Meet the Filmmakers: Bill Haney - 'The Price of Sugar'

This week, we at IDA are introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work will be represented in the DocuWeek^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, August 17-23. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films-the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.
So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Bill Haney, director/producer of The Price of Sugar.

Synopsis: In the Dominican Republic, tourists flock to pristine beaches, unaware that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians have toiled under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane. They work grueling hours and frequently lack decent housing, clean water, electricity, education or healthcare. The Price of Sugar follows Father Christopher Hartley, a charismatic Spanish priest, as he organizes some of this hemisphere's poorest people and challenges powerful interests profiting from their work.

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Bill Haney: Two quite different experiences propelled me into filmmaking.

The first was prompted by my mother.

I was 35 years old, running a high tech company and harboring not the slightest inkling of ever working in film. My mom called and said she needed a favor.

As it turned out, a childhood neighbor had become a subject in an uncompleted Errol Morris film. At 12 years old, George Mendonca dropped out of school to work as a gardener near the school where my dad taught, and I lived. After 50 years of work, he had become the world's foremost topiary gardener. Errol chose him as one of the subjects in his film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, but the film ran into some snags and remained unfinished for some time. George was by now getting quite old, and his wife told my mother that his greatest wish was to see Errol's film finished before he died. I called Errol and offered to lend a hand. It was my first connection with documentary filmmaking.

A majestic grey whale reeled me to actually making my first film.

Three years after calling Errol, I was camping in a desolate section of Baja California that lies within a UNESCO World Heritage site. We pitched our tents along a salt water lagoon that was the last undisturbed grey whale nursing ground in the world. There, Mitsubishi Chemicals and the Mexican government planned to build the world's largest industrial facility. The environmental group NRDC and their charismatic founder, John Adams, had invited a small group of us to see what we could do to protect these magnificent creatures.

One afternoon three of us took an 11-foot inflatable boat a mile out into the lagoon. Nursing whales and their calves surrounded us. A 30-foot-long mother, her calf trailing behind, headed directly toward our boat. Slowly, she slid under us, carefully lifting much of the boat into the air. Ever so gently, she then slid us back into the water. She and her calf turned and rolled alongside us.

That night I wandered over to the tent of the naturalist--Roger Payne, one of the world's greatest wildlife biologists--and asked him what could be done to help protect the world's whales. He suggested a film. Together with my partner Tim Disney, we would make A Life Among Whales.

IDA: What inspired you to make The Price of Sugar?

BH: I stumbled across the story that is the center of The Price of Sugar.

Together with Harvard's Children's Hospital, Tim Disney and I had started a nonprofit, Infante Sano, with the intention of delivering medical training and supplies to dramatically improve infant and maternal health care in Latin America. I was in the Dominican Republic bringing medical supplies to local hospitals when I was told of a charismatic priest building a new hospital for the poor. I went to meet him.

It didn't take long for the incredible passion and vision of Father Christopher Hartley to become clear. A longtime acolyte of Mother Teresa, his lifelong commitment to the poorest of the poor was inspiring. When I offered supplies for his hospital, surprisingly he asked if we would consider making a film instead. He saw the civil rights challenges his parishioners faced--most of them Haitians working on Dominican sugar plantations--as so severe that only engagement from Americans could help. Facing death threats as he stood against a powerful company, he saw the international media as a critical source of support. Inspired by his courage and vision, we agreed to make the film.

IDA: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?

BH: Skipping over the more mundane challenges of crewing and financing a documentary, let me focus on three major issues.

Making a film in an isolated corner of the developing world, where different languages are spoken and where the local powers are hostile, poses some challenges. Telling a local story--that of a parish priest and his parishioners--where the national and international connections are so relevant, and doing so in a fair-minded, engaging and economical way can be complicated. Revealing a hidden world in a film that a powerful and wealthy family passionately wants to squash, and uses a broad array of attacks to keep audiences from seeing, has been a bit of an obstacle.

My strategy for dealing with these challenges is pretty simple. First, stand on the shoulders of giants. Newton said this about his work, of course, and while I am no Newton, my partners in this film--Eric Grunebaum, Peter Rhodes, Debra Longo, Claudio Ragazzi, Tom Camp, Jerry Risius, Eric Cochran, Nikki Bramley, Diana Trudell, Lori Joyal and my partner in all my films, Tim Disney--certainly are giants to me. They, and the countless others who worked to help us, made the challenges possible to overcome.

Second, we worked on a story that deeply moved me. By my lights, The Price of Sugar plumbs some of the most fundamental questions of the 21st century, and does so in an inspiring and deeply human way. Our story reveals the lives of some of the poorest people in the Americas--living next to some of the richest. My own emotional engagement with the principals at stake keeps me going when the obstacles seem highest.

Finally, a determination to let the sun shine on the inspiring lives of our central characters, several of whom believed they were risking their lives to work with us. If they could push forward with all their burdens, how could we falter?

IDA: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?

BH: My sense of the heart of the film didn't really change much over the course of making the film. The tale of a parish priest, his struggle to care for his parishioners and the way he and his work connected to the wider world was our focus throughout. I never knew where that story would take us, of course, but I knew that was its heart.

IDA: As you've screened The Price of Sugar--whether on the festival circuit, or in screening rooms, or in living rooms-how have audiences reacted to the film? What has been most surprising or unexpected about their reactions?

BH: The audiences we have screened The Price of Sugar for have been extraordinarily generous with our film. It won the Audience Award at its first festival, South by Southwest, and has provoked penetrating questions on both macro-scale issues of morality, human rights, international trade and US subsidy policy, and on more human-scale issues involving the lives of the film's characters. I love the Q and A sessions.

Most surprising--and heartening--for me has been the passion and kinship audiences feel with the film's characters. Haitian plantation workers and a Spanish priest are a long way from the daily experience of most audiences, but the direct connection between audience and character seems to happen quickly and deeply.

IDA: What docs or docmakers have served as inspirations for you?

BH: Terry Malick, Kevin Macdonald, Penelope Spheeris, RJ Cutler, Michael Apted and Errol Morris are among the filmmakers whose work inspires me. There are many, many others.