MAKING THE FILM:
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE BLACK
Stephanie Black in conversation with writer Tarikh Korula of the New York Independent Media Center.

Tarikh Korula (TK): Could you talk a little bit about the film?
Stephanie Black (SB): LIFE AND DEBT is a project that's taken a couple of years to make. The aim of the film was to clarify, simplify and make visible an essentially invisible subject matter — the impact of economic policies on the day to day lives of people whom these policies are ostensibly supposed to benefit but actually don't.


TK: How did that idea come to you?
SB: From spending time in Jamaica. I had made a documentary called H2 WORKER, and went down to film the Jamaican farm workers who would go on the program in Florida to cut sugar cane. I went down to Jamaica to film them in their homes and I fell in love with the country, as anyone who's ever been to Jamaica does. This question kept playing in my mind over and over, how could a country that is this rich, this beautiful and this resourceful, in its people, its culture and its agriculture actually be this poor? Everyday in the paper there was always an article on whether Jamaica was meeting its benchmark to the IMF. There was this whole rigmarole the country was continually going through on a day to day basis to affirm that it was ascribing to the structural adjustment program and connected programs. So by reading the paper day to day and coming to understand something I had no working knowledge of by living in The United States, it became a kind of personal interest.


TK: You focus not just on the dairy farmers but on so many industries.
SB: The structure of the film took a similar approach to how the information became clear to me. I kind of reiterated in the film a little path, you know the presence of the news media in the film as it communicates information. So when living in Jamaica and being intrigued and charmed by the local news it made me think about news as the source where I first learned about the information. Also the idea of bringing local Jamaican news to The U.S. as opposed to American cable which is always brought down to Jamaica. So through the different groups of people who speak in the film, the film takes an archaeological approach. Some archaeologists dig very deep in one area and others dig over a broader area. Because these policies have such a far reaching, widespread, broad, yet incisive impact, that broad approach was the strategy the film took. To show how this repeats and repeats in almost every aspect of the country's productivity and thus its ability to become an economically sovereign nation.


TK: All of the interviewees are so incredibly eloquent. How did you choose the interviews for the film?
SB: There's something in documentary filmmaking when you go out into the world and you're very open, you just want to learn and everything interests you. Then you find yourself on this path and you can feel when things are working. You meet one person and talk to them and they say, "oh you must go and meet this person." Then this person says you must meet that person. Everyone was so articulate, there were so many people who could share their stories so eloquently and were very interested in sharing their story. I think a lot of the farmers understood very clearly that this was going to be an opportunity to speak to the American public and they're very clearly aware that these policies aren't coming from the American public but from institutions that people aren't aware of. So the intent of the film was shared by everyone.


TK: Jamaica Kincaid's narration can be perceived as antagonistic at times. How did you come to choose her words and the narrative structure of the film?
SB: Jamaica Kincaid's text is a very militant, angry, poetic voice against colonialism and against what colonialism did to her life. And I was very interested in taking these same words and this same anger and placing them in a neo-colonial context, which is the present day, and seeing how still appropriate the words were.


TK: You get a couple of interviews that seem like they must have been major coups. Stanley Fischer, the Deputy Directory of the IMF, for example. How in the world did you get someone from the IMF to explain all of their imperial policies on camera?
SB: I'm not gonna tell (laughs)! The interview with Stanley Fischer was pretty straight forward, actually. I got funding from ITVS, the branch of PBS that funds independents in the United States. So it was always known that it would go on PBS. When you have that kind of affiliation behind you it's always easier to request an interview. And then you go through the normal channels that you go through to obtain an interview. And then you get an interview. You submit your questions in advance, and then you get the interview and you interview the person, and then the IMF calls you and tells you that they're angry!


TK: What's next?
SB: I just want to make sure it [LIFE AND DEBT] gets out there, it's a different kind of energy now. And I think because there has been so little media coverage on the issue and much more on the protesters and the violence of the protests. I think that the film has a kind of critical importance in clarifying why there are so many people on the front lines on this issue. I believe firmly that as the consciousness changes, things change. We want the film to be seen by a really broad base audience, people who are already informed on this issue but also people who aren't yet informed. Maybe this film can be a bridge for them to try to rethink things.