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The Doyennes of Documentary Women Working in Nonfiction

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WOMEN IN DOCUMENTARY Momma Doc BY NINA GILDEN SEAVEY THE FILMMAKER AS HOMEMAKER

n January 1999, The New York Times knowing that I had been there for my The Realization That Something I ran an article in its Arts and Leisure sec- children. If that’s bad for the statistics about Has Changed tion entitled ‘’Female Directors Battle the number of women directors at Sundance It was September 1986 and Aaron, my oldest, the Indie Boys Club,’’ about the dearth of this year, maybe they’re counting the wrong was only one month old. I got a phone call from women directors in Sundance. I wrote a things.” a guy who said, “Hi! I work for a filmmaker letter to the editor that was published a few Ever since I wrote that, I’ve been thinking named Ken Burns and he got a lot of money to weeks later, in which I said the following: about what being a mom and being a film- make a series for PBS about the Civil War. We “Making films involves a kind of all-con- maker have really meant to me and other need some help in the research in Washington, suming passion. My own experience in being a women who I’ve observed go through the radical DC, and we heard about you and were won- …and a mother of three is that transformation to fatigue, guilt and worry that dering if you’d like to come on board with us.” there are times when a woman really can’t do is motherhood. Now, those of us who’d been around for both well. But at the end of my life, I’m certain So here are a few reflections: a while had heard about the Burns brothers I won’t regret not having made a few more and all of this money they’d raised to make

Nina Gilden Seavey (back row, second from right) with her family: Back row, left to right-Husband Ormond, daughter Eleanor, Seavey, son Aaron. Front row: son Caleb.

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WOMEN IN DOCUMENTARY this series. I looked at my baby boy I was hold- convinced the university’s administration that I ing and rocking (a pose I’d assumed 30 days should teach a five-week summer course in prior and had been unable to abandon since) historical documentary . I could and wailed, “I just had a baby! I can barely find handle that. the time to brush my teeth, much less find the I realized that everything now had 5,000 perfect photographs it will take to make become about “what I could handle.” The this film.” So he responded generously, “Well, problem with filmmaking is that you have to go what about in a month?” I shook my head and to where the film is being made. So, if you’ve thought, “This may be a mistake, but I’m going got a great story to tell in India, then that’s to say, ‘No’ and hope I have a career sometime where you go. Which is a problem if you have in the future when I get more than two hours children…and you want to raise them. of sleep in a row.” Fast-forward to September 1990. I’m The Choices watching PBS during the much-publicized And that’s the catch: “And you want to raise broadcast premiere of The Civil War. I’m like a them.” Mothers in all professions have this beached whale on the bed, in my last trimester conundrum: how much time to spend at work of pregnancy, with that same little boy (now and how much time to spend at home? You four) and a two-year-old little girl named can always leave your children with the nanny. Eleanor bouncing around while I desperately And you can convince yourself that you are try to watch the long list of credits streaming spending “quality time” with them. As the founder and director of The Documentary Center at past that doesn’t include my name. I’m think- Then one day you get honest with your- George Washington University, Nina Gilden Seavey has been teaching documentary filmmaking for the past 15 years. Here ing to myself, “The world of documentary has self and confess that you are gone for more of Seavey lectures to a “Principles and Methods Class” at The changed. I missed the boat. I’m screwed. I’ll your children’s waking hours than you are at Documentary Center. Courtesy of The Documentary Center, George Washington University never work again.”

Getting Traction Of course my reaction to The Civil War was just hormones talking. But the world of documen- tary indeed had changed. All of a sudden, docs were cool. Docs weren’t the old “educational films,” with that big God-like voice, that you saw in school. Docs were now films filled with passion, with characters, with emotion and truth that frequently superseded fiction films. 13-C&S Int’l Insurance The following month, I waddled up to the podium at George Washington University and welcomed 250 guests who had come to hear Henry Hampton give the inaugural address for the center I had created in order to teach doc- umentary film. The Center for History in the Media (now the Documentary Center) was an act of desperation. “Do something to make yourself viable in your profession,” I told myself. So, having successfully finished a master’s degree in history at GW (it took me five years to complete a two-year program), I

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WOMEN IN DOCUMENTARY home with them. That they are tired, you are wasn’t missing the benefits of having become that they (and I) needed to make a connection. tired, everyone is cranky and no one is having a mom. Amidst the thousands of dirty diapers, Now they are teenagers (18, 16 and 14), much fun at all. That the day-care lady is the mountain of empty juice boxes, the hours and I am really in the thick of it. But I am not alone. watching your kids do all of the cool things of mind-numbing recitations of “One Thumb, that, as a mother, you don’t want to miss—like One Thumb, Drumming on a Drum,” I was Husband of…Filmmaker…Mom walking for the first time, speaking their first watching my children grow. The first few years As husbands go, Ormond is spot on. Because words, painting their first picture. seemed really, really long. I spent 50 out of 60 he is a college professor, he has lots of time But it’s worse for filmmakers—especially consecutive months pregnant or nursing. After when he doesn’t have to be in his office. Plus, independent filmmakers. A friend once observed I finally finished this unending reproductive he is very patient. Plus, he likes coaching little that being an independent filmmaker really merry-go-round, time started moving faster kids’ team sports and he is a sucker for my meant one of two things: “independently than I could catch up with it. daughter’s plaintive cry, “Oh Daddy, can you wealthy” filmmaker or “independently married As time passed and the kids went to drive me and my friends to the movies? to someone who has a job” filmmaker. I am in school, I had more time to devote to filmmak- Please? ” This immediately transforms a per- the latter category. But my husband is a col- ing. I could travel more. They became more fectly cogent six-foot man into a puddle of Jell- lege professor, so the job doesn’t come with independent and could work to keep the O. So he’s usually good to help for whatever much money attached. So I have to work. And household together if I had a shoot or was in comes up with the kids. I did—on other people’s projects and on my an edit session. From the middle of nowhere in But that’s what it is—help. No matter little five-week summer program. I worked at Russia I have called into a soccer game at half how good he is, Dad is not Mom. When the home. I had part time help and a prohibition: time to find out the score. What is remarkable baby would cry, he’d say, “Are you going to “When mommy is working and the door is is not that I could make the call from half a feed the baby?” I’d say, “The baby’s not hun- closed, you can’t interrupt or I won’t be fin- planet away, but that I was aware of what time gry.” “How do you know?” “That’s not the ‘hun- ished by story time.” it was back home, I knew what any one of my gry cry.’ It’s the ‘I want to be picked up’ cry. It wasn’t much professionally, but at least I kids was doing at that particular moment and So, will you please pick up the baby?” He’d look at me as if I had either cracked some ancient code or I was just trying to shirk my maternal nursing duties. As the kids got older, there were clearly things they wanted from me and things they wanted from him. He is more patient with their unending homework. I am good at figuring out school problems, emotional crises, camps, 17-Seventh Hebrew lessons, music teachers, driving routes to and from sports practices, our finances, home expansion and the unforgiving matrix of schedules that keeps the whole ship afloat. I know what the kids are thinking, fre- quently before they’ve even thought it. When they’re sick, they always want Mom. When they want money, they go to Dad. When they’ve got something on their minds, they will inevitably come into my room while I’m read- ing and spread out on the bed with the leading question, “Mom, can we talk for a minute?”

The Lessons All of this presumes being at home—not being

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WOMEN IN DOCUMENTARY where the film is being made. So I’ve made some choices. Sometimes they’re Solomonic choices that split the difference between the creative and difficult work of filmmaking and my family. But out of these choices have come some insights:

When possible, make films that the 1kids can relate to. When the kids were little and watched Discovery Channel, I made a special on the Alamo for the network. When the kids got older and turned to MTV, I made a film about a band who came from Russia to become country music stars. The kids are somewhat more for- giving of my being gone if they think I am doing something “cool.”

Involve the kids, as much as they 2 can legitimately be involved, in what you’re doing. In 1994, Seavey and her collaborator, Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Wagner, produced The Battle of the Alamo for the Discovery Channel. Here, at the Alamo in San Antonio, Seavey and Wagner were the first filmmakers that have ever been given permission to shoot inside the At the appropriate ages, I’ve taken the kids Texas Shrine. Courtesy of The Documentary Center, George Washington University with me on shoots. Aaron watched me inter- view doctors who had treated children his own age who had had polio. Eleanor shot her own version of The Making of the Making of the Music Video for the band Bering Strait. Caleb flew by himself to Nashville and was back- stage at the Grand Ole Opry when Bering Strait made its first American appearance. The issue here is to not ask the kids to do too much, too early. In general, film shoots are boring and having a crabby kid on location could be a dis- 10-DV Caddie aster for all involved. Especially as teenagers, it’s good to have your children come to the premieres of your films. It will prove to them that you’re not such a dweeb after all.

Work with other people 3 who have kids. My most successful work relationships—cine- matographers, editors, producers, writers, executives, etc.—have been with people who are in the same boat as I am. It drives me crazy when a person without kids tells me how busy

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Consider your work 4 “my time.” The books always tell mothers to “take time for yourself.” This is ridiculous advice. There is no time. Filmmakers are lucky; we love what we do. I love every minute of the filmmaking pro- cess (except fundraising). That is my time for myself. Everything else is “family time.” I am fatter than I’d like to be, I get less exercise than I would like, I’ve read fewer books than I’d like to have read, and for years my husband and I saw no movies in a theater. Oh, well. No big deal. I get to make films and have a family. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Seavey in Russia with Bering Strait band members during the filming of The Ballad of Bering Strait. When something comes up that is Courtesy of The Documentary Center, George Washington University 5 important, drop everything and tend to family. they are. They have no clue what busy even edit session with someone who has kids, we I was recently on a shoot in the Rocky begins to look like. The people I work with who all know that this work is important, but what’s Mountains at 10,000 feet in a blizzard. It was have children understand the need to be effi- really important is waiting at home for us; so stunningly beautiful and reminded me again of cient with their time, incisive in their work and we get on with what we have to do. We love it, why I engage in this cockeyed profession to focused on the best job possible with the least but we’re ready to leave it as soon as possible begin with. Later that evening, when we were amount of BS. When I’m on the road or in an to get back to the real business of life. back in the hotel, my daughter called and was crying: “Mom, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel really sick.” I did the best checking I could as Dr. Mom and discerned that she didn’t have to be taken to the hospital. She definitely had a fever and I had my husband give her some ibuprofen. She wanted me to come home. I told her I couldn’t leave that minute 11-Rotondi Reserarch but that we were scheduled to fly out the next day. I’d be there for her as soon as I could. I hung up, feeling horrible––and guilty that I wasn’t there that minute for her…and hating that beautiful shoot at 10,000 feet in the snow-covered Rockies. By the next night I was home and she was no better. And she didn’t get better for a while. After weeks of illness and tests, it finally turned out that she had mononucleosis, which was a relief to me. At least it wasn’t something worse. I stopped production on the film and stayed home with her and home-schooled her while she missed several months of high school. My attitude was, “If the funder wants

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WOMEN IN DOCUMENTARY me to make this film, I’ll make it on my terms. Fire me if you don’t like it.” It’s amazing how accepting people will be when you give them no choice.

Get perspective 6 on your work. The reason that we are filmmakers is because we care passionately. We believe our work is going to be seen by thousands, maybe mil- lions, of people and that we can make a differ- ence. We are willing to sacrifice so much in terms of job security, income and daily life sta- bility in hopes that we will be able to have our say in a manner that can inspire, inform and change people’s lives. All of that is true and In 2001, Seavey completed shooting on The Ballad of Bering Strait with a multi-camera concert shoot at Wolf Trap Farm Park, which she noble, and is our calling. directed. Courtesy of The Documentary Center, George Washington University But those people are strangers to us. We don’t want to trade off the immediate impor- time I spend making a film and the time it takes admit it, nor do they even know it, but their tance of getting a film out to the public while me away from home. It’s an odd calculus. lives are more volatile and they need more sta- ignoring the needs right in front of us. It’s Even as the kids grow, they need you in bility at home in their teens than they did when funny: Kids will generally accept what you offer greater and lesser degrees at varying times. I they were toddlers. to them; frequently, they don’t know anything have never spent more time at home as I do You have to take the long view. Not long different—until they get older.A long time ago, now that they are teenagers. They would never ago, I was having a lunch with a good friend of I decided to try to not do anything that I could not bear to hear repeated on the analyst’s couch. That has been a good barometer for keeping the exigencies of my work in perspec- tive with the true requirements of motherhood.

Judge time carefully. Your kids will 7 only be at home for a relatively 12-Visual Productions short period in their lives. Your career is longer than their need for you will be. I make films. But I make far fewer films than my professional counterparts. I try to extend my abilities in a variety of ways to keep myself fresh. I teach to fill in the income gap (that five- week summer class is now a six-month certifi- cate program). I provide advice and counsel on other people’s films to keep my creative juices flowing. In 2003, I took eight months out to run the SILVERDOCS Documentary Festival, just to see what that was like. I come out with a new film only every few years. I try to weigh the

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On the streets of Moscow in 1999 during the production of The Ballad of Bering Strait, Seavey checks a shot with Director of Photography Erich Roland (right) and Sound Recordist Paul Rusnak, (back center). Courtesy of The Documentary Center, George Washington University

mine who is an executive at National Sundance a whole lot less important than it Geographic. Her three children are all in their might otherwise appear to the outsider. 20s. I was fretting over what film I was going I would feel a failure if I looked back on to make next and how I was going to finance my life and said, “I made many great films, but DVD Circus it, make it, get it distributed, etc. She said, I wish I had spent more time with my kids.” I “Just think about it, Nina. In five years, your don’t want that regret. Being a filmmaker is a children will all be out of the house and you will blessing, a great, unbelievable gift. Being a be able to devote yourself to this issue full- mom, though a much more common occupa- time. In the meantime, cut yourself some tion, is definitely even better. ❙ slack.” Five years actually didn’t seem like such a long time at all. Had someone said to Nina Gilden Seavey is currently completing me 18 years ago, “Nina, in 23 years, your chil- The Open Road: America Looks at Aging for dren will be gone and out of the house, so just airing on PBS and has her first dramatic feature, wait until then to really delve into your career,” Evening Light, in pre-production. She contin- I would have reacted as if she had lost her ues to serve as executive producer of SILVER- mind. Now, five years to go seemed a frighten- DOCS and still teaches documentary filmmak- ingly short period of time. ing at George Washington University. Maybe that’s why the reporter at The New York Times who bemoaned the lack of women filmmakers at Sundance seemed like such a novice to me. Life is about choices and some women make choices that make getting to

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