(theme music playing) HOLLAND: I'm Julia, a bookseller with Politics and Prose, and we're live with Caty Borum Chattoo, Sheila Nevins and Marjan Safinia discussing "Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change."

Author Caty Borum Chattoo is executive director of American University's Center for Media and Social Impact and assistant professor at the American University School of Communication in Washington, DC.

She is an award-winning documentary producer, scholar, professor, and strategist, working at the intersection of social change, communication, documentary, and entertainment, storytelling.

Sheila Nevins is executive producer of MTV Documentary Films.

Best-selling author of "You Don't Look Your Age and Other Fairy Tales" and past president of HBO Documentary Films.

She has produced more than 1,000 documentary films over the span of her career.

Marjan Safinia is an Iranian documentary filmmaker whose films examine identity, community and social justice in collaboration with Grace Lee, she recently produced and directed, "And She Could Be Next" a two-part documentary series about women of color transforming American politics from the ground up.

Please join me in welcoming Caty Borum Chattoo, Sheila Nevins and Marjan Safinia.

Thank you all.

SAFINIA: So I thought maybe you could set the stage for the conversation by reading just a little short excerpt from the book, which kind of gets to the heart of what you tackle in the book.

BORUM CHATTOO: So this is actually from the end of the book because a good book author friend of mine told me that when you write a book, use the last three pages to sing a song with passion, about how much you care about that topic.

And so I did, um, try to do that in this book.

So the very end that has a header that says "Why Documentary Matters" And, uh, I'll just read a little bit of that.

Um, "Documentary is a vital irreplaceable part of our storytelling culture and democratic discourse.

It is distinct among the mediated ways we receive and interpret signals about the world and its inhabitants.

We humans, despite our insistence to the contrary, make individual and collective decisions from an emotional place of the soul where kindness and compassion and rage and anger originate, not only from the rational deliberation of facts and information.

By opening a portal into the depth of human experience, documentary storytelling contributes to strengthening our cultural, moral compass our normative rule book that shapes how we regard each other in daily exchanges and how we prioritize the policies and laws that can either expand justice or dictate oppression.

Finding connections with our fellow humans requires this nuanced intimate view."

Um, "Telling stories about how lives are lived is not ancillary to democratic functioning and social progress, but embedded the, at the core.

Through storytelling, we reflect the people we find valuable, the realities we deem worthy of cultural attention, the challenges worth solving.

In documentaries that dig under the surface of what we think we know or what we have not seen reflected at all.

We find the possibility to connect and expand our literacy about human lives and to fuel solidarity that can come from a recognition of shared destiny and humanity.

And ultimately democracy requires the active participation of publics who see and believe their engagement matters."

Um, so that's really, look, I'm just giving you the hint, which is that if you only read these two pages of the book, you will know what the whole thing is about.

So it's just giving you the big teaser.

SAFINIA: I love it, I love it.

So tell us, take us back.

What, what made you among your many hats that you wear, what made you to also write this book?

What inspired you and what does it, you have to say that wasn't out there already, that you needed to add?

BORUM CHATTOO: I've always loved documentary film and documentary people, and I always feel like it's important to say, you know, from the first moment I met documentary people, I thought those are my people.

They are brave and artistic and they go for it.

Even when there are no resources, it shouldn't be that way by the way.

But, um, and so I was working in documentary starting around 2005.

We had this little group of people in Los Angeles and we were starting to make movies like "Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price" and some other work bubbling up at that time.

And so it struck me at that moment that there was something really turning up in the space, right?

So, um, YouTube was starting right after that.

We had Facebook and Twitter and there was a different way that digital activism was starting to catch up with documentary and there were new documentary makers.

So years later, you know, always having documentary in as part of my work, you know, I started to really understand more about documentary history.

And to me there was this untold story about how documentary has always come from social movements, actually, it has always come from this nexus and juncture of a media revolution happening.

So the past juncture was television starting and being a vast wasteland, which has a great history, uh, in the book.

And then we were at this digital media revolution and it was changing the storytellers, the stories, the activism around it.

So I knew I wanted to write a book that honored the analog roots of documentary, but that really took off in sort of 2005 when activism and storytelling was changing.

And also one other like geeky fun fact that film people will love: I literally remember and you probably do too, both of you, the summer that we changed from mini DV tapes to cards, it was just like, the cameras were different.

This was 2006.

I remember we had all these little stacks of, um, of the little tapes and then suddenly we're filming to cards and we could cut on Final Cut Pro instead of Avid, which you had to be professional.

So it just felt like it was this democratizing moment.

Um, and then of course, as we know, we evolved into the streaming media age where we have Netflix and Amazon and all these places for new audiences to discover, to discover documentary.

So the book is really about the nexus of social, um, social issue documentaries and the kind of activism and public engagement that happens around that.

And the history of it is really juicy.

And I know we're going to get into, um, you know, Sheila's incredible legacy that I think is really exciting.

And I sort of geek out when I like to tell the story about like Sheila Nevins created the commercial marketplace for docs.

Um, so that's definitely part of the story.

SAFINIA: Okay.

BORUM CHATTOO: So let's stop here 'cause otherwise I'm just gonna... SAFINIA: We're going to come back to uh, to Shelia's outsize role in, um, in creating the world that we live in, in documentary.

NEVINS: Definitely outsize since the pandemic, I must say.

Nonetheless, that was an aside, I'm sorry, go ahead.

SAFINIA: That's ok, you're, you're allowed.

So Sheila has a great blurb on the back of the book, um, which is no small thing to have Sheila Nevins rave about your book.

Um, and it, uh, Sheila, you talk about, um, the book is providing crucial insight into the ripple effect of documentaries that deal with social issues.

You say it's amazing upon reflection to see how personal stories have nudged the conscience of the world.

And you call it a must read for anyone interested in social change and the relevancy of the documentary form.

What was it about the book that made it a must read for you?

And after you know, such a storied, then legendary career, what were the insights that book brought you?

The ways that it helped you see things differently?

NEVINS: You know, I have to say that the book made me feel I mattered.

Isn't that weird?

Um, I really never stopped to think while I was doing what I was doing, that I was changing the world or at least trying to change it.

I've always felt that the great gift of documentaries was that anybody could be somebody and growing up in a theatrical kind of universe of New York, where somebody had to be somebody, somebody got apart, they were somebody, you know, if somebody was singing a song, they were somebody, but here is where people who were nobodies were the most important somebodies.

And I think that I never thought of that thought that we all have a story and that we all have a cry and we all have a pain and we all have an ache and that can be of interest and empathetic to other people.

I never thought of it as nudging the universe or pushing reform, truly.

And I'm not just saying this when I read Caty's book, I thought to myself, it matters.

It matters real people experiencing real pain, brought to them by things that it, without their control are part and parcel of telling of storytelling and, and, um, you know, strugglers, if there's such a word, belong to documentaries, fighting back, belongs to docus.

And I never thought of it as a ripple effect.

I really didn't.

Oh yeah, "Blackfish" I understand, you know, it closed SeaWorld.

I get that.

I get that, you know, but I didn't know people could do this.

And when I looked back and maybe it's just a function of time when I finished Caty's book, I really thought I did a good job.

I'm doing a good job.

You know, all those conversations I have with regular people about what they're going through, people on food lines, you know, people dying of diseases that could have been stopped had they had the proper care, children that are going to bed hungry in this country that somehow or living on a wage that can't get you what you want, can't get food, never mind, you know, a pretty dress.

I realized suddenly that those people had stories to tell that were compelling and interesting and maybe a lot of people hadn't heard, you know, we all can tell stories about ourselves, but how many of us care about somebody else's story?

So in the midst of Caty's book, I announced to myself possibly to my dog and my husband, but that I think I really made a difference.

I think I made good films that really were, you know, the first film on AIDS, the first film on, you know, on, on living below the poverty, you know, living without, without, uh, you know, all those films, they can be popular if the stories are good, you know, I don't have, to be writing "Battle for Tobacco Road" to tell you the story of Tobacco Road?

You know?

And so I'm grateful to Caty for making me, um, understand that that peculiar interest I have in everyday struggles and everyday people was a valid one and continues to be.

And, um, maybe why, as soon as I get to LA, I have to come back home.

I'm never comfortable there.

And I got very uncomfortable with the endorsement of docus by celebrities because I felt it was going away from the cafeteria, so to speak.

So, um, I really learned a lot about, about myself.

Uh, you know, when I read the book, I really did.

I had to stop and think about certain shows.

I had to stop and think about producers.

I had to think about producers who made documentaries and didn't make enough money really from them.

I had to think of how unusual this circle of people that I had grown so close to was to social change because they were, whether it was Barbara Kopple or Fierlinger or whomever, it was, everyone wants to make a living, but they really wanted to nudge the world.

And I think that was, um, I realized why I was part of this world.

So thank you, Caty.

You showed me my place.

And I really think, I mean, I really, I really did, you know, Look, I made other things.

I made "Real Sex at Night" I made "Taxicab Confessions," but I never gave up on what real people had to say about lives, about their lives, whether it was PG rated, G rated, R rated, you know, even possibly soft X-rated, people's where it's at.

So I thank you for giving me the right to a people up my life.

SAFINIA: People up my life.

That should go on a t-shirt yeah.

NEVINS: Yeah.

SAFINIA: People up my life.

(overtalking) Caty, you touched on it earlier, but um, in some ways you talk about the, the industry of documentary, the marketplace, really being born out of movement, out of activism.

Um, and I think it's not well understood that kind of transition that came from movement to, you know, what is quite mainstream now for people to watch documentaries.

Can you tell, talk to us a bit about that trajectory?

BORUM CHATTOO: Yeah.

Well, I find this to be an incredibly important part of the documentary story that I think those of us who work in documentary should really celebrate this story.

I find it very powerful.

If you hear it a different way, you can also find it very frustrating, right?

Because documentary people have always had to fight for their spot.

Um, but just very briefly, if we look at these junctures in history and this is, um, covered in chapter two and I'm not a historian.

And so this is just highlight... Oh, thank you, ladies.

We did not practice that.

Thank you, Sheila.

Excellent.

Yes, it starts with Barbara Kopple.

Legendary "Harlan County USA" is one of the exemplars of the form.

But, um, so this really interesting history that I, I talk about in history here only because I think it's incredibly relevant for us documentary people today to understand that because there's a kind of space for collective organizing for documentary filmmakers to kind of fight for what they need.

Um, so, uh, in the 60s in a moment of, uh, sort of great, um, unrest, uh, urban discord, we know a number of things came out of that.

The Kerner Commission put out a big report, um, starting in the early '60s.

Um, the FCC was starting to be worried about television at the time.

It's when Newton Minow famously called TV a vast wasteland in 1961.

And, um, so TV was still quite new, right?

And so also what was happening was the social movement space of the '60s.

And so part of what was happening was that, uh, people were saying marginalized people, people from traditionally marginalized communities, uh, black and brown, uh, predominantly were saying, part of the problem is that we don't see ourselves reflected in your media space at all.

And so this does not look like America.

And so the, uh, very long story short, uh, PBS has created Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS is created in part of the mandate of course, was to, you know, create programming in the public interest that also meant seeing the full, um, pleura, the pro uh, diversity of our culture.

So lots of ways that promise has not fully been met, of course.

So we'll just conveniently leave that aside for a minute.

We have a lot of work to do in that area.

Um, but that opened a little space for documentary filmmakers at the time.

And also what was happening in docs at the time was that people were getting access to this smaller equipment.

And so with the smaller equipment, they were able to do what we call now vérité or direct cinema.

They were able to pick up a camera and have a uh, audio guy right next to them.

And eventually the audio was inside the camera and basically to make much more intimate storytelling.

And so stories that were being told in that moment, um, not only were being programmed on PBS, so the Maysles and Fred Wiseman, um, these vérité fly on the wall for the non-film people, uh, to know what that means like real intimate access into people's lives.

So the other thing was happening was that people were making films and stories from inside social movements, because they were saying, we're not seeing our stories in mainstream journalism at the time entertainment TV at the time was showing like here's a nuclear family and we're all very happy, uh, white heteronormative, all of it.

So, um, so there was power in that.

So years later, um, documentary filmmakers came together and forced over, uh, forced to open another opening, which was the creation of ITBS, um, which is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has a direct mandate for diversity in documentary storytelling, storytelling has gone on to be very important for the marketplace, but going back to the commercial marketplace, this is where I get really geeky and excited about it.

Um, there was so much organizing from independent filmmakers at the time that, uh, the marketplace started to open because of that but when Sheila comes along and says in, as I quote in the book, you know, I liked what the Maysle brothers were doing.

You know, the Maysles are like, you know, for us documentary geeks, we know what that means, but for a commercial television person to say, I wanted to make films that looked like that, that felt like that.

And so then HBO, so Sheila, um, starts programming in docs, in the 80s, excuse me, with that kind of idea in mind and this kind of intimacy and access to people's lives.

If HBO and Sheila had not opened that commercial marketplace in the mold of what was happening in movements and in public media, I don't think we would have Netflix and Amazon and Hulu as interested in documentaries as they are because now it's a whole business.

So I think that's an exciting story about documentary filmmakers, having power.

It's also about social movements.

And it's also about, Sheila Nevins.

NEVINS: It's also about not wanting to talk to the already converted.

BORUM CHATTOO: Yes, yes, NEVINS: In other words, part of like, I remember seeing "Salesman" and think thinking who, how do I get people to watch that show?

You know, how do you get people to watch "Harlan County" that are not, not trying to form unions?

You know, what do you, what do you kick when the same people are watching the same show that they basically could be in?

And, you know, how do you get Mary and John Q Public to say, "Well, I saw this thing on television," not even call it a docu.

"I saw this story."

"I saw these people, I saw this made me cry."

You know, "It was a story.

And it was like, you know, I don't know what it was like.

I think it was a movie."

In the beginning you know, we weren't allowed to call documentaries documentaries at HBO.

We had to call them docutainment.

And I took that word very seriously because first of all, I wasn't sure what a documentary was, but I knew it wasn't a docutainment because I didn't, I looked it up.

There was no such word.

So the point really was I took the mandate of "tainment" very seriously, which is if I was going to make something that only intellectuals and 1% were going to talk about, then it was no fun.

It wasn't right.

That somehow I had to find a way not to cheap in the merchandise, but to make it something that other people could buy and have, and love and want.

So in a, in a sense, it was my desire, I'd like to tell you, it was my desire to change the world.

I think it was my desire to be popular, to not be working.

And nobody wanted this job called docutainment, except for a place called HBO.

I didn't even know what HBO was, but I was at "60 Minutes" and I didn't want to be a correspondent.

And I didn't, I wasn't that interested in politics as, as a cerebral highbrow entity.

And I heard about this job and I was looking for someone for the job.

And I thought, well, maybe I should take that job.

Maybe I should take it.

Maybe I could make a documentary.

I thought they were about Winston Churchill and Hitler and World War One in 1960 and 1970.

And then I remembered watching, I guess it was "Jaws" or one of those movies like "Bob, Ted, Carol, and Alice".

And I thought, why don't I just get people that are interesting?

Why do I have to be always in Washington?

And on the top levels of intellectual, you know, that, that level, why can't I be like a movie?

And so I think the birth of commercial docus was based on competition rather than do gooded-ness.

If you forgive me that, and certainly on as, uh, as the cameras change, more and more people could tell their own stories.

And I understood that, but, but when I would see things doing well, and I would see that my documentary on Adolf Hitler was not only not doing that well, but there were three others like it, I knew that I had to reach into Barbara's world and the Maysles world and take those people from the coal mine and from being salesmen and make them engaging enough to tell a story that would make a difference.

Does that make any sense?

SAFINIA: Yeah, total sense.

I mean, I'm curious to dig around that a little bit, Sheila, cause I think that, um, you know, documentaries are a way of getting us closer to a truth, certainly a human centered truth.

Um, I'm not at all conceit, but there is this fantastic Chekhov quote, which I sometimes reel out just to impress people that I can, um, which is the Chekhov said that "Man will become better when you show him what he's like."

Right.

And there are some, there's a constant process of us better understanding the human condition when we watched documentaries.

And, you know, for me, you know, I can watch a film about, uh, a yak farmer, you know, on the mountain side, in Mongolia and understand something about myself, right?

And that's sort of the magic.

Um, at the same time, there is an element of truth and element of trying to sort of communicate, um, some kind of facts about something, right?

Some kind of information about something, but it has to be embedded in that compelling story and, and those characters.

And I'm wondering Sheila from, you know, how many over 1,000 films, like what is for you that special sauce of straddling the line between an intent for impact and sort of, um, you know, widening someone's mind and, and really placing it inside story.

NEVINS: I think the word is empathy.

I remember reading a diagnosis of, uh, the narcissism of Trump and I thought that's the opposite of what I want.

I want someone to be able to feel what someone else is feeling.

Um, certainly you can't say to someone who's just lost someone.

"I know how you feel" because you don't know how they feel, but to feel that they are feeling and that you are close to them in some empathetic way, not to copy or to be, but to engaged in their sorrow and joy is the only gift we really have out of loneliness.

And the docu seem to be the way to, to get out of that loneliness of I am alone because how can you be alone?

If you identify with the truffle hunter or, you know, you identify with a pig, you know, Glenda, you identify with the pig that loses its, its flock, you know, wrong word, I picked clearly I did not grow up on a pig farm, but you know, I mean the magic of feeling something so deeply for something so strange and different is what is missing.

And that's the great gift of a good documentary.

Which is that suddenly you may not have the guts to go in the mine, but you have the empathy to feel for the people who had the guts to go in the mine, or you may not have PTSD, but you can feel for the people who have sacrificed on your behalf and that PTSD.

So that's what I look for in a long, long winded answer to get to the whole thing, which is, am I moved?

Am I moved not to act because I'm, I'm, that's not me, but am I moved to, to care enough, to want it to be better for them?

Whoever "the them" are, no matter what country they come, they come from, no matter what color they are, no matter how old they are.

You tell me one in four children go to bed hungry.

I think, "Oh, that's horrible."

But you show me those one in four children hungry and I'll care.

And I might just do something about it.

BORUM CHATTOO: So there's something that I write about in the "Blackfish" chapter where I talk about this idea of what's called psychic numbing.

And so there's a scholar named Paul Slovic.

Who's written about the idea that when we're talking about the new America, if we're just talking about tragedy, right, and we know documentaries are not all that, so I just want to make sure I say that, but if we're talking about some large scale suffering like a genocide or famine or war and conflict, that our minds can't process a large number that we actually are numb to, that we don't understand that.

But when we experienced the story of a single person, maybe a see uh, one mother caring for a family in the middle of a situation, you can see and feel it differently.

It's a completely different psychological and cognitive process.

So that's part of, I mean, exactly what you just said Shelia, um, just, with some, um... NEVINS: Just said a little better.

There was a story that, and tell me if I'm hogging this, um, but I'll do it anyway, um, I was given the assignment early on in HBO to do the 50th anniversary.

I think of the Second World War.

And I went and looked at stock footage and I looked at a lot of things and I didn't know what to do.

And my son was about to turn 13 and he said he wanted a bar mitzvah and I was completely a non-functioning religious person.

I don't, you know, but said, well, then you have to go to this museum in Washington and you have to learn what it means, because I can't tell you, I'd been raised by these crazy communists.

So I took my son, my husband, we went to the museum and, um, there was something on the wall and it was various survivors talking and my feet hurt and I sat down and I just listened to them.

And one woman named Gerda Weissmann Klein, she, she was 65 pounds found by an American soldier, married him, had six or seven children, uh, you know, now in her late nineties.

And uh, I thought maybe Michael, Michael Fuchs, who was my boss then will let me do one survivor remembers just one, because I didn't know what to do with all this footage.

You know, the B52, the bomb, and say, I didn't know what the, you know, enlisting, you know, mandatory and was, I didn't, I didn't know where to go with the Second World War.

And so he said, yeah, do it, if you want to the networks, all we'll be doing, you know, big war stories.

You'll be doing one.

I didn't know whether he meant it as a pat on the back or whatever, but I immediately called the Holocaust museum and I immediately went to see, uh, Gerda in Arizona and we did one survivor remembers.

Now I've seen it recently.

It doesn't exactly hold up anymore.

It was a long, long, long time ago, but it's exactly what she said.

It went on to win an Academy award.

Uh Gerda is still on, she's not all on, but she's mostly on and I love her dearly, but I think it's what you said.

You know, you've fought to find a way into the story that makes other people bleed on somebody else's behalf, not bleed to death, but bleed to care.

BORUM CHATTOO: Yeah.

NEVINS: So, yes, I agree.

I didn't have the back end you did on the statistics, but I had the... BORUM CHATTOO: That's very symbiotic, Sheila.

SAFINIA: That's why we have the professor.

The professor came to our rescue.

NEVINS: I see.

SAFINIA: So I want to dig around this idea of, of point of view, you know, versus kind of objectivity.

Um, obviously there are parallels between journalism and documentary, but there are also critical differences.

Um, and, uh, I'm, uh, first I'm curious if you guys can tell me where you think those crucial differences are between sort of journalism and documentary and telling us stories that try and help us make sense of the world that we're living in.

Um, and then I also want to talk a little bit about like the importance of the point of view of the storyteller, right?

And that in documentary, I would argue that there's an adage until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero, right.

And it just makes such a profound difference who was telling the story.

Um, and in understanding the story in a different way, and Caty, in the book you pick out, I picked out a trio of films that you wrote about, which are, um, "Citizen Four," which was one of Sheila's projects by Laura Poitras, "Southwest of Salem," the story of the San Antonio Four and also "The Feeling of Being Watched" by Assia Boundaoui.

Um, and in each of these films, there, there is so much truth revealed, right.

Um, but do we need to somehow sort of throw away, uh, the rigidity of the idea of objectivity as the only pathway to truth, um, and out of how important is point of view, especially in documentary as bringing us up another path to truth.

BORUM CHATTOO: So in the case of "Southwest of Salem," which is an incredible story about, uh, for gay women who were committed of a horrible crime and they were fully exonerated, uh, many years later after they had spent 12, 13 years in prison, I mean, exonerated, so did not commit.

Um, now what's important from the storyteller's perspective.

Um, Deb Eskenazi, who I know was a field producer on your film, Marj, loved that.

Um, I loved my interview with Deb.

I thought she was all power, you know?

Um, so Deb Eskenazi said, you know, there were a couple of reasons why it mattered that I was the one telling that story.

So this is a women, uh, a story about four Latinx women living in Texas gay women, surrounded by homophobia.

And she's a gay Latinx woman who lives in Texas.

And so she said, you know, if I had shown up to in prison where the women were at the time of telling the story with a huge crew and whatever, like there would've been no intimacy, the storytelling would have been totally different.

And it mattered to the woman, the women who I was, my identity mattered my ability to see and understand.

The other thing that Deb did on the film was, um, she credited the queer community in Texas, where she was living, where she would screen footage of the film as she was making it and she would say, does this feel true to experience, how does this feel to, to us?

Right.

Um, so it's very much community-based storytelling.

And she said, uh, and I think I remember this directly from the interview.

I feel like I probably quoted this directly in the book.

How different would that story have been if a six-year-old white man meant that story, it would not have been the same story.

And I think your quote is great Marj about the hunter and the lion that's exactly right.

In the case of Assia Boundaoui something similar was going on, where she was making a film, just this unbelievable film about the FBI spying on her Muslim community, outside of Chicago for 20 years.

And the community had long suspected it and it made neighbors suspicious of one another.

And that was a great deal of community trauma.

And so she had been sort of told to make this film objectively, but it was her family and her community.

And she said it was hard to make the film.

It didn't feel true.

So that's getting to your point Marj.

And she said, the story only felt true and authentic when she told it as it was most true and authentic, which is her story of discovery about what was happening in her community.

We know that norms of objectivity and the sort of structure of objectivity in journalism was created also out of, uh, advertising concerns.

So we can have this kind of a lofty idea about what objectivity means.

No true objectivity is possible from any human telling a story.

So what I find, and this is not pitting journalism against documentary.

As I say, many times in the book, they are symbiotic.

They work together, we need daily beat journalism to tell us what's going on.

Documentaries are doing something it's like different they're, they're making meaning for us.

Um, but in that way, when a creative storyteller names the gaze isn't that more authentic when we're talking about that kind of creative storytelling, when they clearly say this is my gaze, or this is the case of two women who were well, that was not a character in her phone.

But, um, so that's what we mean when we talk about editorial voice and editorial freedom and documentary, sometimes it does make sense to be somewhat detached if someone can do that.

But, um, sometimes it's more authentic to say, this is the gaze that I come from.

And I think I'll just add here, I think particularly when we're talking about women and people of color who are so used to someone else telling their story and the gaze is never their gaze, and not only is it never their gaze, but the sort of assumed sort of main gaze is always white hetero normally, you know, fill in the blank.

So, um, it's, I think it's a great freedom and is a degree of, um, creative and creative authenticity.

It doesn't mean that you can't be a fact checker doesn't mean you can lie in your films.

Doesn't mean any of those things, but truth and objectivity are not exactly the same thing.

Sheila, what do you think?

NEVINS: I think it's impossible to be objective.

BORUM CHATTOO: Yes.

NEVINS: I think it's just impossible.

It's impossible.

You may learn in the process of being passionate, that there may be something to the other side that you haven't noticed before that certain kind of, and again, I used the word empathy for the opponent.

Um, I couldn't remember whether it was the hunter or the lion that was the good guy.

Um.

SAFINIA: Usually it's the, hunter's not the good guy, but only because if the lion got to tell the story.

NEVINS: Lion grabbed the hunter first, who's the good guy?

SAFINIA: And I have to, I'm going to have to think about that and get back to you.

NEVINS: That's what I mean about when you get into the hunter and the lion, then, you know, maybe the, you know, I guess if the hunter has a gun, but if the hunter doesn't want to shoot him, he's shooting birds and the lion, you know, I mean, I don't know.

Sometimes I get confused between the good and the evil of something, because as I learned more about the opposite or the opponent, not that I forgive in any way, but I try to understand, you know, um, why is he hunting in the first place?

Can he find something?

Can he play basketball?

You know, I mean, you know, sometimes I'm in the middle of a hate and I suddenly don't hate the other side as much as I thought I would.

And I get very confused, a film we just did with Alexandra Pelosi was a similar thing where I want to hate the people who say, take off your mask because they're irresponsible and they're spreading it.

And they, you know, but then I go home with them and I see that one of them let's say is, is an exterminator.

And he's lost 40 pounds in the last two months being this exterminator.

And he's glad he has his job and he's clearly got cancer and he's smoking like crazy.

And then suddenly I find myself feeling for his plight because he needs or she needs, or they need that job and that job brings them the bitterness that allows them to not want to do what they need to do for them, their neighbor or their brother.

So I get very confused sometimes in the process of making something about the clarity between good and evil, you know, you go in and, you know, Harvey Weinstein is evil.

Okay.

He was evil.

I understand it's clear, but not everything is that clear when you get into these.

And that's where I think journalism, because it's not necessarily sleeping with the enemy, so to speak.

And the documentary filmmaker is sleeping with the enemy that you get a kind of a, a peculiar, fair play that you don't mean to get when you start out, it's very complicated.

SAFINIA: It's nuanced.

I mean... NEVINS: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

SAFINIA: Jim asks, uh, "Our world and our nation are changing dramatically.

How are doc film's going to change in response?

The, um, the bifurcation of audiences, right?

Like the echo chambers that, that we find ourselves in and that, you know, all forms of ingesting media has become reflective of your own point of view to some extent.

And then the other thing that's happening is that, you know, a lot of money has rolled into the documentary space and, you know, we, some, some including myself call it the corporate age of documentaries, right.

Which, and as we talked about, you know, from PBS to HBO, it informs and changes the content and the way the content comes across.

So in a world where we are hearing from our echo chambers consistently, and there's an outsized kind of corporate influence on documentary content, where does that leave us?

Especially when we think about social justice and impact in docus.

NEVINS: Caty?

Professor Chattoo?

BORUM CHATTOO: I was gonna hand it to Shelia because (inaudible) Um, well, so the kinds of films that I primarily write about in the book, I'd sort of give this list of characteristics and traits, right.

That also have to do with the motivations of the filmmaker, the sort of civic motivations of the filmmaker.

But I talk a lot about people having some great degree of editorial freedom that when we think about independent filmmakers, um, I continue to know, and actually Marjan, you just made a film that it, you, and Grace Lee, you made a film that is just exactly this point, which is not taking your cues just from sort of the marketing departments inside a media company or the editor.

Um, but literally taking the cues from what's bubbling up in the communities and, Marj and Grace's, film is about the incredible work that women of color did, uh, organizing.

And when, you know, I just wrote an op ed about this and said, when, when folks were kind of scratching their heads about that on election night, I looked at Marj and Grace and, like, no, we, watch our film.

We knew that two years ago, we documented all of that.

Um, so that's really important as an ethos in the kinds of documentaries that I care about the most.

And I think that probably you two do as well, the things that we couldn't possibly know just from marketing, um, proclivities or from just assignments, go out and find that story.

But stories that must be told, because filmmakers say I'm sitting on something and I have to tell this story.

So that's important to protect and, uh, you know, to protect in a lot of ways, right?

In terms of funding that goes into documentary storytelling to take care of filmmakers, to make sustainable careers, um, in terms of new capital that can flow in, that's really truly giving editorial freedom to filmmakers to tell these stories.

And the one other thing I'll just get on my soap box a tiny bit here and say that history tells us, and this is also true with journalism.

History tells us that leaving a beautiful art form like documentary entirely to the marketplace is not healthy.

So documentary has always been funded, um, by this kind of trifecta, which is philanthropic dollars, public broadcasting, and, uh, now more commercial funding.

But when those sectors work together to understand what makes a powerful film, um, that's a healthy direction.

So I guess we're all a little bit nervous at the moment of the sort of, I think none of us wants to see the pure Hollywoodization of documentary films.

And at the same time, when you can have a film like "American Factory" which won the Academy Award two years ago, when you kind of a film like "American Factory" or Ava DuVernay's "13th" reach 190 countries around the world, that's also valuable.

So, um, I write about this at the, in the final chapter of the book, um, really to talk about where things are going and how do we balance those sort of economic forces in the audience, uh, proclivities.

So... SAFINIA: You know what I mean, you've had such a sort of longitudinal view of the form shifting what do you, what are you feeling for this next moment of evolution?

NEVINS: Me?

SAFINIA: You.

NEVINS: Um I think popularity carries with it numbers and a curse at the same time.

And I think that, um, awards of which there are so many also carry with them a tremendous burden of a curse and a, and a bonus.

Um, for instance, if you make a documentary about a killer, and it's very popular and it's in four parts, um, what are you serving?

Is that a documentary?

Are they watching it because of the, uh, detective techniques and finding, or are they watching it because, uh, this amazing killer escaped justice for a very long time.

And, uh, he was able to cut people up in little pieces and slice them and eat them.

So you have to be very careful with popularity.

And on the other hand, you want it, on the other hand, you can cheapen the form by wanting it too badly.

So it's a very complicated time for docus because you say docus, it's the time, the edge, it's the time of docus, is it?

How many docus are like yours or like "Blackfish" or like "Salem", come on guys.

How many, how many are like Kirby Dicks documentary and I mean, you know, how did those do in comparison to slicing up someone and frying them?

So I think the word doesn't mean the same thing anymore.

There is the social change docu, which is always one that interests me because I like to sneak that in, there is the popular docu, like "Tiger King" or whatever that was called.

I watched it, I liked it did.

Did I think it was a docu?

And then there's the genius of a docu like "Dick Johnson", which takes the form from something like, uh, "76 Days", which is true vérité in a full-on hospital and goes all the way to using narrative in docu.

And yet they're both called docus, you know, and then you look at a fiction film like "Nomad Land" with Francis McDermott and she's visiting places populated by documentary people.

I mean, document, I don't mean people who make docus, I mean, real people in these, these camps where she stops off on the way in the search for her soul, she have to say yourself at some point, are we creating one form that is blending everything together in some way, there's nothing wrong with that.

And that is this an old word?

Is this possibly an old word?

Is it really going back to the troubadour and sort of storytelling, various kinds of storytelling, uh, some with a morality issue, some with a pleasure issue and some are retelling, some in the form strictly, almost mostly narrative, some of the forms of mostly reality, a docu.

It's a very interesting time, I think, but I, I do think the classic vérité docu, that reads the reality of the moment will always have its very, very special place and it will always be sacred at least to me.

It's a very interesting time because as you brought out, the equipment is so easy to get, it's easy to edit.

It's easy to do.

I used to go into an editing room.

I thought I was in a foreign country, now it's not like that anymore.

You know, I actually get it if I get it, a lot of people get it.

So I think the point really is, um, moving the pieces around is not this complex world that it used to be getting the, the material, the visual material instantly.

You don't have to wait to go to a lab and wait for it to get there and put it on a special machine.

You just roll it into your iPhone, roll it into your, you know, so, so it's a whole different world of storytelling and I think it's kind of great, but I do think in some way that that vérité form that nudges the world is the superior form and that we will always breathe a different kind of air than all the other stuff.

That's my theory for whatever it's worth.

SAFINIA: No, I agree with you.

And I think that what's inherent in that is the risk, right?

The risk to the corporation that, you know, things may not happen in the timeline dictated, you know?

And, and so it, you know, it's, uh, Caty and I were at a conference once and I gave a talk about hunting versus farming, right.

And I think documentary filmmakers are really hunters of story, uh, as opposed to farmers where it's more sort of controlled and you know, it's like dancing, dancing that line.

NEVINS: Competition of winning has gotten very serious and it's, it's, it's very harmful and it's very, um... SAFINIA: Driven by dollars by now.

NEVINS: Put it on by now so that it gets that.

If you put it on there, then you can't get this, is it a television or is it a theatrical you're going to get an Academy award nomination or is it going to get a, you know, a Peabody, an Emmy, a prime timer.

And then there are all these other ones that come into it.

And in the beginning, they're kind of nice because they allow other films in, but at some point, you know, at some point it becomes insane.

Everything is up for an award.

I think, you know, it's okay.

It's okay if it's a Pulitzer and maybe the Peabody's are the Pulitzer, but the rest of the world of entries and forms and the networks go crazy over that stuff.

And I think the streamers as well, I have to use the word streamer more, but, um, they are essentially networks in the old sense of the word, but it's not about winning.

I mean, although it's great to win.

It's about nudging.

It's about changing.

And, um, that's why we give our lives to these things.

It's why we stay up until three in the morning with one edit, you know, that's why we neglect our kids.

That's why we burn our food.

You know, that's why we forget to brush our teeth.

SAFINIA: And sometimes that's why we murder other people and slice them up and fry them... NEVINS: Yes well... (laughter) And make millions of dollars selling to networks.

Fry, yeah, I don't cook.

So I feel free about it.

BORUM CHATTOO: I don't either, I was just about to say Some of us never worried about cooking in the first place.

NEVINS: Well, watch some of the murders.

If I get one more murder, I think I'll murder the person.

SAFINIA: So I want, we have only a few minutes left and I wonder if we can just end on this, which is what is one unforgettable indelible, will never leave your mind, moment, scene from a documentary that you've you've experienced, that's sort of transformative.

I know there are tons, but as you were just talking, I'll start with Shelia, the one in my mind... NEVINS: Has to do with the bird... SAFINIA: The bird, you have a bird one?

NEVINS: Has to do with the bird.

We did a film that nobody watched called "Pelican 895", Irene Taylor Brodsky did it.

And I stole it from bird that I saw in a CNN documentary about the oil spill in New Orleans.

And I thought what's going to happen to this bird?

I don't even like pelicans.

I don't know anything about them.

And so I called up Irene, who's like in a nine... 19th month.

And I said, I really want to go to New Orleans and see what they do with these birds.

Cause I think there's a rescue group that saves birds and all that she said, yeah, yeah, I'll try.

So she went, we found baby bird, baby pelican is covered with oil.

He went through volunteer therapy, a volunteer group of young people who had to carefully take the oil off him.

They had to teach him to fly.

They had to teach him to eat and then came today six weeks later when one had to see if he was well enough to join the sky and fly with the other pelicans, no longer had a mother or a father, I guess.

I don't know what pelicans have, but anyway, um, so then came that day and we didn't know how to end it.

Was it going to have a sad ending because he would not be able to fly?

Or was it gonna be like a Hollywood movie?

You know, was he going to soar up in the sky?

Guess what do you think happened Caty?

BORUM CHATTOO: He soared into the sky?

SAFINIA: That's what I hope happened.

NEVINS: Okay.

So we didn't know.

We didn't know.

And the music person didn't know what the last part of the scoring was.

I think it's still on HBO Go one of those places, "Pelican 895".

Anyway, he got there.

He must've had an agent because he really tortured us, you know, he, he flapped a little early days of phones, flap a little bit.

He raised his wings a little bit that he learned and then a bunch of pelicans flew up and then I get choked up when I tell this story and I'm a grown person, and he got up and he flew into the sky and he flew away and we couldn't see his armband anymore.

And we don't know whatever happened to Pelican 895, but he found other pelicans.

That is one of the few moments that I really, really, really remember.

And I've been to death camps and I've seen dead bodies and I've had people jump out of windows.

But I remember the pelican flying.

I do remember him "Pelican 895", and I'm not good at math.

What can I tell you?

It's a crazy world, right?

SAFINIA: Caty, do you have an indelible?

BORUM CHATTOO: God, you know what?

I feel like a total imposter, but I'm so overwhelmed listening to all of this that I feel like I don't have one particular moment, but I, I mean, there's, you know, I guess one other thing that I would add, because that was also a story, Sheila snuck in something meaningful here, which is, uh, the story of making a film, not just the, not just the, so I still think, I don't know, this is very geeky and it was a film that, that I worked on that never saw the light of day, but it was, we were looking at, um, manufacturing job flight in the American Midwest.

Actually, Brian Knappenberger is now a very important filmmaker was our DP at the time.

This is 2004, 2005, 2004.

And, uh, and I just, I had dreamed about documentary for, so like I went to film school at USC and nobody was at film school at USC in 2002 to make documentaries, they're there to make "Star Wars" and "The Hangover" so, um, when I finally got out on a documentary shoot, I just, I, it was exactly what I thought it would be.

Uh, it was just an adventure and it, at the time, I mean, look, I, this is not necessarily how I would make a film today, but, um, we didn't exactly plan what we were going to film.

And I just remember what I wrote about this in the book, the uh, my very first shot of the film was like, I think I was holding Brian's legs so that he wouldn't fall out of the station wagon outside, um, St. Louis.

And so I think that's mostly a story I can never touch Sheila's pelican story, but I, documentary people, I think this is why, I mean, just going to close this in a beautiful way, and Marj, I want your story too, I love that documentary people call themselves a community.

And I, that feels right, because once you've been through a documentary experience with a crew and a team, and the people that you, that are the participants in your film, that you share their stories on screen, you're never not family to those people again, you know, never they're, they're always, um, part of you.

And so it's, it's not just a beautiful art form for people to experience, but I think for those of us that get to make them sometimes, um, there's nothing like that community that is built around the film that's in the film and that you make the story with so.

That's, that's just my first moment.

SAFINIA: I have many, many, many, many, I watch far too many documentaries, but there's one that just popped into my head, as I was asking the question, I think it's one of yours, Sheila, uh, "How to Die In Oregon".

That was one of yours, right?

NEVINS: Yeah.

SAFINIA: And it's a story it's a film about, um, you know, um, having the right to choose your own death when you're, you know, terminally ill and there's this extraordinary final scene, right?

Where, um... NEVINS: I love that scene.

SAFINIA: Oh my God, it's an unforgettable moment.

Like talk about humanity, where with a woman who been with, through the whole film and... NEVINS: You know, the cameraman wouldn't go in, he did the whole thing through the window.

SAFINIA: It came, at the end right?

So, so she's been up, she's been down, she's chosen to have the capacity to take, you know, to finish her life with dignity at the time that is right.

And she's with her family, the friends come through, everybody says their goodbye.

She's with her family, they're all on the bed, around her.

And then the camera goes outside and it's dark outside.

And there's a lit window, which is the window, you know, the room that they're in.

And all we hear is the audio of her breaths shallowing and the sniffles of her family.

And it's such a profoundly human way to understand the totality of everything that is in a moment like that in someone's life.

And you can't ever forget it.

And you can't ever come across a moment like that in your own life and not remember the connection that ties us all together in the human experience.

And I think that's why... NEVINS: Because she says the last thing she says, that's audible really, "If only people knew how easy this was."

And just sort of lies there... SAFINIA: It's a beautiful, beautiful, moving film.

Caty, thank you for bringing us together to talk about "Story Movements", your delightful book.

We are really good spokesmodels, Sheila.

We should do this.

BORUM CHATTOO: You really are.

SAFINIA: But mine has little monkey tags from where I... NEVINS: I memorized mine.

I didn't need 'em.

SAFINIA: Oh you memorized yours?

You said she needed the last word and I think that might be it.

HOLLAND: Yeah, I couldn't have said it better than you did.

Um, we just here at Politics and Prose want to thank Caty Borum Chattoo, Sheila Nevins and Marjan Safinia for this amazing conversation and to our audience out there, your patronage and support enable us to have these kinds of amazing discussions.

We hope you are out there staying safe, staying strong, staying connected and staying well read.

We will see you next time.

NARRATOR: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose bookstore locations or online at politics-prose.com (music playing through credits)