film a disservice it's still a leap of faith
00:35:03you're asking your your characters to go on a leap of faith with you which is what i always tell
00:35:07people and be upfront about it but it's you know because matt your subjects i mean during the course of
00:35:13the film they're making the decision to be more public to try to get attention to the cause their city
00:35:19in raqq uh have you been in touch with them as we're filming raqq is now seemingly liberated uh have you
00:35:26been in touch over the past few days and how are they responding to the news yeah i mean similarly
00:35:32we have a text group and we text almost every single day um yeah the news that raqq has been liberated is
00:35:39is quite bittersweet i mean it's it's good that isis is gone but i think um you know one thing that we
00:35:47you know we sort of uh if passes prologue we sort of shoot first and ask questions later and
00:35:53you know what's next what's the plan and i don't see much of a plan and i think um you know one of
00:35:59the big themes in in my film and one of the big poignant things in my films especially now is is that
00:36:06isis is an idea you can't fight an idea with weapons you can't fight an idea with bombs you can't
00:36:12fight an idea with guns so how do we fight this this sort of you know original um things that that
00:36:20allowed isis to flourish in the first place how do we combat that and i think that remains to be seen
00:36:26and that's one you know one of the sad realities is that this is not a happy ending right now
00:36:31um and i think i wish i wish it wasn't the case um but i think you know they're not going home anytime
00:36:37soon but going back to sort of amanda's question or amanda's point earlier is i think one thing that
00:36:43is quite different in documentaries now than say 20 years ago is that you know you could go off to
00:36:49syria you could go off to mexico you could go off to some place and legitimately tell someone you know
00:36:54i'd like to tell your story but that that story might not necessarily make it back to where they
00:36:59live building off your thought of how these films now can get much more exposure i mean the flip side
00:37:05of that is they are competing with hundreds of other films whether it's on netflix or amazon or any of the
00:37:11other sites uh when you bring a film out is part of your job now to create a social media presence for
00:37:18that film and and even though you want might want to get on to the next film to carve out six months
00:37:23to promote the the current movie how are you all dealing with that question i mean it's time
00:37:28consuming you have to like to vote it's almost a full-time job now taking a film out into the world
00:37:33and um you know with this particular film it's about a moment in time the last year of the obama
00:37:39presidency that is now a thing of the past so you know and the con i think when people watch it
00:37:44i've showed it four times twice in toronto twice in london publicly and so it seems that people are
00:37:48watching it with the watching the film and then watching the narrative that's going through their
00:37:53mind of what's going on in the world today which is very different but so just engaging with that
00:37:58and figuring out how to engage with that i mean we're still starting to be honest with you because
00:38:02i don't want to insert myself into the political arena although i know it's going to happen when this
00:38:07thing goes out but just in terms of like a for any film a plan to kind of get it noticed
00:38:12it's it's it's actually it's a lot it's a lot of work and we generally it's not built into the budget
00:38:17and all that this is just what you do because you believe in your project i think there's a shift
00:38:22from i think most of us probably produce and direct our work and it's very hard to define when
00:38:27we're directing when we're producing but the moment the film has been color corrected the mix is done
00:38:33everything's done kind of our work as director is over and then it's becomes the role of the producer and
00:38:38and i know we don't have dvds anymore but to me i used to think that you have to shepherd that film
00:38:44to the very end which would be either a home video or broadcast the time in the schedule going i'm going
00:38:50to spend the next four or five months with this film because these are our babies and we want to see that
00:38:54they're brought into the world in the best possible manner they have the best opportunities to
00:39:00walking around and for for wind on fire i just want to tell you for example there's all social media
00:39:05that we've been able to create around the movie it's my previous movie i learned this year that the
00:39:11movie like a baby started to do its own steps venezuela was using this as their manual for the
00:39:17revolution this year and i was like wow the movie doing some change to the world i all of a sudden
00:39:23got a call from brazil where opposition used it last year to impeach the president i was like
00:39:27wow so nothing to do with ukraine nothing to do with the european union all of a sudden it's
00:39:33doing some changes in latin america so the social component i exist and the it's it's a great but
00:39:39we as the filmmakers we're starting to learn more and more and involve ourselves more and more and
00:39:44for example i just had a conversation before the table and we were talking what are you doing next
00:39:48what are you doing next and we all over the summer we're not finding ourselves on the set back to do
00:39:54next movie we're finding ourselves to promoting the movie and if in the winter on fire i was a filmmaker
00:39:59these days with christ from syria i find myself being activists protecting the first amendment
00:40:04of the constitution because these people in syria were fighting for the freedom of speech since 2011
00:40:09and i'm finding myself in 2007 us americans finding ourselves on the streets protesting peacefully like
00:40:17them protesting and we're fighting our freedom of speech here right now we are the filmmakers we need
00:40:23to preserve these elements and specifically in the climate of our country we're finding ourselves that
00:40:28there is a threat to the first amendment there is a threat to the freedom of speech and we if it
00:40:33wants to continue making movies and express ourselves we need to preserve this so all of a sudden
00:40:38i'm not kind of finding myself going to the next project i need to advance this project in order to
00:40:44preserve these elements for all of us it's not just a threat to the first amendment and freedom of
00:40:49speech it's a threat to the freedom of the press it's a threat to the right to to peaceful assembly it's a
00:40:55threat to um to to protesting just in general um you know what what communities have experienced as
00:41:02abuse of power um you know around the country strong island is a personal story that's true but the end
00:41:08of the film is a really pointed question about how we decide whose fear is reasonable and for the last
00:41:15you know since 2012 um you know when trayvon martin was shot and killed by george zimmerman in february
00:41:212012 we have been confronted with more and more of these self-defense cases right and every single
00:41:28self-defense case the narrative is the same now as it was with my brother's case 25 years ago which
00:41:34means that we have a serious problem in our criminal justice system that now is being backed up with
00:41:40data that's now being backed up with scholarship that's now being backed up by academics who you know
00:41:46from the marshall project to the brennan center who are coming out with studies they've crunched the
00:41:50numbers they have the data that prove that the implicit bias or the explicit bias is there and
00:41:56that it's in and it's influencing the way that our criminal justice system arrests people sentences
00:42:01people and still because we live in an age now where reason has somehow become a pariah and
00:42:12you know it it's partly my responsibility to use the film to say okay if this sounds familiar to you
00:42:20it's not an accident right when you're promoting your film you're not retelling the story of the
00:42:25film per se you're moving on to the larger topic that the film casts a light on i'm telling this i'm
00:42:32telling the story that might happen tomorrow i'm telling the story that happened last week you know
00:42:37it's it's it's not you know william is a point on a line that continues through to this day several
00:42:44earlier films function as a form of journalism and they draw on existing journalism and the president's
00:42:50mantra now is fake news i mean you know what's your reaction they spark conversations though on on social
00:42:56media and because this goes back to the like the role of social media when we finish a film and then
00:43:01what happens after that now if you're not satisfied with with how the mainstream media is talking about an
00:43:08issue all you need to do is go out onto social media you can see these dynamic conversations
00:43:13happening when our films come out we we have to think about how do our films fit into those dynamic
00:43:21conversations and how can we use that to kind of like pour a little bit of gasoline but you have to do
00:43:25it in a very you can't just like send your film out and drop it into the into the social media universe
00:43:30because sometimes it can get distorted that may be different from your intent tent as an artist
00:43:35because we are artists we have intent and that's what i find to be particularly exciting albeit
00:43:42time consuming and expensive and so it depending on whether you have you know amazon or netflix behind
00:43:49your film we you know we have a smaller um i don't know how it operates from film to film but
00:43:55those conversations and sort of the reimaginings of of these films are incredibly important and taking
00:44:02place in in the social media especially now where we have such divisiveness the purpose i i think
00:44:09one of the most interesting things though i think you were addressing this as well is how the purpose
00:44:13shifts how it changes when we made jane people asked me that the film was sitting in the storage
00:44:19unit for 50 years and so why is it happening now and when i got hired in 2015 early 2015 or 2014
00:44:28the world was so different than it is now and the other night we were at a uh at a premiere and one of
00:44:37the reporters asked me about harvey weinstein the the weinstein story broke the night that we were
00:44:43bringing out a story a 55 year old story about a woman who had to overcome insurmountable
00:44:52um obstacles and odds that were brought on by the sort of male dominated culture and to have that
00:44:59sort of heroic tale of a a real hero um emerging in the midst of this sort of puddle of darkness that
00:45:07we're in just it changed the whole discourse it seemed to me and and the film shifted in my mind and
00:45:15in jane's mind and then in the way that people sort of have been asking us questions the last few weeks
00:45:20so it's very interesting how these things become well greg's a great terrific example of it that
00:45:26that greg's entire film you cannot watch his film in fact you clearly in in the edit room
00:45:33you know it's there you can't help but over trump is just looming through the film i was actually
00:45:39talking about it i was like how much of how much would the was the edit have changed if hillary won
00:45:45well i think you know it's interesting because clearly i mean i knew going into it it was going
00:45:49to be a momentous year i just had a gut feeling the last year of the obama presidency so i pushed
00:45:53for the access and it was a struggle but once we started going you could just feel that there was
00:45:58this was a massive moment in our in our history clearly everyone thought involved that hillary was
00:46:05going to win did you people i mean i i asked them at one point do i have to be worried because if you're
00:46:11not worried you guys know what you're doing i think it's you know they're like no no it's gonna be
00:46:15fine like okay so i believe you you guys are the pros you're the experts but i think but what was
00:46:19interesting is you know in the film there's a scene where obama goes to greece um after the after the
00:46:25election and that was planned beforehand and i think so what would have happened had hillary won
00:46:31is they were going to sort of talk about how close we came he was going to give he ended up giving a
00:46:37speech indoors my understanding is they were going to give a speech outdoors on the steps of the parthenon
00:46:42and talk about how fragile our democracy can be you know and that's where the film was going to
00:46:48inhabit it it's like look how close we came and to an authoritarian and um you know then
00:46:55once the election happened they had to change the optics but i think i had a feeling that we were kind of
00:47:00in this momentous terrain but whenever i mean somebody well hbo funded the film and so sheila nevins
00:47:06asked me at the very beginning how do we know anything's going to happen it's like you don't but you
00:47:10know we just spend time with the characters and eventually if we're there enough and they trust
00:47:16us enough hopefully something happens in front of the cameras now that we have a different
00:47:21administration in place uh different challenges for filmmakers i wonder if you think it's even more
00:47:25important for your colleagues to try to get in there and capture what's happening absolutely i think
00:47:32not just because of trump i think i think you know just in the world that the landscape that we're
00:47:37living in is so different and i think we as documentary filmmakers have such a greater
00:47:42responsibility i mean there's less and less money in foreign bureaus you know newspaper industry is
00:47:47dying and i think long form investigative journalism is is not what it used to be and i think documentary
00:47:53film is sort of filling that void and simultaneously also i mean obviously that's part of what my film is
00:47:58about you know citizen journalism is becoming more and more important as you know technology has been
00:48:04democratized and avenues of distribution have been democratized um you know i think a big part of
00:48:10what my film is about is about sort of an homage to journalism i think as we look to the future we're
00:48:15going to rely more and more i think a big part of what my film is about is about sort of an homage to
00:48:22journalism i think as we look to the future we're going to rely more and more on sort of first person
00:48:27testimony right and i think in terms of in terms of citizen journalism i think what i find really
00:48:33ironic is that we have had citizen journalism at least into you know in
00:48:37this country I've been able to trace it back to you know it's it's the Zabruder
00:48:42film right and Kennedy's assassination like the first time that we all saw you
00:48:47know one piece of tape as a nation and then after that maybe it was I mean
00:48:52Kennedy you know Malcolm X maybe but then really the zeitgeist moment was the
00:48:59Rodney King tape right the Rodney King tape and the subsequent verdict was the
00:49:04first time in our country where everyone saw the same piece of citizen journalism
00:49:10and went away from that tape believing two different things believing that a man
00:49:15who had almost been beaten to death was still a threat and believing that the
00:49:19police officers who were acting in the manner that they did had no other choice
00:49:22that I think that's what one of the big differences is I least I mean where I'm
00:49:2849 so I sort of remember what it's some there's been a shift and sort of how
00:49:34this stuff is perceived how the New York Times is perceived legitimacy of the
00:49:39mainstream media the legitimacy of and from that I think has sprung voices that
00:49:45are more uncompromising that are saying this is our point of view and we're
00:49:49telling our story and that's you know if you look at the difference between my
00:49:53film which in some ways took a more traditional approach to say we're going
00:49:57into this environment that's incredibly divisive you have police on one side the
00:50:00community on the other side they don't like or trust each other or understand
00:50:04each other we're gonna try to go into that world versus a who streets which is
00:50:08saying this is our experience this is how we are telling that these stories are
00:50:13happening in an environment where we the divisiveness and the sort of the lack
00:50:17of dialogue I feel at least from my experience is is sharper than it's ever
00:50:23than it's ever been I think one of the reasons Jane when she watches our film
00:50:27today thinks she's watching it for the first time I said this to her I go Jane you
00:50:31understand that it didn't look like that the colors didn't look like that and it
00:50:34didn't sound like this when you experience Orson Welles heavily narrated 1965
00:50:40documentary and I'm almost entirely convinced that through the advent of
00:50:45technology of color grading and on all of what we can do in sound we can now 55
00:50:51years later create an experience that allows an 84 year old woman to feel that
00:50:56she's experiencing this for the first time and I don't think that was possible in
00:51:001965 I think that's one of the most remarkable things about the film your
00:51:03film is the use of sound I mean you really truly feel like you're there and it's
00:51:09it's not done in a sort of it's remarkable how did you did you know that that was
00:51:15going to be such a big part of the film from the beginning we said we built a
00:51:17sound mixing stage in my office two and a half years ago we started sound editing
00:51:23before we started picture cutting yeah and what we did was because we you know
00:51:27they don't record sounds when they do nature films so we but in Gombe they've
00:51:31been doing in Gombe they've been doing there's been people doing doctorals on
00:51:36chimp vocalization so we acquired 55 years of audio recordings and field
00:51:41recordings and then spent two and a half years constructing the soundscape in
00:51:46seven one for the film which is another thing that was like so annoying to me that
00:51:51nobody watches I mean I'm sure everybody who watches everybody's film here on
00:51:55laptops or whatever and it's just so I'm so glad you do it it's so frustrating that
00:52:01we're like here as filmmakers and that there's even an option to first screeners
00:52:06because it wasn't even a thing back in the day and it's like I really I just I
00:52:11feel like it's such a cheat when people are like I'm gonna watch a screener I'm
00:52:15gonna watch on your phone and of course we all may we all know now that okay it's
00:52:19gonna end up on someone's phone so we have to bear that in mind as we're like
00:52:23contemplating aesthetic decisions now but the beats by Dre though are pretty good
00:52:27I'm in there
00:52:30unfortunately we're coming to the end of our time but I'd like to just go around
00:52:47the table quickly what's the piece of one piece of advice you would give to a
00:52:52young documentarian or an older documentarian starting out to make their
00:52:56first film Yancy would you kick it off gosh the one piece of advice that I
00:53:03would give regardless of your age is to summon your courage you know I think that
00:53:10more than anything else it's courage I feel like I say this all the time but it
00:53:18still holds true for me is sort of a cliche documentary maxim but it's if you end up
00:53:26with the story you started with and you weren't listening along the way and I
00:53:29think that's good advice for life and I think it's good advice for filmmaking and
00:53:33let the story evolve you know if if you have a notion what you think your story is
00:53:38throw it out the window and and really be open open the story changing and in
00:53:44both with my last film Cartel and and with City of Ghosts I wouldn't have these
00:53:49films if I didn't believe in that you know they changed massively from from when I
00:53:53started to when I ended you know City of Ghosts began as this story of this sort
00:53:57of information war but it became a story of you know rising nationalism in Europe
00:54:01it became a story an immigrant story as I talked about it became a story of trauma
00:54:05and for me that's it's so important is you know being open to all that Peter I
00:54:12think really finding ways to get perspective whether that whether that
00:54:17means on the one hand recognizing that the work that you do is so demanding that
00:54:22you need to take care of yourself and remember and get perspective you know
00:54:27whether it's your relationships your friends your family taking care of
00:54:30yourself fundamentally but also really getting perspective from listening and
00:54:34really sort of absorbing as much as you can what my my mentor and executive
00:54:40producer on on the forest John else who's done a lot of you know writing for
00:54:45documentary remember he always tell me that he would read like just do nothing but
00:54:49reading in the style in which he had to write the narration so he might read the
00:54:53Bible you know for instance or he might you know read some that absorbing and
00:54:57listening and truly will give you the perspective necessary particularly in this
00:55:01day and age to you know break free of your comfort zone certain getting into
00:55:06being being able to sort of confront and tell the story of somebody try to
00:55:10understand maybe somebody that you don't like or understand I think that's
00:55:15incredibly important today and Danny what would you tell a young filmmaker oh it
00:55:20can be an old filmmaker what's old you know what a for me documentary
00:55:26filmmakers to take the camera and just to jump into the jungle jump into the
00:55:31Middle East jump into the Maidan Square and you know what to start to
00:55:36document this thing and then to find the points that I personally can connect it I
00:55:42personally can be related and to be able to tell the story where you have
00:55:48beginning middle and end and every person doesn't matter if he knows the
00:55:52subject or not with all my two stories winter on fire and Christ from Syria I
00:55:57try to educate people I try to explain them that a the relevance of what I
00:56:04witnessed in Ukraine or in Syria or in the Middle East can be easy connected or
00:56:09easy translated to European Union to Latin America or to the United States as
00:56:16right now and it's important for me to educate people because at the end of the
00:56:20day because of the media situations we are living in the bubbles and we as
00:56:24documentary filmmakers we have this chance and responsibility and ability to
00:56:28educate people that's why for example I will suggest to every young filmmaker or
00:56:32old filmmaker go do take a camera learn these stories learn about these people
00:56:37and educate something that media sometimes not doing because winter on
00:56:42fire or Christ from Syria they're both comprehensive stories versus small
00:56:45segments of the news so we have this chance and ability to tell these stories
00:56:50and educate people and bring them from dark side like you are educating them
00:56:54about Isis that people much don't know so you know what we able to educate them
00:56:59who is this refugee people what they're looking that they're at the end of the day
00:57:02they're not terrorists they're seeking shelter so we have this ability to bring
00:57:06people from darkness and I think that's what I will endorse
00:57:10Brent I'll take it turn it to an aesthetic place I think that people forget the film
00:57:17is 50% sound and 50% image and as directors and artists I look at every shot as a
00:57:26world of opportunities there's a myriad of things that we can do to communicate
00:57:30via the mise en scene the image all aspects of film and I think that
00:57:36oftentimes a documentary because the word document is germane to documentary
00:57:41people think that you can just document cover the action and I think it's in it's
00:57:48our responsibilities as directors to bring as much as we can to make that as
00:57:52complete an experience as possible so if you're filming an interview think about the
00:57:59position of the camera in relation to the subject think about the eye line think
00:58:03about the lighting think about if you can anticipate what they're gonna say then
00:58:06where is the best place put the camera I think that our brethren in fiction have
00:58:11sort of are in general are a little bit more advanced than us in this
00:58:17department and I think it's something that that can really enhance all of our
00:58:22films so and it was something that you know what you were saying about Matt's film but
00:58:27you can watch what the sound off or your film like I I could have watched your
00:58:31film entirely with the sound off I know you'd be like what the heck but but I
00:58:36knew what your mother was saying through and I knew was a testimonial because of
00:58:40the way you framed it and and and and I was so I was so happy when I turned your
00:58:45film on and I I saw ah there's someone who's sculpting this and and who's I'm not
00:58:51just hearing but I'm seeing and all my senses are alive and and so I got into
00:58:58this field for one reason because I wanted to make nonfiction films that had
00:59:02the the the the emotional strength of fiction because I was I grew up in this
00:59:08watching movies and so I that's what fascinates me about this field and so to
00:59:14a young or old or to to anyone really just think what can I do to maximize this
00:59:23moment my first piece of advice and this is my first feature film so I say it very
00:59:29humbly is just start shooting just go it was that was the piece of advice given to
00:59:35me I felt a little frozen like this is so big and there's so many people and I
00:59:40have to film in a school and I have to get permission from the Baltimore City
00:59:43school system and I have to raise all this money and just start shooting
00:59:47don't worry about it just go and that's the first piece and the second piece is
00:59:53you know I made step because I wanted to give people hope I wanted I feel like in
00:59:59this day and age we need as much hope as we can get and hold on to and I was
01:00:04told no a lot on this movie by a lot of people that I have great respect for to
01:00:11this day and admire and I didn't take no for an answer and it's a lesson not just
01:00:15for me but it was a lesson for all the girls in my movie great right so I would
01:00:21actually agree with you that the artistry of the filmmaking doc filmmaking is
01:00:26often kind of just not talked about enough wasn't we spent an hour here I was
01:00:29waiting for it to come yeah and it's great it's really yeah it's really sort of so
01:00:34because we are making movies and that's what we're doing and you know just briefly
01:00:40on our film we sort of the final year we did no time to white balance no lights at
01:00:44all so it was like the first cuts were like really ugly it's safe to say colors but
01:00:50when you know the color correcting now is incredible so we showed it on like
01:00:54Odeon Leicester Square in London massive screen that like it all held up which is
01:01:00people saying the DPs are amazing it's like well yes they were great they got
01:01:03they were in those tiny rooms with the small cameras but really it's like the
01:01:07guy who did the color was amazing but I think in terms of like as starting out I
01:01:11think it's um what I would say is is be honest and be authentic in front of
01:01:18yourself and your characters be clear about what your intentions are with the
01:01:22film and then for me what I always ask myself is why this film why now you know am I
01:01:28speaking to this moment and I think given that the moment that we all find
01:01:32ourselves in that question for me at least is more relevant than ever well
01:01:37thank you all for being with us here today we could easily go for another hour
01:01:41but your films are fascinating they certainly touch on all kinds of urgent
01:01:48issues so I hope people take the time to sit back and watch all of them thanks
01:01:53very much
01:01:54thank you
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