{"id":17819,"date":"2018-12-21T12:55:20","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T20:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=17819"},"modified":"2023-09-19T13:21:29","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T20:21:29","slug":"director-duo-show-no-easy-answers-in-fight-over-land","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/director-duo-show-no-easy-answers-in-fight-over-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Duo Show No Easy Answers in Fight Over Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

The team behind the\u00a0new Independent Lens<\/em> film My Country No More<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em><\/span>Rita\u00a0Baghdadi<\/strong> and Jeremiah Hammerling<\/strong>, told us they were drawn to Hammerling’s native North Dakota to make this film “because his hometown,\u00a0as well as much of rural America, was changing rapidly and we wanted to document those changes. And we also wanted to explore the importance of community.” The film won Best Feature<\/strong> at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A key glimpse into the filmmaking team’s approach can be found in their first-person piece written for IndieWire: “The best stories transport us into someone else\u2019s life, if only for a moment. But we won\u2019t go along for the ride unless we empathize with the characters. Empathy doesn\u2019t just drive a good story, it is storytelling.”<\/p>\n

“Though the film deals with the dangers of fracking,” they went on, “it was important for us to not make another\u00a0Gasland<\/em>.\u00a0We wanted the story to be character-driven and that meant being open to showing how the industry also benefited a lot of people in the region. As filmmakers, our goal was to maintain that there were no easy answers, only different perspectives.”<\/p>\n

“We are drawn to those experiences that connect and inspire us as human beings. Our company name\u00a0Endless Eye\u00a0comes from a passage in the Upanishads that says, ‘Not what the eye sees but that which makes the eye see, that is the endless eye.’ It is only possible for us to recognize ourselves when we see ourselves through each other\u2019s eyes.”<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles-based team wrote to tell us a bit more about their film.<\/p>\n

What do you want audiences to take away from having seen My Country No More<\/em>, or how do you hope it inspires people?<\/b>“It is only possible for us to recognize ourselves when we see ourselves through each other\u2019s eyes.”<\/pullquote><\/p>\n

We hope our film inspires rural Americans to become stakeholders in the future of the land and their communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in making the film? <\/b><\/p>\n

The weather! We took a total of 12 trips to film out in western North Dakota, half them in the winter. The only way to get to Williston at the time was to fly into Fargo and drive 8 hours west, which we sometimes had to do in dangerous conditions. One night, while filming in the Walmart parking lot, it was -65 degrees with the wind chill. Coldest I\u2019ve ever felt in my life. Also, the mosquitoes in the summer\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems like it also must have been a\u00a0logistically challenging film in other ways, too?<\/b><\/p>\n

Trying to capture the proximity between farms and industrial projects in western North Dakota was a challenge precisely because everything is so spread out. Neighbors who live \u201cnext door\u201d to one another in the country could still be a half a mile away from each other. In trying to illustrate the industrial creep on open land, it was difficult to capture just how much the oil boom was changing and impacting the environment where these people live.<\/span><\/p>\n