- Documentary filmmakers take us into the lives of their subjects in a way that the written word simply can't.

We see what they see, we get a sense of the physical space they occupy with our own eyes, we hear their voices.

Today's guests weaves these elements together in powerful films that explore everything from love to addiction.

She's Elaine McMillion Sheldon this week on Story in the Public Square.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to Story in the Public Square, where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G.Wayne Miller with the Providence Journal.

- This week we're joined by award-winning filmmaker, Elaine McMillion Sheldon.

Elaine, thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you for having me.

- So, you have a tremendous body of work for a filmmaker so young.

So we want to really talk a little bit about all of it but let's start with My Love: Six Stories of True Love, which is a remarkable series on Netflix.

Tell us about the episode that you made.

- Yeah, so there six episodes.

India, Brazil, Spain, where am I forgetting?

South Korea, Japan and America.

So I did the American episode.

I featured a couple that's been together for more than 60 years in Vermont.

They ran a farm, they had a hundred milk cows, dairy cows at one point and now are retired and their son runs the farm.

And so we really just observed their life over the course of one year.

We spent a week, a month filming with them just going about their daily life but also their preparations for the end of life.

So their cremation plans and where they plan to be buried and all those types of things.

So it was a really, it's like actually kind of coming out at a great time with COVID and people feeling very isolated.

It's a very uplifting series, It's very heartwarming to see all these couples across the world expressing their love after 40 plus years of marriage, all of them.

- When you make a film like that and you're sort of a fly on the wall, how do you do that?

How do you sort of blend, it seems seamlessly into their lives.

- Well, magic's in the editing.

So editing out all the awkwardness 'cause there's more awkward moments than not.

But you kind of have to set the rules early on and make sure that people understand that you're there not to interview them, but you're there to observe.

And it's about time, the more time you spend around people the easier it is for them to start ignoring you and more comfortable they are with you in scenes that maybe are tougher and filming scenes at bedtime, you know.

When they're getting ready to go to sleep, those are all like conversations you have to have with people and gauge they're comfortable, if they're comfortable and how they want it shot.

And so it's really a relationship that you build over the course of time.

And as that time progresses through the year, you get more access to more moments that feel intimate.

And so it's about showing up over and over and keeping your word and making sure to not break the trust that's been built between you two.

- Do you have an estimate of how many hours you actually spent within both with cameras rolling and just getting to know them and background stuff and talking to them.

Any idea?

- Yeah.

That's a good question.

Well, we would film a full week every month.

So, seven days a month for 12 months and most of the days would be, I would say we probably would get around four to five hours of footage of day and then the rest of the hours that we spent together were off camera.

Ginger always would bake us some baked goods.

We would go on hikes with them, just spending time getting to know each other.

And that it's the time off camera building the relationship that allows the on-camera moments to really happen because at that point we're kind of like family around them.

So I don't know.

I mean, five hours a day for a week, 12 times a year.

So there's a lot of footage to go through.

- How did you find this couple?

I know the backstory there but maybe you can tell us.

It's really sort of a remarkable story in and of itself.

- Yeah.

What seemed like a needle in the haystack type of assignment when it was given to me to find a couple and to not be given any constraints, they just had to be in America and we thought that we wanted a rural couple.

And so at first we were looking across the Southwest and the south, Louisiana and Texas and New Mexico and elsewhere.

And I actually did a road trip and met a bunch of couples in person.

But before that could even happen, it was my associate producer, Molly and I hitting the phones up.

Calling upwards of 300 people from non-profits to volunteer organizations to senior centers to people that just have access to a community that are still... We were always asking for a couple that was still very active in their community, that's something we were really looking for, someone that wasn't isolated in some.

And to people that still really shared a bond that you could see, because this is a film you want to see them express their love.

So it can't just be any couple that's, they have to be comfortable with hugging and kissing and holding hands in public and all those sorts of things.

And so it was a long journey and it was actually pretty discouraging at times because there was just so many people.

It's crazy because we went on this nationwide search and what happened is this couple actually was recommended at the end of that through an internal recommendation from Boardwalk Pictures, which is who produced the show for Netflix.

And so we ended up finding the couple from the associate producer that was at Boardwalk because her sister was their neighbor.

And so, but it took...

It actually took, I think meeting all those couples and talking to all those organizations to really learn what we really wanted in the couple.

And so when we did finally come across Ginger and David, it just felt right.

They were interested luckily, so.

- I can't recommend this movie enough.

I came across it just Netflix surfing.

It was drawn in from the opening scenes but I wanted to get your take.

They are so candid.

These are older people so candid talking about dying and death preparations.

Was that difficult for them?

Was that difficult for you?

How did that come to be because that was among the most powerful aspects of the film.

- It was one of the things that really attracted me to Ginger especially and David is that they had such a humbleness, humility and such a grasp on their stage of life and what they were doing in preparation to save their kid's pain and save their kids trouble.

And I just.

You know, even within my own family and families that I've known forever, we just don't talk about this.

We don't talk about end of life, we don't talk about death.

And because of that, when it happens sometimes it it causes more pain.

And so I just really appreciated their soberness around that, you know?

Recognizing that they had had this full life and celebrating that full 60 years together, we followed them on their 60th year together.

But also recognizing this is going to come to an end and also finding it interesting that Ginger actually wanted to be buried with her parents, not with David and David wanted to be buried on the farm, which is something very interesting.

So there was a lot of surprises about the way they handled the conversation around death.

and I found it very refreshing.

I've not really met people that have had that grasp.

And I think it's because they've had very fulfilled lives and they just are okay with their situation.

- When you're making a film like this, I'm not asking if you script the conversations, but do you say to them, so we need you to have this conversation or whatever it's gonna be.

Is there that kind of planning that goes into it or is it really sort of let's just roll the camera on them and see what happens.

- It is much more of rolling the camera, but it's about being at the right conversation.

So there's a bunch of conversations that happen that we won't film or we'll stop filming midway because it's clear that the material is not something that is really relevant to the scope of the film.

And so we just have to make sure we're there when they go to the insurance company to talk about the life insurance, right.

Because we know what that conversation's gonna be but we don't interrupt during those scenes, You know.

In the cremation meeting, we don't interrupt during those scenes.

It's funny being a documentary filmmaker, you always have this idea of what the scene's gonna be and what might be said.

And sometimes you're disappointed, sometimes it's not exactly what you think it's gonna be.

But majority of the time you're actually quite surprised that things happen and life happens that you couldn't have expected and it's actually more beautiful or more surprising or more ironic than you could have even scripted.

So yeah, no script.

It's just long shots.

Some of those meetings are an hour long and they take place there four minutes or two minutes in the film.

So it's a matter of just sort of like condensing things and there will be moments where we might prompt them to... Like at the county fair, we wanted them to play a game.

And so we went and found the game that had the best framing with the stuffed animals and we talked to the lady beforehand who was running it and said, this couple's coming over.

You don't have to talk to them or anything, but just let you know... We're gonna film this if that's okay with you.

And so we will do things like that that are visually things we want to get.

But in terms of story, it's about being there and catching it as it goes.

- Is that your modus operandi for all of your filmmaking, what you just described that process?

- Yeah it has been that process, that observational sort of hands-off fly on the wall.

That has been my process for basically the past 10 years.

- So you've done two films, two great films about the opioid crisis.

And we're gonna talk about both of them and we're gonna listen and see a snippet from one of them but start with Recovery Boys.

First of all, how did you get interested in the opioid crisis?

And then tell us about Recovery Boys which again is a great film.

- Yeah.

I mean America has been hit hard by the opioid crisis and that's certainly true in my own backyard.

I've had many middle school and high school friends lost to addiction or be in prison or have lost their children but are suffering in some way from this.

And so my husband and I when we were working in 2016, we were really looking to find stories of resilience and stories that didn't just show the pain and exploitation around addiction, which is where a lot of the stories we were seeing.

It's like lot's of stories we're seeing were hard to watch.

It was people shooting up and overdosing and then the cameras move on.

And so we really wanted to see, you know.

We know people are resilient, we know people can overcome things.

We wanted to see what that actually looked like over the span.

So we followed these men in Recovery Boys for 18 months.

The first six months they enter a rehab and the last 12 months they're actually re-adjusting back to life.

- Important filmmaking is certainly in the realm of public service.

Your next film Heroine, was nominated for an academy award.

It won an Emmy.

We're gonna have you talk about that in a moment but let's have a look and a listen to almost a minute from that film.

- [Announcer] (indistinct) (siren wailing) - I'm not really sure what a plateau is going to look like.

(siren wailing) You know, I see this as a countrywide problem that has the potential to bankrupt the country.

We conservatively estimated that Cabo County and we're talking 96,000 people spent probably about 100 million dollars in healthcare cost associated with iv drug use in 2015.

That's one small county and one small state.

I don't, I can't even fathom what it's going to look like when it plateaus.

But I know it will be welcomed.

(instrumental music) - [Announcer] (indistinct) We're clear returning.

- So tell us about the film, how it came to be, what it is and what we just saw during that nearly minute long view and listen.

- Yeah.

So when Karen and I were looking for stories of resilience, we often look in the places that are the most descended upon by parachute journalists.

And that was Huntington West Virginia where, you know.

It was every week, it was the BBC or CNN or someone was coming in for one day to tell their story and we just felt that there was so much more to the story.

And so we were able to identify these three women, a fire chief who saves people from overdoses every day.

A drug court judge, who actually helps with reforming people, helping them to reenter society after felonies and a street missionary who goes out and helps women who's trapped in the cycle of addiction and stuff, sex work and helps get them into rehab.

And so they're all working at different levels of society and they actually all work with the same people at different points of their life.

And I think what these women represent is sort of those unsung heroes across America that get up every day and have a grassroots effort that actually makes an impact And you know this is not national policy coming from The White House, this is actually getting up every single day and doing what you can do in your own backyard.

And so I think essentially that's what we need in a crisis like this is more women and more men like these women.

And we followed them over over the course of a year as well and the film is just under 40 minutes and it's been a powerful film because it has had such reach and impact because of its length.

Within an hour, we have it available for educational screenings.

You can watch it for 40 minutes and then have a 20 minute conversation and it's still touring in prisons and rehabs and it's going everywhere.

Medical schools, lots of medical schools.

There was a medical school that was studying the impact of empathy.

So when the students would watch this film, would they treat patients differently than the group of students who hadn't watched the film?

And, yeah.

So there's been some incredible things that have come from that film.

I'm really proud of that.

- You've referred to that as a community driven impact campaign.

I'm curious about the inspiration for you.

What draws you to telling those kinds of stories?

- I mean, I like to tell stories that we know are happening but maybe we're not getting past the headlines to the heart and soul and the people and staying a year.

I have the luxury of being a documentary filmmaker where I can chart things over a year.

Most journalists don't have that time being based in a newsroom.

And so because of that, I feel a responsibility to attach those long term stories that are showing struggle but also showing triumph day in, day out to chart those and put those with impact.

And so generally, how I work as a filmmakers is I don't really consider myself an activist who's coming up with the solutions but instead I make this piece that then serves the grassroots activism that's already happening.

So the community driven impact campaign is really about identifying people all around the country and world who are already working on this issue and then making the film available to them to start these hard conversations.

- So what is it about the power of this kind of storytelling that does more than the statistics we read from the CDC and those were important.

And the news reports that we see and many of them are also important.

There's something obviously more here and it's not just the time commitment, can you talk about that?

Is it the emotional connection that you as a filmmaker make to your subjects and the subjects in turn make to your audiences?

Or what is it because again, the power of this is something very, very different than your quote unquote run of the mill, 32nd clip on the evening news.

While that may be important.

- Yeah.

I think it takes all kinds of media, right?

If it wasn't for the statistical analysis, I wouldn't know where to go to show up, to show the issue, right?

So it takes all kinds of reporting to draw attention to this.

But I think what's most effective about this form, especially in observational form where it's not interview based, it's really about capturing scenes unfolding.

Is that it's as close as we can get to showing reality and even though knowing this is a constructed piece, it's very difficult, You know.

When you're a filmmaker, you're always trying to not obscure and like mess up reality but it is the closest we can get to actually showing boots on the ground.

And that matters because we're not telling people what to think, we're showing them the situation and they're able to come to their own conclusions and we're giving them the context they need to then feel immersed.

And so it's about giving people sort of a front seat into this particular experience that they may never, ever get to see.

And it's the emotions on the face, it's the candidness, it's the surprises that come through the scenes, it's all those things.

At the end of the day, I think like seeing people overcome things or seeing people fail is as humans we relate to that, right?

We can hear a statistic and it can kind of roll off us It may be a shocking one but it could still roll off us.

And if we see the people behind the statistics, the phrases stick with us, their voices stick with us, their backstories, their ongoing stories.

It's harder to shake.

- Go ahead.

- No, I would argue there's another element here too.

This kind of storytelling really gets beyond stigma.

People have preconceptions about addiction and opioid and it's a moral failing or if you just tried a little harder or whatever, but.

And that's the stigma piece.

And I think that's an obstacle for people getting treatment and just sort of a problem in society in general.

But talk about that because this really does strip away the stigma and show us real people.

- Yeah, the stigma part was especially important with Recovery Boys because we're starting with the men where they are.

We don't show you their mugshots, we don't give you their rap sheet of all the things that have happened before.

We start with where they are, which has them coming to rehab, which is then making the decision they wanna change their lives.

I think that's really important.

And the same thing, I made a film called Tutwiler, it was about women in prison.

And we made that conscious decision to not put their charges on screen because that's stigmatizing them just to an event in their life in which they're now serving time for.

So the same thing goes back to Recovery Boys, we start with where they are and we see them progressed or not progressed but we're not stigmatizing their past to then label them as simply an addict.

Right?

Like they are more than that.

They're a father, they are a son and we see that complexity over time.

And so it's a shortcut that a lot of people take when they don't mean, maybe don't mean to stigmatize but just shortcut they take to give people labels.

So we understand each other as stereotype, stigma, all those things.

And so it's an essential in the work that you don't do 18 months of work and then undo it all by labeling someone one way but allowing the audience to see them in all these complex ways.

- Yeah.

The word that keeps sleeping in my mind is, we're having this discussion is empathy.

And I wonder if you're consciously aware of empathy in making these films.

- Yeah.

I probably.

I think I'm brought to the stories I'm brought to because of my own empathy.

I feel I'm particularly telling stories in Appalachia where I'm from.

I feel very connected to the communities and the individuals that struggle here because there's so little attention around the good, right?

Like since the war on poverty in the 1960s, most of the coverage of this region has been about our demise, our downfall and pitying us.

And so I've grew up in this region and I think that that affects the way that I, my empathetic lens, right.

So, I am more empathetic because of being in this region and I think the stories I tell kind of like sort of translates that.

I ended up loving most of the people I film even if they do bad things, right.

Like I still really care about them and we have a relationship that's hard to explain.

So yeah, it's kind of all around it.

I mean, you have to care about the subject, you have to care about the participants and all these things in order to spend this much time with people.

- We've had our guest, Maddie McGarvey.

She's an incredible still photographer on our show twice and she goes into Appalachia a lot with very much the same intent and understanding and empathy that you have.

Do images have the power still in moving to change minds.

I mean, we've hit on that, but go into that a little bit more because I would submit that they do in a way that text for example, can not necessarily.

- Yeah.

I think that every medium has the ability to move people if they're caught at the right moment.

And if they're in the right place, I think texts is harder.

You have to be in a very quiet place to absorb what is happening and I've certainly been moved by a lot of texts myself.

Still photography captures that one moment which really can highlight a single moment.

Whereas cinema allows you to see the time and space and so I think that that might be the easiest form, medium in terms of its ability to reach people.

When you can see conflict unfolding, when you can see the things that feel true to your own life.

And so they all have their own ability I think to transform and to increase empathy.

But I feel like I have a lot of tools in my toolkit as a filmmaker to do that.

There's manipulative tools as well.

Like if you think about how music is used in documentary films or if you think about how certain things are cut to make you feel something.

So it can also be a manipulation but I do think that what's really powerful about cinema and just specifically observational cinema is the ability to enter spaces that you wouldn't otherwise enter.

And as long as I as a film maker can take you into those spaces.

Like a health department meeting, where there's a conflict.

We've had people...

There's a health department meeting in heroine where Jan Rater says, there's a debate about whether the community should be releasing and distributing Naloxone across the community, which is the opioid universal drug.

And she says, "I don't care if I save someone 50 times, it's 50 chances to get a long-term recovery."

And for so many people, I can't even tell you how many people have emailed Jan, myself and others in the film that said, that was the line that changed my mind about Narcan.

That was a line that I all of a sudden realized the power of Naloxone.

And so, we know that cinema can have change on people's opinions and their viewpoints on these particular issues that are hot issues and communities.

- So Elaine, we know you're working on, you're in production now on a new documentary called King Cole.

Can you tell us a little bit about it?

- Sure.

it's a bit of a departure from these previous observational films.

I mean, it does have a lot of observation of coal culture.

So over the past two years, I've been documenting co-related cultural scenes like the mist by two minutes, cold pageants.

Moments where of high school football team when they leave the locker room, touches the piece of coal with their lucky stone as they go out to play.

So it's really about looking at the identity that's been built around the coal industry and coal mining communities.

But beyond that observation, it weaves a magical realist tale of a post-Coal future because we all know that's where we're going, right?

This is the end, it's been coming for a while for these communities and they've been suffering long enough.

And so the film is really about helping Appalachia and other communities like them look forward into what's next, what's our identity in a post-coal world.

- When can we expect to see king Cole which of course we're looking forward to seeing.

- It'll be a while, 2023 we're hoping for a release.

So yeah, we're still fundraising and shooting and because it weaves elements of fiction into non-fiction, it's definitely a more ambitious project in a certain way.

- You mentioned editing and we didn't really get into that but editing is such a huge part of this and it's also incredibly time consuming.

You know, we do some editing here, I do some editing on some of my work.

It's incredibly time consuming, but it is so important.

Where do you get the patients for it?

(laughs) Maybe that's what I'm asking.

I mean, it's go ahead.

- We got about a minute left here Elaine.

- Editing is about putting your butt on a seat and sit in there, that's all I can say.

(laughs) And it takes time and sometimes you get to work with great editors but taking good field notes and knowing what you want out of a scene that helps as well.

- And sound editing too.

Of course it's part of it and then I find that even more homours and it's more just put your butt on the seat and stay, stay, stay, which drives me crazy sometimes.

- Elaine in the 30 seconds we have left, how did you get the filmmakers bug?

- I just wanted to be a storyteller.

I grew up in this region.

This region is full of storytellers and has a strong oral storytelling tradition.

And I just love people and I wanted to be out in the world telling stories.

I didn't know it was gonna be filmed and I'm happy to be here where I am.

- Well, we're thrilled that you're making films.

They are a remarkable body of work and the folks want to know more, what's your website.

- It's elainemcmillionsheldon.com.

- Super.

Well, thank you so much for being with us.

She is Elaine McMillion Sheldon.

You want to check out her films.

That's all the time we have this week but if you want to know more about story in the public square, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org.

We can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G.Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more Story in the Public Square.

(instrumental music)