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Changing The Face America Shows The World
Shortly after Election Day, 30 documentary filmmakers received an invitation from the U.S. Department of State to participate in a startup program called the American Documentary Showcase. The DOS wanted these filmmakers to present their films all over the world. FLOW, our global water crisis doc, was among those asked to participate.
To be honest, I was reluctant. Rampant media consolidation, FCC auction giveaways and embedded Iraqi war coverage hadn’t exactly enamored the US government to those of us working in independent media. What were their motives? Were the politics of change really upon us? No one really knew, but as documentarians we’re nothing if not deeply curious; how could we say no?
And so we met. Just 25 days after Barack Obama took office, 30 of us, joined by the International Documentary Association (IDA) and The University Film and Video Association (IFVA), met in LA with Susan Cohen of the Department of State. FLOW’s director Irena Salina would have joined me, but she was in India working on her next film.
I recognized many faces. There’s Scott Kennedy, nominated for an Academy Award for his razor-sharp landscaping of LA’s political backrooms in The Garden. And Ellen Kuras, also nominated with co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath for The Betrayal, their exile-on-main-street masterpiece. And Anayansi Prado, with her revelatory Children In No Man’s Land, featuring a Department of Homeland Security that’s holding 700 unaccompanied minors as of this writing.
The list goes on but here’s the point: these filmmakers, like others in the room that day, are fearless, political (on both sides of the spectrum) and not notably generous to those in power. The question for the State Department that Saturday could be summed up in two words, why us? After all, aren’t there far less controversial subjects to present internationally? Nature docs, for example?
Susan Cohen’s response was perfectly rational and completely unexpected. She said freedom of expression is our biggest asset, a rare commodity in today’s world. It’s our brand, she said, and in the critical rebuilding of our international relationships, we’d be well-served to show the world what we mean by it.
Really? We probed further. What about creators speaking freely to audiences in Libya, or Sudan? Or Afghanistan, or Indonesia? Were we simply expected to gloss over Q&A questions critical of US policy?
Cohen was resolute. Absolutely not, she said, go right ahead and say whatever you believe, critical or not. Again, she said, it’s an exercise in freedom of expression, nothing less. Express yourself. Freely.
Suddenly, my reluctance was under attack.
And sure, it’s easy to be cynical. After all, this is brand marketing, by the biggest brand on the planet. But imagine a young South African boy deeply moved by the slaveholder revelations of Katrina Brown’s Traces Of The Trade: A Story From The Deep North. Or an Ecuadorian medical student inspired by the street medicine of One Bridge To The Next to start her own practice in Quito.
Documentaries inspire action, I’ve seen it over and over again with FLOW:
• A trembling 12
year old girl at a Dominican Republic Q&A mic still finds the courage
after seeing FLOW to challenge local water officials onstage to do far
better. Why? She’s just lost her younger brother to dirty water.
• A bright young
activist, Miguel Luna, sees FLOW at the Sunset 5 in LA, comes out of
the theater and immediately starts organizing an LA awareness march
for World Water Day. Over a thousand people show up to march with him.
In the rain.
• At a Sundance
Q&A, a longtime corporate water executive for Suez, takes the mic
to support FLOW’s critique of Big Water. And to tell us that as a
matter of conscience, he recently quit his job.
I could go on and on, but the fact remains: documentaries touch people deeply and yes, they change lives. Whatever side of the spectrum you’re on, there’s no predicting the potential impact of such a series, and in that unpredictability lies a potent rejoinder to my superficial critique around motive and agenda.
I was at KPFK-FM in Los Angeles recently helping to promote Miguel Luna’s March For Water, and shared our State Department invitation with Sonali Kolhatkar, the excellent progressive journalist I’d hired while managing the station some years back. Sonali was a bit taken aback by this news and asked if I’d said yes, if I’d agreed to be part of it.
I well understood her trepidation. I won’t start listing U.S. foreign policy debacles, they are legion. I told Sonali I’d been going back and forth, that I wasn’t sure yet. But I also find my analysis about all this becoming entirely more complex, and yes, the contradictions abound.
I drive a hybrid vehicle, one of millions built with plastics that are non-recyclable. I am writing this on a Mac, which is altogether not green enough. We screen FLOW in theaters that sell bottled water, promote FLOW on channels sponsored by destructive multi-nationals. So where does one draw the line? Can one distribute creativity, or try to change the world, without contradiction?
The answer is clear; nothing ever changes if these contradictions stand in the way of an audience. If they stop FLOW from being seen, those that privatize and pollute water avoid solid critique and sidestep accountability. That is not the right outcome, after six years of work and so many people’s efforts to get it seen.
Betsy Mclane, the indefatigable liaison between the filmmakers and the DOS, says the Showcase is revealing itself to be a more profound and more complex undertaking than anyone anticipated. This describes my reluctance perfectly.
Over the past eight years, I’ve experienced the politics of againstness; for vivid reasons and just purpose. But I’ve also asked myself what can one stand for, and the answer in this case comes back loud and clear. I’ll stand for freedom of expression, by whatever means necessary.
So tomorrow, April 2nd, I’ll bring FLOW to Jakarta under the auspices of the American Documentary Showcase. I’ll meet young filmmakers at a local film school, talk about the film, show them our UN Right To Water petition at www.Article31.org, and our water activist network at www.freeflo.org.
In the final analysis, if the U.S. State Department is willing to create a program that effectively spreads the urgent message of FLOW, I’m more than willing to participate. The only question remaining is just how diverse our audiences will be. Time will tell, but I believe I’m speaking for everyone involved when I say how appreciative I am of this chance to meet these remote audiences, to share our film, and to hear their reactions, freely.