Witnessing is the essence of being a documentary filmmaker. Capturing moments in time; never knowing how history will judge them.
Celebrate your victories and mark your defeats. Ultimately documentary filmmaking is not a job, it's a calling.
I'm a storyteller who uses all of the beauty and power of cinema to tell tales of human struggles for positive social change.
I'm both an artist / filmmaker and a human rights defender.
My advice to emerging documentary filmmakers would be: try to find other people, a group, a cooperative that you can work with. Filmmaking is hard and lonely and decidedly unglamorous. Find like-minded souls and share the joy and the misery.
Everyone has access to a pen and paper, but to be a great writer is difficult.
The digital revolution has had a democratizing effect. Now anyone can be a filmmaker, but to be a good filmmaker is as hard as it ever was.
I truly value the cinema experience, the tribal gathering in the dark to watch something larger than life. I like to sit in the first row with no heads in front of mine, and become one with the screen. I always stay for the complete credits so I can linger in the film's story just a little longer.
I'm an eclectic and avid filmgoer. I try to see everything from romantic comedies to blockbusters to art house films, world cinema and documentaries.
Destiny doesn't control your life, but it does place you on a path. It's how you walk down that path that determines stories I tell.
When you make a documentary film, after many years the only thing you remember is what you put into the film, not what you took out.
If you make a great film full of emotion, of pathos, people want to continue to know more, to work harder.
Like a human rights lawyer who uses the law to rectify wrongs, I use filmic storytelling for the same effect.
The biggest misconception about me and my work is that I only make political films denouncing human-rights atrocities, even though all of my films are about people fighting for their rights and their quest for justice. My films aren't depressing, are very human, and always offer a way forward.
I believe that those who believe in the power of human rights must find new ways to address economic injustice - and on a scale commensurate with the millions of people around the world that are mired in poverty.
