What is the current project you are working on?
“Voices of Pripyat, Voices of Fukushima”
This is an exploration of nuclear moments stretched. In the case of Chernobyl and the worker town Pripyat, it has been 25 years since the accident. Fukushima and its surroundings are just beginning their nuclear moment. Both places will be time stamped with the radiation acting almost as if it were a camera flash. Chernobyl and Pripyat will be April 26, 1986, Fukushima will be March 11, 201, both until they fall apart or are taken over by nature.
These places themselves are eerie, haunting places that are full of questions. The individual questions as to what has happened to the people. How has this sudden event changed their lives? In a nuclear dead zone people’s homes will still look ok, as if nothing is wrong. But, of course they are not. In other disaster areas people can rebuild. In these people cannot. They won’t even have the option of leveling their homes and starting over. A nuclear event is unlike any other. The radiation cannot be seen, touched or felt in the short run. But to stay longer….and this is why people cannot go back, although some of the old do. They have gone back to Chernobyl – resettled – while others at Fukushima have not left.
So places and the people…I’ll find people who lived at Pripyat and have left and then too interview some of the resettlers to Chernobyl. Their experiences are unique in the world and they have much to share to the rest of us, because almost all of us lie in the range of a nuclear reactor. There are 440 of them, with another 60 that are being planned. Every one of them has the capacity to spread radiation 1,000 miles or more through the wind. We’ll have these for quite some time, as we have grown dependent on the energy that is generated from them. But odds are before they are closed we will have another event.
The film is a cautionary tale, but asks some deeper questions. What is home? What is loss of home and land? What is nature’s place with man? How do we leave our mark through our unquenchable desire for energy? And with radiation…what is fear of this unseen force? How does this shape a life and many lives?
A new wrinkle on this project is that I will be also going to Fukushima. Originally I was going to just go to Chernobyl, which I have already been twice. But with the launching of a kickstarter campaign I have been asked and urged to expand this to Fukushima, since this is too a nuclear moment begun.
Did you always want to be a filmmaker? What inspired you to become filmmaker?
I am a photographer for close to 25 years. I never thought about being a filmmaker. I had a very strong impression with my first visit to Pripyat, especially when going and photographing the kindergarten there. I felt the children somehow, knowing how many of them were to be profoundly affected by the moment. Radiation has a stronger effect on the young, less as you age. Over 5,000 cases of thyroid cancer of young people have been traced to the Chernobyl event in the Ukraine and Belarus.
So, to get back to it, when I came back to the states, it was at about that time when Fukushima happened. I could see the similarities between the two screenplays. People were not told the full story, not told that they would not be allowed to return to their homes ever. I could see how the government and companies right away began downplaying the health concerns. Something in me grew passionate towards these people and what was happening, so I decided to make a film.
Who is your favorite filmmaker?
Right now it is Terrance Malick. He has a poetic sense that I admire greatly. He also frames every scene, which I find is mostly lacking in film. I have a photographer’s eye.
What is one piece of advice you can give to someone who also wants to make it in the movie business?
I am not trying to make it in the movie business. I am making this film because it is in me to do. I am a poet as well as a photographer. These two sides give me the desire to create “things” that people feel. Many years ago while photographing my daughter I had an experience with one of the pictures that I took of her. There was an intense questioning in her eyes that went straight into me. She was about 3 and a half. Her eyes were full of wisdom and full of pain as if she was fully grown up. This led me to questions of who am I, who are we? Have we been here before? That one look has framed most of the work I have done since and influenced this project as well.
What do you like to do besides filmmaking?
I play piano. I write poetry. I photograph. I play golf.
www.StartingPointPhotography.shutterfly.com
www.photoasastartingpoint.com
What are some of your favorite American films? Foreign films?
The English Patient, The New World, Before Sunrise/Sunset, The Third Man, Vertigo, The Godfather, The End of the Affair, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Babel, My Neighbor Totoro, La Belle Noiseuse, Hud, Sorcerer, Bridge on the River Kwai, Swept Away, Ikiru, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Wings of Desire, Kagemusha, 3 Days of the Condor, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ordinary People…
How would you describe the film "scene" where you live?
I have a screenwriter as a roommate. Glen Berkenkamp. He is actually someone who you might want to interview. He has been around a long time and is a unique and interesting writer. Check my fb friend’s list to find his contact.
How has social media changed the independent film industry?
It has allowed people to get their work out there. This is the plus side. The negative side is that people are for the most part over saturated with information. Serious work is often not easily digested.
What's your opinion on crowdfunding and recent crowdfunding scandals?
I don’t know about the crowdfunding scandals. I’d be interested to find this out.
You could go back in time and see any classic film being made. Which film would it be and why?
Any of the Hitchcock films, as he did not waste the film, so to speak. Also, to travel back and see Orson Wells make Citizen Kane. The new discoveries, new seeing, completely ahead of his time…that would have been quite the treasure…
What's your favorite movie quote and why?
Monologues are more to my liking.
The English Patient – as Katherine is dying in the desert she says:
We die, we die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers, fears we have hidden in, like this wretched cave. We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted — to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps
Wings of Desire – Marion meets her Angel
It's time to get serious.... I was often alone, but I never lived alone. When I was with someone I was often happy. But I also felt it's all a matter of chance. These people are my parents, but it could have been others. Why was that brown-eyed boy my brother, and not the green-eyed boy on the opposite platform? The taxi driver's daughter was my friend, but I could just as well have embraced a horse's head. I was with a man. I was in love. But I could just as well have left him there, and continued on with the stranger who came toward us.... Look at me, or don't. Give me your hand, or don't. No, don't give me your hand, and look the other way.... I think there's a new moon tonight. No night is more peaceful. No blood will be shed in the whole city.... I never toyed with anyone. And yet, I never opened my eyes and thought: 'This is it.'... It's finally getting serious. So I've grown older. Was I the only one who wasn't serious? Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely. Neither when I was alone, nor with others. I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness means at last I am whole. Now I can say it because today I am finally lonely. No more coincidence.... The new moon of decision. I don't know if destiny exists, but decision does exist. Decide. Now we are the times. Not only the whole city, but the whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are more than just two. We personify something. We are sitting in the People's Plaza, and the whole plaza is filled with people, who all wish for what we wish for. We are deciding everyone's game. I am ready. Now it's your turn. You're holding the game in your hand. Now or never. You need me. You will need me. There's no greater story than ours. That of man and woman. It will be a story of giants. Invisible, transposable. A story of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the future of everyone on the plaza. Last night I dreamt of a stranger. Of my man. Only with him could I be lonely. Open up to him. Completely open, completely for him. Welcome him completely into myself. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know it is you.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Yes, I think that there will soon come a time where consciousness and films begin to come more into play, films showing a possible different future in which people are more aware of themselves, their neighbors and the planet in which we live. Almost all-futuristic films (at least mainstream) show an apocalyptic world where either we have blown ourselves up (a few survive) or have to do battle with robots or aliens who try to take over the world. I think this is an era of final cut and DSLR’s that will allow some men and women to make different kinds of films that would never have been possible before. Of course distribution is still in the hands of the few. And yet the Internet holds different possibilities in order to get work out. Perhaps there will be a time where the web can support artists, a few dollars at a time. Kickstarter is one example.
So, back to an imagining…some films being made as models for a different kind of future, not so much a KUMBAYA, as human beings will always struggle with aspects of loneliness and abandonment, fear and hurt, but a different kind of world where there are men an women who fight less with each other, with less divide in terms of understanding, a world where children are seen not as fodder for unrealized dreams of adults, but more as wise little beings who understand innately about concepts of love, acceptance and play, a world where man has understood his place in nature and works with the environment rather than against. There have been films that touch on this, mostly sci-fi where a wise being/alien comes to the Earth and is pitted against ignorant, fearful human beings: i.e. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, or STARMAN.
I think it would be great for humanity to shoot higher, so to speak, give ourselves models of possibility rather than no possibility. My sincere hope would be that these films be made by skilled filmmakers… New Age attempts with poor production values; bad actors, bad cinematography, bad lighting, bad scripts, etc. There is not much value with any of this. Truer works of arts that enter people’s hearts and psyches and begin to shake the dream we seem to live of struggle, fear and worry…my two cents.
Thank you for doing the interview. I hope I can interview you again when you come back from FUKUSHIMA and CHERNOBYL.
Excellent sentiments, Ray. Perhaps you will be the one to make such films!
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