Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from August 12 through September 1 in New York City and August 19 through September 8 in Los Angeles. 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 Phie Ambo, director of The Home Front.

Synopsis: The Home Front is about conflicts in our private sphere: feuds between neighbors. The film follows a boundary inspector who mediates between disagreeing neighbors. We enter the homes of the feuding parties to learn about the conflicts from both sides. Why is it so difficult to solve a conflict so close at hand? And what do fences and hedges represent? Is this really what the conflicts are all about?

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Phie Ambo: I got interested in documentary filmmaking when I was in my early 20s; I bought a video camera and immediately I was hooked. I thought it was magical that I could point my camera at whatever I thought was attractive and just leave the rest out of the framing. The camera became my way of trying to understand reality. I could select what I wanted to be part of my own private reality. I guess it´s still the reason why I keep making documentaries and not fiction-looking at the world in my own framing is my way of trying to get a meaning out of the chaos that is life and reality.

IDA: What inspired you to make The Home Front?

PA: I got inspired to make The Home Front because I had heard in the news that violence towards public employees was rising and so were fights between neighbors. I got interested in finding out why we fight so much in a country like Denmark, where we have a pretty good welfare system and a very high living standard. What creates conflict, and what does it look like in the microcosmos that is our neighborhood? I was mainly interested in conflicts that arise from matters of principle. The neighbors had to have fights that to the outsider seemed small and meaningless, but through the film I would invite the audience to look deeper into the conflict and discover that maybe fights are not at all about what we say they are. I was interested in the anatomy of conflict at a very basic level. I wanted to look at these fights that on the surface looked pointless and dissect them to see what they actually consisted of.

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

PA: The main challenge in making The Home Front was to get participants for the film. Not only was I an intruder in a very stressful and personal time in peoples' lives, but I was also insisting on having both sides of the fence in every case. If I didn't get both neighbors to participate, I felt that the film would be more about gossip than about dissecting a conflict. It took me two summers of recording to get the cases that I needed for the film.

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

PA: From the beginning I wanted to make a light and humorous film because I think that it´s important to keep things in perspective: Nobody will suffer serious injuries from having a problem with a fence or a hedge. It was important to me that the participants understood that the film was not about pointing out a winner or a loser in a fight and that it would be an entertaining and playful film-not a serious piece of journalism. But one thing is theory and another thing is actually seeing yourself depicted in an entertaining film about something that you at the time experienced as extremely stressful. I always screen my films to the participants before I finish the editing, and I was really surprised that all the participants were happy with the film and were able to smile at their situations now that a year had passed by. 

IDA:  As you've screened The Home Front--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?

PA: The Home Front is the first film that I made just for television. I have only made artistic films for the big screen, so to me it was quite a challenge to create a short film for primetime TV, but I wanted to learn to communicate to a wider audience. The film was seen by almost one million Danes, so that was very rewarding. But it came as a surprise to me that the film also turned out to have a big festival life.

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

PA: I get inspired by any film that has a personal voice. I like documentaries that are driven by a strong and entertaining story, like Catfish or Exit Through the Gift Shop, but I also love to see films that are told through powerful images, like Our Daily Bread or Working Man´s Death. I like it when I can feel that the director wants to tell a story that only he/she can tell. 

The Home Front will be screening August 12 through 18 at the IFC Center in New York City.

For the complete DocuWeeks^TM 2011 program, click here.

To purchase tickets for The Home Front and the rest of the films in the DocuWeeks New York Shorts Program, click here.

Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from August 12 through September 1 in New York City and August 19 through September 8 in Los Angeles. 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 Cari Ann Shim Sham, director/executive producer of Sand.

Synopsis: A rhythmic and visual collage, Sand takes a close look at "sand dance" as it is passed down from a father to his son. Sand dance is a quickly disappearing American dance form that stems from turn-of-the-century vaudevillian and traveling shows. With only a handful of people left today still performing it, this film is a rare archive of the transference of sand dance, or "passin' the sand," from one generation to the next. Sand features emerging tap dance artist Kenji Igus and his father, Darrow.

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Cari Ann Shim Sham: I can't really say that I "got" into doc-making. An idea came to me that quickly turned into an obsession that luckily transformed magically into a film. I didn't know the final form would be a doc when the initial "a-ha" moment of conception struck me--although now, in hindsight, I realize that a doc really was the only option for the concept.

As an artist and filmmaker I'm always interested in showing the world new things, and Sand was just that. Also, being a dancer who has a passionate love affair with tap dance, I fell hard for this film. It was more to me then just an interesting story to share. Sand is a document that serves as an archive of this rare art form from our American vaudevillian past. It shows the transferring of the dance from one generation to the next--what is referred to as "passin' the sand" from a father to a son, a passage of lineage and personal family oral history. I can't say enough about what an  authentic, rare, one-of-a-kind, gem of a film this is. It is a testimony to our country's fleeting turn-of-the-century history, as well as an homage to vaudeville and an important new piece to add to the canon of world dance and documentary cinema.

IDA: What inspired you to make Sand?

CASS: I was chair of the dance department at the Culver City [California] Academy of Visual & Performing Arts from 2001 to 2007. While I was there I started an advanced youth tap group called the Tappa Tappa Tappas. Our academy and the group drew the attention of a young man by the name of Kenji Igus. His mother sent me an e-mail at the beginning of the 2003 school year asking about the group and if her son could stop by and try out. When Kenji showed up I was surprised and delighted. He quickly fit in with the group and became a very strong contributor and central force. One day he mentioned that his dad knew the hambone and could sand-dance. I asked him to invite his father to come in to one of our rehearsals and do a workshop with the students. When I saw Darrow and Kenji together that day, dancing on our stage together, after the workshop, not talking to each other, but instead trading steps back and forth, the idea came to me in a flash. In that moment the film Sand was born. 

It took me five years from that day to make the film come to fruition. In those five years the film grew inside of me, gaining structure, insight and a deepening of purpose. As time passed I had the pleasure of seeing Kenji grow into a charming young man and a fine emerging tap dance artist. I applied for several grants and the project was shortlisted by the EMPAC Dance Movies Commission in their first granting cycle, 2007, but not funded. I had to pay from my own pocket to fund the film, with $7,000 to produce and another $12,000 to print and tour it to festivals to make it happen. But that small amount is nothing compared to the satisfaction I get from sharing Kenji and his father in this beautiful film with the world. I'm so happy to have captured this time of his life and be able to tell the story of father and son and this almost lost art form of sand dance. This project serves as an archive that highlights the finest two sand dancers I've come across in the world, bringing to light their contributions to and legacy in the history of American tap dance. As a dance scholar, I intend to collect, write about, archive and pass on information to help bring awareness to and sustain this great American form. As a filmmaker I am committed to creating compelling images that will enlighten and inspire. 

This film could not have happened without Kenji and his father, Darrow Igus, and it is my gift to them. It also could not have happened without the fabulous crew, who inspire me always and I thank from the bottom of my heart for their passion, creativity and sacrifices to make this film so beautiful: Kyle Ruddick, Ross Riege, TK Broderick, Will Pellegrini, Phil Abrams, Reyanna Vance and April Rose. 

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

CASS: When it came time to choose a camera to shoot Sand, the Canon 5dMark ii was the buzz and everyone was talking about its ability to shoot video, but no one I knew had tried. I was researching cameras and the 5d kept popping up, so we decided to test it out on Kenji. We shot the 5d next to the Panasonic HVX 200, another camera that we owned and were considering. One of my students at UCLA had a 5d, so we had him bring it in. When we got the footage side by side, there was no doubt in my mind which camera we would use to shoot the film. My DP, Ross Riege, went to work researching the camera and its sensitivity to light. Since I wanted a three-camera shoot, Ross had the challenge of matching up three cameras and lighting specifically for the 5d and its jumpy, light-sensitive image sensor. Ross also pulled in the big guns lens-wise and ordered up two long lenses--500mm, meant for high-speed sports photography--to punch in on the feet of the dancers.

At the end of our first day when we were checking footage, my producer Kyle Ruddick, Ross and I noticed that we had a two-to-three frame freeze in our footage that was occurring every 12 frames, caused by a camera hack to help control light, leaving our footage completely useless.

As the director, I made a quick and steadfast choice to not tell the rest of the crew and Kenji and his father that we had lost all but an hour of our first day of footage. We pressed on the next day, to get the film shot in only one full day. For comic relief we started referring to the camera as "the wild horse."

This small disaster helped me in the edit as I didn't have too many choices or too much footage to fall in love with. But the edit was for me the hardest part. I love to edit, but editing Sand was one of the most difficult tasks of my life. I truly cut my teeth on it, and cut some other things in the process too...I had drift issues with the sound synch, the camera ran fast, which was new for me, and it was a hell of a time converting the footage for playback in Final Cut Pro, and it took me a long time to line up, synch sound and render all three cameras before I could even get started editing. I believe I took about six months to edit the film, which is a long time for a 10-minute doc. But I needed it and the film deserved it. I really wanted the rhythms and the dance to speak louder then the words. I gave it my all--at times I was so affected by the edit I would get nauseous or dizzy. My dreams were full of rhythms and my sleep was sparse and erratic.

I wouldn't trade that time of my life for anything. It was epic and transformative; I learned so much, and every moment along the way I had a strong sense that it was more than just making a film. It was a sensation of purpose that I just can't explain with words. I couldn't really talk to anyone about it; when they asked, I would just smile. It was profound, absolutely surreal--and that, to me, is the power of art.

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

CASS: My vision for the film in its infant stage was just a single image that carried with it a strong space for history and revelry, dance and a father/son relationship. I knew that I wanted Kenji and his father Darrow to tell their story, but I also wanted to show them "doin' the sand." So trying to strategize how to put the two together was a long progressive process that mostly occurred in my head. We doc filmmakers have to be so thoughtful and strategic in how we approach our subjects, in choosing the questions we pose, in positioning ourselves and our cameras into our subjects' lives in order to remain invisible and just let it be. There's a lot of letting go, and a lot of thinking that you do alone, conversations with yourself. 

It's risky. You never know what you'll get. But that for me is part of the magic in the moment.  When you turn that camera on, who really knows what might happen? It's so mysterious. I love living in that state of awareness, wonder and the unexpected surprise. So, yes, my vision grew from a seed to a seedling, a juvenile to a plant, and now we are in full bloom.  

IDA: As you've screened Sand--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?

CASS: The first time I screened Sand was in Los Angeles at the James Bridges Theater at UCLA.  It was a preview of the film, for all of my friends, cast and crew. I don't remember much from that night, but there was one comment my friend Michael Sakamoto said to me that stuck. He grabbed me and he said, "Cari Ann! Sand! It took my breath away, I was literally holding my breath when I was watching it! Incredible!" 

So that's my favorite feedback moment memory. People love the film. When it screens, it really charms audiences and makes them feel something special, and they fall in love.

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

CASS: My favorite doc is Manufactured Landscapes, and I also am a fan of Baraka--films that speak through imagery, and filmmakers who know how to make those images speak: those are my inspiration. One of my teachers, John Bishop, is a real inspiration. I love his docs; they really go there for me. He always says, "Just point the camera and let life happen." Anyone who is brave enough to pick up a camera and make a film; those angels, those magnificent souls, who make movies happen--they are my heroes.

Sand will be screening August 19 through 26 at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Los Angeles.

For the complete DocuWeeks^TM 2011 program, click here.

To purchase tickets for Sand and the rest of the films in the DocuWeeks Los Angeles Shorts Program, click here.

Editor's Note: Have Your Heard from Johannesburg, which earned a 2010 IDA Award for best limited series, airs January 12, 19 and 26 on PBS' Independent Lens. What follows is an article published in conjunction with the series' theatrical premiere at the Film Forum in New York City in April 2010.  

Connie Field was racing against time in 1996 when she first began working on her remarkable documentary series Have You Heard From Johannesburg. Many of her interview subjects were quite old, and she knew filming needed to start as soon as possible. These people had played crucial roles in the epic story she wanted to tell: the history of the global anti-apartheid movement.

Fortunately, Field was able to capture the insight and observations of an incredible array of people before they passed away-- Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu, members of the African National Congress (ANC) who were imprisoned along with Nelson Mandela; Baroness Barbara Castle, a member of the British Parliament who was deeply involved in the anti-apartheid movement in England; and Ger Wagner, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell Group, to name a few. More than 20 of Field's interviewees are no longer alive.

Field interviewed more than 130 people for the documentary, traveling to Australia, England, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden and all over the United States. Have You Heard From Johannesburg is told in seven parts; the first three stories are each about an hour long, followed by four feature-length (90 minutes, on average) stand-alone films, for a total running time of eight-and-a-half hours.

Parts One through Three are Road to Resistance, which focuses on the early history--the official implementation of apartheid in South Africa in 1948, the inspiring beginnings of a mass movement, and the imprisonment of ANC members, including Nelson Mandela; Hell of a Job, the extraordinary story of Oliver Tambo, the unsung hero of the ANC who lived in exile for more than 30 years, endlessly organizing and mobilizing support to end apartheid in his homeland; and The New Generation, which chronicles the struggles of young people in South Africa and the worldwide response to the apartheid regime's ruthless response to the Soweto uprising in 1976.

Parts Four through Seven are Fair Play, about the global movement to ban South Africa from competing in sports (from the 1964 Olympics to rugby matches in the 1980s); From Selma to Soweto, the story of the anti-apartheid movement in the United States, President Ronald Reagan's role in supporting the South African government through his policy of "constructive engagement," and the incredible impact of African-Americans on US foreign policy; The Bottom Line, about the successful worldwide grassroots campaigns to force corporations to stop doing business in South Africa and put intense economic pressure on the government to end apartheid; and finally, Free at Last, the culmination of decades of global grassroots movements, the South African government's increasingly oppressive response to protests, and the campaign to free Nelson Mandela.

The director and her team combed through more than 1,500 hours of archival footage and 6,000 photos to create the series. Since 2000, they have been organizing the footage and working on various edits. But as Field is quick to note, they also faced lean times on occasion and thus were in "low gear." Organizing the massive amount of material was daunting, but Field is no stranger to nonfiction film. She conducted hundreds of preliminary interviews before choosing five women to feature in her 1981 documentary The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, and she had directed (with Marilyn Mulford) Freedom on My Mind (1994), an Academy Award-nominated documentary about the struggle to register black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s. In 2007 she completed ¡Salud!, a documentary about Cuba's role in working toward healthcare equity worldwide.

In her latest project, Field uses familiar documentary elements--talking heads, archival footage and photos, and music--to bring to light a story that has never been told in its entirety. Oftentimes she juxtaposes her interviews with riveting film and television footage of her interview subjects when they were decades younger and on the frontlines protesting, giving speeches or interviews. Though the majority of her interviewees were part of the global anti-apartheid movement, Field also gives plenty of time to white South Africans who were members of the government or involved in business or sports during the apartheid era.

She does an admirable job pulling the stories together, sometimes with uneven results, but the entire series is well worth seeing. It is also is a cogent and timely reminder that people can indeed build a global movement and force an unjust government to change.

Have You Heard From Johannesburg makes its world premiere at Film Forum in New York beginning April 14 and then opens in the San Francisco Bay Area at the San Rafael Film Center on June 25 and the Roxie Theater in San Francisco on June 27. The series will also be screening in London, Vancouver, Washington, DC and South Africa. Steps International is managing the international television distribution.

Field will soon be preparing a six-part, 52-minute (per episode) version for Europe (minus From Selma to Soweto because it's a US-based story). Other broadcasters are taking different packages. Active Voice is doing community outreach.

Documentary caught up with Field by telephone as she was putting together the final edits to Free at Last and getting ready for her sound mix.

Documentary: Have Your Heard From Johannesburg takes a sweeping look at the worldwide struggle against apartheid in South Africa. How did you decide to make this subject the focus of your film?

Connie Field: The subject of it really is the global movement that affected apartheid; it's really not about apartheid. It's not about how things changed in detail inside South Africa. It's basically taking a subject that most everyone in the world could be appalled by. Then the question was, What then did the world do? Who did what? What were the obstacles?

And it starts basically with the United Nations' creation of the declaration of human rights [in 1948]. That was the same year that apartheid was instituted, when the Nationalist government came to power in South Africa. So it's really about that and it's about the working together of both the internal movement and external movement because it's an incredible example of how that can work. And it's also an extraordinary story about how a liberation movement for the people living under apartheid goes about galvanizing the entire world to work with them. The ANC was probably the most successful movement ever to do that.

D: Is one of your goals to try to inspire people and remind them that mass movements can work?

CF: Well, yes. As Howard Zinn used to always remind us, often it's people's history that doesn't get told. And this story, to my chagrin, has never gotten told. There have been various books over the past ten years, but nothing that focuses on it from a global perspective.

D: Was that one of the challenges of making this film?

CF: Yes, it was a big challenge, but I don't think that I thought about that. I was interested in this incredible story, and it would also be the kind of story that I could get some funding for because I have a background in this kind of thing. There was no way to get a sense of the scope of it because it's not like I could read a book, like the history of the Civil Rights Movement and choose my focus, which is a lot easier.

I started filming early because I was very afraid that the elders in this group of interviewees would die before I had a chance to figure out the story. So I started shooting in 1997. I knew that I would be going to the National Endowment for the Humanities, which had funded my past work, so I knew I had to write very detailed scripts. In essence I thought if I could write the real scripts based on real material, as opposed to when you write a script before you've ever done anything, it would help the filmmaking process; unfortunately it didn't. So I ended up shooting first and gathering material.

D: Did you conceive of this as a series from the beginning?

CF: Yes, but a shorter one. I conceived of it as a four-part, one-hour [per episode] series. That was my first conception, then it grew to a three-part, two-hour [per episode] series and then it morphed into a 12-part one-hour [per episode] series, and now it is what it is.

Every time you're discovering a story, like the story we did on the United States, From Selma to Soweto [originally released in 2007 as Apartheid and the Club of the West]. We were just editing, and we said, Oh my goodness, this is a whole story here. I was trying to narrow down what I was going to focus on. I decided I was only going to deal with what got done outside of South Africa that really had an effect on South Africa. So that was the guiding force. I also focused on the campaigns in South Africa that had biggest impact outside of South Africa.

The US story fit that concept because once the United States sanctioned South Africa, it was a big political blow to the regime that had always depended politically on the United States at the United Nations and various places. As you see in the story, this was done over Ronald Reagan's veto. It's a very significant story in the United States because it's the first time African-Americans had really shaped US foreign policy to this degree. That's also why I put the divestment movement inside that episode.

The divestment movement was part of the strategy to economically strangle the apartheid regime. Divestment was the movement in the United States--it was stronger here than anywhere else because our economic system is privatized. Here, the pensions are in private funds and invested in the stock market. In Europe, where you have social welfare states, people's pensions are with the government. So you had all kinds of opportunities to have an effect that way that wasn't true in other parts of the world. It was the base movement inside the United States that also built the movement that then affected Congress.

D: How did each episode develop?

CF: We just laid everything out chronologically--and that structure never worked because we would have something happening over here that didn't culminate until two episodes later. It was just not the way to organize this. In essence I've done it as a hybrid, between chronological and thematic.

D: Were you thinking of doing something similar to Eyes on the Prize?

CF: Yes, I had that in mind. When Eyes on the Prize was done, people understood how important the Civil Rights Movement was. I don't think people have any notion of this [anti-apartheid movement] particularly. It's not in the global lexicon, though it should be. It was one of the most important human rights struggles of the last century.

D: How did Eyes on the Prize influence this project?

CF: It didn't, really. This [project] was a process of discovering the stories, which was not true for a lot of Eyes on the Prize; there had been numerous things written about the Civil Rights Movement. So I was constantly discovering, Oh, this happened...Oh, this is what went on here. It was not a tamable beast. It was a different process.

D: Rather than interview academics or historians, you made the conscious decision to interview people who were involved in either fighting or upholding apartheid.

CF: I always do that. I learned to do that with Rosie, and it's a style I haven't quit since then. I base the films on the participants, on the people who lived that history, not the people who are commenting on it.

D: Music is a critical part of the film. The title of your film comes from Gil Scott-Heron's seminal song "Johannesburg" How did you decide on that title and theme music for the series?

CF: I like music titles. I like that song. That song was an early song from the '70s. I liked what it meant: Have you heard from them. The story is about them organizing the world and the world joining with them. It's not about the world coming in to save the South Africans. So that song expresses that.
I always collect music as a part of the story, music from the period and of the places as being a critical part of the story.

D: Did you do most of the interviews?

CF: I did all of them. I do all my own interviewing. It's stressful as a director because I had to do about three a day, and you have to prepare a lot and be so focused. When I made the film ¡Salud!, it was like taking a vacation, even though for that film we had to go to places that had no roads, and live in houses that had no electricity and no running water. But that was a vacation compared to this.

D: Was there a reason that you didn't interview Nelson Mandela?

CF: Well, two reasons: One, it wasn't super easy to interview him and the second thing, he's actually a very small part of this story because he's in prison the whole time the story takes place. So I just figured it wasn't really necessary to bother him. I didn't really need it for the story, and he has so many things pressing on him that I just didn't feel I had to be one of them, so I didn't pursue it. I hope he sees it.

D: What were some of the obstacles to making the film?

CF: We were very under-funded. This is a huge project and it's international, so we really did it on a shoestring. It meant that I made it the way I make other things: I keep the very top level very lean and save my money for spending it on cinematographers and editors. It's also why I did this all myself; I was the producer and the director.  I didn't have enough money to do it otherwise, to hire other producers. Also, I’d been very lucky to work with a couple of extremely loyal young people. Without them, it would have been really depressing. Twelve years ago, I first hired Greg Scharpen to do the archiving, and he then became an Avid assistant and eventually the series editor. Sage Brucia, a terrific graphic designer, has been with me for six years. They stuck around for a really long time and for not a lot of money.

D: So how were you able to support yourself?

CF: Well, I did another film that I got well paid for [¡Salud!]. It paid our rent. My staff is very generous with me. We used to have a great situation in our building before Saul Zaentz sold it in 2004. He never raised the rent for almost 20 years. I was able to get a ton of space for very little, so I didn't have much overhead. All of those factors allowed me to continue on what we had and make it stretch.

D: Will you be screening at Encounters, the doc fest in South Africa?

CF: I don't know. I'm really looking for places that will show the whole thing. I'm hoping to get set up in South Africa and hopefully the Ford Foundation will help out with that. I want to present it in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town in three different venues. It'll probably be a free showing. I'm hoping that will happen in July and August. I'm also hoping to go to Zanzibar in July with the whole thing.

I know that the features [Parts Four through Seven] are stand-alone, but if you see the Oliver Tambo story [Part Two: Hell of a Job], all those become more meaningful. The first three parts give you a lot of context to have a lot more meaning than just seeing the features by themselves.

I'm hoping that the people who write about film will write about the whole story so that that whole story will start to be out there in the universe. Nobody has given this stamp out there in the world that says this is an important thing that happened and people should know about it.

Editor's Note: Crude will make its broadcast debut September 22, 2011, on the Sundance Channel. Below is an article from the Fall 2009 issue of Documentary.

Joe Berlinger is in court again. The filmmaker, who along with his on-again/off-again creative partner, Bruce Sinofsky, famously chronicled courtroom dramas in their films Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost, is once again at the heart of a legal drama. But this time, the courtroom is very different; in fact, it's not a room at all. It's a jungle.

"I didn't see this as my next film," says Berlinger of Crude, which is being released theatrically through First Run Features in September. In 2005, Berlinger had a meeting with Steven Donziger, a lawyer representing indigenous Ecuadorian tribes who were several years into a lawsuit against the American oil company Chevron. The tribes alleged that their land, water and culture had been damaged by the policies of Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001. The company no longer operates oil wells in Ecuador but allegedly left behind a legacy of polluted waterways and land the size of Rhode Island.

As Donziger petitioned Berlinger to make a film about the case, red flags went off in the filmmaker's mind. "Who are the characters? What's the unfolding action?" Berlinger asked himself. It sounded to him more like a 60 Minutes piece than the follow-up to the previous Berlinger-Sinofsky documentary, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.  "I'm not an advocacy filmmaker," Berlinger recalled telling Donziger. "And I'm probably the wrong guy to make this film."

But Donziger persisted, as lawyers often do, and Berlinger saw an opportunity to visit the Amazon for the first time. A short time later, he was on a plane to Ecuador.

On the second day of the trip, the canoe Berlinger was traveling in stopped at an indigenous Cofán village. He and his guides got out of the canoe and saw a few members of the tribe preparing lunch by the river that had sustained them for centuries. But the tribe members were not gutting tuna they had caught; they were scooping it out of a large metal can. "It appeared to come from the Ecuadorian equivalent of Costco," Berlinger recalls. "That deeply spoke to me." He began to set aside some of his concerns  "and think a different way" about this film.

"Mid-week, I met Pablo," Berlinger explains, referring to Pablo Fajardo, who would become the central character of Crude. A native of the region, Fajardo went to law school with the help of the Catholic Church, came back home and took on Chevron in his first case. Suddenly, Berlinger had the "David" in this David vs. Goliath story. "Pablo is a transfixing character," Berlinger acknowledges.

"The universe was tapping me on the shoulder," the filmmaker continues. "How could I look in the mirror, knowing people are dying here, and not make this film?" 

Without funding, distribution or even sure this story would ever become a film, Berlinger started shooting. Not since he and Sinofsky, at the time working for Maysles Films, started shooting their first feature, Brother's Keeper, had Berlinger taken such a leap of filmmaking faith.

For this film, Berlinger would be working without Sinofsky. Their partnership had reached a low point just before the filming of Some Kind of Monster. At that time, Berlinger didn't think they would work together again. But filming month after month of the heavy metal icons in group therapy sessions forced Berlinger and Sinofsky to confront their own issues. The result was a revived partnership, along with an understanding that they would work independently when it suited them. 

Berlinger returned to Ecuador for the evidentiary phase of the lawsuit. Unlike anything he'd ever seen before, these hearings would be held far from the confines of a courtroom; they were happening deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

"Creatively, they were fantastic," Berlinger says of the site visits. "But physically, they were very challenging." He and his two-person crew endured 120-degree heat in a malaria zone, amid the ever-present smell of gasoline.

These were the conditions, of course, that the indigenous people that Fajardo represented had to live with every day. Like all his experiences with vérité filmmaking, Berlinger found that the process of shooting Crude was impacting him personally. "What I love about vérité is that you get dropped into this world and you change as a person," he notes.

Berlinger found himself gaining a deeper understanding of indigenous people and their struggles. "We may know intellectually we aren't treating people right," he maintains, "but this film deeply made me aware of extreme inequities of the world." Still, it was a year and a half into filming before he felt confident the material would become a film. 

Crude hits theaters at a time when another film about an American corporation's alleged wrongdoing in the developing world, Bananas! (Dir.: Fredrik Gertten), is creating a significant amount of controversy and self-reflection in the documentary community.  The film chronicles a lawsuit filed against the Dole Corporation on behalf of workers who were allegedly made sterile from chemicals used on banana plantations. Bananas! was to premiere in competition at the Los Angeles Film Festival, but was pulled from competition after Dole Food Corporation threatened a lawsuit against the filmmaker, the festival and Film Independent, the festival's parent company, if the film were screened. The festival did screen the film, as a case study examining the relationship between "documentary filmmaking and ‘the truth.'"

Despite the recent controversy surrounding Bananas!, Berlinger is not concerned that Crude will spark a similar legal challenge. "My filming strategy dovetails with safe legal aspect," he notes. "Each side should have their say. I want people to judge for themselves [which side is right]." Crude features arguments from Chevron's lawyers in the field as well as interviews with company spokespeople. 

Despite, or perhaps because of, its even-handed approach, Crude is a powerful advocate for Fajardo and the indigenous people of Ecuador. The film features the stories of a sick teenager and her mother, who travel many hours for cancer treatment; babies with unexplained skin rashes; and people literally living on top of oil pits. Regardless of who is held legally responsible for the conditions highlighted in Crude, it's clear that something should be done to improve the situation.

To that effect, Berlinger is using screenings of the film to raise money that will provide fresh water for people in the affected villages. One of the characters who appears late in the film is Trudy Styler, who along with her husband, the rock star Sting, founded Rainforest Foundation Fund UK. Styler travels to the heart of the polluted region and then returns with fresh water tanks in one of the films most uplifting sequences. Screenings to date have raised over $300,000 for water tanks to be sent to the region. 

Berlinger hopes that the film will inspire people to get involved, donate time and money to the cause, and "think twice next time they pull up to a gas station." He summed up the theme of the film in a familiar, simple, yet timeless way: "Treat people the way we expect to be treated."

Crude is a moving amalgam of international politics, legal drama and grassroots activism that exposes years of pollution and disregard for indigenous people and their land. As made clear by the clean drinking water now available to many indigenous families, the film is already making an impact.

David Becker recently produced the feature-length documentary Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie, about the famous hippie and humanitarian Wavy Gravy.