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2015 Florida Film Festival: The 5 Can’t-Miss Elements to Make a World-Changing Documentary
by Mellissa Thomas
The “Making Meaning: Films that Change the World” discussion panel at the 2015 Florida Film Festival: (l-r) Maylen Dominguez, J.P. Eason, Jimmy Goldblum, Julie Sokolow, Christopher L. Walker, and Tony Sullivan. Photo by Mellissa Thomas.
The 2015 Florida Film Festival devoted its Thursday morning to the solemn and often underrated art of documentary filmmaking. Full Sail University’s Film MFA Program Director Maylen Dominguez moderated the lively “Making Meaning: Films that Change the World” discussion with a panel that included documentary subject Tony Sullivan (of Limited Partnership), Full Sail University’s Experimental Film Course Director J.P. Eason of the Film MFA program, and three documentarians, all of whom have feature films that screened in this year’s festival: Julie Sokolow (Director, Aspie Seeks Love), Jimmy Goldblum (Co-Director, Tomorrow We Disappear), and Christopher K. Walker (Co-Director, Welcome to Leith). Despite the panel’s collective shyness and soft-spoken nature, it got to the heart of what constitutes a documentary that creates change.
Have a prewriting and production plan, but be flexible.
Or, as Goldblum pithily stated, “Always have a well-thought-out plan, and be willing to abandon it.”
Goldblum’s Tomorrow We Disappear, a documentary about a magician’s ghetto in New Delhi, India, was born out of sheer curiosity. He was reading a fictional tome and, “by the time I got to about the five hundredth page of that book, [the author] describes a magician’s ghetto, and I thought, wow, how creative is that?” He decided to do a web search for magician’s ghettos in India and came across a single story about the Kathputli Colony, which was pending gentrification to building the city’s first skyscraper. Goldblum and his team then went to India to record the process and its effect on the citizens on the verge of being displaced. “I had an idea of what I wanted to shoot, but then I got there and there was this guy smoking black tar heroin right in front of me, and I thought, ‘Okay, this won’t go quite like I thought it would.”
Sullivan, who was one half of a gay married couple battling for his citizenship in Limited Partnership, stated that the documentary developed organically as well. Director Thomas Miller was at USF, which has a large immigrant student population. He noticed gay immigrant couples were encountering major challenges in getting their U.S. citizenship and wanted to make a documentary on what those challenges were. Miller was originally chronicling four couples’ experiences, but during the fourteen-year project, two of the couples broke up, and one couple was able to complete the process, which left Sullivan and his partner Richard Adams.
Create a narrative and resist the temptation to get attached.
According to Eason, one of the most common errors he has noticed among his students is they set out to create a story around a subject (person), but end up constructing a story they think the subject wants to see about himself, so the movie instead “becomes propaganda.” His solution: return to the narrative structure.
Walker, whose Welcome to Leith follows the eponymous North Dakota town’s fight against white supremacist Craig Cobb, who moves in and tries to take over, added that it is important to forsake feelings for the narrative. “There was this group of people [in the documentary] that I considered my ‘babies,’ so to speak,” he confessed. “Up to the final locked cut, I kept them in…I knew sooner or later I would have to edit them out, but I didn’t want to. I eventually did for the sake of the narrative.”
Goldblum elaborated further, stating that with features and even narrative features, there is a script, and the shooting and editing are based on it, but with a documentary, there is no script, so filmmakers have to construct the story during the editing process, which is when the danger comes. “… Some people tend to fall in love with the rough cut, and then finish the documentary based on that. You have to be able revise your ideas.”
He went on to explain that the plot in any narrative is external (the gentrification of the colony was the plot), but the subplot is happening internally (how the people questioned their self-perceptions and what they truly felt about the renovation). “If the plot and subplot don’t intersect at some point [in the documentary], it’s going to feel arbitrary.”
Sullivan noted that he was grateful for Miller’s objective approach to Limited Partnership. “It could’ve been a political movie or a legal movie, and both would have been awful,” the British-accented gentleman said. “It’s a great trust when you place your life in a documentarian’s hands because you don’t know what [direction he’ll go in] with the footage.”
Use what you have and just do it.
Sokolow said she filmed most of “Aspie Seeks Love” on her Sony Handicam over the course of four years and eventually got the attention of Animal, a production company that she “revered”, which came onboard and helped her complete the movie after watching a rough cut. “They didn’t seem to mind my Handicam footage,” she encouraged the audience. “Use your iPhone. Just make work.”
Goldblum reinforced Sokolow’s encouragement with a powerful point: When documentary filmmakers apply for grants, it is best to have footage recorded already. Those applying without footage will likely not win the grant.
World changing movies happen through empathy and understanding.
Goldblum admitted that he didn’t set out to make a socially conscious movie, but he befriended the subjects and asked the same questions repeatedly in order to encourage more transparent, vulnerable responses. Because the documentary explores the human element of the issue, it causes viewers to become attached. “Jacques Cousteau said if you want people to take notice of your subject, you have to make them fall in love with it.” Thanks to Goldblum’s documentary production, the India press dubbed his crew “Hollywood filmmakers”, which created a “media firestorm” and the gentrification project was halted.
Sokolow and Walker agreed. Walker admitted it was a bit strange to humanize a white supremacist, but it helps to listen to both sides. He discovered that Cobb (the white supremacist) has Asperger Syndrome (just like Sokolow’s subject David Matthews), which helps viewers to understand more and judge less. Cobb was imprisoned and is now on parole. “Welcome to Leith” screened at Sundance and now has a partial sale deal with PBS to air on its “Independent Lens” documentary program.
Sokolow noted that her project helped her documentary subjects have a platform on which to voice their frustrations as individuals on the Autism spectrum who encounter much difficulty finding like-minded people to spend their lives with. She was able to connect Matthews, who wanted to write a book but had not yet, with a bookbinding collective and get his first book published. She also was able to have Matthews speak at an Autistic school in Pennsylvania and he answered the children’s questions about his journey.
In the end, love is the nucleus of documentary filmmaking.
All of the panelists agreed that love is necessary in documentaries, both in narrative and during the lengthy production process. “If you don’t like what you’re making, just stop,” Walker said. “Because then you won’t put your all into it and it won’t come out good.”
Goldblum made one key clarification. “Empathy and love are powerful forces [in documentary filmmaking], but without political context, it comes off naive.”
WINTER PARK, Fla. (Florida National News) – Mister Rogers’ Week of Kindness, inspired by the children’s TV host and icon, comes to Orlando in March 2023. This week-long series of events was announced today at the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation in Winter Park.
“Fred McFeely Rogers devoted his entire life to reminding us of some of the most important ideas of what it means to be human among humans: love, respect and kindness,” explained Buena Vista Events & Management President & CEO Rich Bradley. “Many of us find that nearly 20 years after Fred’s passing, it is important to focus on his teachings once again, perhaps now more than ever. This is a week to re-engage with his massive body of work with some folks, and to introduce his teachings to others.”
Mister Rogers’ Week of Kindness begins March 20, 2023, the date which would have been Fred’s 95th birthday, and concludes on Saturday, March 26 with the Red Sweater Soiree, a community dinner to recognize ten ordinary members of the community who inspire and exemplify the affinity that Fred Rogers had for showing kindness to our “Neighbors”.
Mister Rogers Week of Kindness coming March 20-26, 2023. Photo Credit: Mike Brodsky (Florida National News)
Activities planned for the week will include early childhood education activities and faculty training, as well as events open to the public.
“The events will be offered free or at low cost,” continued Bradley. “This week-long celebration is not a series of fundraisers, but rather about once again remembering and sharing some of the great work that Fred Rogers created, not only in early childhood education, but in reminding us that we are all part of one big ‘neighborhood’. Fred taught us the importance of accepting our Neighbors just the way they are and engaging in kindness with our interactions. I can’t think of another period in my lifetime where we needed to reflect on those messages again more than today.”
“There are three ways to ultimate success,” Fred Rogers was once quoted as saying. “The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind. Imagine what our neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.”
Many of the activities of Mister Rogers’ Week of Kindness will be attended by members of the cast and crew of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 – 1975, and again from 1979 – 2001. David Newell, known as “Mr. McFeely,” the “Speedy Delivery” man, appeared at today’s media conference via video, and looks forward to visiting Central Florida next March.
David Newell, “Mr. McFeely.” Photo Credit: Mike Brodsky (Florida National News)
Mister Rogers’ Week of Kindness is supported by the McFeely-Rogers Foundation, the Fred Rogers Institute, and Fred Rogers Productions. Details regarding the specific activities and venues will be released over the next few weeks.
For more information on the events, visit https://www.BuenaVistaEvents.com or https://www.MisterRogersWeekofKindness.com.
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