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Why Make Activist Videos?

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Posted on August 20, 2001

By Bernardo Ruiz

On July 13, six documentary filmmakers had the tables turned on them as they answered questions instead of asking them. The filmmakers, all participants in the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, discussed the notion of activist filmmaking, as well as the nuts and bolts of getting their films made. In a roundtable conversation with filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz, they explored the topics facing social documentary makers and why the struggle goes on. Participating were:

The Filmmakers

Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, Live Free or Die

A film that follows Dr. Wayne Goldner, who performs legal abortions in a small New England town. While most of the town supports abortion rights, few want to confront the right-to-lifers and the controversy they bring. Goldner stands virtually alone in a opposing a powerful minority.

David Belle, Abandoned

Thousands of U.S. residents face deportation, caught in the wake of the harsh new immigration laws passed by Congress in 1996. The film takes a close look behind the official facade of the immigration detention system to reveal a multimillion-dollar prison industry and how it benefits by specializing in such cases, which are billed at almost twice the price of housing regular inmates.

Laleh Khadivi, 900 Women

The Louisiana Correctional Institute houses the state's most dangerous female prisoners and often exceeds its population capacity of 900. Three-quarters of the inmates are mothers, and one fourth are serving sentences of 15 years or more. This film is a striking, sensitive portrait of life in this deceptively peaceful atmosphere.

Beverly Peterson, Invisible Revolution

Taking you to the front lines of a powerful, passionate, and very raw youth subculture, this film documents not only the young people involved in the pro-white movement, but also the counter-movement that demonstrates against and often clashes with them: Anti-Racist Action (ARA)

Bernardo Ruiz: Let's start off by discussing the idea of 'activist filmmaking,' what it means and how it is still relevant today. Would you define yourselves as activist filmmakers?

Rose Rosenblatt: It is a wide parameter, but I guess so, because I take on controversial subjects, difficult subjects. I insist on doing them in depth, and I insist on some sort of point of view.

Laleh Khadivi: I would say yes, too, because the whole time I was making this film, I wanted to be a social worker. I didn't want to leave [my subjects] and come back to New York and just sit in front of an Avid. I didn't want to distance myself from these actual human dramas. This is my first film, and I got into it because I knew it would have an effect when it was done. I don't think I could work on another film [that didn't address important issues], no matter how much money you gave me.

David Belle: I don't make too much of a separation between activism and the kind of filmmaking I do. I think there are many tiers to activism -- filmmaking is just one arm of the process. I've never looked at it like, a film's going to change the world. I always looked at it like, here's this issue and here is the mainstream press's presentation -- which is very unbalanced. Typically, there's a whole side that has no voice, and it's usually the poor. My idea is why don't we try to offset that and give some balance to those who don't have a say?

Beverly, in your case, the stories that deal with white racists and even the Anti Racists Action (ARA) group are rarely touched on with any kind of depth in the mainstream media. Was that part of your reason for wanting to cover that world?

Beverly Peterson: Well, it's funny, because [the project] started totally by accident. I happened to be on a fellowship in Ohio. This woman who lived next door told me about these kids in ARA [a loose coalition of punks, skinheads, and anarchist youth who fight fascist and racist groups like neo-nazi skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan]. It surprised me, and I had to go and check this out. But what made want to make the movie -- I mean, I could have done this as an article -- was because I got pissed off. I was so angry with mainstream media's [coverage]. Everybody I talked to hated these kids. Even my friends who are progressive hated these kids. [laughs] It drove me nuts, so I became determined to show them as they are. In the process, one of the things I had to fight was the concept of being an activist. If I [were just an activist], then the film would just be dismissed. So, I tried to make it as objective as possible by being as subjective as possible with every single group. It's funny, because I sent the film to the government of this town [which appears in the film] which is going to have a community rally in Ohio [against racism]. I didn't know what to expect. They said, "This was a great film. It was really objective. It was really fair. But we hate those ARA kids." But what I told the woman was, I didn't make the movie to make you love the ARA. I made it so that at least you would hear their voice.

That brings up an interesting point. One of the things your film did well was to humanize a complex subject. There's a moment in Invisible Revolution when we are watching the preparations for a wedding. The bride is fussing with the details. It turns out the 18-year-old imperial wizard is getting married to his white power girlfriend. She is crying. You capture this almost tender moment between them -- loving glances. It is a sweet and typical scene and a very disarming moment because it humanizes these white racists. They are a "normal" couple until the shotguns go off and everyone starts yelling, "White Power!"

Interestingly, everyone here did that with their films on one level or another. You all dealt with abstract issues like Abortion, Racism, Immigration, Women in Prison. But what makes these films work is that they are told through people, by humanizing these social issues. How do you look for the stories within an issue? How do you get connected to those stories and those people?

Khadivi: That's the best thing about being able to document life is getting both sides. Working in the prison, a lot of filmmakers have the tendency to only consider what the inmates are thinking: What do they do? Are they being violated? In the case of 900 Women, the prison is [seemingly] serene. All the guards are women. That fascinated me. I wanted to know how it was possible that these women who are guards come from the same communities as the inmates. All the correctional officers are coming from lower-income African American rural communities that are surrounding the prison Those are the same places that the inmates come from. They knew each other when they went to school. They knew each other as little kids. They just took different paths. And that interaction between them was really fascinating. You tend to come to a story with a good guy/bad guy perspective. When you start to dismantle that, I think people broaden their ideas about who fills what role. In the film you find there is a guard who has a heart. She has something to tie her to the people she is supposed to be oppressing. But that isn't always the case.

Rosenblatt: There is this tightrope you have to walk. You have to have a point of view, and at the same time you have to be omniscient. If you don't get both sides in some way, then it does becomes cardboard, it becomes black and white. You discredit yourself and the film. That happens very quickly. It's so important that you have access to both sides. Without access, don't go there. Go there when you have it. Interestingly [in Live Free or Die] we got access to one of the characters and desperately wanted to get access to the right-to-lifer, who gave us no access. That notion of no-access became the character. That was what was riveting. But it would have obviously been better if we could have gotten into her house, talked to her, and found out she had nine kids and is a rabid anti-abortion pro-lifer.

This is the woman who, in the documentary, suggests that since you and the subject are both Jewish that you are somehow in cahoots.

Rosenblatt: Right, because Dr. Goldner is also Jewish.

Marion Lipschutz: I do think, though, when you walk into a situation, my impulse is to look at all sides and to be fair and give people their due. Often that makes for a better film -- to at least have some of that access. I also think that with this film we set out to make it with a point of view. It was that doctors are being scared away from the profession [of abortion]. They're not doing it. We came in with that point of view. We didn't come in with the point of view of 'let's find out what it it's like to be a doctor.' So that meant that we were indeed making selections that were probably unfair to the people who are driving doctors out of the business. So, I think there are different kinds of ways do activist films. The difficulty is really being careful about doing propaganda.

Rosenblatt: You can't make a good piece without a point of view. I think this is something a lot of filmmakers-at least a lot of young filmmakers-struggle with. They should not be afraid of it because they're not going to get on PBS or something.

Khadivi: At one of my screenings at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, somebody raised their hand -- of course, I was petrified. I guess everybody comes to a prison film, in this community of activist/documentary filmmakers and expects, to see a very pro-inmate, pro-reform film. Mine didn't really have that point of view. Mine is sort of pro-person, pro-women film. This guy raised his hand and said, "Do you realize you've made a promotional piece for prisons?" Because, one of the lifers, one of the women who is going to die there, said, "I think my life is better now than if I were in the free world." She says, "I have found things in myself that I would not have found otherwise. I would probably be dead now." The guy mentioned this comment. I said, "That is a revolution that came within herself. That had nothing to do with the institution. Whatever these women achieved, they did it by themselves. And just because I showed the Warden's side and the correctional officer's side as well as the inmates side, this person took offense. You do walk that fine line. Some people come expecting to see one thing, and the minute you show them something else...

Rosenblatt: I think it's a sophisticated notion [to get both sides]. People who work in activism [don't always understand] that there's an artistic component to making a film. We're trying to pull back and tell a story and get people to rethink things.

Belle: It's essential to humanize the characters and not to preach about an issue. That's the way you are going to pull people in. In doing that, of course, you have your point of view, but showing both sides for me is . . . I love it. I love to talk to the other side. It adds a whole extra dimension to your film. You are eventually going to find someone who is proud of what they do and who is willing to talk confidently about that.

David, that was one of the elements that worked really well in Abandoned. The people representing the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) side often seemed like they were trying to convince themselves of this flawed policy. By allowing them to talk and talk, you allowed them to stumble through their rhetoric and search for ways to justify this unreasonable law [the 1996 Immigration Law]. Your film also brings up another interesting point. You used narration to frame the issue. In fact, you all used narration. What motivated the narration in each of your films?

Rosenblatt: Lack of imagination. (Everyone laughs)

Belle: I really wanted Abandoned to have no narration, but then I had a 5 -1/2 hour rough cut and I thought, I have to put it in there. Especially with something like this. It's too technical [on its own]. It's too legalistic. You have to reduce things so that the story can move on without getting bogged down in details.

Lipschuptz: Narration isn't bad, it's just bad narration that's bad.

Rosenblatt: Narration does something. It serves a function besides helping to structure. But it also takes you outside of the piece. And it's very, very frustrating because you [generally] don't want to do that. So you have this dual thing that you have to struggle with. That's the hardest thing, having the audiences follow the subject. Because you know the subject very, very well. Often times things are unclear, and I screen it for an audience and realize what will do it is a line or two of narration. I don't want to do that, but I just have to. Then there's this personal narration which we went with, which is a very different thing. It works, in terms of character. [Ed.: In this film, the filmmakers/narrators themselves become a character.]

Right, that was one of the things that really worked about your film. The kind of asides or personal information that we as an audience became privy to was only possible through your personal narration. It gave it structure as well as provided insight. Now what about funding? What were some of the sources you targeted?

Khadivi: For 900 Women , A0E gave us money to go down and make a 42-minute piece. It turned out to be longer than 42 minutes, so when their money ran out, I went to Soros [George Soros Open Institute] and they helped out. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities -- after I spent a really long time convincing them that this piece wasn't going to slaughter Louisiana and make it look like a crime-filled, corrupt state -- they gave me money. A lot of money. The Playboy Foundation also gave money and a variety of other groups, but television was really the biggest chunk of money. We also sold rights in Europe.

How much were you able to raise in total?

Khadivi: Probably $230,000. TV is really the way. Schedulers and programmers have so much time to fill.

Rosenblatt: But are you happy with the TV cut? [from 74 minutes to 42 minutes]

Khadivi: Yeah, in terms of knowing that this can be shown to America and the message is intact. It still has the same ending as in the 74-minute version. It ends with the line, "Women are the fastest growing prison population." But, yeah, we struggled with cutting it down.

Lipschutz: I had a round of foundation funding. And I think I've figured out something that is really useful to understand. When foundations say they don't fund media, it means they have people who are incredibly educated about an issue, which you don't know as well as they know. What they want to know is that you really understand the issue that they have been spending their life studying. They are only going to fund you if you promise to bring to the public an understanding of what those issues are. They have a limited pile of money, and lots and lots of people want it.

Peterson: Most foundations were horrified with Invisible Revolution.

So where did the funding come from?

Peterson: Well, every station turned me down. They all said, "We're doing it ourselves." I said, "Really?" (laughs) They were trotting out the same subjects that everyone else was trotting out. I couldn't get any big foundation money either. So I went to small family foundations that had small discretionary funds of $3,000 to $4,000 in the towns where these groups were. I would call them up and say, "You've got this rally coming up. I'm going to be there in two weeks. I'm desperate. I need money right away. I can come down. I can film it. Here's my budget. I've got to have enough for this one shoot and this one shoot only. Please, please, please." And that was how I got my funding.

Lipschutz: You poor thing!

Khadivi: Wow.

So, really it was funded moment by moment...

Peterson: And thank god my cameraman -- who was fully paid at scale -- was understanding. I also got money towards the end when I sold footage of an interview I did with Ben Smith, who two weeks after the interview went off on a shooting rampage in Texas and killed two people and wounded nine before shooting himself. He made history.

So you had this "exclusive" footage.

Peterson: Right, because, no one wanted to interview him. People were like 'why are you interviewing him? Interview someone else.' I sold it to ABC and got $30,000-$40,000. My husband was saying, 'just think, we could pay all our bills, we could be out of debt.' I said, "Honey, the ARA are going to be in Las Vegas, I can take a trip and..." (Everyone laughs) I was able to keep working. I sold the footage to HBO and I'm selling some to Dateline. I was able to get a lot of press out of it, too.

How about you, David?

Belle: We have some private money each year. Crowing Rooster Arts is a nonprofit. Our money comes from people who wish to remain anonymous, but who are very concerned about human rights.

How important is it to organize around the distribution and exhibition of your film?

Belle: It's just as important -- if not more so -- than making the film. So many films are made that don't get seen. You can't throw everything up in the air and say, 'thank god, I'm finished.' You have to organize. I would really like this film to get on TV, but I am also going to be distributing tapes to [grassroots] groups, organizing on a very simple level.

Rosenblatt: I'm pretty despairing on the subject. And we're doing pretty well. We're airing on nationally on P.O.V., but you don't have that sense that it's going to make a big difference. You want it to. You calculate that it will. We decide to air this right before the elections [aired September 26] because we thought wouldn't it be great if we got pulled into the dialogue around the election. But I don't know what it would take for that to happen -- to get Hilary [or] Al Gore to see this and somehow use this.

Khadivi: I want to get a truck and a screen and drive around the south and project the film at women's prisons. It is a rolling circus, but that's why I made this film, to get it out there. We did this on The Farm, and now I want to do it on a smaller level.

Peterson: There's a group called Working Films, they're just getting started. They're helping me exhibit/promote my film. Doing it alone is just exhausting. There comes a time as a filmmaker when you just want to get on to the next thing.

So as full of despair as the process can be, you all want to continue making films. [Everyone nods, laughing.]

Rosenblatt: Because making a film is delicious, it is the greatest time, it's wonderful. It gets in your blood and you just can't stop.

This article first appeared in The Independent Film and Video Monthly in December, 2000.

Bernardo Ruiz is a journalist and filmmaker, director/producer of a short, Night Magic and is currently associate producer for the first hour of the four part series Matters of Race. He is the director of Quinta Raza Productions.