April 25, 2003|Nettie Wild is like her movies: a contradiction, but a compelling one. In one breath, she'll tell you she has no political agenda but is simply looking for a story to tell and finding it in political struggles in Canada and elsewhere. But ask her to tell her story and you'll find a less detached woman, one who is well aware of the "social contract" she has with her subjects and fiercely committed to a definite point of view. The strange thing is, both of these motives seem to nourish each other--her commitment to story gives her subjects the urgency they might not otherwise possess, while her ethical standards give her narratives the backbone they need to demand our attention.
Unlike many figures in Canadian culture, she's not one for paralysis, boldly plunging into complicated (and highly dangerous) political skirmishes to see what happens, then revealing all in films as unpretentious as they are complex. She trusts her point of view as much as she's willing to challenge it, resulting in a body of work that has all of the substance that a documentary demands without the calcifying "worthiness" that often weighs it down. And so it's no wonder that her prominence has won her attention at this year's Hot Docs festival, where she is featured as the subject of the Canadian Focus retrospective and will be speaking, with many of her collaborators, at the screenings of her films. It was a honour to find myself sprawled in a corner with her at Toronto's Isabel Bader theatre, where we got to the business of talking--and where I found her to be humane, articulate, and unpretentious, much like the body of work she has produced.-Travis Hoover
The following films comprise Hot Docs' "Canadian Focus" retrospective of Nettie Wild's work.-TH
A RUSTLING OF LEAVES: INSIDE THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION (1988)
The movie that put Nettie Wild on the map, if nothing else, it's proof that one doesn't have to be "objective" to be fair. Indeed, as she wades into the quagmire of the post-Marcos Philippines, she gives equal time to players left (revolutionary guerrillas, liberal politicians) and right (fascist radio personalities, vigilante militias). Even as she reveals her left bias at every turn, she does her damnedest to see every facet of the struggle facing the country after new president Corazon Aquino reneged on her promise to give land to impoverished farmers and had to bargain with the military to stay in power; Wild risks everything to get close to her subjects, coming up with something more substantial than anything in traditional journalism. Though it's slightly let down by an amorphous and confusing structure (and some weak agitprop intertitles), it's still a shining example of thoroughness and dedication to the documentary cause. ***TUESDAY, APRIL 27th, 1:00pm INNIS TOWN HALL
BLOCKADE (1993)
Another example of Wild being pointed and evenhanded at the same time. There's no doubt that she's on the side of the Gitskan and other Native peoples as they try to defend ancestral land against logging companies, but that doesn't stop her from mapping out the full range of opinions on the subject in order to show what her protagonists are up against. The clash of cultures--one that passes down history orally and sees the land as full in itself, the other that keeps everything on paper and assigns value only to 'natural resources'--puts the Gitskan at odds with both bottom-line seeking industrialists and loggers who fear for their livelihoods, a conflict that affords great opportunities for people to explain themselves in an ignorant and/or racist manner. Par for the Wildian course, the film suffers from shapelessness but still manages to be original and illustrative in its expansive approach. ***WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28th, 4:00pm INNIS TOWN HALL
A PLACE CALLED CHIAPAS (1998)
The weakest film in the Nettie Wild retrospective, Chiapas highlights all of the director's weaknesses (clunky voice-over, loose and chaotic structure) with a subject that blocks the normally far-reaching Wild apparatus. That subject is Subcommandante Marcos, the charismatic and media-savvy leader of the Zapatistas, who in 1994 led a revolt in the Mexican province of Chiapas in response to free-trade agreements that erased the distribution of land to impoverished Mayan farmers. Though the ensuing war of words and images--what THE NEW YORK TIMES called "the first post-modern revolution"--is rich in irony and contradictions, Wild can't keep track of them all, ricocheting from backstory to unsuccessful attempts to snag an interview with Marcos and the introduction of high-ranking Zapatistas whose significance is only sketchily asserted. Snatches of information remain, but there's the sense of too much being crammed into a too-tight 93 minute running time. **THURSDAY, APRIL 29th, 6:45pm ROYAL CINEMA
FIX: THE STORY OF AN ADDICTED CITY (2002)
In response to the constant fatalities on Vancouver's Downtown East Side, home of countless intravenous drug users (and the highest HIV infection rates in North America), the mayor of the city moves to institute safe injection sites to reduce the carnage. This naturally triggers a war between drug-user activists and conservative business owners, and gloriously biased Nettie Wild is there to advocate for the former. Eschewing her voice-over editorializing for once, she lets the players speak for themselves--specifically, the heroin-addicted lead voice of advocacy group VANDU and his straight co-activist/girlfriend as they deal with politics, his debilitating habit, and her attempts to set up a drop-in centre. Exploring the sometimes-dark corners of her main subjects' personalities, Wild strikes a rare balance between addressing an issue and putting a face on it. The results are as heartbreaking as they are informative--a must-see. ***1/2MONDAY, APRIL 26th, 9:15pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE
FILM FREAK CENTRAL: What initially attracted you to documentary? NETTIE WILD: Originally, I started out as an actress. And I went to the first Latin American film festival in Havana, and I was really struck by how extraordinary the documentaries that were there were. I thought they were going to become fuzzy and out of focus and well intentioned, or whatever, and they were extraordinarily in focus, and beautiful, and inspiring. And I thought, Gee. Some of these people who brought the films there had to fight a revolution to make a movie, so what I can do is score a Canada Council grant or something. But the big thing is that I make "political" documentaries--and some people think that that's kind of boring and educational and stuff like that, but what I find is that political documentaries, always the ones we've had the very great pleasure to make, are these huge, big, sprawling human dramas, where the stakes are incredibly high to the point where in some of our films people are actually putting their lives on the line to bring about change in their life, usually to wrestle some small bit of control over their life. So the stakes are huge, and the drama is really high drama, and it's like, they're stories that compel me so much that I can't... It's like they bite me, and they won't let me go. So, that's why I make them.
You live in a country that has a strong documentary tradition. How connected do you feel to that? I feel pretty connected to it. I admire it, I think that it's something to be proud of. I'm not sure that previous Canadian documentaries have influenced the way I frame, or the way I interview, or whatever, but I think the whole idea that documentaries are really valid and wonderful stories, a wonderful storytelling form, that's what I got from [being Canadian]. It's not like it's some kind of weird and esoteric art form here. It's something that's a part of our culture.
Your films tend to wade into unresolved conflicts rather than just set phenomena. What attracts you to these conflicts? I don't have a list of grim-and-determined-issues that I think I should cover. It's kind of like when you're in a bar, and someone comes up to you and starts telling you, "Did you hear about this guy Subcommandante Marcos in Mexico, like he used to be a professor of philosophy and political science, and then he went underground, and then he popped up as the masked guerrilla leader of an indigenous uprising in Mexico?" And I'm hooked! And that's why I make the darned movies--because I can't not make them. It's really weird, and at times people think, How can you invest five years of your life? Well, it just goes like that, you become so embroiled in a one-person story, or a three-person story, or a movement, and then all of a sudden everything that moves seems to relate to it, and I'm hooked. Absolutely hooked. And the big thing that keeps me in the films is, as a storyteller, you're struggling to find a beginning, middle and an end. So to actually craft the story it's not all about an interest in the issue--in fact, it has little to do with that. That's me as a political person, intellectually doing it, but the storyteller wants to tease out--"Okay. How can I retell this story in a way that will pull people into it, the way I've been pulled?"
You have a habit of expressing the views of all sides of the clashes, even when you don't agree with them. Some of the sides.
Well, a wide array of the sides. Are you trying to be fair, or are you trying to hang... ...[My] opponents out to dry?
Yes. What I'm really trying to do is, I'm trying to construct a conflict for the film. So my loyalty is...I'm not an activist, but I make films that are used by activists. My loyalty is not to the issue, and it's not to the movement, it's to the drama of the story.
It's not even a little bit connected to the issue? Well, of course it's connected, but my loyalty, what my first task is, is to create the drama. And so that means I have to embrace the conflict, because the conflict, and the characters are the heart of your drama. And in order to get to the conflict, you've got to have at least two sides. Because it's real life, there's usually about ten, and so that's what compels me to take the various different sides very seriously. It's not any kind of loyalty to any kind of sense of being objective, because I don't believe in that. I believe that you should pursue--you know, be very rigorous--in terms of trying to be as smart and as objective as possible, insofar as you really want to figure out, "Okay. This guy may be, at first impression the hero, and this woman over here, may be at first impression on the other side, not sympathetic, but you've got to give her the turf to really explore her and be surprised by her." Because in that, if you do that, the contradictions will come through. If you wrestle with the contradictions instead of back away from them, you're going to have a way more interesting movie, because you're going to get surprised. There are a few instances where I've been dealing with really scary people. And to protect my skin, because I'm alarmed and scared, I have not been as open with other people. I could be accused of entrapment! (laughs) You know? If I'm sitting there with Jun Palla, who is the radio DJ in A Rustling of Leaves.
Who is totally unforgettable. Yeah. He was unforgettable, and I had pretty good information that he killed people. And so I was consciously feeding him as much rope as possible, so he would... I knew he had a huge ego. And I knew that if I stroked it--I hoped, if I stroked it--he would come forward and threaten people, which is what I'd heard on the radio, so I wanted him to do that on camera.
So how do you gain the trust of your subjects, when you're jumping back and forth between all sides--well, many sides--of the political spectrum... I'll say to Jun Palla, "You're going to see me." I don't tell him I'm going up into the mountains with the guerrillas because I'm afraid he'll put a tail on me and then find the guerrillas, but I'll say, "Well, I'm going to come into the city with Dante's campaign--and maybe I'll see you there," but I'm filming from that perspective. Or with FIX, I'd say to the drug users, "I'm going out with the police tomorrow," and right at the beginning when I pitched the proposal, saying, "Is it okay that I film you guys, this is my project, this is my objective--and I'm also going to spend time with the police, and I'm also going to spend time with Bryce Rossich and the people who are screaming at you." And I explained to them why it's really important for people to see these people and understand the nature of the conflict, I can't just have you speaking for them, I've gotta get these voices. And at the beginning, everyone says, "Oh, yes, that makes sense." But then when it actually comes time for it, I always phone them up beforehand and say, you know, "We're going out with the police tomorrow, we want everybody to know that, or we're going to a meeting--so if you see me with the police, don't write me off," you know? And when I'm out with the police, and I see people from VANDU, I'll make a point of recognizing them. It's not that I'll be ignoring them. Although I have been in some places--like in Chiapas, we were with the refugees, and then we came into the village again with the army, and we all pretended that we hadn't met each other before! (laughs) So you know, it really depends on the situation--but the refugees and myself, we had all of this eye contact, and they knew that I was going to come back in with the army. The army didn't know that I had already been in there, filming people. So, I could be accused of not being that straightforward with the army. That was another judgement call.
How difficult is it to find a crew to go and fly in the face of a paramilitary organization? It's really hard. In Mexico, it was difficult because the paramilitaries kept threatening to shoot the Mexican members of my crew. And the Mexican members of my crew grew a bit weary of it, and rightly so. As a director, whenever I get some bright idea or I hear something going on in some village, my first instinct is to pick up the camera, pick up the crew, and just roar into it, but I quickly learned that it was really important just to sit down with the crew and just say, "Okay, I've got this message, and these refugees have asked us to accompany them back to their village--are you in or are you out?" There were two instances when the Mexican crew just said, "You know, we just can't do it." It's really tough, and you have to understand that in a position like that there's also some different layers of fear. So for instance, the Mexican members of my crew were in a much more dangerous position than I was. That doesn't mean that I wasn't in danger, but I was white, and as far as people were concerned I was from America, which meant that if something happened to this white woman something might happen to them, and so that might buy an extra hour, an extra day or an extra week. But I was definitely in a little bubble, and I was always pushing that bubble as far as I could.
So what is the most dangerous situation you've been in? It was in the Philippines--we got attacked by the armed forces when we were with the guerrilla army. That's one of the last scenes of [A Rustling of Leaves], and that's when Polloi, the radio operator, who was a very close friend of mine, was shot and killed protecting us. Remember that?
Yeah, I do. And that's real, rootin', tootin' open warfare. They don't care who you are, you're just a target at that point. There's no backup in a circumstance like that, and I was scared out of my brain. That's really where... the night before we were a part of that, that was supposed to be an ambush by the guerrillas, but it went sideways, and it ended up being a rout. And that night, with the guerrilla army, you could smell the smell of fear in the air. Because there were soldiers there who were 17, 18 years old, and I remember the medical officer, who was about all of 22--I remember him throwing up because his stomach was in such a twist. And everybody had diarrhoea, including myself, because we were all so scared. You're just scared out of your brain.
You've worked with Kirk Tougas on most of your films. What does he bring to the mix? It's like having a second director on a shoot with Kirk, in the best sense of the word. He's trying to always figure out what the hell film is it that I'm trying to make, and make that film, so I don't feel that it's being wrestled away. But he has a wonderful sense of storytelling and drama, so all the time that you're working with Kirk you're trying to figure out, okay, here's a big demonstration--who's your main character? Who are you shooting in this demonstration? What's your point of view? And what's wonderful is that you have these ongoing conversations about character and motivation and whatever with Kirk, and because you've had those conversations and because he's in there for the long distance, when he's shooting one character, and say Jun Palla's in the background, with Kirk you've got somebody who's so involved in the actual thesis of the film that he doesn't have to be told "Kirk, widen up, there's Jun Palla there." He can see it and he'll do it. Plus the fact, he is a very strong experimental filmmaker as well, so he brings a very wonderful weird sense of frame and experimental film to it, so anything goes.
One of my favourite things in life is to "go fishing," is what we call it, which is we just go out with the camera and we're in some kind of place somewhere on this planet, and it's not necessarily some big event happening--just usually waiting for the light to be magical. And we just kind of plunk down somewhere and go fishing for images. Kirk also taught me how to shoot, and that's a wonderful thing for one artist to pass to another. Gradually, what has happened with the films is it's gone from him shooting--in A Rustling of Leaves, he taught me how to shoot, because he didn't feel he could go up into the hills with the guerrillas. And then after that, I have an "additional camera" credit in that film, and in the next film, I have another additional camera credit, I shot a little bit more of that film. Then finally, in A Place Called Chiapas, I got a camera credit. And with FIX, he and I did about the same. It's just a really rich relationship.
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