The Toronto International Film Festival is a place to watch big, shiny films that often are on their way already to a theatrical release. The advent of Thom Powers as programmer of the Real to Reel strand brought documentaries under the big-and-shiny banner; with his excellent connections, he has been able to ensure that big documentary releases are showcased and sometimes debuted at TIFF. This year, mostly under the aegis of Powers, the festival presented the latest work of American documentary luminaries such as Fred Wiseman (Boxing Ring), Errol Morris (Tabloid), Alex Gibney (Client-9) and Davis Guggenheim (Waiting for Superman), as well as international figures such as (the American-based) Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams), UK director Kim Longinotto (Pink Saris) and Chilean Patricio Guzman (Nostalgia for the Light). 

Perhaps the most buzz was generated about Morris' and Herzog's films. In Tabloid, Morris focuses on a brilliant woman who, after winning a beauty pageant in her youth, falls into ever stranger, more obsessive and more isolated ways. Herzog's film, shot in 3-D, takes viewers inside the little-seen French cave that houses the earliest known Paleolithic artwork. The day-long documentary conference, oriented to filmmakers, culminated with a conversation between the two documentary big dogs, who happen to be fast friends. (See sidebar.)

Charles Ferguson's Inside Job drew huge applause from audiences who were properly outraged by his exposé of the financial fecklessness that created the financial crisis. The essay film, which depends on a powerful music track to hold together its sequences of high-profile interviews interlaced with helicopter views of urban landscapes, follows Ferguson's 2007 documentary No End in Sight; Inside Job is even more grim. His gotcha interviews, revealing bankers' cupidity and stupidity, provide laughs, but they don't last.

Another hot ticket was Gibney's Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer. In the tradition of Gibney's high-quality, theatrical investigative documentaries, this is a detective story that goes behind the headlines. The film poses two questions: Why did squeaky-clean Spitzer hire prostitutes? Why did his outing result in his resignation, when few other politicians resign after similar embarrassments? Gibney gets a scoop by discovering who the prostitute Spitzer became obsessed with was and getting an interview. But much more than that, he provides a devastating answer to the second question, an answer that intertwines financial and political corruption at a national level. While the film may not revive Spitzer's political career (he appears committed to a political style guaranteed to alienate even his friends), it certainly lays bare the corroded political and economic structures he was trying to reform.

The documentary conference opened with an interview with Gibney, which I conducted. He called himself an "agent provocateur" of better conversations on fundamentally moral issues. "All my films address moral problems, and I want to get people angry about immorality," he said. Unlike many producers of public affairs documentaries, he always structures his films as mystery or detective stories:  "Why did a taxi driver get beaten to death by American soldiers? That was Taxi to the Dark Side. Why did one of the most successful energy companies in America go belly-up almost overnight? That was Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." Gibney noted that the detective format allows him to address formidably difficult subjects. "You can introduce a great deal of complexity if you tell a simple story," he maintained. In response to a question, he explained his success at gaining access to subjects by persistence. "It can take a long time to get people to talk to you; I'm releasing five films this year because it took so long to get some people to talk." Also, he noted, the good faith representation of figures in earlier films helps to convince people to talk. Explaining his prolific résumé, he said that he depends upon a small but energetic staff, which primarily does journalistic research--all his films are meticulously researched--and on trusted freelancers.  

Along with a couple of business panels that offered no surprises, the documentary conference also featured a spotlight on a forthcoming HBO project, War Torn, a historical look at post-traumatic stress disorder. Veteran indie maker Jon Alpert talked about the devastating cost of war to the soldiers, and a little about the price of chronicling it for journalists.

It is also possible at TIFF to uncover talent, showing work that they desperately hope will attract buyers. Veteran editor Laura Israel's Windfall was one such, and so was veteran cinematographer Risteard Ό Domnhnaill's The Pipe. They both take on the hard challenge of chronicling community conflict. Both films are compelling narratives, beautifully produced, elegantly structured, authoritatively edited, with unforgettable characters. They both present a persuasive and powerful point of view, without slighting hard realities.

Windfall recounts what happened when wind-generating companies in her upstate New York town began to bargain with local farmers to install giant, 400-foot-high windmills. Initial enthusiasm by some in the collection of dairymen, organic farmers and weekend professionals soon led to dissension and then acrimony. Without federal regulation--and indeed against government support for poorly planned projects--the townspeople are left to investigate complex issues on their own. Researchers, including the town planning commission, discovered that the windmills not only make a constant and loud whop-whop sound but also create "shadow flicker," an irritating and unremitting shadow-show from the rotating blades. They found out that no one knows how to put out fires at the top of a windmill, and that companies had no plans for fluid spills or for deconstruction of aged windmills. And then the residents found out that wind energy, always intermittent, lacks a distribution grid to get energy out of local areas, and that the only business model yet found depends on continuous and high-level taxpayer subsidy.

The Pipe tells, partly in Gaelic, the story of what happened when a Shell natural gas project blessed by the Irish government schedules a pipeline to rip through a rural Irish fishing and farming village, where the director lives. The townsfolk, spurned by their own government and rejected by Shell when they offer alternatives, begin civil disobedience, a move that starts to tear the town apart.

In both cases, victory comes with scars to community culture so deep that the principals cannot imagine healing. The cost of exercising democratic rights at the grassroots level, when government and regulators have been bought and corporations respond to nothing but the bottom line, is prohibitively high. Windfall and The Pipe make, separately and together, a powerful case for pro-conservation energy policies and regulations to match. That way, local residents wouldn't be left alone on the front lines.

Neither film featured representatives from government or the offending energy companies. Israel noted that the energy companies largely worked in secret, signing locals to confidential agreements. Ό Domnhnaill, who had filmed the conflicts over the 10 years of struggle as a news cameraman, said, "I made the documentary because I had seen in covering the news that Shell could manipulate the media, burying these people's stories and portraying them as lunatics and anti-development. I wanted their voices to be heard." In any case, neither Shell nor the government would participate, since they had signed an agreement previous to the conflict. Interestingly, the film was funded in part by the Irish Film Board, a government agency. Ό Domnhnaill attributed some of the reason for the support to the Green Party, but noted that once in power, the Green Party did not come to the village's aid. He also praised the IRB's integrity.

From Risteard O Domnhnaill's The Pipe. Courtesy of Toronto International Film Festival.

Fair and balanced? I think so. These are both stories propelled by the conflicts within the community. Both directors reside, some of the time, in these communities, and the effort to deal scrupulously with the different characters and to represent their points of view with respect was palpable. The core balance in the story is maintained, as viewers are able to understand the different perspectives, how passionately they are held, and to see the consequences of conflict.

International documentaries were strikingly diverse at the festival. Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia for the Light is an elegiac tribute to the women who continue to search the Atacama desert for remains of their loved ones, disappeared during Chile's brutal dictatorship. The parallels he draws between the searches of astronomers for the secrets of the skies in the desert observatory and the women's searches for secrets in the ground is arch and forced, but the film's production values are as elegant and graceful, as always in a Guzman film. Kim Longinotto's Pink Saris is a vivid but ultimately unsatisfying film about a low-caste Indian vigilante for justice for women. The central character is unbearably grandiose and blustering; her abuse of her higher-caste, common-law husband becomes so painful to watch that not even his confrontation in concluding moments of the film rescues the film. The Danish doc Armadillo, by Janus Metz, echoes other season-with-the troops films: Callow young men go to war hoping for glory; fight with frustrating, invisible enemies; discover that the local population is more afraid of the Taliban than them; go home wounded and confused, without other recourse than to head back for another tour of duty. Tears of Gaza, by Norwegian Vibeke Løkkeberg, is more document than documentary, but it is quite a document--a brutal, graphic, on-the-ground record of the 2008-2009 Israeli siege of Gaza. It features close-ups of body parts, a dusty human torso on a bombed balcony, confused children and dazed women. 

Along with music docs, a lighter doc moment was provided with Australian Mark Hartley's Machete Maidens Unleashed! It is a fascinating film history of 1970s US B movies made in the Philippines, exploitation films in every sense (of Filipinos, the young women who played bimbos, and the audiences who watched the same film again and again in slightly different form). The film reinforces H.L. Mencken's acerbic comment, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

Whether fresh out of the box or on their way to a 20-city launch, the films all stood to benefit from their prestigious platform. One of the beneficiaries of the platform was Davis Guggenheim, who brought billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates to a press conference for the education-reform film Waiting for Superman. Powers never missed a chance to urge people to use their social media tools to spread the word of their enthusiasm for the films they loved.

Pat Aufderheide is director of the Center for Social Media at American University.

Herzog and Morris Explain It All to You

By Pat Aufderheide

An hour-long conversation, moderated by Thom Powers, between the two legendary filmmakers capped the TIFF documentary conference. Here are excerpts, as best real-time transcription could capture the back-and-forth:

Errol Morris: Werner is a neorealist...there is a hybrid world between fiction and nonfiction, perhaps the most interesting place in film to inhabit. From these first films [Morris saw of Herzog's], it gave me a different idea of what is possible in filmmaking. For that I will always be indebted to this man.

Werner Herzog: Errol stuck out like someone who immediately caught my attention, because I had the feeling you had to be taken seriously. There was this wildness of ideas floating around and it just needed to take shape, and needed a certain amount of discipline--which you still do not have in post-production, where you waste too much money. You have to expect films to become profitable fairly early on and when you spend too much money in post-production, it is hard to get into that terrain. But I do not really mind because it is the way you function. You have to wrestle like Laocoön with the snake. The end result is always disciplined, but the way into it, I have my doubts.

EM: I share those doubts.

***

Thom Powers: What do people need to become a filmmaker?

EM: The main ingredients are rage and a desire to get even with others.

WH: A more prosaic answer, [because] you are aiming at the obvious and we are not into the obvious. You have to understand music, and Errol does because he's a cello player, and you have to read, that's what I tell students in the Rogue Film School [that he runs]. Read, read, read, read, read, or you will never become a filmmaker. Errol Morris, he reads everything, like the autobiography of a failed lion tamer, but you can discuss Hölderlin with him. In the application for the Rogue Film School, you have to follow instructions for a mandatory reading list. It starts with Virgil, The Georgics, if possible in Latin. It includes the Icelandic Poetic Edda. A short story by Hemingway, and the Warren Commission Report.

EM:  It is great reading [aside to audience: It's unreadable.].  I've been planning to do a version of Tales from the Crypt, only it's Tales from the Warren Report.

WH: Everyone denounces it, including you, apparently, but it is an incredible, conclusive report. It's a wonderful crime story.

EM: it is one of the great crime stories. I would define my reading as compulsive, unremitting, obsessive, often counter-productive reading. ..Years ago I had this fantasy of creating my own version of Harvard Great Books, 100 great books no one had ever heard of. I found this book by Frank Weatherwax, on training Lassie, which is a masterpiece of its kind. Another book, which at one time I wanted to turn into a movie, Letters to Strongheart. Strongheart was the first of the great dog movie stars, pre- Rin Tin Tin. Legendary because he cried in a close-up on film...This man J. Allen Boone fell in love with Srongheart, and never had a chance to meet him, and after Strongheart died he started writing letters to Strongheart. This is a collection of 80 letters to a dead dog.

***

WH: How do you get people to read?

EM: Maybe it's good they don't. The power of my recent protagonist, of Tabloid, told me a story about how she as a young girl in high school had read a short story by Theodore Dreiser. I compulsively read through Dreiser, and read a short story called "The Second Choice." As a connoisseur of despair, [I find] this is one of the most despairing things ever written. A woman unable to marry the man she loves settles for the second choice. You see her entering into a life of utter barrenness. Joyce [the protagonist in Tabloid] read this and decided that she would not go there.

WH: An admirable and costly decision. How many years did she live in seclusion?

EM: Still, if she had not read this book she would be in such better shape.

WH: No, there are decisions about your life, and she has great dignity, great depth. She is extremely articulate, she is not mad, she made choices, sometimes strange but not indefensible. When you read her favorite books, you see her whole life unfolding in front of you.

***

EM: I often think I am the exact opposite of Werner Herzog. We had dinner in LA recently, and Werner was talking about how he'd gone into a cave where no men had been for tens of thousands of years, and making a film in Siberian wilds, and there was a laundry list of these incredible adventures. I said to Werner, It's interesting you should mention this. My last film was made in one of the most desperate, depraved places on the face of the earth--Van Nuys, California. Both of us--and I hope I'm correct; it's certainly true about Werner--we're both involved in a certain kind of risk-taking. What I took away from [Herzog's documentary] Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices was that art was somehow about risk-taking. I think that's actually more than anything in the movie moved me, because I think it is true. It's doing something that is ill-advised. I remember saying to you once there was nothing more depraved, debased than filmmaking, and you looked at me appalled and said, "You must never talk that way!" But it is doing something that shouldn't be done.

WH: I always come back to the conclusion that there is a certain nobility in it as well.

EM: The fact it has no nobility gives it a certain nobility.

WH: That is too dialectical for me. But it does give meaning. You can wrestle some meaning even from Van Nuys. Even Van Nuys is inhabited by humans.

EM: Don't go too far here. There's another line, I believe it comes from you, 30-plus years ago, that part of art is extending sympathy where it's never been extended before. Part of the job of an artist is to look in places where people would not normally look. To examine people who normally would be passed over or ignored. I agree with that. If anything gives it a kind of nobility, this tawdry enterprise, it could be that.

THIS EVENT IS OVER.

TICKETS FOR 12/6 IN WASHINGTON DC AND 12/8 IN BOSTON WILL BE ON SALE SOON.

IDA proudly presents conversation and clips with Julia Bacha, a key member of the creative teams behind the award-winning documentaries Encounter Point, Control Room and her latest, Budrus.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010 in New York
Doors Open: 7:00pm
Discussion & Audience Q&A: 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street
New York, NY 10013

FOR MORE INFO AND TO BUY TICKETS, VISIT THE EVENT PAGE

Special Support Provided by the ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES. We appreciate the generous support provided by the foundation.

The event which was sold-out gave audiences the real story about what went wrong when Katrina hit New Orleans, LA; and how both the investigators and the Corps of Engineers whistle-blowers were silenced.

Special thanks to our wonderful and generous sponsors: Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Pithy Little Wine Company.

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If filmmaking was a sport, then ESPN would be a contender. Few players in television would commission and produce 30 films in less than two years--and grant creative autonomy to the filmmakers.

In 2007, Bill Simmons, columnist for ESPN.com, e-mailed his bosses a short pitch: With ESPN's 30-year anniversary coming up, the cabler should produce 30 documentaries from that time frame--but not SportsCentury: 30 Years of ESPN. Import a few well-known Hollywood filmmakers and give them complete creative control. Call the series 30 for 30. The top brass at ESPN took the idea further: Filmmakers from outside the ESPN stable would make all 30 documentaries.

 "We made a list of respected filmmakers and celebrities who were sports fans," explains Simmons, executive producer of the series. "We made another list of filmmakers we respected, whether they liked sports or not. We hoped to land a few early for a ‘domino effect,' of sorts, and we only needed two or three names. Something happened that we never anticipated: These people had been waiting for us.

"Al Maysles, who had filmed two months of incredible footage of Muhammad Ali before the Larry Holmes fight in 1980, cut a 30-minute film that nobody wanted to buy, as the fight itself had been so depressing," Simmons continues. "Dominos started falling. Ice Cube is a lifelong Raiders fan. Steve Nash grew up idolizing the late Terry Fox. Barry Levinson never recovered from the Colts leaving Baltimore." Other documentarians who signed up included Alex Gibney, Dan Klores, Brett Morgen, Billy Corben and Barbara Kopple.

As Documentary went to press, ESPN was at the midpoint of its series. Executive producer Connor Schell believes that 30 for 30 is special not just for the sheer number of quality films produced in such a short period. "We have some pretty extensive documentary history in the past with SportsCentury, as well as our 25th year project," he maintains. "However, all were internally produced and more biographically driven and countdown-focused."

Senior director Mark Durand, who oversaw films made by Kopple, Morgen, Maysles and Gibney, was a senior producer on SportsCentury from the beginning. "SportsCentury was ESPN's first real effort to get into sports history--a successful series that was more like documentary than previous Sports Center programming, and it laid the foundation for ESPN Classic''s in-house documentary efforts," he explains. "30 for 30 continues the evolution and takes it to another level."  

"When we sat down and discussed 30 for 30, we agreed on how the independent film genre had advanced, with some incredible storytellers out there that we felt could turn their focus to sports projects and capture them with independent film spirit," Schell adds. "We sought out an eclectic mix of feature film directors, professional documentarians and first-time filmmakers. The common denominator was real passion for the story they wanted to tell. Each piece stood on its own, not dependent on the one that came before or after it. Collectively, they tell a larger story of the era in a mosaic of the last 30 years, diverse points of view and cultural turning points. We tried to support every aspect of production without getting in the way of the filmmakers, so the work of each is their vision."

"These are evergreen stories that ESPN can broadcast on multiple platforms for years to come," Schell says. "We feel we have a great dynamic here, by commissioning great filmmakers to tell stories they have passion about. We're hoping to continue to do that in the coming years."

The only feature-length piece in the series, Jeff and Michael Zimbalist's The Two Escobars, premiered on ESPN in June and in commercial theaters in August, and enjoyed successful runs at the Tribeca, Cannes and Los Angeles Film Festivals. According to the Zimbalists, The Two Escobars was green-lit by ESPN as a result of the series' shortage of both Latin American-oriented titles and soccer stories. "ESPN was looking for works portraying the impact of sports on society," says Jeff. "We thought both Escobars [Pablo Escobar, the notorious drug lord, and Andres Escobar, the captain of the Colombia national soccer team] were critically involved in issues of major social import, particularly in Latin America. We also felt the stories were so compelling that we needed a feature length to do them justice. Who would have thought ESPN would produce a socially conscious story about drugs and soccer, support our vision and allow us creative control, show a Spanish language film for two hours in prime time, and even set up a theatrical run?"

Another high-profile project in the series, Kopple's The House of Steinbrenner, about the late owner of the New York Yankees and the dynasty that he created, premieres September 21. Kopple was on ESPN's short list, and with two previous sports films under her belt (about boxer Mike Tyson and baseball player Lenny Dykstra), it was an easy decision for her. "I had been talking with ESPN during the 30 for 30 project selection," she says. "I was at the All Star Game two years ago, and was impacted strongly seeing George [Steinbrenner] driven around in a golf cart weeping, and I decided I wanted to do something on the Yankees. I've been a loyal Yankees fan since I was a girl. ESPN gave me great creative latitude. I showed them rough cuts and they'd make suggestions, but I could take them or leave them. The story of the Yankees in this period of transition evolved several times over the two years, including shooting and editing after Steinbrenner's death."

"Steinbrenner and the Yankees were not an easy organization to tackle," Durand contends. "The family doesn't care for publicity. The younger generation does things in a different way than their dad, who would call reporters at 2:00 a.m. if he thought he'd make a score. Part of the deal going in was no filming of George, who was not in good health the past four years. But here you have Barbara Kopple, distinguished filmmaker who has worked with a lot of famous people--often during controversial points in their lives--accustomed to getting intimate access. But that wasn't going to happen with the Yankees. She still got uncommon access, yet from her point of view, she would have liked a lot more. That was a tricky thing, so she took advantage of being able to come out with three cameras at the closing of Yankee Stadium-from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.--to cover a really historic moment and catch the full transition from the old stadium to the new one.

"It's more of a vérité film," Durand continues. "Not entirely, but closer to her style; she wasn't interested in doing a history. She was interested in the heritage and the feeling that goes with the heritage of the Yankees. All these things were happening at once--the old ballpark to the new ballpark, the era of George, the era of the heirs, particularly Hal. At the same time, the Yankees come back and win their 27th championship. George's death brought it full circle."

Kopple characterizes the film as being "about family ties, the passing of things. At the end, George passes away; it was pretty heavy. Major League Baseball and the Yankees are an experience that is both massive and intimate. These were once-in-a-lifetime stories. I looked at it as a total: the Yankees, the family, the players, the fans and the legacy."

H. Scott Bayer is the editor/publisher of Indie Film Reporter and writes about independent film, filmmakers and production technology for several trade publications and broader audience newspapers when not working on his own or other peoples' films.

Editor’s Note: On October 21 at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Los Angeles, IDA will present Davis Guggenheim in conversation with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz. The two will explore his wide-ranging body of work that includes culturally significant and brilliantly crafted films. Learn more and purchase tickets.

As I drove to the screening of Waiting for Superman, knowing I'd be writing this article, the question on my mind was, "Can Davis Guggenheim do for education in America what An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change?" The bar is high--not only did it do well at the box office when movies were having trouble in theaters, it foregrounded the climate-change issue across the country, proving that people were ready to discuss the difficult subject. In hindsight, that film appears to illustrate Malcolm Gladwell's "tipping point," using a politician's PowerPoint to inspire a national discussion that was already brewing.

Waiting for Superman isn't Guggenheim's first stab at the issue of education. In 2001, he wanted to show his young children that teachers are heroes. His first doc, the Peabody Award-winning The First Year, followed five teachers over the course of a year in the Los Angeles public school system. "The film is raw, edgy, spare--so beautiful and inspiring it makes you want to go out and do something for those struggling kids, those impassioned teachers," wrote Phil McCombs for The Washington Post. Guggenheim says that since making that film, "Ten years later, nothing has changed. The dysfunction still exists."

For him, Waiting for Superman is "the uncomfortable truth about why our system is not working." Beginning with Guggenheim's smooth voiceover, the film leads with a first-person account of driving his children past their local public school to get to the private school they attend. "I knew that you couldn't tell this story without someone pulling you along in a specific, chosen direction," Guggenheim says, on his choice to include himself in the narrative. "I needed to take you on the path." He acknowledges his affluence makes private school possible but he wishes he could support public school, and with that, he sets up the point of view for the remainder of the film--public schools are an unfulfilled promise to our children and, by extension, our society.

Anthony, Bianca, Daisy, Francisco and Emily--the protagonists of the film--share their hopes for their future; their parents bite their lips and furrow their brows as they face hard realities about their kids' education without funds for private school. Stacked up against these students' dreams are the facts: Dropout rates are high, test scores are way down and spending is at an all-time high.

Representing a diverse geographic, ethnic and economic cross-section, these children face grim options. Daisy wants to be a veterinarian, but her chances of reaching that goal are slim if she follows the fate of the majority of students in her school, one of thousands of so-called "dropout factories" across the country. Watching these great kids standing at such a dangerous precipice is truly heart-wrenching.

The film moves deftly among individual stories to the wider landscape of facts and figures, using eye-catching animation and a bevy of smart, engaged talking heads. Davis notes that in An Inconvenient Truth, where he faced the challenge of animating the story beyond former US Vice President Al Gore's speech, "It was good to go from information and then yank the audience in the direction of the historical. Zooming in and out had to be done by necessity. It works on this story as well." Taking a full year and a half to cut Waiting for Superman, Guggenheim and his team edited as if the film comprised two different narratives--"Other People's Children" and "The Folly of the Adults." In the last few months, they wove the stories together.

Workforce needs have changed over the past few decades but the school system hasn't. Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates speaks to the need for qualified engineers in the tech industry. The US education system isn't turning out enough qualified workers, requiring importing of workers from Asia to make up the shortfall. Among developed countries, US education ranks near the bottom.

Why? Education reformers Geoffrey Canada, founder of Harlem Success Academy charter school in New York, and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools, point to teachers unions forcing bad teachers on schools and strangle-holding change, while Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers attributes the situation to the lack of resources and appreciation for an important yet disrespected profession.

 "I try to attack the logic, the psychological constructs of the issue so the audience can feel the issue anew," Guggenheim explains. "You can't just say, ‘Isn't it terrible?' Now, you have to do more." Producer Lesley Chilcott describes an escalating outreach plan, starting with encouraging website visitors to pledge to see the film. As people make a pledge, there are a series of benchmarks that result in benefits to students and teachers when numbers are hit. At 30,000, those who pledge get a $5 certificate for Donors Choose, a site where anyone can donate to classes in need; at 40,000, Office Max donates supplies to teachers; at 50,000, First Book sends out much-needed books; and so on as the film racks up more supporters.

Gladwell's tipping point isn't a flash in the pan, but rather a groundswell that slowly rises without much notice until an event pushes the trend over into mass appeal, the breaking of a wave. Is now the time for the issue of education reform, as it was in 2006 for global warming? "It's embarrassing to have the same hopes," Guggenheim admits. "It feels a little like I'm tempting fate. I think the issue is just as important. The need and the stakes are so high and people respond to the film. It has a potent effect on people, and I want it to move the needle."

Chilcott has her own hopes for the film, stemming from her experience teaching English in Japan, where she was treated with great respect by the aging executives she taught. "Sensei is the most valued position you can hold," she explains. "We're missing that in America; it's not cool to be a teacher. We need a culture of teaching as a prestigious career." She points to Finland, one of the top education systems among developed countries. "If you teach in Finland for 10 years, you can get an interview for anything else that you want to do," she notes. She points to signs of hope, like a friend getting into Yale Law School, but not AmeriCorps' Teach for America.

Similarly to An Inconvenient Truth, the end credits to Waiting for Superman are interwoven with inspiring messages that direct you to text "POSSIBLE to 77177," or visit www.waitingforsuperman.com--the main portal for how to become active in the issue. "The heartening thing is that the solutions are there; we know what works," says Guggenheim. "People have proven that reform can be done. Even kids whose parents can't give them everything they need... schools can do it."

 "It's not enough to make a movie; you have to create a movement," Chilcott maintains. In the Superman stories, people who need help hope that he will arrive soon to save the day, but hoping for someone to come along and fix the education system, or for one's number to be called in the charter school lotteries, are simply not viable long-term options. "We know what makes a good teacher, we know what makes a good school," says Chilcott. "We just need the political will to make it happen." Waiting for Superman makes a strong case for why everyone, even those without kids, should take an interest in the discussion about schools, but only time will show, as the film rolls out across the country, whether or not it is the right moment for a wave around education reform to break and produce results.

Waiting for Superman opens September 24 through Paramount Vantage and Participant Media.

Agnes Varnum is the communications manager at the Austin Film Society in Austin, Texas.

IDA MIXER and Free Screening of "Catfish" at WESTDOC

WHEN:
Sunday, September 12, 2010
6 p.m. Cash Bar at the IDA Delegate Lounge
6:30 p.m. Free Screening of "Catfish"
8:30 p.m. IDA Member Mixer at the IDA Delegate Lounge

WHERE:
Doubletree Guest Suites in Santa Monica

For additional info and to RSVP visit the dedicated event webpage.

*Attendance to WESTDOC is not required for screening passes*

Editor's Note: Last Train Home airs September 27, 2011, on PBS' POV. This article appeared in the September 2010 online Documentary in conjunction wsith the film's theatrical release thrugh Zeitgeist Films.

Last Train Home masterfully chronicles the personal story of the Zhangs, a family of migrant factory workers in China, to reveal the human story behind the billions of products stamped "Made in China."  The parents, Changhua and Chen Suqin, left their poor rural village to toil in the factories of Guangzhou for 17 years, leaving behind their infant children to be cared for by grandparents. Sadly, they can only afford to return home to see their children once a year, during the New Year holiday. One painful result is that their rebellious teenage daughter is very resentful and angry that her parents have been absent most of her life.

The Zhangs gave director Lixan Fan remarkable access, enabling him to capture incredibly intimate moments between the husband and wife as well as an explosive family argument. Though the documentary focuses on one family, the filmmaker never lets you forget that the Zhang parents are just two of the many millions of migrant workers in China. The opening scene and later sequences in the film, for example, show the incredible cacophony and ensuing chaos at the train station during the New Year holiday. A sweeping panoramic shot captures thousands and thousands of people waiting with intense anticipation to take the train home. The enormity of this mass undertaking is underscored by the text on the screen informing viewers that more than 130 million migrant workers journey home only once a year, during the New Year. Other scenes in the factories or on the train reveal the hardships and challenges these workers face: unaffordable health care, no pension and no safety net. Last Train Home is a rare achievement. It tells a compelling personal story within a social and political context, a cogent reminder that the personal is political.

Lixan Fan was born and raised in China and moved to Montreal in 2006. Luckily for him, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang was looking for a sound recorder who could speak a specific Chinese dialect for his film Up the Yangtze. Lixan, who had worked as a journalist for CCTV, a Chinese television network, began working on the film as a soundman and soon began doing other work on the film, eventually earning the title of associate producer.

Lixan discussed his feature-length debut Last Train Home in a recent phone interview. Last Train Home is currently screening in New York at the IFC Center and opens September 17 in Los Angeles and September 24 in the San Francisco Bay Area, through Zeitgeist Films.

IDA: When did you start thinking about making Last Train Home?

Lixan Fan: About four years ago when we were shooting Up the Yangtze. During a break in filming, I went on a research trip to Guangzhou, where there are thousands of factories. I went to search for potential subjects for my film. I met many families and interviewed about 40 people. I was lucky that I met the Zhangs. The mother told me their story and I found it immediately impressive. She and her husband had been working in factories for 16 years and only go home during the [Chinese] New Year. They've probably spent [a total of] less than a year with their daughter. They have a grandmother back home and they do this trip every year. I thought their story really stood out and could help me explore many different aspects, like how family structure is being impacted by migrant work. So I asked them if they would be interested in being filmed.

IDA: How did you ask them?
 

LF: I told them I was making a film about migrant workers. At the beginning they were somewhat cautious about being in the film. Of course they understood that it is a big commitment and it may have a big impact on their family. In the migrant world, you don't really trust strangers, and you can't really make friends because work moves so often. Someone sitting next to you one day may be gone the next day.

I opened myself up and told them my own story about why I am making this film. I told them, "It's about something much bigger; I want to work with you to tell the story of the hundreds of millions of migrant workers."

They felt it was their responsibility to give a voice to their peer workers. So they agreed to be filmed, and as time went by we had a really strong relationship. I didn't know we would be filming for three years, but I kept going back year after year. Essentially we became one big family.

IDA: When did you begin shooting?

LF: We did some shooting that first trip. We used some of that footage. The [principle] shooting started June/July in 2006. Every year I would go back to the city and countryside. Over three years, I spent five months each year shooting.

In the factory, life was robotic: eat, work, go back to sleep. I spent more time in the factory. I always think that this topic deserves this amount of time to be invested. I asked my crew to always go there every day to hang out with the workers and the subjects. Sometimes we would wait until midnight to follow them back home. By investing this amount of time, we managed to get some really nice footage.

After [the Zhangs] spent so much time with us, they were very comfortable with us. When the father went to see the daughter to persuade her to come back home during New Year's, I asked permission to film from another room. They talked about their own lives and at the end we got a couple lines that are very emotional.

IDA: You captured so many personal, intimate moments. Was there a particular time during production when you felt you were able to go more deeply into the family relationships?

LF: The tipping point was when the daughter and the father had a big fight. That was a tough moment for me. I felt I should be objective. On the other hand, you spend so much time together, it's like seeing my family fight; I care about them. It was a really big dilemma for me. I struggled for ten seconds or so, and I actually went in the frame. To me it's a very human reaction. I surrendered myself to my basic emotion, rather than my rational emotion. Was it right or wrong? I went in and separated them. Later on I sat with the father, and spoke with him for a long time. I asked him if it was OK to use the scene in the film.

I was never sure if it was the right thing or the wrong thing to walk into the scene. It really changed the dynamic of the film. In the editing, I was quite nervous about putting it into the film; I thought it might be too harsh. I thought that even though the parents agreed, maybe it was too violent. My editor Mary Stephens told me that as a director, I shot the scene and the footage speaks for itself. The audience deserves to see the truth. Once I shoot it, it's not my property. I don't have the right to hide it. It's such an emotional thing.

IDA: Did you ask for permission for each time you filmed?

LF: For special things, we would ask for permission [from the family] out of respect. For example, it was a village tradition for the first day of the New Year to go and pray at the temple. It was a very private moment. So I asked the mother if we could film, and she let me follow her. For things like that, I ask for permission. But other than that, the family was totally fine with us filming.

I didn't have a problem filming in China. To film in the factory, we asked for permission from the factory owners. It took a lot of time. At the train station, we were actually fine. It wasn't as difficult as I would have expected, but we had an all-Chinese crew. Also, I used to work for CCTV. I had some friends helping me, and they talked to people. We had been filming there for three years. The first year was more difficult but we come back the second year and they were less cautious. Also, that year was the big snowstorm; thousands of people were stuck at the station and there was a big media war [to cover the story]. There was one moment in the railway station when the situation got really tense. A girl was carried over the tops of people's heads. At the time, a high-ranking official saw us shooting and stopped us from filming. We stopped and we went back to our home base. Then we copied the footage we had on a hard drive and sent copies to Beijing and Canada. But we went back the next day to film and it was fine.

IDA: Did you show the film to the family?

LF: I gave a DVD to the family and they saw it. The father told me that it was very sad for him to see the family story on the screen. I could see how sad he was about his daughter. The mother said she still couldn't see why their daughter was so angry. The daughter didn't want to see it. She's 20 years old and recently lost her job working in a hotel. I met her two months ago; she's looking for a new job and she has a boyfriend. She seems to be happy.

IDA: What has the audience response been like?

LF: Quite positive; people really liked the film. The film has been shown in a few Chinese film festivals, in Shanghai and at the Guanzhou documentary film festival, which was really surprising to me. We went through the censorship board.

In Guanzhou, the audience was really young people. I had students tell me that after watching the film, it was like watching their own lives. I also had migrant workers coming to me, and a theater worker said she saw half the film and couldn't stop crying. We're working on getting the film in Chinese cinemas, working through the film bureau, but I don't know if it will happen.

I was very surprised that the film could screen in the Shanghai Film Festival, the largest film festival in China. Before the Olympics everyone was saying China was changing, but after the Olympics it actually got worse.

IDA: You mean worse in terms of state control?

LF: Yes, state control. There's definitely more state control.

IDA: What has been the audience response around the world?

LF: In North America, they are quite conscious in finding the message and how they can help alleviate the life conditions of the migrant. They also ask questions about why millions have to undertake such a life. I'm especially happy to see that many people think about themselves and the cheap products that are made by the migrants. By making the film, I was trying to show the other side of what's behind the cheap product.

IDA: So you were trying to show the human story of what's behind the "Made in China" label.

LF: Yes, people have to endure such constant separation from their families. It's such an immense human cost for a product that we consume.

IDA: What do you hope people come away with after they see the film?

LF: I hope they understand that their lives in the developed world are somehow connected to migrants as well. Globalization has brought it all together. I hope people will be more cautious about capitalism and globalization and think about how we can all come up with a better plan. I don't mean to make this film to accuse the government. Everyone has this problem. The factories in developing countries are being exploited by corporations. What can everyone do to change it? I think that's a question I want the audience to have. I had always wanted to get this message across. I was very consciously trying to get this moment that would help me say this message.

IDA: What are you working on next?

LF: China's clean energy project. The government is building the world's largest wind farm in the Gobi Desert, and has said it will spend ten years building it. So I will be following this story. They started two years ago. I was in the Gobi Desert last year and I plan to go back later this year.

Chuleenan Svetvilas is a writer and editor in Berkeley, California. 

Promoting the awareness of dangerous facts without editorializing becomes an aggressive political act in Neshoba: The Price of Freedom, co-directed by frequent collaborators Micki Dickoff and Tony Pagano. Excavating the onerous past of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the film is less about racial tension than about the friction between heritage and justice, as well as the punitive limits of a democratic state where personal beliefs are protected, no matter how nocuous. In 1964, the small southern county became the subject of international controversy when three young adult civil rights workers investigating the razing of a church--Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, a black man from the nearby city of Meridan-were tortured, murdered and buried in an earthen dam just outside city limits.

Both Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish activists from New York who had connected with Chaney through the Freedom Summer voting campaign; the fact that their whiteness failed to exempt them from prejudiced terrorism helped the civil rights movement transcend delicate issues of tradition preservation to become an inarguably humanitarian struggle. But while a collection of local municipal and ecclesiastical authorities affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan were tried for the crimes on charges of rights deprivation by the federal government, they avoided conviction and imprisonment due to the state's unwillingness to assist, or take its own action against the conspirators.

In Neshoba County itself this history of violent insensitivity and xenophobia is almost never discussed. But Dickoff and Pagano provocatively suggest that an undercurrent of potentially explosive paranoia is always felt there, even today. As the film's primary narrative thread begins in 2005 with the efforts of the Philadelphia Coalition--a multiracial action group formed specifically to seek justice for Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney's killings--the directors criss-cross between these newfound glimmers of hopeful tolerance and antiquarian footage from Neshoba's Jim Crow-enforcing and red scare-embracing past. These archival flashbacks required nearly two years of fundraising to obtain with usage rights, but they provide a vital, contextual fulcrum upon which we might comprehend the startling expository content to follow. The grisly details of the 1964 murders that unfold through autopsy notes and testimony from the victims' families are independently unfathomable, but the tragic tension intensifies even further as we observe the inability of many Philadelphia citizens to confront their endemic horrors with candor.

In one extended sequence, Dickoff and Pagano interview locals at a county fair; they dumbfoundingly evade the Coalition's efforts in conversation and softly defend the darker side of their culture's ideology. Moreover, the influence of segregation as a collective psychology is still evident in the respect they maintain for their elders, even those who were (and are) active Klan members. "I couldn't debate them about it," says Dickoff, "but I found the reluctance of many Neshoba Countians very frustrating, whatever their fears. These were just ordinary people, good people for the most part, yet they were willing to let murderers go unpunished. That was chilling. It was hard to reconcile that people today in the 21st Century have not outgrown their ignorance." But, Dickoff saliently adds, "We can't ask whites to give up their traditions unless they violate the law."

And what of those who do break the law? The second and third acts of Neshoba are dominated by exclusive interviews with Edgar Ray Killen, a former preacher and Klansman who was instrumental in organizing the execution of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. Dickoff and Pagano were unaware at the start of production that the Philadelphia Coalition planned to target Killen with legal action, but after an indictment was issued in 2005 they remained in Neshoba to capture the trial and unprecedentedly intimate footage of the largely unrepentant defendant. The aging Killen was smeared by every media outlet to which he offered statements--in the words of Pagano, "They crucified him" --and thus was eager to tell his story to more objective ears.

"It's a very simplistic approach to demonize Killen," Pagano points out. "We tried very hard not to do that, and let him do it himself. We wanted to show that people in this community really like him." Indeed, Dickoff and Pagano give him the liberty to ramble on about his innocence and misunderstood credo within the sun-saturated environs of his small farm, positing a stark formal contrast with the black-backgrounded, talking-head vehemence of the victims' survivors. "Killen is a product of his environment," Pagano adds. "[It was essential] to see his environment wider to get a sense of where he lives. You'll notice the amount of close-ups of Killen are few." Perversely, Killen is free to spout his ignorant ruminations while the families of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney are eternally ensnared by the trauma they've endured.

Pressed on whether or not she feels that the film could foster sympathy for Killen's short-sightedness, Dickoff replies, "Some people feel we push the limits of freedom of speech by giving Killen a forum to spout his beliefs and spew his hate," she replied. "[But] I think we should all try to understand where Killen came from...sympathy for him doesn't equal approval." Pagano almost feels as though Killen's political incorrectness deserved more rhetorical control. "I wish we'd put in some more racy stuff," he says. "Killen really [went] after the homosexuals. He [went] after everyone...There are several times in there that he goes off on the coalition, about them being ‘faggots'...that we didn't put in. He's one of the most cunning, smartest, non-educated men I've ever met in my life."

As Neshoba makes clear by its resolution, the insidious intelligence of men like Killen, who have maintained their views and community stature by feeding local anxieties, has allowed the region's racism to persistently manifest itself in subtle ways. The reference to "the price of freedom" in the film's title is thus both a celebration of the efforts of civil rights activists and a reminder that democracy will always allow a safe harbor for hate until it veers into criminal territory, as Killen's did. "Edgar Ray Killen was convicted for what he did, not for what he believed," says Dickoff. "And we have to keep that in the forefront."

But where does a place like Philadelphia go from here? The indictment (and surprising conviction) of Edgar Ray Killen for manslaughter has proved a somewhat unsatisfactory victory that still required nimble political deftness; one can't help but feel that after over 40 years, the wound is still raw and throbbing. "Killen is a scapegoat," intones Pagano. "Let's face it. Killen was prosecuted...because he's the poorest [of the living conspirators]. And he's got the biggest mouth. And the state is never gonna go after anyone else. They're just waiting for those people to die. There are only four alleged [conspirators] left." But Pagano also admits that racism has metamorphosed, even in Neshoba County. "In that community specifically, it's economic. If you're black and I'm white, and we both go into a bank to get a home loan, I'm getting that house and you're not. The railroad tracks still literally divide the town."

Dickoff, too, views the fight against discrimination in Neshoba as an uphill battle, but remarkable responses to screenings of the film throughout the American South have made the task seem less Sisyphean. "The film has a way of making people open up," she says, "especially if they're angry or upset, because it makes them think about race in a way that they never thought about before. Leroy Clemons, the co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition, brought his family to see the film. And they came to this discussion afterward and his daughter, who had just graduated from college, said, ‘This is the first time that I feel good about my community. I was not going to come back to Philadelphia, Mississippi, but now that I see this hope I'm gonna come back and try to work on it.' "

Neshoba: The Price of Freedom opens September 10 in Los Angeles through First Run Features.

Joseph Jon Lanthier is a cultural critic and vegan currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Stunned and frightened, Alessandro Ibiapina accompanied his mother into a bleak São Paulo, Brazil police station on the evening of January 27, 2008. Only four hours before, Jose Ibiapina--Alessandro's father--had been abducted by a small group of thugs while at work.

There inside the station, headquarters to DAS (Divisão Anti-Sequestro), or Anti-Kidnapping Division, sat Dario Dezem patiently waiting. Wearing a DAS t-shirt, he may have appeared to be a policeman, but in fact he was the primary cameraman working on Jorge Atalla's documentary Sequestro (Kidnapping). Living across the street from the station at a hotel for weeks, Dezem had been pining for a moment exactly like this. Even though he and Atalla had been shooting for more than three years and had countless hours of incredible footage, they felt the film lacked an important piece to Atalla's intricate vision.

Before the grief-stricken Ibiapinas entered the room where they would be interviewed, Dezem quickly taped a microphone underneath the table and casually set his DV Cam down, aimed and recorded the unaware Ibiapinas.

Completing Sequestro, Atalla's ambitious doc about kidnapping in São Paulo, would require other risks of far greater magnitude than the amateur subterfuge performed during the Ibiapinas' first visit to DAS. It would take four grueling years before Atalla satisfactorily documented the large criminal tapestry made up of kidnappers, the abducted, victims' families and police.

Long before Sequestro, Atalla, who studied filmmaking at the New York Film Academy, screened his first documentary,  A Vida em Cana, in 2001 at a film festival in Miami. That same year, the kidnapping boom in São Paulo--over 300 reported cases--was grabbing headlines around the world. Considering his possibilities, Atalla thought he'd found his subject.

To film Cana, Atalla had lived with sugar cane workers for six months. So when he told a friend about examining kidnappings in his next film, Atalla's friend asked him, "If for your first film you lived for six months with cane cutters, how are you going to do the same for a movie about kidnapping?"

 "I really had no idea what we were doing in the beginning," admits Atalla, who, battling continued resistance from his family for nearly three years of pre-production, had to keep his plans secret. Compounding matters, when his father's health turned poor, Atalla became saddled with more responsibility overseeing the family business. Finally, he was a rookie filmmaker looking for financing.

Atalla, patient and resolved, eventually scaled these early obstacles within three years, only to have a bloated production team waste the first $200,000 in three months filming training exercises rather than real action. Shortly after the money was gone, Atalla lost his permit to shoot--something that would happen several more times.

In 2004 Atalla caught a break. He was introduced to Artur Dian, a hotshot inspector in DAS who, at the time of their introduction, was working around the clock with his team on ten kidnapping cases. Meeting Dian was pivotal, but utilizing that contact to move the production process forward took a while. "I spent a whole year with Artur learning everything I could about kidnapping before we were able to get the permits we needed to film with DAS," says Atalla.

With permits finally in hand, Atalla and Dezem, now the sole cameraman, were told to stay out of the way when filming and to not expect DAS to spend much energy protecting them in the field. DAS advised the filmmakers, "If you hear shooting, duck."

Years of negotiating the clearance to film DAS was one thing, but winning them over proved to be another. "They are very closed and worried about what information they leak out because they are always dealing with a human life, so they didn't talk much [in the beginning]," says Atalla. "They didn't make friends with me at all."

For inspector Rafael Correa Lodi, it was not until he was truly convinced of Atalla's motives that he began loosening the tight reign he commanded. "I liked that [Atalla] envisioned a project that followed the day-to-day of DAS and would tell the whole story," says Lodi. He recalls being forced to accommodate news crews that would swoop in for only a brief spell, usually during highly publicized cases, mining more for controversy than truth.

With greater access came increased peril. And the dummy police uniforms and flimsy bulletproof jackets Atalla and Dezem donned were little protection against the emotional tragedy and violence they encountered. They were in the thick of it, just what they'd been after, but the question was, Would they survive?

 "Sometimes when we were filming it was like being in a non-ending terror action movie," says Atalla, who was often away from home for two or three days at a time. And when he'd finally get home, he would be so full of adrenaline or anxiety from events he had witnessed, such as seeing a father handcuffed and hauled away from his wife and two sons, that he turned to sleeping pills.

Raids were by far the most intense aspect of the production process. The crew would have virtually no time to get ready because the DAS themselves would hardly spend any time prepping. "Unlike [in] the States, where floor plans can be acquired, [in the favela] it is impossible," Rafael explains. "We can't even cut the power and telephone lines." When the DAS team identifies a potential safe house, they take less than a minute to equip before entering. No news travels faster in the favelas than the presence of police. The DAS' goal is to get in the house and free the victim before the kidnappers have any idea what hit them. Where Sequestro excels are in those moments when the victims, who have been staring at death for days on end, tortured physically and emotionally, are instantly set free; they are overcome with joy.

After three long years interviewing victims and filming with DAS, both filmmakers were mentally fatigued. Dezem withdrew from friends and family. "I saw things I never imagined could even happen," he recalls. "It was hard to separate myself from the cruelty I had witnessed."Atalla longed for a vacation from the daunting task he had undergone. He wanted to spend time with his growing family. But even though his wife desperately hoped for the same, she knew, as did Atalla, that the film still lacked a key element.

Most of what he had were fragmented narratives, stops and starts with no beginning, middle and end. "We had always wanted to follow a family from the first day until the end," says Atalla. Without a primary narrative that could see the movie through from start to finish, his film would fall flat.

Dezem began sleeping in a hotel across the street from the DAS station, hoping to be at the station at just the right time. Finally, after weeks of nothing, on a hot evening in January, Dezem was present when the Ibiapinas came to the station looking for help.

Initially against the idea completely, the Ibiapinas slowly came around and granted Dezem access to their home.

It was just what the film needed, but Dezem was ill-prepared for this new level of access. "They began treating me like a member of the family," he explains. "I felt that the pain that the family was suffering, I was suffering too."

During all this, in some unknown apartment, lying on the floor behind a sofa, with a hood over his head, was Jose Ibiapina. And that is where and how he stayed for 33 hellish days before a deal was eventually struck. His son Alessandro delivered all the money he had been able to raise to a designated drop-off point before going home to wait. After 24 hours with no word, a taxi driver finally called, saying that he had Jose crumpled up in his back seat unable to speak, but he was bringing him home.

Alessandro quickly called Lodi, whom Dezem happened to be dropping off for the day. Lodi then informed Dezem he had about five minutes to get over to the Ibiapinas. Dezem left Lodi immediately, speeding recklessly across town. He managed to pull up to the Ibiapinas' home in the nick of time, hopping out of his car and aiming his camera just as Alessandro pulled his father from the taxi, embracing him joyously before rushing him inside.

Dezem was relieved to have gotten the pivotal footage necessary to wrap Sequestro properly, but more important, he was delighted to see Jose alive and reunited with his family.

As an observational film, Sequestro is a moving picture both emotionally and cinematically that avoids making assessments or critiques of its subject matter. This is a film about what victims of kidnappings endure and how they and their families cope during and after the ordeal. Atalla's perseverance and honesty proved to be his greatest assets in making his film, enabling him to gain the trust and access necessary to capture such immediate and raw footage.

Sequestro opens September 10 in New York and Los Angeles through Yukon Filmworks, Midmix Entertainment, Filmland International and Paradigm Pictures.

R. T. Watson is a reporter and writer based in Los Angeles.