Catching the Vibe
Friedrich Nietzsche said, "To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence." Obviously, documentary filmmakers are NOT ordinary people. Documentary filmmakers enter some of the most disagreeable situations willingly, repeatedly and fiercely to bring greater understanding to complex issues and difficult topics. A few days ago, I posted an entry about the films that were awarded grants from the Sundance Documentary Grant fund. The first two on the list caught my eye.
I first became aware of Anne Makepeace at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. She wrote, produced and directed the documentary ROBERT CAPA: IN LOVE AND WAR. The documentary was about the famed war photographer. You see, Nancy Schreiber was the cinematographer. I still love, love, love her work in SHADOW MAGIC. It was a gorgeous film. So that put Anne Makepeace on my radar. I noticed on the Sundance documentary summary that she's doing a new film that I find very interesting. Her next film is AS NATAYUNEAN — WE STILL LIVE HERE (US). It's about Jessie Little Doe Baird, of the Wampanoag nation, and how she revives a silenced indigenous language that was out of use for more than 150 years. The Wampanoag lived in and around Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Makepeace has a nice website with a summary of all of her film projects. She does quite a bit for PBS. She's a filmmaker worth tracking.
The connection for me is that we are currently working on a script that intersects with the Wampanoag nation!! How crazy is that? Like I ever thought I would say that ... "we're working a project about the Wampanoag nation." A friend of mine once said that there are just certain stories that are waiting to be told and one can know it's time when the topic shows up in multiple places ... an esoteric, positive-thinking, creative sort of human, she said "You just have to catch the vibe and ride the wave." So, right now, it seems that we are "in the groove."
Because of my experience in Zambia last year, I was also very interested in the Marc and Nick Francis film CHINESE SAFARI (UK). According to the Sundance description, Lusaka, Zambia is home to one of Africa's largest Chinatowns and is at the crossroads of China's strategic expansion into Africa. I belong to a message board of Zambians in Atlanta and there's been a very lively discussion on the board in the last few weeks about their concern over Zambians losing jobs to Chinese workers. Apparently the time is right for that story, it's showing up in three different places already.
