Chris Morgan (Joseph Pontecorvo)

Inside Thirteen recently spoke with bear biologist Chris Morgan to discuss the making of Nature’s upcoming three-part series, Bears of the Last Frontier.

The series takes a look at Alaska’s bear population, one of the largest in the world, to see how these fascinating and intelligent creatures live in the wild.  Here, Morgan talks about his experience in Alaska and the importance of preserving, protecting and respecting bears and their natural habitat.

Bears of the Last Frontier airs Sundays, May 8 – 22 at 8 p.m. on THIRTEEN.

Enter to win an autographed copy of Morgan’s companion book, Bears of the Last Frontier.

Inside Thirteen: What first interested you in studying bears?

Chris Morgan: When I was 18, I came on a life-changing trip to the U.S. where I worked at a summer camp in New Hampshire designed to teach kids about conservation and wildlife. One day a bear biologist visited and I started to talk to him about the work he was doing in Northern New Hampshire. And I was hooked, more than any of the kids, I think! I just couldn’t believe that you could be a bear biologist in life.  I bugged him for weeks and finally he relented and picked me up in his pickup truck one night and took me down to his study area.  We pulled up outside this garbage dump, which had 14 black bears on it lit up by moonlight.  It just blew my mind! I’d only seen one black bear in the forest near the camp prior to that. I spent the whole night tranquilizing and tracking these bears.  It changed my life – I was set to become a graphic designer back in England.

IT: How did you cope with being out in the wilds of Alaska for so long? What was the hardest part of the experience?

CM: I was out there on and off for a year. There were times when Joe [Pontecorvo] and I were camping and isolated for weeks at a time, but I love that. I’ve spent a lot of time in the wild in very isolated places, but in our first location, the Alaska Peninsula, the density of bears is like almost nowhere else on Earth. What was unique about that for me was camping and being in that environment for so many consecutive weeks – it’s such an immersive experience in the bears’ world.

Some of the hardest parts were the misery of a long drive on a motorcycle. Once you’ve crossed the Arctic Circle, it’s a psychological milestone, but then realizing you’ve still got hundreds of miles to go before you reach the north coast of Alaska…it’s just a colossal place and it really is representative of these amazing, large wild animals that we were filming.  The other thing I think people assume about film is that it’s glamorous and easy.  We put a lot of hard work in and many, many sleepless nights in order to get the shots that we wanted.  When we were filming bears in the northwestern part of Alaska, we were in an area were the western Arctic caribou herd is. We put in a heck of a lot of time looking for these half-million animals, so we could then find the bears.  We ended up with lots of sleepless nights and just basically taking catnaps.  Joe is a very hard worker – he’ll film as long as there is light, and that’s a problem when you’re in the Arctic in the summer, because there’s always light!

IT: What are the key differences between the three types of bears?

CM: They are three very distinct species.  The bear numbers give away a lot about their personality. There are probably 35,000 brown bears in Alaska, and 180,000 black bears, so they’re a little bit more numerous and flexible around humans because there’s more of them.  There are probably 2,000 or 3,000 polar bears, and those populations are also shared with Canada and Russia.  There are much smaller numbers of polar bears because they are highly specialized and they feed exclusively on meat. The brown bears (also called grizzly bears) are the consummate generalists; they’ll eat everything from berries to Arctic root plants to a moose carcass, when they come across it. Black bears need forest, so where you have forest in Alaska, you’ve got black bears in good numbers.  Brown bears will also inhabit forests, but they will extend above the tree line and into the Arctic where it’s just wide-open tundra and no trees in sight.

There are a lot of similarities in terms of behavior. Generally speaking, brown bears are more likely to become defensive and charge than black bears.  Black bears are more likely to run in the opposite direction, even if they have cubs.

IT: How did you make the bears feel comfortable in your presence? Have there ever been any incidents in your encounters where the bears were not so friendly or trusting?

Brown bear cub (Joseph Pontecorvo)

CM: In the case of the female with her cubs in the first episode, those cubs had never seen people before us.  They’d just come out of their dens, and they were super inquisitive. They took it in like little sponges, like baby humans do. The cubs were playing around and the mother would just give them a stare or turn around while they’re running circles around her, like “alright, calm it down, don’t attract attention.”

On one occasion, a big male bear did charge us.  He just got momentarily confused because a female ran behind us that he was chasing.  I think he saw us as another bear – competition for his gal!  He just charged right after us, and it’s a heart pumping moment.  It’s not unusual for bears to charge people or other bears to give them a message, “hey you’re too close” or “you’re threatening me.” We’d not been doing any of those things, but they don’t talk, so they’ve got to express their concern in some way.

You have to take every possible precaution. I don’t approach the bears – if they graze past us, that’s a different thing. We were camping with electric fences around our tents – bear fences that zap 5,000 volts on a bear’s nose when it tries to come near your tent.  Hopefully it doesn’t in the first place because the other thing you do is keep your kitchen and your food storage area a hundred yards away from where you’re camping.  Never put food in your tent. You have to make sure the bear doesn’t relate you to food, because that can end in a dangerous situation, for the bear and for the people.  I also carried bear spray the whole time. You never want to surprise any bears – make sure they know you’re coming, and that you shout out “hey, bear” every so often as you’re walking down the trail.  Don’t threaten females with cubs, don’t approach a bear that’s sitting with a carcass of food – just common sense things.

IT: What were you most surprised to learn during your observations in Alaska?

CM: What really opened my eyes were the interactions between these bears during the breeding season, and how busy the place got. There are so many bears there, the females ended up being just as competitive as the males were for their love interests.

Overall though, I was surprised to learn how adaptable these animals are, and how different they all are. By the end of the third hour, it’s clear that any two bears you meet are as different as any two people you might meet.  These are super smart animals, and because they’re smart they’ve got this ability to have different personalities and dispositions.  They’re all individuals.

IT: What was your favorite location you visited in Alaska?  What has been your favorite place your adventures studying bears has taken you?

CM: Probably my favorite place on the entire planet is the Alaska Peninsula. It’s like stepping back in time to 10,000 years ago.  You could drop down at any moment, and it would feel the same.  There aren’t many places in the world that feel that way. It’s one of the last really wild places that we have in the world and there’s something incredibly magical and special about that fact.  You definitely feel like you’re the outsider when you’re there.  Like it says in the film, it’s the bears’ world, we’re just visiting.

Svarbard, or some people call it Spitsbergen, is another one of my favorite places, in the European Arctic. It’s a Norwegian sovereignty – about 500 miles north of northern Norway. I’ve guided expeditions there for years to show people polar bears. It is mind-blowingly beautiful, like someone chopped off the Swiss Alps and plunked them in the middle of the ocean.

I love the north, and I’m drawn to the Arctic. The tropics are amazing, but for some reason I’m drawn to the coldest places because it makes you question your ability as a human, and you can’t help but respect a polar bear when he’s hunting seals in the pitch darkness all winter and it’s -40 degrees.

IT: It is asked in this episode, “How much wild are people in Anchorage willing to tolerate?”  How much of a threat to Alaska’s bear population are humans and the urbanization of Alaska’s wild?  Is anything being done to protect them or keep them “wild”?

Black bears crossing the road (Nimmida Pontecorvo)

CM: Anchorage is on the front line of what we call the wildlife-human interface.  It’s where the wild ends and civilization begins.  With a place like Anchorage, it’s like a dot of civilization in a sea of wilderness.  There are wild animals in people’s backyards and on bicycle trails through parks in town and places where you’re perhaps not used to seeing a 1,000 lb brown bear or a moose or a black bear family. Most of the people in Anchorage are very accepting of having these wild neighbors and it’s partly why they live in Alaska.  A lot of this Alaska pride comes through, like “Yes, we live in the wildest state in the Union.”  It’s really refreshing.  Sometimes things do go awry, where you’ll have a loose animal in someone’s backyard causing damage, or, in the worst-case scenario, you may have a person attacked by a bear.  But it’s very rare considering the number of bears around.  The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has a team that consists of the two people that are actually in our film – Jessy Coltrane and Rick Sinnott. Their job is being on the front line of where the humans and wildlife meet.  Sometimes it means them going in and capturing bears or tranquilizing a moose and removing them from a situation where they’re really close to people.

It’s great, because we can use places like Anchorage as a model for co-existence with humans.  It’s more of what this planet needs. These animals, in many parts of the world, are really highly threatened and in trouble.  You look to Alaska and you feel like this is the last place in the United States where at least the near future is secure for these bears.  I live in Washington State; we’ve got about 20 grizzly bears here.  I work on that population and I work with members of the public in these rural towns in grizzly bear country to help them understand what grizzly bears are, what we need to do to have more of them here, how we can live with bears.   I live that every day, so going to a place like Alaska is an eye opener in terms of the possibilities for a place that’s still got these large populations of animals.  The window will always be open.

Jim Norton (Aaron Beck Photo)

Inside Thirteen recently spoke with filmmaker Jim Norton to discuss the making of Nature’s upcoming feature, Salmon: Running the Gauntlet.

Once among the most productive salmon fisheries on the planet, the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest today is marked by the alarming absence of the region’s staple fish. Many salmon populations are already extinct or endangered due to overfishing, habitat loss and dams, making their future in the region unclear.  Here, Norton discusses what interested him in telling their story, and the complex reality of our efforts to save them.

Salmon: Running the Gauntlet premieres Sunday, May 1 at 8 p.m. on THIRTEEN.

Mr. Norton answered our questions via email.

Inside Thirteen: What first interested you in the story of the Pacific Northwest salmon?

Jim Norton: One of the great parts of this project was the opportunity to come back around to where I first heard the story – from Jerry Myers, who appears in the film and tells pretty much the same thing he told me shortly after I started guiding in Idaho. I was young, beginning and ending each day in a sleeping bag in the wilderness, well insulated from the burdens of conflicting education or experience…everything seemed perfect to me. And then one afternoon Jerry and I were fishing together, far up a tributary creek of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. The Salmon is part of the upper vasculature of the Snake and Columbia River systems, an alpine womb which once produced as many Chinook salmon as anywhere on the planet. We lingered a long time at a place called the “salmon pool,” and Jerry started telling me what used to be there. It was actually a little frustrating at the time; it was hard to honor his more complete version of a landscape I knew as a form of ideal.

As guides, so much of our work involved the language of the pristine, the iconography of wildness, the gin clear water of Salmon Rivers and Redfish Lakes. Although the narrative was very much part of my life, much of that richness is just an anecdote for the generation who arrived in the Pacific Northwest after about the 1970s. It’s a story someone else tells us. Our timeline of memory begins just as that of abundant salmon was ending, and with it the biological and cultural nourishment on which so much depended. My experience as a guide, and the connection I am making now as a full-time resident, initially had no lens through which I could see working on rivers, facilitating what has essentially become a leisure pursuit, as a cultural remnant of once more robust and varied interactions with the land and water. So my interest in this story was originally very personal, an attempt to explore the paradox that a lot of the Pacific Northwest lives within: strong identification with the idea of a natural and cultural heritage derived from abundant salmon, but having just missed out on the heritage itself.

IT: What were you most surprised to learn about salmon and/or the process and effects of harvesting them during the making of this episode?

JN: Without question, I was most impressed by the degree to which we took the original myth of protection through production and never looked back. The scale of the infrastructure that has developed around providing alternatives to salmon swimming up and down streams – the billion dollar “mitigation economy” – is simply staggering.

I was also surprised by the degree to which everyone I met on the ground was genuinely engaged in doing the most they could for salmon, appropriate to the context in which they were working. The hatchery programs are trying to produce as many healthy juveniles as they can; the biologists in the hydro power system are trying to pass as many live fish as possible around the dams; the pilots of the juvenile fish transport barges and trucks are checking stress levels in the tanks; the predator chasers were really trying to reduce the number of salmon eaten by sea lions and terns. Telescoping in on each vignette, it looks like a lot of people doing everything possible to solve their piece of the problem. It’s when you open up and show the accumulation of those contexts that things get ugly, and arguably absurd.

IT: Can you explain the significance of the federal salmon policy decision in the Columbia River Basin that will happen this spring?  What is at stake?

Lochsa River, Idaho - a tributary of the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia (Jim Norton)

JN: In short, the listing of 13 Columbia River salmon and steelhead species as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act requires the government to develop a plan, or biological opinion (“bi-op”), for their protection and restoration. Both the 2000 and 2004 salmon plans were rejected by the courts, meaning that the current administration’s recently submitted plan is the latest in over a decade of modification, argument, and litigation. Technically, the bi-op covers the management of the hydro power system on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. An imminent decision from the federal judge should determine whether the most recent iteration of the proposed plan is legal. Of course, whether our approach to salmon management is actually sufficient for their protection, let alone their restoration, isn’t determined in a courtroom. When Jerry Myers is kept awake by the sound of splashing salmon in Indian Creek, when David Duncan can crouch by the river and find fire in cold stone, when the Tribes are nourished in the many ways derived from abundance…then and only then will we know we’ve done well.

IT: In the episode, it is said that, “If the fish were in any worse shape, they wouldn’t be savable, if they were in any better shape, people wouldn’t care as much.  This is the time.”  Do you agree with that?  Do things have to get bad enough for people to care enough to make a change?

JN: I agree this is the time for a radical re-evaluation of the goals and approach to salmon recovery. Many people have cared, a lot, about declining salmon populations for over a hundred years. Unfortunately, sometimes a response to declining resources is an even tighter grip on the agents of that decline. Even as the situation becomes more desperate, it becomes harder and harder to make big changes because everything feels more fragile. In this film, we wanted to get beyond the documentation of now familiar insults to nature and examine the role, and legacy, of how we have tried to save.

IT: Do you see the salmon situation as proof that human ingenuity is no match for Mother Nature?

Chinook salmon (Isaac Babcock)

JN: No. That proof has been offered too many times before, in too many different ways. The story of the Columbia is, perhaps, an affirmation of that maxim. The modern salmon situation does express interesting components of the relationship between human ingenuity and nature. Something we seem to have lost is the appreciation that the abundance we’re now working so hard, at such cost, to wrestle out of the Columbia is the default condition of the place. Abundance is not something we’re going to tease from the river by being clever. The problem here is shifting baselines. Diminishing abundance determines each new generation’s opportunities on the Columbia; these present opportunities become our memories of a collective past, and together they mark the boundaries of what we imagine it could be again. The thrilling potential of restoration, then, isn’t just about more fish – it’s about expanding our capacity to imagine, increasing opportunities to live a life in the story of our choosing.

IT: How do the Tribes’ relationships to salmon fit into the picture going forward?

JN: The additional levels of complexity and intensity inherent to the tribes’ relationship to this story are humbling. Since no 50-minute program can cover everything, we wanted to focus on the Euro-centric, techno-industrial mitigation component of this story. Of course we make reference to the issue as it concerns the Tribes, but they are still very much in the process of working it out for themselves. I hope they find ways to share their stories, because those stories are so terribly underrepresented in the dialect of salmon science and conservation. There are many expressions of what we know about salmon other than what can be plotted, shaded, extrapolated and correlated, including things we can measure but also things we can’t. This information has been part of indigenous communities for millennia. Comprised of replicated observations over many generations of time, these knowledge systems are not only inherently scientific; they represent our only connection to the deep time on which most ecological systems operate.

Equally meaningful, they also encompass the culture of respect that evolved among people as a function of profoundly intimate experience with the specific environment around them, not only as a form of ritual but as an application of effective governance. Information is shared as a narrative covering many aspects of life in the watershed, not exclusively packaged as data sets. We should be maintaining and promoting this paradigm, where the results of formal research are incorporated into a broader sense of place that includes indigenous understanding and oral histories.

There are so many complicating factors for the Tribes within the context of their separate and collective histories, the struggles they have had getting their treaty rights affirmed legislatively and judicially, how that struggle has influenced their considerations about what to fight for and how, what kind of relationship they will have with commercial fishing and hatcheries. As it concerns the nature and extent of salmon recovery, what the Tribes decide is good enough will have a big effect on what happens with salmon in the Columbia.

IT: What message do you hope audiences will take from this episode?

JN: First, we hope audiences will simply celebrate salmon themselves – their truly extraordinary life history and why they stubbornly remain icons of wildness, resilience, and abundance. Certainly, we hope this episode will contribute to an appreciation of their role in stitching together oceans and continents, estuaries and alpine meadows, coastal rainforests and high deserts. By extension, people should come away with an understanding of why their decline is so consequential on so many levels.

Also, we hope audiences will explore the original assumptions that informed our approach to managing salmon – and how committed we remain to trying to make that story work despite 150 years of evidence that those assumptions might be leading us astray. At incalculable cost, we constructed a reality out of our illusions and have forgotten which is which. Maybe it’s time for a new story.

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recently discussed the making of Black in Latin America and the history and future of race identity in Latin America.

The four-part series explores the influence of African descent on Latin America, with a focus on the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru.

Black in Latin America premieres April 19 at 8 p.m. on THIRTEEN.

This interview was conducted for and can be found on the Black in Latin America website.

First, could you talk a little bit about this project?

I conceived of this as a trilogy of documentary series that would mimic the patterns of the triangle trade. There would be a series on Africa which was called Wonders of the African World in 1999. And then there would be a series on black America called America Behind the Color Line in 2004. And then the third part of the triangle trade was, of course, South America and the Caribbean. The triangle trade was Africa, South America, and the continental United States and Europe. That’s how I conceived of it. I’ve been thinking about it since before 1999. But the first two were easier to get funding for. Everyone knows about black people from Africa, everyone knows about the black American community. But surprisingly, and this is why the series is so important, not many people realize how “black” South America is. So of all the things I’ve done it was the most difficult to get funded and it is one of the most rewarding because it is so counter-intuitive, it’s so full of surprises. And I’m very excited about it.

And why do you think there is a lack of knowledge about the black populations in Latin America?

Well, incredibly, there were 11.2 million Africans that we can count who survived the Middle Passage and landed in the New World, and of that 11.2 million, only 450,000 came to the United States. That’s amazing. All the rest went south of Miami as it were. Brazil got almost 5 million Africans. In part, this reflects our ignorance as Americans who don’t know that much about the rest of the world. But also, it is in part the responsibility of the countries in South America themselves — each of which underwent a period of whitening. In the hundred year period between 1872 and 1975, Brazil received 5,435,735 immigrants from Europe and the Middle East and this was a conscious policy after 1850 to “whiten” Brazil which was such a black country. Brazil is the second blackest nation in the world. Brazil has the second largest black population — black being defined by people of African descent in the way that we would define them in this country. It’s second only to Nigeria. But no one knows this. So it’s those two reasons, that the countries themselves went through long periods of being embarrassed about how black they were and secondly, our own ignorance. That’s why this series is so important. It’s meant to educate Americans, and people in Europe and the rest of the world, but it’s also meant to educate people in South America, too. And in each of these countries there is a political campaign against racism, for affirmative action, and for their right to exist where they don’t as census categories. For example, in Mexico and Peru, they are fighting for the right to be identified as black. As in France, many people in these countries thought that if you put that social identity in the census that it reinforces racism. But doing that also prevents people from organizing around race when they are discriminated by race. It’s a paradox. And it’s fascinating to see what is similar and dissimilar in each of these countries.

For Black in Latin America you visited Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. How did you choose to focus on these particular six countries?

Well, we had to pick a country that reflected quite dramatically the history of the slave trade. So the largest countries with the biggest black populations are Brazil and Venezuela. So that was one category. We divided all the countries into categories. We only had four hours. We couldn’t do all the Caribbean and all of South America. We had to come up with criteria. So category one is size. Brazil’s the largest country in South America and it’s Portuguese-speaking, so that was interesting. Second, we wanted to do something representative from the Caribbean.

Haiti just had the earthquake, it was very much in the news. Every night for months I would watch Anderson Cooper talking about the earthquake. But never did Anderson Cooper or anyone else talk about the history of Haiti. They’d talk about voodoo as if it was lunatic superstitions rather than one of the world’s old religions. Most journalists didn’t write anything sophisticated about the history of the revolution. And no one talked about the fact that it was at the western end of an island with another country, the Dominican Republic, and that the two of them had created their identities together and in opposition to each other. So it’s like Jacob and Esau, Yin and Yang. They’re both there on that island, separated by a river, and they’re very different countries. One is Spanish, Catholic and white, as it’s fond of saying. The other is African, black and voodoon. So we’re going to lead off the airing of the series with the Haiti & Dominican Republic program.

Cuba is a slam dunk. Everybody wants to know what’s going on in Cuba. And Fidel Castro, two years after he had his revolution in 1959, he announced that racism had been eliminated in Cuba. And Cuba got almost 800,000 slaves — far more than the United States. So there’s a fascination with Cuba: Our nearest neighbor. Miami’s twin city. How black is Cuba? Is there racism? Did the revolution, which brought health benefits and education to poor people, eliminate racism? That’s the question we ask. You can get the answer because the name of the episode is The Next Cuban Revolution.

And then finally Mexico and Peru. If Havana is the twin city of Miami, Mexico is our twin country. No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the slave trade. The coast of Acapulco was a black city in the 1870s. And the Veracruz Coast on the gulf of Mexico and the Costa Chica, south of Acapulco are traditional black lands. Here’s the punchline, Barack Obama the first black president in the New World? No way. Vicente Guerrero in 1829. Mulatto, just like Barack Obama. First President of Mexico.

All these countries have curious things for this hidden history. The Dominican Republic says “We’re black behind the ears.” And in Mexico, “there’s a black grandma in the closet.” They know, they’ve just been intermarrying for a long time. But if we did the DNA of everyone in Mexico a whole lot of people would have a whole lot of black in them.

Check out photos from the April 11 screening of Black in Latin America, hosted by the Ford Foundation:

The series reveals how huge a role history can play in forming a nation’s concept of race. Although each of the countries you visited has its own distinct history, did you find any commonalities between the six countries with regard to race?

Yes, each country except for Haiti went through a period of whitening, when they wanted to obliterate or bury or blend in their black roots. Each then, had a period when they celebrated their cultural heritage but as part of a multi-cultural mix and in that multi-cultural mix, somehow the blackness got diluted, blended. So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be “blackish” — really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features. In other words, the poverty in each of these countries has been socially constructed as black. The upper class in Brazil is virtually all white, a tiny group of black people in the upper-middle class. And that’s true in Peru, that’s true in the Dominican Republic. Haiti’s obviously an exception because it’s a country of mulatto and black people but there’s been a long tension between mulatto and black people in Haiti. So even Haiti has its racial problems.

In your opinion, if you visited other countries in Latin America you would see those commonalities coming out as well?

Yes. Again, these are representative. Typical. And I think that they typify the larger experience. I would hope we could get funding to do another series.

How do you feel the race experience differs between Latin American nations and the United States?

Whereas we have black and white or perhaps black, white, and mulatto as the three categories of race traditionally in America, Brazil has 136 kinds of blackness. Mexico, 16. Haiti, 98. Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It’s very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with. But these are very real categories. In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it’s almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white. Color and race are defined in strikingly different ways in each of these countries, more akin to each other than in the United States. We’re the only country to have the one-drop rule. The only one. And that’s because of the percentage of rape and sexual harassment of black women by white males during slavery and the white owners wanted to guarantee that the children of these liaisons were maintained as property.

And what’s amazing is that they can keep track. I’m thinking of the scene in Brazil where the group of men listed the different racial classifications that describe their skin color.

It’s like they had a color meter. “Oh this person is Caboclo.” I cracked up. That was a brilliant scene. I set that up, I told the crew just to follow me. And we walked through the market with me asking people what color I was and we had a lot of responses and then we picked the best one. But the best one was those guys when we put the hands in the circle. And then they all said “I’m Negro, I’m Negro” and then I said “No really, what are you?” And they go “I’m Cabocla, He’s Moreno.” It was great.

Could you discuss a few events during the making of the series that you found particularly powerful?

Well, there were many. Discovering that people in Latin America had been worshiping two black saints since the 1600s. That was astonishing. Discovering that the first Barack Obama in the New World was a Mexican, Vicente Guerrero. Learning that the Cuban Army of Independence was over 50 percent black and that two of its leaders were black generals including Antonio Maceo. But I think the most moving person I met was a Catholic Priest named Father Glyn Jemmott who works in the Costa Chica South of Acapulco on the Pacific in the blackest area of Mexico. He’s a Trinidadian. He’s been a parish priest there for 25 years. And he’s a black man. And his goal is to get people into Heaven. And to help them understand that they’re black and that’s a good thing. And he’s a humble man. He does it for the love of God and humanity. I found interacting with him a deeply spiritual experience.

Which of the countries do you most want to go back to visit and why?

I love them all. It’s like a mother and her children. I want to go back to each of them. But I was particularly fascinated by Cuba. Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It’s so different but it’s so similar to the United States, to Miami. It’s like a doppelgänger. It’s the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans. The people are all waiting for democracy and capitalism to come and I hope that that happens very soon. I mean I wish that Fidel Castro would wake up one day and decide he wants to be the George Washington of his country and institute one person one vote and open the country up.

In this week’s Independent Lens Director’s Statement, Waste Land director Lucy Walker discusses what first interested her in making a film centered around garbage, and what it was like working with artist Vik Muniz. Waste Land airs Tuesday, April 19 at 10 p.m. on THIRTEEN.

Statement courtesy of Independent Lens. For interviews and other Independent Lens film content, visit their blog.

I have always been interested in garbage: What it says about us. What in there embarrasses us, and what we can’t bear to part with. Where it goes and how much of it there is. How it endures. What it might be like to work with it every day. I read about one woman’s crusade to show her appreciation for all the sanitation workers in New York by hugging each of them, and I applauded the sentiment … and yet … there had to be some other way for me to show my appreciation.

Then when I was a graduate film student at NYU, I started training with the NYU Triathlon Club. As we endured the most grueling 6 AM workouts imaginable, I bonded with fellow triathlete Robin Nagle, a brilliant professor who was teaching about garbage. Listening to Robin talk about her work was so fascinating that I began sitting in on her Ph.D seminar, and loved deepening my thinking about the sociology and implications and revelations and actuality of garbage.

So when Robin took her grad students to visit Fresh Kills, the landfill on Staten Island, I was curious and gate-crashed. These days it is best known as the resting place of the debris from the World Trade Center, but this was back in March 2000. It was a shocking place, with chain-link fences clad with teeming nightmare quantities of plastic bags making the nastiest noise imaginable, and pipes outgassing methane poking up at regular intervals through the exaggerated contours of the grassed-over giant mounds of garbage. It’s a parody of an idyllic hyper-landscaped city park, with garbage hills 225-feet high — taller than the Statue of Liberty. We looked at the rats and seagulls and dogs, and at the palimpsests of layer upon layer of discarded possessions. And we tried to ignore the putrid smell.

I love great locations in movies, and I couldn’t believe I’d never seen a landfill on screen before. It was the most haunting place. And all of the garbage I’d ever generated living in New York City was in there somewhere. This was the graveyard of all my stuff, along with everyone else’s. I immediately knew that I wanted to make a movie in a garbage dump.

Cut to 2006, and I met producer Angus Aynsley and co-producer Peter Martin at BritDoc and again at the London Film Festival, and instantly liked them enormously and wanted to work with them. Talking about possible projects, Angus mentioned that he had met Vik Muniz and been impressed by his highly entertaining slideshow about art history. I had seen and loved Vik’s work, and I was hugely excited about the possibility of working with him. So I read some of Vik’s writing and set off with Angus and Peter to meet Vik in Newcastle, England when he had an opening at the Baltic in January 2007.

When we met up again in Vik’s studio in New York two months later the conversation turned to garbage, and I suddenly thought about my trip to Fresh Kills seven years previous. That was the lightbulb moment. Vik had previously done a beautiful series using junk, and he had also done projects with street sweepings and dust. His creative use of materials is his signature — whether chocolate sauce, sugar, or condensation trails from planes — so this project would very much be an extension of his earlier work. After we’d started talking about it, no other ideas were interesting anymore. I knew that a collaboration between Vik and the catadores would be potentially very dramatic. Vik had previously done some brilliant social projects with street kids in São Paulo and had a wonderful ongoing project in Rio that employed kids from the favelas, and I was totally inspired by him.

A month later, Angus and I got exciting news that Fabio had found one landfill where the drug traffic was under control, and the catadores were being organized into a co-operative by a charismatic young leader who might be open to collaborating with Vik. We were all very nervous — there were so many things to be afraid of, from dengue fever to kidnapping — but we all wanted to go. We arrived in Rio de Janeiro in August 2007 — Vik, Angus, Peter, and me. Seeing the extremes of poverty and wealth so ostentatiously displayed through the car window … the contrasts of mountains and oceans, black and white, garbage and art, art stars and catadores … the contrasts couldn’t be more starkly drawn than in Rio de Janeiro, and I realized that it wasn’t a coincidence that we were tackling this particular topic in Rio. It was perfect.

For me this film, as with all of my work, is about getting to know people who you do not normally meet in your life. And, if I’m doing my job, I aim to create an opportunity for the audience to feel they are getting under the skin, to emotionally connect with the people on the screen. But you need people you can care about. And so when Valter first cycled into my line of sight, I knew for sure that we had a movie. That day I had gone on my first reconnaissance mission to the landfill and was dressed head-to-toe in protective layers fit for a moon landing. His bike was decorated so creatively with odd trinkets from the trash and he honked his eagle horn with such sweet wit that I was totally smitten.

I am Vik’s biggest fan. And this idea of “the human factor,” about scales in portraiture, and distances in getting to know people, is what the movie is about for me. I’m not sure anyone will notice this unless I tell them, but there are three references to ants in the movie: Vik says that when he is flying over Gramacho, the people look like “just little ants, doing what they do every day”; then Isis talks about the ant that she saw crawling over her dead son’s face; finally we see Vik playing with an ant with his paintbrush in the studio. That play of being so far away that people are just ants, with no “human factor” is the opposite experience of being so deeply connected to your son that you will never forget “not the tiniest detail, not a single single detail,” not even an ant on his face in a single moment.

And Vik, as an artist, plays between these levels of proximity and distance, between showing the viewer the material and showing them the idea, revealing the relationship between the paint strokes and the scene depicted by the paint. The portrait is Isis, it is a Picasso, it is a bunch of garbage, and it is a work by Vik Muniz — all at once. You can view things close in or further away. Likewise you can fear people from afar or you can go interact with them. I love the Eames’s Powers of Ten and I wanted to create a social analog. To start with we see the place from GoogleEarth, then from a helicopter, then from a car, then from a safe distance, then from a first meeting, then from a growing friendship, then from it having change you fundamentally and permanently.

Just as Vik wants the portraits to serve as a mirror in which the catadores may see themselves, so I hope the movie serves as a means for us to see our journey to becoming involved with people so far from ourselves. To zoom all the way in to caring about someone who was previously as far away as it’s possible to be.

Questions poke through the fabric of the movie as things get messy. In Waste Land, Vik and his wife start to argue on camera about whether the project is hurting the catadores by taking them out of their environment and then, when it’s over, expecting them to return. Likewise, should documentary filmmakers interfere with their subjects’ lives? But how could they not? I don’t believe in objectivity. I observe the observer’s paradox every moment I’m filming. Your presence is changing everything; there’s no mistaking it. And you have a responsibility.

My heartfelt thanks to the catadores. I can’t help seeing Waste Land as the third in a triptych with my earlier films Devil’s Playground and Blindsight, and not least in the awe and gratitude I feel for the group of people who were courageous enough to share their stories with us — and to live lives so rich in inspiration for us all. We dedicate the movie to Valter, and remember him saying that “99 is not 100.” A single can, or a single catador, can make the difference.

— Lucy Walker

Director Tamra Davis is hardly an “outsider artist.” She is a well-known Hollywood director of music videos (with Sonic Youth, Hanson, Depeche Mode, Cher, and many more), feature films (including Billy Madison, Half Baked, and Crossroads with Britney Spears), and television series (My Name is Earl, Everybody Hates Chris, and Ugly Betty, among others).

Davis took some time out to talk to Independent Lens about her labor-of-love film on her friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which premieres on THIRTEEN on April 12, 2011 at 10 p.m.

Interview courtesy of Independent Lens. For more interviews and other Independent Lens film content, visit their blog.

You had footage of Jean-Michel for years. Why did you wait until now to make this film?

Honestly I think it had to do with a few factors. I had been working in television and I really wanted to get back into feature film directing and this was a project I could do without having to wait for a studio or for a huge amount of money. I also was feeling confident enough in my skills as a filmmaker that I could make this film pretty much by myself. Those are the technical reasons. On a personal level, having that footage and feeling it still lingering I really felt that it was time for Jean-Michel to have his voice heard. I was getting tired of all the misconceptions about who Jean-Michel was.

How did you come to make Jean-Michel’s acquaintance?

Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev

Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev discovered a book at a flea market in Moscow about Russian avant-garde art that miraculously survived Soviet censorship. That chance encounter led to many years traveling back and forth between Los Angeles, Moscow, and Uzbekistan, piecing together the history of the most remarkable trove of modern art you’ve probably never seen. The result is The Desert of Forbidden Art, which premieres on THIRTEEN on April 5, 2011 at 10 p.m.

Independent Lens sat down with the filmmakers to discuss their travels and the making of the film.

Interview courtesy of Independent Lens. For more interviews and other Independent Lens film content, visit their blog.

What impact do you hope this film will have?

We hope that our film will serve as a catalyst to bring international attention to protect and preserve this endangered 20th century art treasure. Even though the museum houses a collection worth millions, government salaries for its staff average less than $100 a month. This is just one example of the economic pressures on the museum. Ninety-seven percent of the collection is in dire need of restoration. We are using the film to encourage a traveling exhibition of Nukus Museum paintings to several museums across the U.S. Our final act of art activism will be to create the first book in English on the collection.

What led you to make this film?

Bruce Marcus

Inside Thirteen recently spoke with Bruce Marcus, executive producer of Vine Talk, and Josh Nathan, WNET’s Vice President of Business Development, to discuss how the unique show came to fruition (pardon the pun).

Hosted by Stanley Tucci, Vine Talk features wine experts Ray Isle, Stepahanie Caraway, and Emilie Perrier.  Each episode hosts wine tastings with a new and diverse panel of celebrity guests, from chefs (Lidia Bastianich, Stephen Raichlen, and many others) to actors (including Patricia Clarkson and John Lithgow), and beyond.

Vine Talk premieres Thursday, April 7 at 10:30 p.m. on THIRTEEN.

Inside Thirteen: What was the inspiration behind Vine Talk?

Bruce Marcus: The inspiration really came about by noticing a real void of television programs related to wine that were comforting and welcoming to people.  At the same time, knowing that for years, producers have said they were going to try and deal with that and they just never did – there was always the same type of show with wine experts prancing through the fields of France.  Those are beautiful shows, I’ve produced them, but very few people watch and they certainly don’t sustain themselves over time.  This is an adult entertainment show with a focus on wine – it’s not a wine show.

I think the show can seriously have an impact on wine drinking habits in the United States, and it should.  Wine drinking is becoming more and more popular.  It has a long way to catch up with many countries in the world, and there’s no reason people should be nervous about wine, just because there is a history around it and an academic side.

IT: How are celebrity guests selected for the show?

BM: There are a number of us working together – we work very closely with Stanley Tucci’s production company, OLIVE Productions.  We get a certain number of guests that are known to Stanley, but in general we are looking for a wide range of interesting people.  They don’t have to be Hollywood celebrities.  We’ve had a good share of musicians, we’ve had a poet, writers – we just want a good group that we think will make a good mix at the tasting table.

IT: What is the process for selecting which wines will be featured?

BM: We’re doing everything we can to make it a very credible process.  First, our production staff selected the wine regions for the purpose of attracting a large audience.  Over 80% of the wine purchased in the States actually comes from U.S. vineyards, so we wanted a large percent of the shows to be out of the U.S. wine regions.  After that, we gave certain parameters to the wine associations and asked them to find 25-35 wines within their regions that fit our parameters.  For example, one of the parameters was, for the most part we needed wines that were available in stores – we did not want to go out in front of millions of viewers and have 10 bottles available across the country, because we know it’s going to drive people to want to get these.  We also wanted a good price spread.  The associations were then invited to a selection event in October where we put together independent wine panels that tasted the wines and picked their six favorites of each group of 25 or 30. Our sommeliers did participate, but it was mostly outside people – retailers, distributors, wine-knowledgeable people, and they picked the six for each show.

IT: Can you talk about working with WNET and what the experience has been like using the Tisch/WNET Studios?

BM: We are very fortunate that the timing worked out and perhaps the ideal location for us in New York City was becoming available unbeknownst to us, right at a great crossroads of American culture at Lincoln Center.  It wasn’t the exact physical makeup that we had initially envisioned, but that’s never the case, and we ended up with what we believe is a very effective use of both the upstairs and the downstairs – we like to call it our upstairs cellar, and then the studio audience is down on the first level.  We couldn’t have asked for a better public television partner.  It’s been great working with the WNET and WLIW team, and everyone has been incredibly supportive.

IT: What is your favorite wine?

BM: They keep changing, every few months!  I’m very much into wines from Chile – Chile is not featured in our first season of shows – I got outvoted!

Josh Nathan

Inside Thirteen: What first interested you in Vine Talk?

Josh Nathan: The show grabbed my attention – there’s nothing else on television like this.  It’s an opportunity to have fun and educate at the same time. I think wine is something that needs to be made accessible to people, and I think Public Television’s mission is to make complicated subjects accessible.

Having Stanley Tucci host was an interesting and positive aspect of the show design; rather than having a chef or a wine sommelier be the host of the show, instead you have someone who everybody knows, is very likeable and delightful on the air, and who has an interest in and knowledge of wine. He’s not lecturing, he’s discovering with the audience, and I thought that was just a terrific approach.

IT: To what degree has WNET been involved in the creative process for this show, if at all?

JN: We got involved as soon as Bruce brought the program to us.  He had a format and a layout for how the show was going to work, and we reviewed it, got engaged in refining that format with him and Joe Lacarro, the director.  After the pilot was shot, we got very involved in deciding how to improve the structure of the show.  Neil Shapiro (WNET’s president and CEO), Stephen Segaller (WNET’s VP of Content), and our team watched it, put notes together, and then I sat down with the Vine Talk team and one of the sommeliers, and we restructured the show based on that pilot learning experience. Bruce came up with the concept and the format, but all of our hands were in taking it to the next spot.  The folks at APT screened it as well.  It was a very positive and efficient collaboration, pre-pilot and post-pilot.

IT: What has the experience been like having the show film at the new Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center?

JN: I thought it was genius!  They originally were going to shoot in another space, and I suggested that they look at Lincoln Center and think about the upstairs and the downstairs.  I didn’t really know what their requirements were in terms of layout.  They went over and spent some time in the studio and looked at the space and they came back to me and said they wanted to use the studio because it offered a way to separate the audience from the performance, which they thought would enhance the show.  Now the studio audience can be talking and laughing and enjoying themselves while they watch the taping, without everyone having to be quiet while the show is going on.  It also gives the guests, Stanley Tucci, and Ray Isle an intimate space to work.  The way they transformed the studio was brilliant, and that’s what’s so cool about the Lincoln Center studio – it’s a gem of a space, and I think this show really shows the potential for how much you can do in that space.  It was a pleasant surprise.

IT: What is your favorite wine?

JN: I have a few – it depends on what I’m eating, and the weather.  In the summertime, it can be any number of white wines.  On a really hot summer day as part of a cocktail hour, I’ll serve a rosé.  There’s an Italian wine, Dolcetto d’Alba, a wonderful red wine from Italy, that, whenever I see it on a wine list at a restaurant, it’s always terrific.  For white wine, there’s a Picpoul grape from France that’s fantastic – great with fish, chicken, crackers and cheese.

A fun tip: host a Vine Talk party – screen the show with friends and have your own wine tastings at home!

*In New York, the series’ broadcasts on THIRTEEN and WLIW21 are sponsored by Fairway Market and Fairway Wines and Spirits.

More than 10,000 educators from across the country gathered on March 18-19 for the 6th annual Celebration of Teaching and Learning at the Hilton New York in New York City.

The conference brought together experts from a wide range of fields, including the Arts, Global Awareness, Health & Wellness, Instructional Technology, Social Studies, Special Education, and Whole School Issues.

Among this year’s notable speakers were NBC’s Brian Williams, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Chief of Staff to the U.S. Secretary of Education, Joanne Weiss; Mayor Cory Booker, and WNET’s own Jon Meacham (Need to Know).

Check out our photo highlights from the event:

Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel are the filmmakers behind Pushing the Elephant, a film about faith, family, and forgiveness in the most extreme circumstances imaginable.

The film premieres on Tuesday, March 29 at 10 p.m. on THIRTEEN. Independent Lens sat down with the directors to talk about telling such an intimate and, at times, terrifying story and what drove them to do it.

Interview courtesy of Independent Lens. For more interviews and other Independent Lens film content, visit their blog.

What impact do you hope this film will have?

Pushing the Elephant brings to life the horrors that continue to be endured in Congo, the importance of international involvement, and the ways in which individual acts can make enormous contributions. By approaching this complex issue through the humanity of the story of one woman and her family, we hope that the film will enable viewers to find commonality of experience, and therefore a sense of responsibility toward, Rose Mapendo and the millions of refugees like her.

We are focusing our audience engagement campaign in three main areas: women’s empowerment, refugee rights and policy, and peacebuilding. We are partnering with organizations and advocates to explore ways in which the film can be used to advance our common goals. Our first advocacy initiative is working with a consortium of women’s rights organizations to use the film to help get both the Senate and the Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA), an unprecedented effort by the United States to address violence against women (looks strange capitalized) globally.

We have a deep desire to bring the film to Congo, the Great Lakes region, and areas with large refugee populations. We would like to screen it both to a grassroots audience and to the power players deciding the fate of Rose’s homeland. In cooperation with our partner FilmAid International, we have already shown the film at Dadaab and Kakuma, two of the world’s largest refugee camps, both in Kenya. We have received footage with testimonies from some of the people who screened the film, which we hope to build on as we develop our campaign.

What led you to make Pushing the Elephant?

Arts Engine, Inc. is a female-founded company. Big Mouth Films, a project of Arts Engine, is committed to telling multifaceted and universal stories through an intimate lens about the complexities of life as a woman in this new millennium. This story is a perfect example of this commitment. For all the unique circumstances of the story, it contains universal truths about the mother-daughter bond and the importance of family, connection and forgiveness, themes to which women everywhere can relate. Furthermore, as a strong African woman and a refugee who is a leader and an activist, Rose represents a model of woman we rarely get to see on film or other media sources. At the heart of the film is a powerful story of how families persevere through extreme circumstances.

What were some of the challenges you faced in making your documentary?

The greatest was doing justice to Rose’s message. We feel very committed to getting her message out there in a way reflective of its import, which is a huge challenge. We also had many storylines that we tried to integrate effectively and truthfully, which was tricky.

How did you gain the trust of the people in the film, since much of the subject matter is difficult and personal?

At Arts Engine, we always feel very committed to having subjects tell their stories in their own voices in the way they want their stories to be told. I think that just approaching any human being with that kind of approach — saying, “This is your story. You tell it how it needs to be told. We don’t have an agenda, other than to listen.” Also, Rose talks. That’s what she does for a living. She wanted her story to be heard. In addition, the first time we filmed with them, it was just Beth, a one-person crew. She was able to just fade into the background and let life unfold before her. Some of it is also time — as with any relationship, it’s a matter of taking time, building trust, and letting people feel comfortable.

What would you have liked to include in your film that didn’t make the final cut?

One of the hardest for us to let go was the storyline of Rose’s parents, who are briefly included in the film when Nangabire says goodbye to them in Nairobi. They had been waiting for a very long time for their visas, but everyone had all but given up. Then the visas came through. We have this incredible footage of them packing to come to the United States, and talking about their dreams, and their expectations about what would happen when they arrived. We had wonderful footage of their arrival as well — of going to Costco for the first time, of grandma playing basketball, of the whole family meeting them at the airport and praying together. However, we hope to include some of the footage in our online and DVD extras. We want to include it somewhere, because it is such a great story of loss and separation, reunification, acclimation, and hope.

Any other storylines you had to sacrifice?

Rose was in a death camp for about a year and a half, she and Nangabire were separated for 12 years, members of Rose’s family remain scattered around the world. There were only so many stories that we were able to capture; there were so many more that we wanted to learn about. Of course, there was no way to hear all of them. Each story was so rich and full of detail, there would always be questions left that we wanted to ask.

It’s probably tough to choose just one, but tell about a scene in the film that especially moved or resonated with each of you.

Elizabeth Mandel: One of the scenes that resonated with me most is a scene that is no longer in the film. The scene shows the family preparing to go to church the morning after Nangabire arrives in the U.S., which is the first time she has seen her mother in 12 years. Nangabire comes downstairs and Rose starts fixing her hair. Nangabire says, “Mom, stop breaking my hair!” and Rose says, “I’m not breaking your hair, I’m making it look better.” To me, this is emblematic of the relationships between mothers and daughters everywhere, an exchange that is shorthand for such complexity. When discussing the film, we often talk about how even though the story of genocide in Congo seems so remote to most Americans, it is a very intimate, accessible, universal story. Even though this scene got cut, the sentiment it captures pervades the film.

Beth Davenport: One of the scenes that resonated with me was when Rose tells us the story of the difficult decision she, John, and Aimee had to make to keep their family alive. Filming and getting to know Rose over the course of two and a half years, we learned so many intricacies of her story. As trust between us strengthened Rose mentioned that there was a part of the story that she hadn’t yet shared with us. On our last shoot and interview with Rose, I asked her if she was ready to talk about this part of her past that she hadn’t spoken to many people about. Rose was ready. It was a very difficult interview for her. However, by the end of it, in her work, and through the process of making the film, she understands the importance of talking about the past in order to heal, and the effect that this will have on other women around the world who feel shame about what has happened to them.

What has the audience response been so far? What do Rose and her family think?

We feel privileged to have received such a positive response, and for our subjects to be so happy with the film. One of the most gratifying things is the way in which Rose’s message of forgiveness has affected people. We heard a story from a colleague about a friend and relative who hadn’t spoken to one another in years. They both came to see the film, and it led to a thawing of the ice between them. In addition, a number of organizations that are involved in Rose’s line of work (peacebuilding, women’s rights, refugee policy) have indicated that the film could be very important for their efforts. We were quite nervous to show the film to Rose’s family, including Nangabire, John, and Rose’s brother, Kigabo. There are many intimate family details, and a lot of pain is exposed. Although we were always upfront with the family that anything recorded we were likely to use, we were still anxious to see their reactions. Fortunately, they think it’s a wonderful film, and think that it is something that can help promote their belief in peace and reconciliation, and universal rights.

What has happened to Rose and the other people in your film since shooting wrapped?

Since the completion of filming, Rose has been working with her brother Kigabo to establish Africa Health New Horizons, an organization dedicated to providing free health care, with a particular focus on maternal and child health, in the Great Lakes region of eastern Congo. She continues to advocate for peace and reconciliation and women’s and refugee rights on the world stage.

Nangabire has recently moved to Tucson to complete her high school training. She hopes to go to nursing school.

Aimee got married while we were filming and had a baby near the end of production. We just found out that she is expecting another child.

The independent film business is not for the faint of heart. What keeps you motivated?

It is finding subjects like Rose. As difficult as our business is, her life, her history, and her work are so much more difficult. We feel motivated by an opportunity to bring underrepresented but critical voices like hers to the foreground.

Why did you choose to present your film on public television?

Public television has set the bar for broadcasting engaging documentaries that inspire introspection, action, and sociopolitical involvement. It has also become the portal for those whose voices and experiences are not reflected on mainstream television. With this in mind, we felt that Pushing the Elephant was an excellent fit for public television.

How did you originally learn about Rose and her story?

People ask us that all the time! Here is a blog entry we recently wrote on the subject.

What are your three favorite films?

Elizabeth: Tampopo, Rebecca, Waiting for Guffman.

Beth: Grey Gardens, Amores Perros, The Ice Storm.

What advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers?

Making documentary films takes a lot of energy, time, commitment, sweat, and tears. Pick a subject that you care deeply about. Work with people you respect and like. Be prepared for enormous challenges, and remember to maintain your sense of humor, your perspective, and your relationships with people outside your industry. And be prepared to cut your favorite scenes; sometimes it makes your film stronger.

There’s no craft services on a documentary film project. What fuels you?

Elizabeth: Apricots and salt and vinegar potato chips. Not necessarily together.

Beth: Really, really dark chocolate – at least 85% Cacao.

Inside Thirteen recently spoke with Roger Weisberg, producer and director of No Tomorrow, which takes a look at the tragic murder of Risa Bejarano, a principal subject of the recent PBS film Aging Out, and the chilling death penalty trial that followed.

The film delves into the complex reality of the death penalty, compelling viewers to question for themselves the legitimacy of capital punishment as a public policy.

Here, Weisberg discusses what compelled him to make the film and explains how his experience with the trial informed his own opinion of the death penalty.

No Tomorrow airs Monday, March 21 at 9 p.m. on THIRTEEN.

For more about the film, including background information, discussion questions, and other resources, check out the No Tomorrow Viewer’s Guide.

Inside Thirteen: Why did you feel the need to make this film?

Roger Weisberg: About five years ago, PBS broadcast our previous documentary, Aging Out, about teenagers who have to fend for themselves after leaving the foster care system.  One of the principle subjects of that film was Risa Bejarano.  Less than a year after the film was completed, she was brutally murdered, and our film about Risa’s transition out of the foster care system ended up documenting her last year of life.  This documentary initially fell into the hands of the homicide detectives investigating the case, and then into the hands of the district attorney.  When the D.A. opted to pursue the death penalty for Risa’s killer, he decided to use our film in order to heighten sympathy for the victim, Risa Bejarano, and hatred for the defendant. All of a sudden we discovered that our work was being used for a purpose for which we had never intended, and we felt compelled to make a follow-up film about this chilling death penalty case and the role that our film played in the trial.

IT: In the film it is mentioned that the prosecution edited Aging Out to heighten its impact on the jury.  To what extent did you feel the material was manipulated?

RW: The district attorney initially showed the entire film about Risa’s transition from the foster care system to living on her own.  Then, in his closing argument, he re-edited a small portion of the video in order to highlight the happiest moments in Risa’s life – attending her senior prom, participating in her high school graduation, heading off to college with several scholarships.  These uplifting moments were put into a montage, and then the D.A. edited statements that he was able to surreptitiously capture from the defendant in jail where he was bragging about being a killer. The juxtaposition of these comments by the defendant with our imagery of Risa’s accomplishments had a powerful effect on the jurors.  The last image the jurors were left with after he showed this montage was Risa’s bloody body at the crime scene.  We knew that he intended to use our film in the penalty phase of the trial, but we were surprised to learn that he took the liberty of re-editing the film to heighten its impact.

IT: It’s said in the film that there is value to the potential and the message of death row, and Risa’s foster mother says at one point in the film that “if there was more of the death penalty, there wouldn’t be as much crime.” Yet, Juan Chavez does not seem daunted by receiving the death penalty; he almost expects it. What are your thoughts on this – would some other punishment have been more effective for troubled youths like Chavez?

RW: There is a huge debate over whether the death penalty is a deterrent, and that’s what Risa’s foster mother Dolores was hinting at when she suggested that if the death penalty was more broadly applied, there would be less crime. There really is no conclusive proof whatsoever that the death penalty in fact is a deterrent or that young people like Juan Chavez are even aware of the death penalty.

In terms of alternatives, there are two  – the preferable alternative is to be able to reach troubled youths at the first sign that they are going off the rails.  Juan Chavez, much like Risa Bejarano, grew up in an abusive home, suffered from neglect and sexual molestation;  and was surrounded by street gangs, which became the only family that embraced him.  If the juvenile justice system, the mental health system, the educational system, or even the Church was able to reach this young man before his behavior became so pathological, there’s no doubt that there would have been an opportunity to turn him around before he committed this horrible act.  Given that that didn’t happen, the alternative to the death penalty that many states have is the imposition of a penalty of life without parole.  That’s a way of punishing somebody, arguably more severely than putting them to death – having to spend the rest of their life incarcerated with no possibility of parole.  It protects the community forever, and it satisfies the hunger of the public for retribution for these heinous crimes.  So, we do have an alternative to the death penalty that is effective and is vastly less expensive.  It’s kind of counterintuitive, but imposing a sentence of life without parole costs taxpayers significantly less than the death penalty.

IT: Having worked with Risa on Aging Out, do you think she would have been at ease with the outcome of the trial?

RW: Risa was someone who believed in second chances.  She was someone who herself was given a second chance.  The people who knew Risa best, her closest friends, tell us that she never would have supported the death penalty.  Risa’s siblings were all in gangs and caught up in this lifestyle that’s sadly too common in many poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and she understood that this environment often leads to violent crime.

IT: Did making this film change your thoughts on capital punishment and the death penalty?

RW: To be honest, I initially was opposed to the death penalty on pure moral grounds, but when Risa was murdered and we dove into this story, I really understood in a new way the impulse to want to punish the perpetrator of this kind of crime in the most severe way possible. I was sympathetic with people who, like Risa’s foster mom, favored the death penalty because she wanted this young man pay for his crime.  Even though I learned to recognize that that’s a very legitimate human response, the more I learned about the administration of the death penalty, the more I became convinced that it is not a legitimate public policy. The way it is administered is just too inaccurate.  There have been so many men and women on death row who have been exonerated.  It’s too costly, it’s too discriminatory, and it doesn’t deter.  For all of those reasons, my initial moral aversion to the death penalty was reinforced by what I learned about the way the death penalty is applied in this country.

IT: How big of a role do you think choice played in the case of Juan Chavez’s life vs. Risa Bejarano’s life?  Is it a question of nature vs. nurture?

RW: A lot of people looking at Risa and Juan Chavez compare the two and argue that Risa grew up in these horrible circumstances but she made choices to improve her life.  Meanwhile, Juan Chavez grew up in equally horrible circumstances, surrounded by abuse and neglect, and made choices that put him squarely down a destructive, murderous path.  I have to question whether Chavez really did have choices.  As one of the experts said, he didn’t choose to be abandoned by his father, he didn’t choose to be abused by his mother, he didn’t choose to go on the streets to find the only family that would accept him.  He didn’t choose to be born with mental health problems.  I think to say that Chavez acted on pure free will and therefore is fully responsible for his actions is an oversimplification that does not take into account the role that his troubled upbringing played in his life.  None of this background excuses his heinous behavior.   I do think that people like Juan Chavez deserve to be severely punished, and the community definitely deserves to be protected from them, but I don’t think that as a society, we deserve to kill him.

IT: What message do you hope viewers will take from this film?

RW: It probably was summed up best by the comment of Bryan Stevenson, who got the last word in the film.  He said that the question is not: does Juan Chavez deserve to die for what he did? – the real question is do we deserve to kill?  So, I think that if you had to boil it down to one single message, I would hope that even those viewers who think that Juan Chavez deserves to die, would conclude that we don’t deserve to kill him – that the application of the death penalty is just too too inaccurate, too unfair, too discriminatory, and too costly for us to continue to have capital punishment in this country.

To date, there have been over 170 community events and screenings of No Tomorrow.  Organizations and schools that are interested can acquire the video for that purpose.