1 the Bleeding Edge, An Independent Documentary Directed
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1 The Bleeding Edge, an independent documentary directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering through their production company, Chain Camera Pictures, unearths systematic corruption within the “$400 billion medical device industry” (The Bleeding Edge 2018). The film takes a deep dive into the healthcare impacts of medical device “innovation” (Dick 2018). Both Dick and Ziering specialize in investigative journalism and documentary having produced the Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated documentary, The Invisible War (The Bleeding Edge 2018). In all of their documentaries, Dick and Ziering focus on issues of “breaking news,” aiming to inform public opinion, and influence policy (Fuchs 2018). According to Ziering, in an interview by No Film School, when she and Dick decide to make a film they “first get intrigued, then outraged, and then [they] decide to make a movie” (Buder 2018). In the case of The Bleeding Edge, the topic of the film arose when one of Chain Camera Picture’s producers, Amy Herdy, came forward with “this crazy story” about one of her neighbors, who had experienced complications due to an untested medical device (Buder 2018). The disbelief following the interview resulted in an in-depth investigation into this “breaking news,” where research was conducted, and interviews with survivors, professionals, scholars, and doctors were recorded (Fuchs 2018). This information was then synthesized and analyzed, before getting compiled into a commercially consumable film that informs the public of the fractured health system that “has devolved into [a] business” (Fuchs 2018) The Bleeding Edge is an independent film, meaning that,t was not produced in Hollywood and is not backed by any super PACs or the government (Grove 2014). In order to receive funding for the production of The Bleeding Edge, Dick and Ziering received a fiscal sponsorship from Utah Film Center (Dick 2018). Dick and Ziering received a grant from The 2 Grant Me the Wisdom Foundation, which provides funding to organizations or efforts that are educating the public about the health care of women and girls around the world (The Grant Me The Wisdom Foundation). The focus of The Bleeding Edge aligns with the foundation’s mission by extensively covering the debilitating effects of Essure, a female sterilization implant. Dick and Ziering received a second grant from the Perspective Fund, whose goal is to support independent “documentaries that raise awareness, connect people, inspire action, and create impact around human rights and social justice” (Perspective Fund 2018). The Bleeding Edge is a perfect example of an independent documentary affecting change around human rights (patient rights). Just a few months after the film’s release, it has already had a significant impact, which is projected to continue and grow with time (The Bleeding Edge 2018). The Bleeding Edge has also received funding from two individual contributors, Berry Liberman, and Jill Cunniff, in memory of her son, Danny (Dick 2018). Berry Liberman has a history of providing funding to initiatives aimed at educating the public about social issues like health, which is likely why she chose to support the production of The Bleeding Edge (Horn 2015). Jill Cunniff likely provided funds for this particular documentary because of her less than optimal experience with the healthcare system when her son Danny died in 1998 from leukemia (Breslin 1998). In order to receive funding and grant money, the film proposal had to meet certain requirements. However, the film already aligned so heavily with the mission statements of both the foundations and the values of the individual contributors, that there was likely very little influence from the sponsors in shaping the agenda of the documentary to be different than the filmmaker’s vision. The rights to distribute The Bleeding Edge were bought by Netflix, which has the ability to provide content to 104 million subscribers (Greenberg 2017). Dick commented in an interview with PopMatters that, “Netflix is perfect for this film,” as it reaches such a wide audience, 3 allowing for a larger number of viewers to become educated and invested in an issue (Fuchs 2018). Making a Murderer, a Netflix’s docu-series is a great example of how Netflix documentaries can influence the public. Millions of people watched the series and hundreds of thousands of people signed a petition calling for Avery, the subject, to be released. Unlike commercial networks or public broadcasting, platforms like Netflix have the option to show documentaries that may not bring in the most significant amount of revenue because they have so many other films that can compensate (Greenberg 2017). Because Netflix does not need to draw in large revenues from documentary films it can experiment with less mainstream, as well as more controversial, documentaries (Greenberg 2017). As a powerful global corporation itself, Netflix can “speak truth to power,” without fearing the consequences, allowing a space for controversial documentaries like The Bleeding Edge to actually effect change (Fuchs 2018). Documentary filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering have a history of exposing certain social issues and facilitating conversation around them in the hopes for change. In an interview with Film Comment, Kirby Dick states: “We have an opportunity, as documentary filmmakers, to speak to issues around social justice, particularly when information about injustice is covered up and allows the injustice to continue. From a cinematic point of view, it's also very dramatic to have a film actively uncovering and investigating this cover-up” (Lucca, 2012). This sentiment is made glaringly clear by the intent of their previous films: The Invisible War and The Hunting Ground. In The Invisible War, Kirby Dick exposes the cover-up of rape by the U.S. Army. After the showing of the film, Amy Ziering stated that “as a documentarian, what you always dream of is real political impact” (Lucca, 2012). After winning the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival, the film was shown to 16 senators and eight Congressional representatives (Lucca, 4 2012). Shortly after, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta saw the film and held a press conference vowing to institute some of the changes the film actually pointed out. Dick and Ziering tackle a similar issue in The Hunting Ground where they focus on the neglected sexual assault epidemic on college campuses. After thousands of screenings across college campuses, the film garnered enough of a response to trigger a wake-up call for a culture change. Dick says that after people watch The Hunting Ground in screenings they start “talking about [the issue] publicly for the first time and [start] breaking it down… if it’s affecting people that way, hopefully it will help to make change” (Allen). Dick and Ziering had an explicit intent to make these films to actively investigate cover-ups about issues around social justice by uncovering them. The Bleeding Edge is no different. From the get-go, the intent of the documentary was clear: expose the medical devices industry for what it is and the phony medical devices approval processes used by the FDA. Kirby Dick states of what he wishes to accomplish with The Bleeding Edge: “[change] has to happen at a national level and it has to be directed at the corporations” (Fuchs, 2018). For Dick and Ziering, the format and production of the film revolve around the idea of maximizing the impact of the change that they wish to fulfill. When considering the methods that Dick and Ziegler used to achieve their intended impact with The Bleeding Edge, the film uses its expository mode to a significant degree to expose how the medical device industry utilizes loopholes in governance as well as the new relationship between the FDA and the industry’s lobbyists to destroy the lives of the patients it has been tasked to protect and heal, all in the name of profits. However, Dick goes beyond just examining the industry’s development and its impact on patients, he does so in a way that both captivates and motivates the viewer to action. There are two specific examples that show Dick’s use of documentary storytelling and artistic methods that allow his film to make his intended 5 impact and galvanize the audience to action: the moment of rolling thunder as Angie Firmalino first mentions Essure and the revisiting of Ana Fuentes and her deteriorating situation throughout the film. Each carries out a specific task in promoting Dick’s intentions, as well as representing a key aspect of documentary storytelling, especially in the expository mode. When we are first introduced to Angie Firmalino, we hear her life story and are shown images of her family life with her interview dubbed over footage of her daily life. The moment that her interview turns to her decision to have the Essure procedure, the film shows Angie outside with her son tending to a garden. Right as Angie’s dubbed over dialogue says, “Essure,” the interview audio cuts out, and the audio shifts to her in the garden with her son, which coincides with a deep, rumbling thunder that overpowers the scene. It is a master class of audio editing by Dick, as we are first introduced to the name of the product that inspires the rest of the film by an incredibly ominous sound. This use of audio and natural sound has a distinct impact on the audience, as we are now primed to expect that the word Essure will have a negative connotation throughout the film, which, of course, it does. The use of audio to present a key theme of a film is common in almost all types of film, but it is normally left out of the expository mode of documentary.