“My Social Location as a Member of a Fraternity Makes My Voice a Credible One”: Byron Hurt on His PBS Independent Lens Doc Hazing

As someone who never understood (okay, downright loathed) the conformist culture of so-called Greek-letter organizations, I didn’t bother to catch Byron Hurt’s (Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Soul Food Junkies) latest doc Hazing when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival back in the spring. But fortunately, the film — which takes a deep historical, as well as personal, dive into what Wikipedia defines as “any activity expected of someone in joining or participating in a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses, or endangers them regardless of a person’s willingness to participate” — will now be launching the new season of PBS’s Independent Lens, which gave me a welcomed second chance to correct some of my own very wrongly preconceived notions. A certain victim-blaming narrative inevitably pops up every time a frat or sorority pledge is irreparably harmed, or too often dies, at the hands of “brothers” and “sisters” supposedly tasked to look out for them. Refreshingly, the director himself is brave enough to likewise challenge his own preconceived notions, taking a holistic approach that stretches across racial lines to ask probing questions of victims’ families, whistleblowing survivors, academics and even still-proud secret society members. As both a onetime pledge and subsequent tormentor himself, Hurt is able to confront his own complicity in the dangerous silence, and in the process expose the root of the insidious ritual, which can be summed up in one painful word: shame. In order to learn all about this emotionally difficult cinematic journey, Filmmaker reached out to the award-winning, self-described “documentary filmmaker, writer, and anti-sexist activist” a week prior to the doc’s PBS debut. Hazing opens the newest season of Independent Lens on Monday, September 12 at 10 p.m. ET. The film will also be available to stream thereafter on the PBS Video app.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Believe in a Holistic Approach to World Building”: Sophie Jarvis on her TIFF-Debuting Psychological Drama Until Branches Bend

Veteran production designer Sophie Jarvis’s assured feature debut Until Branches Bend is one smartly executed, unexpected gem. Premiering in the Discovery section of this year’s TIFF, the psychological drama (really a contemporary horror film) follows a cannery worker named Robin (2016 TIFF Rising Star Grace Glowicki) whose life is upended after discovering a creepy bug in a peach while (conveniently) alone at break time. Unable to get her boss to take the very real threat of a catastrophic invasion seriously — and perhaps risk a factory shutdown — she decides to go public with her unappetizing finding, which entails sounding the alarm to a community that relies exclusively on said factory for its financial lifeblood, and is similarly inclined to dismiss a woman like Robin. That is to say, a strong-willed Cassandra who has to crusade just to be heard as well as a blue collar worker forced to jump through hoop after condescending hoop just to access a basic right like abortion — something Robin now desperately needs after having an affair with a (married) boss prone to blowing off a woman’s “hysterical” concerns. A few weeks prior to Until Branches Bend’s September 10 (at TIFF Bell Lightbox) world premiere Filmmaker reached out to the Canadian designer-director to learn all about cinematically weaving together personal and environmental havoc (while a pandemic and raging wildfires loomed like an omen offscreen).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Were Filming at a Time When Putin Was Arresting Opposition”: Sarah McCarthy on Her Telluride-Premiering Doc Short Anastasia

Sarah McCarthy is no stranger to navigating the myriad challenges posed by authoritarian states. Indeed, the Australian doc-maker has shot in precarious political places throughout the world, from the Philippines, to Saudi Arabia to Russia — where she’s returned time and time again. Nor is she a stranger to the Toronto International Film Festival, where following on the heels of feature-length works (The Sound of Mumbai, The Dark Matter of Love) she now debuts her latest short Anastasia; and the innocuous title, much like the film’s titular character, belies one powerful punch. Anastasia Shevchenko is a Russian civil rights advocate who’s been arrested and placed under house arrest — which is, unfortunately, not an anomaly under the Putin regime. Smartly, McCarthy is less concerned with the “crimes” Shevchenko committed than with the individual who’s chosen to sacrifice herself — and hence her family — to the greater democratic cause. It’s a portrait not of an outspoken firebrand, though Shevchenko is certainly that, but of a single mother who wants nothing more than to see her children grow up in a free society. Of course, whether the personal price paid by those she’s ostensibly fighting for is worth that heavy toll is also the crux of every activist’s dilemma. A few weeks prior to the film’s TIFF Short Cuts debut on September 9 (and the week before its Telluride world premiere), Filmmaker caught up with the intrepid globetrotting director — who the UK’s Radio Times recently named as one of its “30 Most Powerful Women in Film.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Directing When You Are an Editor Feels Like Cheating”: Cinque Northern on His Telluride Doc Short Angola Do You Hear Us?

Having already made the prestige fest rounds to great acclaim this year — from Tribeca to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage outdoor film series just this summer — Cinque Northern’s Angola Do You Hear Us? is now a must-catch at Telluride. The documentary short follows the incomparable actor and playwright Liza Jessie Peterson on her artistic and spiritual mission to bring her one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot to none other than the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The film also explores all the baggage, bureaucracy and ultimate blocking that was met with a work centered on racial injustice (that deftly connects the capitalistic dots between slavery and the incarceration industrial complex) at a plantation-turned-prison. So to learn all about this outside the box project (which even includes some evocative animation) Filmmaker reached out to the short’s director/editor — and 25 New Faces alum — the week before the film’s Telluride launch.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.