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Environmental Docmaker Speaks by Don Schwartz
Suzan Bazara, more comfortable behind the camera, finally poses for a portrait. photo: courtesy S. Bazara
BASED IN TELLURIDE, COLORADO, HOME
to the famous narrative festival, Suzan Beraza started her career in theater—acting, directing and teaching—but inner impulses and outer circumstances drew her to the world of documentary filmmaking. Thus far, she has produced and directed two feature documentaries, and a third is on the way. Well received, they have earned at least twenty awards to date.
With an initial focus on the devastating environmental impact of plastic bags, “bag it: is your life too plastic” takes a broader and deeper look at the environmental and health impacts of plastics in general.
Beraza utilized the folksy, everyman persona of actor Jeb Berrier, who hosts the film and mirrors typical reactions to the bad news about plastics and what we can do to reduce our use.
“Uranium Drive-In” covers the environmental microcosm of a small town struggling with the decision to allow uranium mining and milling in their region.
Following the old-fashioned journalistic dictate to cover both sides of a story, Beraza presented a more compelling picture of community needs in conflict as she gives strong voice to each sides. Her focus is on the people, their lives, and the concerns that drive their conflict.
Currently in production is “¡No Soy Puta!”, which means “I Am Not a Whore!”, examining sex tourism in the Dominican Republic.
Born in Jamaica, to a mother from the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, and a father of Spanish and Cuban descent, Beraza comments, “I kinda joke around that I’m ‘hick and spic’.”
Two and a-half years later the family moved to Puerto Rico where she remained until college. But, during high school, her father moved to the Dominican Republic where she visited frequently and developed a strong connection to the place and its people.
It was in high school where Beraza found and developed her acting and performing skills. She attended Berry College, in Mount Berry, Georgia, earning her B.A. in Theater. Immediately after Berry and portending a different destiny, Beraza crewed on Emile Ardolino’s 1987 hit film, “Dirty Dancing”.
She went on to work at the Flat Rock Playhouse, North Carolina's state theater near Asheville. Beraza took a year of physical theater training at the Dell’ Arte School of Physical Theater in Northern California; and she studied directing physical theater at Ecolé Philippe Gaulier in London.
Beraza has performed as a can-can dancer, and has been singing with a women’s acapella group, Heartbeat, for seven years. After her time in the American south, Beraza and boyfriend moved to Telluride, Colorado where they started The Telluride Theater Company.
Still active, she was the company’s artistic director for 12 years—directing, performing, and organizing seasons. She has also taught at four educational institutions.
I spoke by telephone with Beraza, who was at the Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival, representing her students from the Youth Documentary Academy.
CineSource:When you were at Berry, did you have a vision of working in film?
Suzan Beraza: I’ve always loved film, but I was pretty much on the theater track, which I did for 15 years. But most of the times when I had ideas, they would come to me in film; and I would volunteer for the Telluride Film Festival.
I had a short story in my head that was nagging at me for years. One year I just got together with a few friends and said, ‘I have a film.’ We did it in the Dominican Republic. It was called “Sister and Brother.”
Ms Bezara hard at work editing, her profession when she isn't producing her own docs. photo: S. Bezara
I went to edit the film at a time when editing was changing from linear to non-linear. So, I edited it myself. I was one of the first people in town to try it out. After that I started getting hired as an editor [laughing] because I knew how to use this software. I worked as an editor for quite a few years.
After that, I made another short film that was a tongue-in-cheek commentary on US policies called ‘Life’s a Beach.’ It got into quite a few festivals internationally, but not very many in the US.
After that film came out I decided to try a feature documentary, which was ‘bag it’. It started off as a short film. I’d heard a news story about plastics, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s pretty interesting.’
The towns of Telluride and Mountain Village were having a plastic bag reduction challenge. So, I went to the towns, said this would be a really cool thing to cover, and I got a little bit of funding from the two towns.
But once I started researching and getting into the story more, it became a bit of a rabbit hole that you go down. All of a sudden, you just realize there’s a much bigger story there. I’d felt like I was a pretty informed citizen as far as knowing what’s healthy and not healthy.
The whole thing about plastic was a real surprise to me. I felt like there wasn’t much information out there about its impact on oceans and our own health. This was a story that I felt needed to get out there.
So, it became a feature film, and I brought on board Jeb Berrier who’s in the film. We’d done theater together, and I knew he was comfortable in front of the camera—he improvised easily.
Had you had environmental concerns before?
I would say I’m pretty environmental, I try to be pretty aware, and not waste. Maybe that’s because I was growing up on an island where resources are a little bit more restricted. Water is more precious. Bathrooms have signs up saying ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow.’ [laughing]
Maybe it’s because my mother is kind of a thrifty type. It kind of came up more when I was making this film. I’d been a vegetarian for eleven years, and so I definitely was already, kind of, that person.
’bag it’ started as a short funded by two small communities; but as a feature, how did you fund it?
Most of our funding came from individual donors. It was verrrry low budget. Once we had a rough cut, we started to get some grant funding, and we were able to finish it off.
At the time, I was pretty naive, and thought ‘make a film, do the best you can to make it happen, and just finish it’ (laughs).
But you traveled to various places outside the US!
Yes, we did.
That’s expensive!
Yes, it is. Unless you travel the way we travelled. On those trips it was just Jeb and myself. At Midway, we had one camera guy that went. China, we bought the footage. I went to the Bahamas a few days to film the beaches.
We just scrimped: really cheap lodgings, staying with friends. The main trip we had was Europe. It was very fast, like twelve days or something.
You were handling audio and video?!
David Byars (camera, editor), Casey Nay (producer, editor) and Suzan Beraza (director, producer) at the premiere of 'Uranium Drive-In' at Mountainfilm in Telluride. photo: courtesy S. Bazara
Yep. It was low budget. [laughs]
It doesn’t look that way. I’ve seen documentaries with a larger crew, and they didn’t do as good a job as you did!
Well, thank you. [laughs] Again, part of it was just naiveté. I thought I just have to be a ‘one-man band’—producer, director, camera, audio, everything. [laughs]
Was that for the whole shoot?
I really had a great team. We had an awesome producer, Michelle Maughan, and a great editor, Casey Nay, both of whom helped tremendously. When I was in the US, I had a gal named Leigh Reagan, who did a lot of the filming when we were in California, and a different guy, Jim Hurst, went to Midway.
I couldn’t go for that long, and Jim was available. He was a great camera guy, and he was willing to go. And it worked out well for him. He made a lot of connections there, and ended up working on Chris Jordan’s film called 'Midway' about albatross.
And Chris Jordan is in our film. He’s the artist that does these big art pieces about counting large numbers. He’d become fascinated with Midway. We became like a little family of filmmakers there, looking at different parts of the same issue.
What happened after picture-lock?
Ms Bezara hard at work editing, her profession when she isn't producing her own docs. photo: S. Bezara
I didn’t know much about film festivals. We didn’t have a finished film by the time Sundance came around. We ended up premiering it here in Telluride, at Mountainfilm Festival, which is a fantastic festival.
I have been to a lot of film festivals now, and I really love that festival—even though it’s in my hometown. It does more docs than Telluride Film Festival does.
[We] got some nice attention, which I didn’t expect, but someone from PBS said, ‘Hey, we’d love to show your film.’ It was Rocky Mountain PBS. We ended up doing our PBS broadcasts through NETA. We were in a lot of markets in the U.S. Over eighty percent of PBS broadcasters picked it up.
Sure, we wanted the movie to make a little money—so that we could continue to make films, but our main goal was to get as many viewers as possible. This is why we wanted to do PBS. It’s very egalitarian. Everybody can have access to PBS, you don’t have to subscribe to anything.
And then we got picked up after that contract ended by The Documentary Channel, which screened it for another two years. And now it’s on Outside Television. So, it’s had quite a long broadcast life.
It’s also been broadcast in over 30 countries, which has been fantastic. It’s had over 2,000 screenings at schools, universities, and community groups. It’s had a great run.
At what point had you seen ‘Plastic Planet’?
We were already finished with the film when I saw that one. I was like, ‘Oh, no! There’s this film coming out about plastic.’ We had even considered ‘Plastic Planet’ as a title at one point. I saw the film. There were some similar people in both films, but I felt that our films were different enough. It was definitely more of a European film, as far as its distribution.
So, you kinda get worried at first, and then I thought, ‘Ya know what? There’s room in the world (laughing) for more than one film about plastic.’ The more awareness that’s out there, the better it is. I welcome as many films about plastic or anything along those lines as possible.
It sounds like your first feature documentary was very successful.
Yeah. It’s done well for us. It’s allowed me to not have to work a second job, and keep making films, which has been fantastic.
You made ‘bag it’ and it went wild. What happened after that?
This whole debate with the uranium mill was happening locally. I thought it would be an interesting topic, but there was a bit of concern that it might be too local.
I tried to think of a way to frame the story that is way beyond this little town, and this issue, because it rings true for so many other communities throughout the country—throughout the world. People are trying to decide whether or not they want resource extraction as the main economic engine in their community.
I went to a few of the meetings that were happening—it’s just so nearby, only an hour drive from where we are. We started doing some preliminary filming, and we decided it would be a good film to pursue. We kept working on it, and started getting funding from different sources.
I was more savvy in the whole grant writing process. We got some grants. So much of my job is fundraising. I’m sure you get that from a lot of filmmakers.
We were able to get the funds to complete the film. And it’s now being broadcast on Pivot TV which used to be The Documentary Channel which was acquired by Participant Media—they’ve done giant social issue docs and fiction films: ‘Food, Inc.’ and ‘The Cove’, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ They wanted to have a channel where they widen their audience.
The DVD was released on October 21st by First Run Features. It’s on iTunes, and we have an education distributor. We’re doing university screenings. This is a similar model that we had with ‘bag it’.
I think ‘bag it’ is the kind of film that a wide range of people enjoy and want to see. Everybody uses plastic, it’s accessible, it’s funny, and sad. It’s got many emotions going on.
‘Uranium Drive-In’ is definitely a much more narrow audience which we knew in making the film. But, we’re really pleased that we were able to have it be broadcast.
I was impressed with how well you sought and presented voices from both sides of this ubiquitous people-versus-Big Energy conflict.
Part of this was that I was very torn as well because it became much more than just an environmental issue. It became about people that are really doing their best to survive, and who really, honestly do believe that it’s not that dangerous. I just wanted to respect their opinion as well.
It became fascinating to me. [pause] You know a lot of films try to be very objective, and in this situation that felt very difficult to do. And I was, ‘Okay, let the film be subjective, let it be different people’s version of the truth that they vehemently believe.’ In one scene you’re hearing one person’s truth, and the next it’s completely the opposite spoken with as much authority; and you start to wonder ‘What is the truth?’
That’s part of what I loved about the story, you don’t know where the truth is. I think that so many times in life you try to say that ‘This is it, this is what’s true.’ But, a lot of times we just really don’t know.
From the beginning we didn’t want it to be a film about scientists, and facts, and figures. We wanted to do something really different, and personalize the story. Even reading the research behind this story, it was just all over the place as far as impacts of radioactivity. So, we just decided, ‘Y’ know what? (laughing) Let’s not even go there. Let’s keep it in this community, with these people.’
What’s your current project?
My current project is a film set in the Dominican Republic about sex tourism. It’s called ‘¡No Soy Puta!’ which means ‘I Am Not a Whore.’ We’re in early production right now. We have an executive producer on board, Fork Films, which is owned by Abigail Disney. They support films having to do with women, and this film is being told from the point of view of the women.
This is a bit of a departure, what drew you to this subject matter?
I have family living in the Dominican Republic, and I partly grew up there, spent a lot of time there. And I just saw, in the town of Sosúa—my brother lives near there—a very big change over the last several decades from being kind of a family-centered, resort town, to becoming centered on sex tourism. Women come from all over the island to work there, for different stints of time.
I wanted to tell the story of who are these women and who they were behind what people think of them—‘Oh, she’s a prostitute.’ Yeah, but she’s much more than that. I’m looking into who they are as people as opposed to just focusing on their work, as society does.
Who are they? How did they get there? What are their hopes and dreams? They have dreams just like all of us do. They have families. They’re mothers; some of them are wives, they’re daughters. They’re complex people behind the way that they’re labeled.
What impact do you want the film to have.
I want these women who do sex work to be seen with more dignity, and for them to be given more compassion. This is something we sweep under the rug, a dirty, little secret no one wants to really look at.
I also want people to see that they could find themselves in this exact situation—if they had been raised in a different environment, in a different country, under difference circumstances. What these gals kept saying is that they do it ‘por necesidad,’ for necessity, because they really are the bread-winners in their family.
What’s your overall thought, or approach, or philosophy about making films, being a filmmaker?
I have a focus-word for each film. So, for ‘bag it’ it was ‘accessible.’ For ‘Uranium Drive-In’ it was ‘compassion.’ And for ‘¡No Soy Puta!,’ it’s ‘survival.’ I like to tackle subjects that people will look at it and think one thing, but when we dig a little deeper, it’s a much bigger story. Things aren’t what they appear at first glance.
I feel like a lot of times people want to judge things as being black or white, that’s very rarely the case. They can have a reaction to something, and they judge it right away without thinking of the complexity, and I just want to draw attention to those.
Suzan, why are you making films?
I think it’s because I’m a very visual person. I do like words, but I’m not as much a word person as I am a visual person. Things come to me visually, I can plot them out in my head, see them unfolding in my brain. I can’t begin to write a book, or a song, or piece of music. Before, I expressed myself visually through theater, but I found that film is more fitting to how I see the world, and how my ideas come to me.
Don Schwartz is an actor, writer and blogger on all things documentary, and can be seen here or reached .