Filmmakers Collaborative is excited to announce its partnership with Boston Film Festival! This year’s festival–its 40th year– runs from September 19-23! Check out the line up and grab your tickets!
This year’s festival features a record six world premieres, a college student-centered partnership with Warner Bros. Television, and a lineup that fest executive director Robin Dawson told The Boston Globe was “worthy of 40 years of film.”
Dawson went on to tell The Globe, “I feel like this year we really represented Massachusetts well. We always look to infuse the personality of Boston and Massachusetts into the film festival. That was one of the goals when I first took over, that you would know you’re in Boston through the theater experience and the event after.”
Among the six premieres is a debut film by Boston native Eric Aronson,, who wrote, directed, and produced “Any Day Now,” the festival’s Centerpiece Spotlight film. A fictional portrayal of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery on March 18, 1990, the comedy/thriller was shot entirely in Boston over the course of five weeks.
The Boston Film Festival is one of America’s longest-running and industry recognized events for films. The 40th program will showcase cutting edge indie films, top documentaries, shorts, animated, fall release studio films and a newly created sports category.
The feature films include the Opening Night debut of “SHEEPDOG,” along with Centerpiece Spotlight “Any Day Now.” Both films were shot locally throughout Boston and Massachusetts. The Boston Film Festival is thrilled to announce the addition of “Sweetwater,” Cannes Film Award winner and Image Award (NAACP) nominee for best Indie Feature, making its Angel Studios worldwide premiere at the festival. Rounding out this amazing slate of feature films is the Closing Night feature “Max Dagan,” making its East Coast premiere.
Documentaries making their world premiere at the festival include “Capturing Kennedy,” “Phillip Dutton: A Leap of Faith,” and “The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay.” The schedule also includes the U.S premiere of “Democracy Noir.” This incredible group of films reflect newsworthy topics exploring societal issues. Question-and-answer sessions with film creative representatives will follow all live premieres.
For those of you who don’t follow us on our Facebook page or follow us on X, formerly Twitter, we’d certainly welcome your attention and readership! In addition to updating members and public followers about FC-specific news, we frequent share helpful and timely information about events (for members and non-members), independent film projects, and general interest film-and-media-centric articles and essays. We also share links to the latest Making Media Now podcast episode.
Over the last month or so, our potpourri of updates and information included an NPR article about director David Lynch’s continual, life-long artist pursuits. At 78, he’s about to release his first collection of music. The article explained, “”….At 78, Lynch is still making art. He’s planning on releasing a new album with the artist Chrystabell in August. He told NPR the music began as a sound experiment he was working on. When he got Chrystabell to sing over the music, he found “she is perfect for this and in ways I can’t really explain.”
Meanwhile, over at Vox, writer Constance Grady wonders about whatever happened to the shared TV-viewing experience? Remember when folks would actually gather around the water cooler (or fax machine!) to talk about the previous night’s episode of “Lost” or “Friends”? Grady writes, “…In April, New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik labeled our current era of television “the golden age of Mid TV.” Mid TV, according to Poniewozik, is “what you get when you raise TV’s production values and lower its ambitions. It reminds you a little of something you once liked a lot. It substitutes great casting for great ideas.”
Our friends at Variety remind us that the year is (gulp!) already half-way over. Which means it’s the perfect time to trot out a half-year best-of list! We particularly loved seeing that “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy” leads the show biz mainstay’s list of best-movies-of-’24 so far. Have you see it yet? Have you listened to our Making Media Now conversation with its director?
And most recently, as actor Alec Baldwin heads to trial for involuntary manslaughter in Santa Fe, The Hollywood Reporter published an article on two documentaries that examining the accidental shooting that took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Per the article, “…Among the many people who will be closely watching Alec Baldwin‘s involuntary manslaughter trial when it begins in Santa Fe this week are two sets of documentarians covering parallel and potentially competing stories from the movie Rust.”
Filmmakers Collaborative and GlobeDocs are combining efforts to celebrate Sustainability Week with a free, in person screening at Cinema Salem in Salem, MA, of the feature documentary, CANARY, and short film THE CHELSEA COOL BLOCK. Doors open at 6 PM; screenings begin at 6:30 PM. A Q&A with directors from both films immediately follows.
Danny O’Malley,
the co-director, of CANARY, which tells the story of the extraordinary life of Dr. Lonnie Thompson, an explorer who went where no scientist had gone before and transformed our idea of what is possible. Daring to seek Earth’s history contained in glaciers atop the tallest mountains in the world, Lonnie found himself on the frontlines of climate change—his life’s work evolving into a salvage mission to recover these priceless historical records before they disappear forever.
Late last year, Danny and his co-director, Alex Rivest, joined us on the Making Media Now podcast to talk about the film. Here’s what Danny had to say about why he was attracted to telling Dr. Lonnie Thompson’s story:
“..Lonnie always talks about his youth in West Virginia, and he grew up in coal country. So he’d listen to the miners talk. And one thing that I think we’re all familiar with is people brought canaries into the mine. And when the canary died, it meant there was gases that could kill you. There was something bad happening and you needed to get out. At the heart of this film, there’s all these warnings.
Lonnie is a climate scientist who is warning the world about climate change. His doctor tells him he needs a heart transplant. And there’s this question of will we respond when we’re warned or will we find out the hard way?
My whole thing with documentaries is you wanna find a character and a story where you don’t have to put spin on the ball. Working in documentary television, there’s a lot of half-baked ideas and things where people pitch something but the story’s not there and it’s heartbreaking to work on. So I’m just always looking for a story where you just find out what happens and you’re like, this already feels like a movie like this already.
We have a hero, we have stakes, and there’s something that it’s trying to tell us the story. And then the job becomes how do you bring out the truth, bring out the power, and bring out the universal feelings of that story so that everyone feels it.”
Joining Danny O’Malley at the April 25 event in Salem, MA will be Yari Wolinsky of Turnaround Films. Yari will be presenting a locally-produced short called “The Chelsea Cool Block,” and he recently chatted with us about the origins of Turnaround Films and the premise of his short film.
Can you say a bit about the origins and mission of Turnaround Films?
In 2020, my father and I, as Trillium Studios Film, were approached by a family member who wanted to support the production of films about climate change. He’d done well in real estate development, almost always on the other side of the table from environmental groups, but had a “turnaround” moment where he realized how serious the problem is and wanted to help do something about it.
Our film and photo producing history covers a lot of ground, but we had never touched on climate change before. We looked at the breadth of films being made and saw that there were many good and important films, but for the most part, they tackle climate change at a global or national scale. We, at least, had trouble really connecting with the problems and always felt daunted and depressed by what could possibly be done.
What became the mission of Turnaround Films was to create short films that focused on what individuals and groups were actively doing in their communities to mitigate or adapt to climate change and other environmental problems. We started filming in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic and that kept our first stories tied to New England and Massachusetts. We tell stories that show how the solutions can be local and human scaled and that often the efforts of a determined person or a coalition of groups can make big changes.
What would you like to share about “The Chelsea Cool Block” that might entice folks to want to see it?
Cities are hot. Pavement, black roofs, lack of trees, traffic, and industry all create and hold heat. As the climate warms, our cities are going to get hotter. This is especially bad in low income communities like Chelsea, just north of Boston, where there is a struggle to pay for air conditioning at home and getting to work can mean waiting for public transportation on streets super-heated by cars and buses. There are many proven ways to mitigate this, but they are complicated to organize and expensive to actually put into place.
What first caught our ear about the Chelsea Cool Block project was that this was an effort being organized by multiple groups: researchers from BU’s School of Public Health, activists from the GreenRoots social and environmental justice nonprofit, administrators from the city, and residents of Chelsea. Studies had found where the hottest place is in the city and this alliance worked quickly to raise funds and implement as many solutions as they possibly could. Their goal was to improve the lives of the residents there now and in the future, and if they could learn from the process and the results, all the better.
We’re just a few days away from the 96th Academy Awards presentation. Here’s a rundown of the group of five internationally focused documentaries that earned nominations for Best Documentary Feature: Bobi Wine: The People’s President, The Eternal Memory, Four Daughters, To Kill a Tiger, and 20 Days in Mariupol.
20 Days in Mariupol documents the devastating attack on civilians in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, also secured a nomination. Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photojournalist Mstyslav Chernov, a Ukraine native, directed the documentary, which is produced by the PBS program Frontline and the Associated Press.
Frontline Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath and Michelle Mizner, a Frontline producer/editor, who also worked in both capacities on the documentary, recently joined Michael Azevedo on FC’s podcast, Making Media Now. You can find that podcast chat, wherever you listen to podcasts.
https://fcmakingmedia.podbean.com/e/unveiling-the-production-of-the-documentary-20-days-in-mariupol/
Bobi Wine is a film about the titular Ugandan pop star who ran for president of his country against a dictator who has been in power for going on 40 years. The film is directed by Ugandan natives Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp. This is the first Oscar nomination for Bwayo and Sharp.
Chile’s Maite Alberdi has earned the second Oscar nomination of her career for The Eternal Memory. Her film tells the love story of Augusto Góngora and Paulina Urrutia, two prominent figures in Chile, whose bond endured event after Augusto was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 62. He lost his battle with the disease in 2023.
With Four Daughters, Kaouther Ben Hania also earned the second Oscar nomination of her career. The film, which shared the top prize for documentary at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, centers on Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman who raised four girls, and then dealt with anguish after her two eldest daughters joined the fanatical ISIS Islamist movement in Libya. Ben Hania, who has worked in fiction and nonfiction previously, incorporated actors to portray the missing daughters, and well as Olfa.
Finally, To Kill a Tiger, set in a village in India, tells the story of a family that fought for justice against long odds after their daughter was the victim of a brutal sexual assault by three young men. Among the film’s executive producers are Dev Patel, Mindy Kaling, Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, and Dr. Atul Gawande, the renowned surgeon and author.
We congratulate all the filmmakers for their nominations and for having delivered to audiences stories of profound humanity and consequence. We’ll be watching on March 10 to see who takes home the Oscar!
FC is proud to have been a fiscal sponsor for “Canary” which will begin a limited theatrical run on September 15, followed by a one-night-only special nationwide screening on September 20. The film’s co-directors, Alex Rivest and Danny O’Malley recently joined us on Making Media Now,(MMN) the FC podcast. Here are some excerpts from our chat!
MMN: What was it in the story of Dr. Lonnie Thompson that felt so compelling to you?
Danny O’Malley: Lonnie always talks about his youth in West Virginia, and he grew up in coal country. So he’d listen to the miners talk. And one thing that I think we’re all familiar with is people brought canaries into the mine. And when the canary died, it meant there was gases that could kill you. There was something bad happening and you needed to get out. At the heart of this film, there’s all these warnings.
Lonnie is a climate scientist who is warning the world about climate change. His doctor tells him he needs a heart transplant. And there’s this question of will we respond when we’re warned or will we find out the hard way?
My whole thing with documentaries is you wanna find a character and a story where you don’t have to put spin on the ball. Working in documentary television, there’s a lot of half-baked ideas and things where people pitch something but the story’s not there and it’s heartbreaking to work on. So I’m just always looking for a story where you just find out what happens and you’re like, this already feels like a movie like this already.
We have a hero, we have stakes, and there’s something that it’s trying to tell us the story. And then the job becomes how do you bring out the truth, bring out the power, and bring out the universal feelings of that story so that everyone feels it.
MMN: And Alex, you come from a very different professional and academic background. Share with a bit of your story and how the story of Dr. Lonnie Thompson came on your radar.
ALEX: I grew up in science. My dad is a professor at MIT in computer science. I grew up kind of in the shadow of academia. I fell in love with neuroscience at college and ended up going to MIT to do a PhD in neuroscience, studying memory systems.
We would genetically engineer mice to turn off and on very specific parts of their brain and look how it affected memory acquisition and recall. So I was doing that on the academic track, finished my PhD, did a postdoc.
But during the whole time, I had a love to get out and adventure and go to places as far off the map as I can get. And I always saw that as far as I was off the map and reporting back from that, there was always a group of people that were a little bit further away. And I started realizing that those people were scientists and that their curiosity had brought them to places that were very hard to reach, very unique, very beautiful, very tough environments.
And I realized that there was something that this was not being communicated right. That that curiosity alone can make
you one of the explorers on the frontier. And there was something, there was just a magic to that, that I felt like was missing.
And, and like Danny said, I grew up watching science television. I try to watch as much as I can of it. It always feels a little bit like homework. Hmm. And, and it, and it, as I, as I got into science and I met more scientists and I worked with ’em, I realized that the, the, the essence of who the human is has been completely removed from a lot of science television.
And I came across Lonnie’s story in New York Times article and reached out to him and said, we’d like to talk to you about this, this kind of TV show idea we’re developing.
So we got on a Skype with Lonnie and within five minutes he had us totally pulled into this adventure story that he was telling us. Within 40 minutes he had us both crying on the Skype call just about his, his life and, and how close to to death he actually came. And then at the end of it, we hung up. It was about an hour long Skype call I, I turned to Danny and I said, if there’s a single story we ever tell in this world, it has to be this one. And reading about Lonnie Thompson, I heard him described as the closest living thing to Indiana Jones.
MMN: Danny, tell me what you saw in the opportunity to tell his story and trying to strike that balance between charismatic figure and actual hard science.
DANNY: When me and Alex first talked and he was talking about these charismatic scientists and he’s never seen them represented the way they are in real life. One of the things that came to mind was Indiana Jones. And I was like, well, Indiana Jones, has car chases and gunfights and all this cool stuff. We may get cool stories but we’ll never get that.
But when we went and actually talked to scientists, a lot of them had been kidnapped, had been caught in civil wars, we met one scientist who negotiated a peace treaty between war tribes so he could dig up skull with the oldest child skull found in discovery. So I was like, yeah, there’s no limit on how cool these scientists are gonna be and how great their stories are gonna be.
And like Lonnie has no exception.
MMN: How old was Lonnie roughly when you andmet him and how far along in his career was he?
ALEX: I think when we first got in touch with Lonnie, he was 69 or 70, I believe he’s 75 now. And as we’re speaking up at 18,000 feet.
MMN: He’s up there with, not to throw a spoiler at anybody, but he is up there with his second heart.
ALEX: Yes, he got a heart transplant. He was the only heart transplant recipient ever to go to these altitudes. A year after his heart transplant he, he was back up at 20,000 feet. And I think that’s an important story about what is possible. I mean, Lonnie’s story is always about taking the seemingly impossible and making it possible.
MMN: I think typically, and maybe it was just me, but when I hear glaciers I’m thinking of the Arctic. And can either of you talk to me a little bit about what is specific and specifically compelling about the evidence that’s being found in glaciers in South America?
ALEX: It may be good to just step back for a second and say when they study ice and study glaciers, what they do is they pick a site on the ice and they drill a hole into the ice and then recover a cylinder of that ice. And as you go down from the very top of the ice to the bottom, you’re going back in time. So whatever snow fell last year will be near the top ever. Snow fell 10 years ago will be a little bit further down. Whatever snow felt 4 million years ago will be at the bottom of the ice core.
And so you can reconstruct the exact atmosphere of that part of the planet by getting an ice core. So that’s kind of a fundamental feature here. So in Antarctica and Greenland and in the Arctic where we, where we think of ice, there’s these massive ice ice sheets and they are kind of far away from human populations for the most part.
Now there’s this whole thing and people didn’t know the term tropical glaciers, right? You don’t think of glaciers in the tropics, right? But there are lots of glaciers in the tropics. They just are have, have to be in places that are cold enough. And to be cold enough you have to be kind of above 16,000 feet. Most of ’em are above 18,000 feet. Peru has a huge majority of glaciers. And the thing that’s kind of beautiful about ice cores in places like the Andes: they contain these local histories too.
DANNY: Yeah. One more thing to mention about tropical glaciers is like Alex said, it’s where the people live. You know, when we think about melting glaciers, we think about sea level rise, but there’s this other factor where there are cities that depend on the runoff from these tropical glaciers in the mountains. Like the rivers create hydropower, they fuel whole cities and towns during the dry seasons.
And when these glaciers melt, there’s going to be agriculture that can’t grow food anymore. There’s going to be cities that don’t have power. And part of what’s important about Lonnie’s work is shining a light on that issue because if we don’t figure out how to globally support these places that are gonna be losing water, those people are gonna have to move. And you know, there are estimates of climate change that go from like a hundred million to a billion climate refugees.
And there’s no political infrastructure, there’s no treaties, there’s no anything that’s prepared for that. And I think part of the hard work that we have with climate change is getting the world together to prepare for those outcomes so people don’t have to move or people can, we can find a way to find new places for people that are equitable and don’t lead to political backlashes and things like that.
Our guests on a recent episode of Making Media Now (MMN), the Filmmakers Collaborative podcast, were Eamon Little (EL) and Christopher Lydon (CL). They are part of the team behind a documentary in progress called “Born That Way,” for which Filmmakers Collaborative is the fiscal sponsor.
“Born That Way,” directed by Eamon Little documents the final year in the life of Patrick Lydon, in which Patrick looks back on his fascinating life, lays the ground for posthumous green shoots projects, and prepares for his death Director Eamon Little promises that the film will be an unflinching journey to the end of an exemplary life, probing otherness in our society, and asking, searching questions about the future we want to create.
Joining Eamon to talk about the life and work of Patrick Lydon were Joan Pratt, his friend from his days at Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Patrick’s brother Christopher Lydon, who covered politics for the New York Times from its Washington bureau in the 1970s hosted the Ten O’ Clock News on WGBH TV in Boston in the 1980s, and co founded and hosted The Connection on WBUR in Boston in the 1990s.
Christopher Lydon is currently the host of Open Source, the world’s longest running podcast, having been established in 2003.
For more information about Born That Way and the Born That Way Project, please check out its page in the projects section.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.
Making Media Now: Chris, as the person who knew Patrick the longest and knew Patrick first—given that you were siblings—tell us about Patrick’s role in the Lydon family.
Chris Lydon: He was an afterthought. There were five Lydon kids and who would’ve thought of another. And then my mother announced at dinner one night, “We are going to have a baby!”Because we were four boys already and one girl, that had to be a girl, and he was known as “Constance” for no very good reason until he was born, of course, a boy.
He was a complete darling in the family even before he was born. And then immensely afterward. He was adored before he was born. And afterward, when he was a tiny tot in his playpen, we used to race off the school bus to see who could be the first to get a smile outta Patrick.
He was adored. And this is very profound, and I think it has everything to do with his life. He was just inundated in affection and conversation from an early age.
He used to say funny things: If you bumped his highchair and say sorry, he would say, “Sorry means don’t do it again.” But he was a presence. He was a sort of ageless character when he was just a teenager. My college friends loved him.
He’s always been a kind of man out of time and place, and a completely adorable person. But there are two stories here. There’s the life of Patrick and the afterlife of Patrick.
So many people have said to me, learning about his life, “God, and I thought that was gonna be my life.” A life not for self, a life for other people. Soaked in literature, soaked in fantasy, soaked in fun, and it gets bigger and bigger. He was the most extraordinary man.
I’ll say this, Eamon is calling the movie “Born That Way,” and you’ll see why, to my mind, it’s something like a portrait of the saint, a modern saint as a growing boy or a social activist, a social visionary. And it’s very, very remarkable. He was a doer. He held the flag very, very high of living a purposeful, meaningful life.
MMN: I was lucky enough back in January of this year, Chris, to be listening to your podcast, Open Source. And I came away from that conversation feeling as if the ethos of the Lydon family was fully embodied in your brother.
CL: Our family ethos was formed around the fact that my father was disabled by Parkinson’s disease and we knew that it was a disease that was untreatable essentially and would ultimately be fatal. So he had to stop working. He and my mother had an incredible courage and imagination to say, “No, this is not the end. We’re gonna start fresh on a small homestead with five kids.” I was milking a goat when I was eight years old and then went on to a cow. My sister looked after the sheep. Little kids looked after the chickens. But there was a kind of, this sounds weird and I’m just discovering it in my old age, but there’s a sort of celebration of voluntary poverty.
We had no choice. My father had a phone company pension. The miracle was that first of all, my parents were madly in love with each other till my father died.
And even afterward, my mother would poke me and say, “Christopher, I hope you hadn’t forgotten. Your father was a great man.” And she meant it.
But there was a sense that life was a privilege. This was prosperous post-World War II time. There was opportunity. We knew there would be opportunity for us if we did well in school, and we worked our little butts off, but it was a happy little thing, and we were poor. That was conditioning the whole thing. And along comes Patrick this pure gift again. It was never, “Oh my God, another kid.”
MMN: Eamon, in the synopsis of the film and what the film is going to be, you referred to Patrick as a social artist. That was a really interesting turn of phrase. What does a social artist mean to you?
Eamon Little: Well, in my use of that expression, and Chris kind of touched on that earlier when he was trying to find a definition. I mean, Patrick was somebody who was very creative with human relations.
He had a great gift for seeing potential in people and in situations and in connecting up things that seemed disparate to anybody else.
It was funny when I met Patrick first I didn’t understand what it was that attracted me to him. But it was this thing that he was somebody doing a lot of good in the world, and yet he was not a do-gooder. You know, he was doing this because this was his art.
MMN: The title of the film, “Born That Way”—when you use that phrase, what are you referring to? Born what way?
EL: It’s actually a straight from the horse’s mouth: Patrick shares an anecdote in the film where a woman with special needs sees this welder and the welder is working away, but he only has one hand that’s functional. And she says, “What happened to your hand?” And the guy says, “Well, I was born that way.” And she goes, “Interesting: Born that way.” And then Patrick is very passionate when he goes, “Yeah!” You know, in that moment he saw something about it. And we use the word disability all the time, but Patrick did not like that word.
What Patrick liked to do was to see the ability or the potential in everything, in people. And, and it’s that lens that we’re trying to look at the world. Making a film with Patrick was an opportunity to look at the world through a kind of unique lens that he had.
He was a great champion of people who with so-called disabilities and their citizenship and their rights and their potential over their disability. In fact, in one of the interviews I did with him, he said, “I was talking to a woman recently, and she said that her greatest disability is the fact that everyone c says she has a disability.”
This film is essentially, it’ll take the course of one year in which Patrick has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease or ALS and talking to him about doing some piece of work around the fact that Camp Hill was 50 years in Ireland when he got the diagnosis. And he said, “Look, whatever you want to do, let’s do it soon.” And very quickly, I realized I gotta make a film with Patrick.
MMN: And that very unfortunate news was brought to your attention, Christopher, in the summer of 2021, correct?
CL: Patrick and I talked all the time on the phone. He said to me one evening, he said, “Chris, I’ve aged more in the last 10 weeks than in the last 10 years.” And I thought, oh my God, he works too hard. He needs a physical therapist or something. And, but I think he knew already there was some profound neurological thing gone wrong. And, and then very quickly he had a diagnosis, oddly enough, from a doctor in Dublin who had trained at Mass Massachusetts General Hospital. Anyway, it was diagnosed and there was no help in the way. There was nothing to be done about it.
MMN: So I know, Eamon, that you’ve got some travel coming up in the spring of 2023 as we’re talking right now for your purposes, what would you like listeners of this conversation today to come away with?
EL: I would like them to know that this is happening. I think that one of the things that this film will be important for, as well as telling a story, but for the anonymous viewer, I think that the film will be also an oblique critique of kind of Western society in the light of the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of a Person with a Disability. We’re forever not seeing the potential, but looking at the disability.
Presenting a WEBINAR on Film Festival Strategizing with Marga Varea of Twin Seas Media. So many film festivals, so little time and money to spend submitting to them! How can you determine which event might be the best fit for your project? How likely is it that they will lead to a distribution deal for my film? These questions and more are answered here.
RECORDED: Thursday, May 25, 2023
Presenting a WEBINAR on Visual Effects for Independent Filmmakers with Jimi Simmons. Filmmakers often use visual effects to enhance a story by bringing to life believable characters, worlds, and stunts. How can we do that on time and on budget as an independent filmmaker?
Jimi will present VFX techniques demonstrated in today’s most popular software tools as well as draw from his years of experience working on films such as RISING SUN, SPAWN and DECEPTION.
RECORDED: Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Making Media Now, the FC podcast, recently featured a conversation between host Michael Azevedo and director Josh Seftel, an FC member. . Josh and his team at Smarty Pants films have received an Oscar nomination in the category of best documentary short for their film “Stranger at the Gate,” (for which Filmmakers Collaborative was the fiscal sponsor) a riveting story of redemption about Richard “Mac” McKinney, a former U.S. Marine, suffering from PTSD, who had fought in Afghanistan after 9/11.
Following his discharge from the military, McKinney returned home to Muncie, IN where he began to construct a plot to blow up the local mosque. “Stranger at the Gate” tells the remarkable story of what happened when McKinney set out to put his plan into motion.
What follows is an edited excerpt from that conversation.
Making Media Now: Welcome Josh and let me extend congratulations to you and your team for your Oscar nomination in a category of best documentary short for your film Stranger at The Gate.
Josh Seftel: Thank you. We’re very excited about it.
MMN: Give our listeners sort of a synopsis of the film and how the story came to you or how, how you found out about the, this, this story of Richard Mack McKinney.
JS: I’ll give you a quick summary of the story. So the film tells the story of, of Mack McKinney, a US Marine comes back from 25 years overseas fighting combat. He’s a broken person when he comes back, he’s PTSD, he’s filled with hatred, especially hatred toward Muslims, and he decides that the best thing he can do for his country is to bomb the local mosque in his hometown in Indiana.
So he builds a bomb getting ready to, to do the deed, and he ends up having an argument with his daughter. His daughter is eight years old, and she has a Muslim friend, and he finds out about this and he flips out on her and they have a huge fight, and they’re yelling at each other, and he runs to his room and he’s weeping, and you know, the guy’s a mess. And he decides that what he needs to do is he needs to go to the mosque to do some reconnaissance, to get proof of how evil these people are prior to doing the bombing.
So he goes to the mosque when he arrives, the people at the mosque, the congregants who are, you know, a blend of different people. There’s a, there are some Afghan refugees, there’s an African American convert, and they welcome him into the mosque and they show him incredible kindness even though they, what they see in front of them is this hulking scary guy who’s covered in tattoos, is flush in the face, is, is, is shaking.
They can see there’s something wrong with this guy. And they, they show him compassion and, and they welcome him in. And at that point, the story takes a, a dramatic turn. Now, whether or not you want me to, I’m happy to, to spoil the ending.
MMN: Let’s not spoil the ending. I don’t know that this is necessarily a spoiler, but in, in multiple headlines regarding the film, there’s a description where it is a, a a story of hope and love overcoming conflict and, and hate. So I don’t think that qualifies as a spoiler. I hope it qualifies as an enticement to, for people to watch the film.
JS: Another headline that I really liked that kind of captures the spirit of the film is something like, he came, he came to kill them, they ended up saving his life.
MMN: How did you find out about this story?
JS: I was working on a series of short films called Secret Life of Muslims, and whole idea behind that was to create a platform to share stories about American Muslims that I felt were important to tell because there weren’t enough stories being told about American Muslims that were accurate, that that captured the spirit of, of, you know, what, what it is to be Muslim in America right now. And the reason I was drawn to this was that, you know, I grew up in upstate New York, and when I was a little boy, I got picked on for being Jewish.
And you know, kids called me names, they called me Duke Hike threw pennies at me to remind me that, you know, Jews are cheap. And, you know, those, those things stayed with me. And after nine 11, when I was working as a filmmaker in, you know, I saw my Muslim friends facing that similar kind of hate, and I felt a connection to them and felt as a filmmaker, maybe there’s something I can do. So I, I started the making these films, and in the process we came across this story, the story of Mac McKinney and the mosque in Muncie, Indiana.
One of my producers, Anna Rowe, found the story in USA Today University Edition. And we decided this story is incredible. We went and found the people who were involved and met them and we were just blown away by the how inspiring they are.
MMN: Was it a difficult process for you to establish trust and a rapport with, with Mac McKinney? Because there’s a segment in the film where you can be heard off camera asking him, “How did killing people change you?” And it’s such an abrupt direct question. He almost loses his breath. He has to take a beat or two, and he says, “I never really told that.”
And from the viewer’s perspective, we still don’t know what his decision was when going to the mosque at the, at the time you posed that question. And as a viewer, I’m thinking, are you referencing killing people in the military or killing people in the aftermath of what was going to be a domestic terrorist event? I would imagine you’ve gotta feel pretty secure in your rapport with a subject to come at them with a question like that.
JS: We had talked a lot, we knew each other well at this point. And, and I made a point of spending time with him and talking to him a lot before the interview. The way that I approached it was I wore a microphone as well because I wanted to make sure that with this film, I just knew that there were gonna be moments in the interview that would be really important. This film is very interview based.
So by wearing a microphone and by interacting with my subjects in a way that at times might feel a little provocative, I was looking for moments where the character of these people would be revealed not just through words, but through their reaction to my questions.
MMN: Do you know if Max sought treatment for PTSD when he ended his military career? Did he think of himself as somebody who had PTSD?
JS: I know he is done a lot of therapy. I think more so in recent years. At that time he was drinking a lot. At the time when he was thinking of bombing the mosque, he was drinking, I think, two gallons of vodka every couple days or something. It was a bad time and he was crying a lot and just not well. And I think that was around the time when he was building the bomb and thinking about doing this horrible act.
MMN: Did you have a sense that Max’s psychological makeup would allow him to easily develop a hate for groups he considered being part of “the other”?
Or was that a byproduct of his military training?
JS: I don’t know how someone develops that level of hatred. I think when you’re on the battlefield and people are shooting at you, and they all seem to be from one group, you know, in the space, many of them were Muslim, they become the enemy. I think in Mac’s case, he did not think of them as being human. I think that was the foundation of his hatred.
MMN: Your film is nominated for an Oscar in the category of best documentary short. When you decided that you wanted to tell this story, what were the what was the decision making process around deciding on length.
JS: That’s a good question. We always went into it thinking it was a short, and partly that was because of that was about how much funding we had.
We knew we had enough to make it short, but not a longer film.
What happened was there was a moment where you have a cut and it’s like 50 minutes. And you’re kind of like, “Oh, maybe this is a feature.” So we did toy with that for a moment, but we quickly realized that as the film got shorter, it kept getting better.
MMN: Tell me about what the morning was like when you found out that your film had been nominated for an Oscar.
JS: The Academy asked us all to record our reactions on video, like selfie video. I had very little interest in doing this. In fact, I was not going to participate. And then some of the people on my team said, no, let’s just do it. We’ll all do it together on Zoom and if we don’t make it, we’ll just trash the video and if we do make it, we’ll have it.
And so I was like, all right, fine. So there’s six of us on Zoom, and we’re all watching, and they get to the best, best documentary short, and they read the first name. It’s not us, second name, not us. And now we’re all starting to like shrink a little bit in our seats, get a little lower, you know, third name, not us.
Some of us are starting to put our faces into our hands and fourth name, not us. And we’re like, “Oh, well we didn’t make it.” And suddenly the fifth one was us and all of us in unison, just all six of us just popped up! We just did not expect it at that point. And we were delighted.
It means that this film will be seen by so many more people. This message that love conquers hate, which we is something I think we need right now. Since we were nominated you can just watch the YouTube views. They’re going up by thousands and thousands of views every day. And that’s really exciting to us.
MMN: Nobody going to the Oscars can get away with not being asked this question. Who are you bringing and who are you wearing?
JS: Ha ha! I’m bringing my wife Erica Frankel, who’s also a filmmaker, and I’m also bringing Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner She’s also an executive producer on the film. Malala really believes in this film and it’s exciting to have that kind of endorsement and that kind of support because I think in many ways Malala is the human embodiment of the message of our film. She represents compassion, education and also forgiveness. That’s, that’s what our film’s about.
MMN: Well sincere congratulations from everybody at Filmmakers Collaborative. The film is Stranger at The Gate. You can see it on YouTube, you can go to the New Yorker website and see it there. And I’ve been speaking with the director of the film, Josh Seftel. Thanks so much, Josh. And we will be watching and eagerly anticipating the outcome of the category award at the 95th Academy Awards on March 12th.
JS: Thanks Michael. And I just wanna say a thank you to Filmmakers Collaborative for being our partner on this film and for being our fiscal sponsor. We love working with you all and we wouldn’t be here today without you. So thank you for your partnership.
As 2022 fades into the rear-view mirror and 2023 looms on the horizon, let’s quickly scan which films, particularly documentary films, garnered the most raves from the year just past while we glance ahead at what the new year may hold.
We generally avoid any discussion around which films were “best,” seeing whereas that definition is highly subjective. But it’s always interesting to learn which films captured the spotlight and the accolades. As we reviewed “best-of” lists from the closing days of 2022, we were happy to have been reminded of several entries that we’d been meaning to see (many are now available to stream or via VOD).
Variety introduced their faves by saying their “…list of the year’s best documentaries is a testament to the range of what nonfiction cinema has become. It’s history, it’s activism, it’s portraiture, it’s personal, it’s about science and music and literature and politics and royalty and family… and Pez.” One film on their list, “Hello Bookstore…follows the life and fate of a beloved independent bookstore in Lenox, Mass., so you might expect it to be the sort of movie that expands into a larger statement about the cherished and precarious state of independent bookstores in the digital/corporate/chain-store era. Yet it does that only by implication. For 86 reverent minutes, A.B. Zax’s film, without ever leaving the premises, traces the daily existence of one deceptively quiet bookstore — which is called, incidentally, The Bookstore — and its missionary owner, Matthew Tannenbaum, a jaunty boomer who curates the place as if it were a library, a cocktail party and a projection of his literary dreams.”
Meanwhile, the folks over at the AV Club maintain that “while the merits of streaming and its impact on the theatrical exhibition marketplace can be debated, there’s no doubt that the advent of digital streaming has contributed to a boom in nonfiction filmmaking. Viewers who would never have seriously considered getting in their car, seeking out a theater, and plunking down $10 or $15 to watch a documentary have indulged curiosity in the genre at a massive scale.” Among their favorites are “Fire of Love,” “Three Minutes–A Lengthening,” “Cow,” and the David Bowie bio-doc, “Moonage Daydream.”
In rolling out their top selections from 2022, Esquire provides some context; they contend that “…Sometime, during the great Documentary Boom, we lost our way. HBO pioneering a wave of deft, uber-journalistic true crime documentaries gave way to the Dahmerification and Bundyification of Netflix. (Read: regurgitating serial-killer-obsessed stories and re-traumatizing victims along the way.) The glory days of ESPN’s 30 for 30 feel long gone, as documentaries like Tom Brady’s Man in the Arena—where the athlete all but lords over their portrayal—become more commonplace. Their rundown goes to say, however, that “…the very best of 2022’s slate of documentary films shifted back toward good-intentioned, impartial filmmaking—which feels a bit insane to even have to point out. But here we are, There’s Trish Adlesic’s A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting, which put the focus squarely on the victims of the tragedy at its center. Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues is can’t-miss ode to a man who transcended jazz music. And Good Night Oppy? Well, that little space rover simply made our hearts melt.”
If you’re curious what films resonated with The Boston Globe’s film critic, Odie Henderson, check out our year-end chat with him on the Making Media Now podcast.
So what does 2023 hold in store for documentary film fans? Over in Netflix-land, the first half of January’s documentaries will be dedicated to Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme (Madoff, The Monster of Wall Street), Mumbai cops who killed their targets in order to rein in the unchecked power of a crime boss in the ’90s (Mumbai Mafia: Police vs. The Underworld), and a viral sensation’s road from fame to imprisonment (The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker), which “…chronicles a happy-go-lucky nomad’s ascent to viral stardom and the steep downward spiral that resulted in his imprisonment”.
Our friends at GBH/PBS’ American Experience bring us “The Lie Detector,” (premiering January 2) and available to stream via their website. Here’s the film’s log-line: “In the 1920s, as law enforcement began to develop more scientific methods, researchers claimed they could tell whether someone was lying by using a machine called the polygraph. Popularly known as the ‘lie detector,’ the device transformed police work, seized headlines and was extolled in movies, TV and comics as an infallible crime-fighting tool. Husbands and wives tested each other’s fidelity. Corporations tested employees’ honesty, and government workers were tested for loyalty and “morals.” But the promise of the polygraph turned dark, and the lie detector became an apparatus to frighten and intimidate millions of Americans.” Directed by Rob Rapley, the film is a tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.” Hook us up!
Roberta Flack gets the American Masters treatment in film debuting on PBS on January 24. According to its press materials, the doc “illuminates where reality, memory and imagination mix to present music icon Roberta Flack, a brilliant artist who transformed popular culture, in her own words. With exclusive access to Flack’s archives of film, performances, interviews, home movies, photos, hit songs and unreleased music, the film documents how Flack’s musical virtuosity was inseparable from her lifelong commitment to civil rights.”
Independent Lens closes out the month with “The Picture Taker, which tells the story of Memphis-based Ernest Withers whose Memphis studio held nearly 2 million images and were a treasured record of Black history, but his legacy was complicated by decades of secret FBI service revealed only after his death. Was he a friend of the civil rights community or an enemy — or both?”
