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What inspires indie filmmakers to persevere? Find out with filmmaker interviews, journals and insider scoop. Go inside the making of independent film.
Three documentary filmmakers, ranging from first-timer to seasoned veteran, share their motivations and insights into the filmmaking process. Learn how each of their stories—a Navajo beauty pageant, an opera about the A-bomb and the struggles of the formerly incarcerated—evolved from idea to finished film.
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FILMMAKER Q&A
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Jon Else
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WONDERS ARE MANY: The Making of Doctor Atomic
Drawing upon recently declassified documents, archival footage and behind-the-scenes interviews, WONDERS ARE MANY: The Making of Doctor Atomic chronicles the creation of the monumental opera based on the mysterious and paradoxical Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, as his team prepares to detonate the world’s first atomic weapon.
Documentary producer, director and writer Jon Else (The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb, Sing Faster: The Stagehands’ Ring Cycle) talks about oven-baking 30-year-old videotape, how “funny is important” when getting people to think seriously about nuclear war and the creative motivation of unfinished business.
“I actually saw the glow of an atomic explosion when I was about eight years old…. I remember my father taking me out in the backyard, looking over the fence and seeing the sky light up red. It really made an impression on my little mind. We carry these things around forever, and we spend our lives making movies about stuff that clutters up our childhood memories.”
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FILMMAKER STATEMENT
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Billy Luther
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MISS NAVAJO
For the past 50 years, the Miss Navajo Nation pageant has celebrated Navajo women and traditional values, language and inner beauty. Through interviews with pageant contestants past and present, MISS NAVAJO explores the meaning of cultural preservation and the role of women in Navajo culture.
In his Filmmaker Statement, director Billy Luther shares his personal connection to the story, what he hopes viewers will take away and what motivated him to make this film, his first feature documentary.
“What inspired me about the beauty pageant was that here was a crossroads where the western competition met Native influences, and the result was something not gaudy and glitzy like most beauty pageants, but something beautiful and profound.”
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FILMMAKER Q&A
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Macky Alston
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HARD ROAD HOME
HARD ROAD HOME follows two former felons in different stages of life "on the outside." Julio is a former drug dealer who has committed his life to an East Harlem program that helps break the cycle of incarceration. Alberto, who idolizes Julio, is a success story in the making, but still struggles with his old demons on a daily basis.
Director Macky Alston (The Killer Within, Questioning Faith) talks about the sensitivity surrounding his subjects’ histories, intense moments of shooting and winning the trust of one of his primary subjects, Julio Medina.
“When we met, I was looking to see if he and his organization would serve as a compelling subject for a documentary film. He was looking at me to see if I was there to exploit him and his community. I think Julio kept close watch on me and my crew and, over time, came to believe that our project was about respect rather than exploitation. …”
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Inside Filmmaking:
Volume
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
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Indie icon: Danny Boyle
(Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire)
“The reality is that it doesn’t matter how successful you are—if you take $50 million of someone’s money, they are going to want something in return, quite understandably…. If you take less, you are freer. It’s easier in a way, although it’s physically more difficult. Your life isn’t quite as comfortable, but you’re a lot more of a free agent, really.”
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I love the physicality of it, the shooting, particularly the hand-held shooting, dollies, running after sunsets and dawns…. When you get to be a grown-up, there aren’t many professions that let you combine all that running around with what amounts to high-level narrative calculus.
—Jon Else, WONDERS ARE MANY: The Making of Doctor Atomic
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I like to look at an event or issue through an unexpected way. Here it was culture through a beauty pageant. If I didn't tell stories that way, I would become bored very easily.
—Billy Luther, MISS NAVAJO
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I hope I will never be among the corps of people who discourage budding filmmakers to go for it. It is bitterly hard, but it has been my experience that just when I have been ready to throw in the towel, something happens in the process—a sudden windfall, an unimaginable revelation—that returns me to the path.
— Macky Alston, HARD ROAD HOME
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Inside Filmmaking:
Volume
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
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the National Endowment for the Arts