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Steinman: Two Down, Many to Go by Don Schwartz
Two mothers from Steinman's film, 'Motherland'. photo: courtesy J. Steinman
NEW YORK-BASED JENNIFER STEINMAN
began making films in college and, a couple years out of college, went to work as a Staff Editor for CBS. So far, she’s directed and produced two feature documentaries.
“Motherland”, follows six women, who have experienced devastating losses, as they take a journey of healing to South Africa, where they perform volunteer work for children. The film won the Audience Award for Emerging Visions at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival and went on to receive many more festival awards.
Her second, which was just released in 2013, is “Desert Runners” and concerns the brave few who take on the challenge of running in four ultramarathons—about 150 miles each—in the four harshest deserts on Earth, in the same calendar year.
The film was selected as the “Best of the Fest" at its world premiere at the Edinburgh (Scotland) Film Festival. Having just screened the Mill Valley International Film Festival, as of this writing it is scheduled to appear at The Vancouver International Film Festival, , The Hamptons International Film Festival and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Both films have found distribution.
Steinman was kind enough to drive across the Bay to my Larkspur home for our interview. Although I began with my usual basic questions, we soon focused on her two films which, while quite different from each other, both evoke powerful emotions, thoughts and questions.
Steinman on location making her new film, 'Desert Runners'. photo: courtesy J. Steinman
Where were you born and do you have siblings?
Berkeley, California, born and raised. I have one sister, she’s four and a-half years younger.
What kind of work does your father do?
My father’s an engineer, and he actually designs air ionizers for large company clean rooms. He was the VP of technology of his company for years, and travelled all over the world talking about the dangers of static electricity in your work environment.
And your mother?
My mother’s an artist, an environmental artist. She does large-scale ecological installations, basically—so they are like site-specific sculptures, she does a lot of gardens and parks, and things like that. Using all reclaimed, recycled, and live materials.
I imagine you went to high school in Berkeley, what about college?
I went to UC San Diego. [And got a degree in] visual arts. Well, it was with a film emphasis. I basically studied film through the art department. I also took took performance art, painting, photography.
What did you do after graduating?
I started trying to work in production any way I could...
Was this in Southern California?
No, this was here in the Bay Area. I just started volunteering on other people’s shoots. I PA’d, did funny little side jobs with a little Hi-8 camera. Did as many different kind of jobs as I could.
Shot from 'Desert Runners'. photo: courtesy J. Steinman
But the thing I really loved in school—more than any other part of the filmmaking process—was the editing. That was my favorite time, in the editing room. And back then it was ¾ inch tapes, reel-to-reel; or, like, I cut my senior film on a flatbed. There was no Avid [laughs] back then.
I just loved editing. For me it feels like collage—it has that fine art piece to it. It feels like someone has just handed you a bunch of raw footage, raw material and says, ‘Here, make something.’
That is where the magic happened for me, in the editing room. So, I knew if I had to pick one aspect of production to focus on, that I wanted to edit.
So, I got a job serving coffee at Varitel, which was a high-end post-house in San Francisco, in the '90s. And I quickly learned the post-production world, how it worked. Spent about a year learning the business, as a young 23-year old.
Then I moved to New York, and got my first editing job at CBS. Long story short, I spent a year in New York working at CBS and really missed California. Channel 5 in San Francisco, the local CBS station, was starting up a show, and I got transferred out here.
I worked on Evening Magazine for its first year, and after a year of that I decided to go freelance. I just started editing, and I was editing all over the Bay Area. I initially had lots of TV clients.
But then I realized that my real love was films and documentary films in particular, and so I got my own Avid and had my own edit suite for a while, in Emeryville, where people could come and work—because I found that the independent filmmakers were the ones who needed you to have your own equipment.
So, I set up that shop with a partner, and I edited other people’s films for a while, and I still did a lot of corporate work and TV work too. And at a certain point I realized that what I really wanted to do was make my own films.
I’d spent a lot of years making other people’s films, and it was time to go back to making my own, which was my original dream as a nineteen-year old. [laughs] That was 2006, about seven years ago, when I decided to make ‘Motherland’.
Did something specific happen? Some catalyst?
I was working, editing on somebody else’s film, and Hurricane Katrina happened. And one of my best friends hopped on a plane and took off to go to New Orleans to help.
All the mothers on the healing journey to South Africa from Steinman's film, 'Motherland'. photo: courtesy J. Steinman
I couldn’t go because I was working on this other person’s film. And I felt really trapped. Everything in me wanted to go to New Orleans, to help, volunteer, be part of the relief effort, and I had friends down there who lost their homes and (pause)... You know, it was the first really big tragedy that happened here, in our country, in a long time since 9/11. And I wanted to help.
This was the first time that I felt that maybe my time of working for other people in that capacity is supposed to come to an end now. And not that I don’t still do work for other people—‘cause I do—but it’s not the focus of my career any more the way it was back then.
And after that happened, when that job was over, I felt like I needed to regroup, to figure out what do I really want to be doing because obviously, being at home, editing someone else’s film wasn’t fulfilling me any more.
And I got the idea for ‘Motherland’, and it was really strong for me. It was like, ‘Okay, you can’t ignore it, you really need to make this movie.’
And the funny thing that I’ve learned in the last six or seven years, about making a film of your own, is if it’s supposed to happen, it will happen—and often whether you like it or not. [laughs]
Like, that film for me, took on a life of its own, where it started as an idea, and then I mentioned it to someone, and the next thing I knew, it started to snowball, and, literally, from concept to our first shooting day was less than six months.
It was like the seas parted and made way for everything to fall in place for it to happen—effortlessly and seamlessly—in a way that no other project that I had thought up before. With other projects ideas it was always an obstacle here, an obstacle there. But when it’s the right project, it just happens. Sometimes despite you. [laughs]
‘Motherland’ looks like an expensive film. How did you finance it?
Almost entirely friends and family personal donations. I raised a little, teeny bit of grant money. Because it was my first film and I didn’t really have the track record to ask for the money in advance. I ended up charging all my credit cards to go and do the shoot.
When I got back I cut together a trailer and put together a whole fund-raising package, and went out and pounded the pavement to raise money. And we were able to pretty much just raise money through friends and family. (pause) Raising money’s really hard. [laughs]
[sighs] You know, I know a lot of filmmakers who are great at grant writing and spend a lot of their time going that avenue to raise the money to make a film. And for me...
Two of the racers from 'Desert Runners' coming down the home stretch. photo: courtesy J. Steinman
It just never really made sense for me at that time because I felt like the grants that were available were so small—five thousand dollars here, ten thousand dollars there—and the amount of work that you had to do just to apply for that was so time consuming.
I found that I could go out and work for ten days and make more than five thousand dollars editing, and have that money in ten days, as opposed to spending two months on a grant application for five thousand dollars that I may or may not get.
So, at a certain point I saw that was not a good use of my time, and I went for the private funding instead. Begged a lot of generous people who cared about the issue, and things like that. [laughs]
And then my next film, [‘Desert Runners’]—a totally difference scenario. Almost all corporate sponsorship. But that’s because it’s a totally different subject matter... Fundraising, in general, is such a big conversation. What I’ve learned is that it really is specific to each film, what’s going to work, what the film’s about, and who’s going to be interested in the film.
So, ‘Motherland’ involved you and six mothers going to South Africa. Did the mothers pay for their trip?
No. When I cast that movie I didn’t want a cast of characters of only people who could afford to pay for a trip to Africa. You know, we didn’t stay at The Ritz [aughs]. It wasn’t a fancy trip. It was on a filmmaker’s shoestring budget, but it was financed by the movie, not by them.
How long were you in South Africa?
Three weeks. We shot for about 17, 18 days.
And your crew?
I had two camera people and two sound people, and a field producer. So there were six of us total.
That’s not a cheap movie! Congratulations. That’s all I can say. You climbed that mountain.
Thank you. [laughs] It feels like a long time ago, but it’s nice to like..., ‘Oh, yeah, I did do that. Wow. That was crazy.’ [laughs]
For us viewers, of course, we watch it, it’s happening now. I’m still in South Africa. I just want to stay with this film. What brought on ‘Motherland’?
I had a really good friend who lost her son in a car accident. I remember when it happened, I remember calling her that day, and it had just happened, and she was like, ‘I can’t [talk] now, Jason just died.’ I’ll never forget that day.
He was nineteen years old, killed in a car accident, and I had known people who had lost people. I had just lost my grandfather. But I had never known anyone who had lost a child. And it seemed like such a specific kind of grief.
I didn’t have kids at the time, but I just remember watching her and thinking ‘How does she get up in the morning?’—and being so amazed that she did. I remember watching her kind of find her way, and being awed by her strength, her ability to carry on.
Anyway, flash forward, a year later, I also had always done a lot of volunteer work, and I always really loved volunteering, and felt like it brought a lot to my life.
One of the things I learned from volunteer work was that it always felt like a healing thing to do. You go, and you think you’re going to give to other people, but really you end up receiving so much more than you give.
And I was really drawn to go to Africa. I’d been reading about it, and I’d been trying to figure out where to go. And then one day I just had this thought, ‘Going to Africa to do volunteer work… volunteering can be healing,’ and then I thought about my friend on the same day, and I wondered if a trip like that could be healing for her?
So, I just called her, on a whim, I said, ‘I had this crazy idea, do you think going on a trip like this would be something that would be healing for you in your grieving process?’
And she instantly burst into tears, and she said every hair on her arms stood up, and she said, ‘I’ve been feeling so stuck, and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do next, and that’s it.’
Then I said, ‘What do you think about filming it? And what if we brought a group of moms who were all going through something similar to what you’re going through?’ And she said, ‘I’m in, let’s do it.’
The whole thing just snowballed from there. The concept was to test this theory: Could volunteering and giving be a healing thing to do for some one that had suffered a tragedy like this?
How did you chose a charity in South Africa?
I knew I wanted to go to South Africa, I don’t know why I knew that. [laughs] And then I found a placement organization that puts people where they’re needed.
My philosophy on volunteering has always been about offering yourself up in service. It’s not about you saying what you want to do, it’s about them telling you what they need. So, I didn’t want to pick the place, I wanted them to tell us where they needed us.
So, what did you do?
We stayed within a town, and then within that town we did different things every day. We went to daycare centers—a lot of the centers there have, like, a hundred kids and two adults. Some of the kids are orphans. A lot of them have families, but they can’t afford to feed them, so the center is where they get their one meal a day. We did a day at a school for physically disabled kids, we spent some time in a super-rural village—no running water, no electricity.
So, it was all about taking care of children, primarily?
Originally my idea was what would happen if you brought together children without parents with parents without children.
Were there any particularly dramatic stories? Epiphanies? For the mothers or for you?
I always knew, going into it, that something beautiful would happen between the mothers and the kids. How could it not? But what I didn’t think about in advance, didn’t expect, was what it would mean for the mothers to be together as a group, to be with each other for those three weeks. And that actually ended up being the real beauty of the trip.
Yes, we had these amazing experiences with the children, but the experience for the mothers—of being on a trip for three weeks with five other women who had been through what they had been through, and for the first time in their lives not feeling isolated and alone in the tragedy—that was the real story of the trip, where the real beauty and the healing occurred. Also getting to meet African women who’d been through the same thing.
How did you meet the African mothers?
We were staying in their homes. They were our hosts.
What happened after you finished it. What was the path of the film?
It premiered at South by Southwest (http://sxsw.com/), and won an audience award there—which was awesome [laughs]. It did really well on the festival circuit, won a bunch of awards, which was really nice.
Now it sits on my distributor’s shelf [laughs]. And I probably sell about one copy a month. And it’s awesome [great laughter].
[Very Serious] Of course, Vanguard has it.
Vanguard has it, yes. And now it’s on iTunes, Netflix, DVD, Amazon. It’s pretty much everywhere.
And how’s it been doing?
Good. I learned a lot on my first film, and I think... I mean I made the movie I wanted to make for my first film. Didn’t do things that filmmakers are supposed to do like consider who your audience is going to be. I mean this is if you want to be a working filmmaker who’s actually making a living, doing what you love to do. You have to consider things like marketing, publicity, who the audience is, what the appeal’s going to be to the general public.
It is exceptionally hard to pitch a film about six women who lost children. I have never been so challenged by anything as much as I was by the marketing of this film. Nine times out of ten people would say, ‘Oh, you made a movie. What’s it about?’ And you tell them, and they go, ‘Ohhhhh, that sounds hard to watch.’
Oh, my god. I wouldn’t hesitate to green-light that film.
But also, nine times out of ten, if you can get them to actually watch it, they love it. But it’s getting people to watch it which is the hard part, and that’s what marketing is all about, right? So, it was a learning experience, and tricky to get the film out into the world in that way. Whereas my new film [‘Desert Runners’] which you just watched, is not a hard sell at all. People line up to see it. I think it just doesn’t feel heavy to people, in the same way.
And I just think that’s a part of our culture. People go to the movies to escape a lot of the times..., there’s people who don’t mind seeing heavy films, but the general public—I would say 75% of the people—would rather see something goofy and funny on their one movie night a month than the heavier stuff. It’s a bummer to me, but a reality I’ve been faced with.
Yeah, we need to find a way of marketing the idea of documentaries. So, what year did ‘Motherland’ premier South by Southwest?
2009.
Were you already working on ‘Desert Runners’ when it premiered?
No.
Had you even thought about ‘Desert Runners’?
No.
So, you made ‘Desert Runners’ pretty quickly.
Yeah.
So, ‘Motherland’ came out in 2009, and then you’re making money with your media work, and how did ‘Desert Runners’ emerge?
At the filmmaker party at South by Southwest I met Sevan Matossian who is the cameraman for ‘Desert Runners’, and we became friends. He loved my film, and I loved his film, and we said to each other, ‘Oh, we should make a film together.’ So, we tossed around ideas with each other for a couple months. So, in October [2009], my mom had been really sick, and I had spent three weeks in the hospital with her, and it was horrible and depressing, all about sickness and sadness—a yucky time.
And so, my mom was finally feeling better. I went back to New York, and the next weekend I had this health and nutrition conference to go to. I got there, and one of the speakers was this quirky, wacky Irish guy named David O’Brien who was in his mid-fifties. He was telling a story about how ten years earlier, when he was in his forties, he had run this desert ultramarathon.
So, he’s telling this whole story of this race he did ten years ago, and he’s funny, and animated. There’s like five thousand people at this conference, and he’s got the whole audience engaged. And my filmmaker brain is going, ‘Now that guy is a character.’ People were mesmerized by him.
I’d never heard of these desert ultramarathons where people run 150 miles through the desert. I thought, that’s insane.
So, I’m thinking this whole time this guy is a character, and then, at the very end of his talk he says, ‘So, what I’ve decided to do now, ten years later, is I’m not going to do just one of these races, I’m going to do four of them. And I’m going to do them through the four harshest deserts in the world, all in one year, next year.
And, by the way, only one guy has ever done this before, and he’s a professional ultramarathon runner—and I want to be number two.’ And I was sitting in the audience and I thought to myself, ‘Now that’s a story.’
I waited till Dave was done, walked back stage, walked right up to him, and said, ‘Have you thought about filming what you’re going to do next year?’ I instantly thought it was a great story to partner with Sevan on. I called him up, and I said, ‘I met this funny guy at a conference. He’s going to do an insane thing next year.
I think it could be really cool to film him doing it. Do you want to go to Ireland with me and meet him, and see if we think he’s a good character, if this is worth making a film about?’
And so, two months later we were on a plane to Ireland. We hung out with Dave and his family for about a week, and at the end of the week we decided to give the first desert run a try and see what happens. [laughs] That’s how it happened.
Did you have the idea of covering all four races at that point?
This is where the whole fundraising piece comes in. I had an investor who came to me after ‘Motherland’ was done, and said, ‘I want to give you some seed money to start a next project.’ It was $10,000. We figured out that was enough to pay for our tickets and the gear we needed to get to the first desert.
And we decided to do it. We’ll just go there. We have no idea what we’re going to find when we get there. We’ll shoot everything we see, we’ll look for a story, see what’s interesting, we’ll follow Dave, see who else is there. Worst case scenario: We’ll come home, make a twenty-minute video about this cool race that happens in Chile, sell DVDs on our website, and hope to make $10,000 back.
And sure, the dream was ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to make a feature film about all four deserts?’ But, we only have $10,000 so, we’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got now, and just see what happens.
So, we went to the first desert. We had no idea if we were going to be able to make a film, how we could make a film. It just seemed like a path we should follow. And it wasn’t until we got back from the first desert that a corporate sponsor contacted us, and said, ‘We heard you were there. We’d be interested in sending you to all four deserts.’
You could write a book about making this film.
I could. [laughs] It’s a journey. [pause]
I love filmmaking. I love all of it—not just the interviewing people, having a camera in people’s face and editing the footage. But I also love the moments like that where you have to jump off a high-dive without knowing if there’s any water in the pool. If you aren’t willing to take those risks sometimes, nothing’s going to happen.
I keep getting this question in interviews: What advice would you give to young filmmakers? I always say, ‘Just make the movie. Because you could sit around forever waiting for all the ducks to get in a row.’ My yoga teacher said this the other day: I’ve never seen ducks line up, have you? (laughs) It’s so true. You have to take a leap of faith and go for it, even if you have no idea if it’s going to work or not.
And a lot of times nothing comes of it, and you’re like, ‘Okay. That sucked. Didn’t turn out the way I hoped.’ Then you move on and try something else.
When I talk about ‘Desert Runners’ I say ‘I love this story.’ I love the fact that we went out there having no idea what we were doing, and now almost four years later we have a movie.
You’ve had one festival showing across the pond, and already have significant distribution prior to your North American debut. What’s next?
That’s the question of the day. I know. I need a new story. I’m thinking about it every day.
Take any one of my stories, please! (Jennifer laughs) Of course, I want to see a documentary about the making of ‘Desert Runners’. Last question. I’ve adopted this one as my ritual last question: What is your philosophy of filmmaking?
Yeah. It’s interesting that you ask that question. It’s actually something I’ve been thinking about so much lately—especially when it comes time to pick your next subject. Let me separate. I do have a philosophy, and I also have an interest... that I’m seeing repeat for myself.
I’m drawn to people, to real people, to digging out what’s real in the hearts of people, getting to their vulnerabilities. And, also about universal issues among those real people. If that makes sense?
So, with this film I really learned that about myself. Because I’m not a runner, and I wasn’t really interested in what gear they were using, or what their training regime was, their schedule for eating all day. And I learned that a lot of runners are really interested in that stuff. They want to know the details. And I really didn’t care.
I was not interested in that. So, being out there I asked myself, ‘What am I interested in, why do I think this story is interesting even though I am not really into running?’
And what I’m interested in is this: Who are these people? Why did they decide to do this? What makes them tick? What kind of thought process does it take to succeed at something like this? And, ultimately, what makes someone think they can do this—when ninety five percent of the population would never even consider it?
And, going back to my original story about being at the hospital with my mom, and then seeing Dave; when Dave said, ‘I’m going to do this.’ The first thing that went through my head is: My mom thinks she can’t even walk around the block. Why does this guy think he can run 150 miles through the desert—four times in one year? He’s not that much younger than my mom, and yet it’s all about what we each think is possible for ourselves.
And this guy thinks that this is a possibility—in a way that I wouldn’t think it’s a possibility. My mom would never think it’s a possibility. Most of the people I talk would never think it’s a possibility.
[pauses] So, what is that?
That is my area of interest. What makes people think they can do the things they think they can do? How is that the same or different from other people? That’s my interest area that I found. No matter what the subject is—whether it was ‘Motherland’, whether it was ‘Desert Runners’, or my next film. I’m noticing that’s what pulls me forth as a filmmaker, that desire to know what makes people tick.
And then philosophy-wise, I have a lot of different philosophies around filmmaking. One of them is that I’m fiercely loyal to my subjects. It’s something that’s evolved in the making of these two movies. My number one priority is them. And this idea that they have entrusted me to tell their story, entrusted me with their lives. And it is my job—I believe, as their filmmaker—to honor them.
I have no interest in making any kind of reality TV, I have no interest in painting people in a light that is not true for them. I am a hundred percent interested in finding the humanity in all of my subjects. And if I think somebody is being a (pauses) ‘less than appealing’ character—for lack of a better way to put it—I’m going to look for ‘why?’ and talk about that. Does that make sense?
I don’t believe people are inherently malicious, there’s always a reason behind it. If someone is behaving badly in my movie, I’m going to make sure that the audience knows why, so that the audience can see who they are in their humanity. It would just really be hard for me to have one of my subjects be really upset with how they were portrayed in my movie.
I just don’t think that would be fair to people; so, in a certain sense I think that counts me out of making certain subjects (laughs). But, this is what I’ve learned about myself.
I understand you’re also interested in making narratives.
I am. I have a couple films in my head. I have a script that I worked on for a little bit and then got pregnant and had a baby and everything sort of gets put on hold. [laughs] But I do have a couple...
So, if someone came to you with millions of dollars financing, would you want to move on your narratives?
In a heartbeat. I don’t even need millions. One million would be awesome. I could make a killer film for one million dollars. [laughs] Posted on Oct 24, 2013 - 09:57 PM