¿Hay algún vídeo, película, campaña o cineasta en particular que haya tenido una gran influencia en tu carrera?
Zack Canepari & Drea Cooper’s “California Is A Place” showed me how independent doc shorts for online were possible, and also that they could be quirky, stylized and emotionally resonant. This, along with MediaStorm’s short multimedia pieces, opened my world to that wonderful blurry space between film + journalism on the web.
Jason Tippet’s “Only The Young” showed me how cinematography in doc can rival that of narrative features, and tell a human story.
¿Qué te motivó a hacer esta película?
I learned through epidemiologist Jonathan Smith (he’s in the film) about thousands of miners dying silently in the mining camps in South Africa, Lesotho and surrounding countries. I’d worked with Aeras before on a film series about the rise of drug-resistant TB across the world, and their Dir of Communications at the time, Kari Stoever, and I decided to team up to make this short that directly confronts the neglect of gold miners with TB.
Por favor, dinos qué cámara o cámaras utilizaste principalmente, así como cualquier otro equipo especial que hayas empleado y por qué lo utilizaste.
Canon 5D Mark II and Mark III. Jonathan Smithand his team shot most of the footage while working on his film THEY GO TO DIE and his VOICES Campaign involving similar issues.
Cuéntanos qué estilos o técnicas especiales utilizaste durante la producción de tu película para ayudar a contar tu historia.
Jonathan’s interviews with widows of miners are heartbreaking; he gave me a hard drive of 10-12 of these… it was obvious his team had spent the time to build report and was sensitive to peoples’ pain around sharing their stories.
¿Cómo ha ido evolucionando tu historia desde el primer día hasta el último de la fase de posproducción? ¿Es tu historia tal y como pensabas que sería?
It was a collaborative process! The story was pretty straight-forward, and with a particular message, but there were some interesting side topics that came up along the way and I found a way to weave in.
Describe, por favor, la experiencia más gratificante que tuviste durante el rodaje de esta película.
Screening it at the SADC TB conference in 2013 – I wasn’t there, but my Producer at Aeras told me about it… it’s exactly the place and people we wanted to see it, to face what was happening to gold miners directly.
¿Qué consejo darías a otros cineastas comprometidos?
Listen, listen, listen. You’re a filmmaker – you don’t have the answers, and I guarantee there is no one solution that will solve anything anyway. So listen as best you can to at least do justice to the issue or conflict in your film, and reveal the nuances of an issue. It’s not your job to provide solutions, necessarily (that’s a big burden) – it’s your job to make people think, make people feel, and make people grapple with the solutions that may be out there.
¿Qué es lo que más te gusta del proceso de rodaje y por qué?
People, always people. I like absorbing who people seem to be, talking with them about who they are, and this gives rise to why they think what they think. And then everything they think and everything they are from one moment changes in the next, because humans do that constantly, and nothing is certain… and I love to be privy to it all.
¿Cuál es el objeto que siempre te llevas cuando entrenas al aire libre y por qué?
Lotsa lens cloth. Too much of my earliest footage is smudgy because I’d just use my shirt to wipe the lenses. Yuck.
¿Qué te gustaría que el público se llevara de tu película?
What they will!
Enumera los puntos clave que deberían tratarse en un debate posterior a la proyección:
*What did the audience previously know about tuberculosis? Did they know that behind HIV, TB is the leading infectious disease killer in the world? How have their perspectives of the disease changed after seeing UNDERMINED?
Por favor, facilite información sobre cualquier novedad reciente relacionada con el tema o los temas de la película. ¿En qué aspectos han cambiado las cosas y en cuáles no?
Unfortunately, miners continue to be infected with TB, and drug-resistance is on the rise.
¿Qué oportunidades hay para quienes estén interesados en participar más activamente?
Follow Aeras work
See Jonathan Smith’s feature-length film about miners : http://theygotodie.com/
© SIMA Academy