Yesterday, Inside Thirteen had the opportunity to interview Mark Samels, Executive Producer of STONEWALL UPRISING, a film documenting the 1969 police raid of a Greenwich Village gay bar, The Stonewall Inn. When bar patrons refused to be led away in paddy wagons, a three-day riot ensued, providing a pivotal spark to the gay rights movement.

STONEWALL UPRISING takes a closer look at the oppression faced by gays and lesbians in the late ’60s, and brings viewers behind the scenes of the riot through interviews with Stonewall patrons, reporters, and the police officer who led the raid.

The film will premiere in New York at Film Forum from June 16-29; it will air on THIRTEEN later this year. Mark Samels answered our questions via email.

Inside Thirteen: How much of an impact did the Stonewall riots have on the Gay Rights Movement? Was the reaction immediate, or gradual over time?

Mark Samels: The Stonewall Riots were not the beginning of the gay rights movement in the US, but they were an important catalyst. Not unlike early events in the civil rights movement, such as the arrest of Rosa Parks or the march on Selma, the events in June 1969 in Greenwich Village would come to be seen as pivotal, and momentous. For the first time, gays and lesbians felt that their own personal struggles were being mirrored in a larger movement—a movement that would increasingly become politically significant. For many, there was no going back to what life had been like before Stonewall. Over time, that sense of a new chapter in the the story of gay Americans became symbolized in annual Gay Pride parades, another product of Stonewall.

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

MS: We hope viewers will come to see that the gay rights movement actually has a history, and that Stonewall played a critical role in that history. We also hope that the film presents a picture of what life was like in the US for gays and lesbians during the 1950s and 1960s, the role New York and Greenwich Village played in gay life, and how the media presented homosexuals during this time. If nothing else, this history shows what has changed, and what has not changed, for gays in America over the past fifty years.

IT: How consistent are the accounts you received from the patrons, reporters, and police you spoke to for the film? How open were they in speaking about the incident?

MS: STONEWALL UPRISING is a historical film without narration and a story told largely through witnesses. A few scholars and experts appear in the film, but for the most part the story is told by those who took part in it. We made a great effort to include a 360 degree perspective on the story, from gays and lesbians who took part in the riots to police officers who were sent in to close down Stonewall to politicians who enacted public decency laws that impacted gay life. The filmmakers, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, have a great track record in establishing trust with film subjects, and in treating them fairly and empathetically. That trust was key to getting people from all sides to participate in the film.

IT: What was the biggest challenge in making this film?

MS: By far and away the biggest challenge in making the film was how to represent it visually. Surprisingly for an event that took place in 1969 in the nation’s media capital, the events at the Stonewall Inn were not recorded by local television stations or independent film crews. Only a few photographs of the riots exist. Yet the three days of riots were intense, dangerous and emotionally charged. We chose to depict that intensity through the use of images from other public protests and disturbances of the time—and put a card at the top of the film announcing that stylistic approach. In doing so, we hoped to preserve the integrity of the film without diminishing the power of the story.

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Building on the success of his series African American Lives and African American Lives 2, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. again turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans. The series premieres on THIRTEEN Wednesdays, February 10 – March 3 at 8 p.m. Ask your own questions of Professor Gates on the PBS website.

Q. What makes FACES OF AMERICA so special?

Gates: After my work on the African American Lives series, I got thousands of letters from people all over America saying, “Why not do my history?” So, I decided to do the same kind of analysis and research on people of Irish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and other ethnicities, and the results are just as dramatic as in African American Lives. All of the guests on FACES OF AMERICA were deeply moved by what we revealed about their ancestry. We were able to trace the ancestry of Native American writer Louise Erdrich back to 438 A.D. We found that Queen Noor is descended from royalty, and that’s before she married King Hussein of Jordan. We found that the African American poet Elizabeth Alexander is related to the emperor Charlemagne!

We went even further and used DNA analysis to look for “deep cousins” — common ancestors among our guests — and we found genetic connections between eleven of our twelve guests. I found that despite all our apparent differences in terms of culture and history, we are all the same. Read More …

How does the design of a cell phone, toothbrush or couch affect your life? Did you ever stop to think about it? Director Gary Hustwit (“Helvetica”) looks at our complex relationship with manufactured objects, the people who design them and the creative process behind their work. Step inside the offices of the world’s most influential product designers to see how these objects influence us — often without our even knowing it. “Objectified” premieres on Independent Lens on Tuesday, November 24 at 10pm. Inside THIRTEEN spoke with director Gary Hustwit about the film.

Q. What got you interested in going “behind the scenes” into our relationship with everyday objects?

A. You know, sometimes I just look around my apartment and think, “Where did all this stuff come from? Who made it? Why did I buy all of it? Do I really need any of it?” Just basic questions that I think we all have sometimes. I also think it’s interesting how archaeologists learn about ancient civilizations mostly through the objects they leave behind. So 100 or 1,000 years from now, what will the objects designed in our lifetime say about our culture? And I was interested in the idea that we’re having a relationship with the people who design all this stuff, through the objects themselves. Maybe it’s just me, but these are the sort of ideas I obsess over!

Q. So is this a film for design nerds? What will a non-designer learn from your film?

A. Well, we all buy and consume these objects, from computers to cars to toothbrushes. So I think we can all benefit from learning about the creative processes and thinking of the people who design them. I think it’s amazing that there’s so little public discourse about the design of all these products. In the mass media, all we get are buying guides that tout the latest crop of gadgets or whatever, but no real discussion about whether or not these things should be made, or how they’re made, or how they’ll be disposed of once we’re done using them.

Q. Is there an object that you came across during filming that particularly inspired you?

A. What inspires me the most are probably the objects we take for granted and think of as the least “designed”. Have you even noticed those toothpicks with the serrated edges on one end? Do you know why they’re there, and what the story is behind them? Like Henry Ford once said, “Every object tells a story, if you know how to read it.” So I enjoy digging into these little stories behind the hundreds of objects we touch every day, that usually go unnoticed.

Q. One of the people you profile in the film has created some of the most familiar and ever-present designs in recent memory – Jonathan Ive, the designer of the iPod, iPhone, and a slew of Apple hardware. What is the source of his inspiration and creativity?

A. I think Ive embodies some of the qualities of craftsmen from hundreds of years ago, with his complete immersion in the materials and obsessive attention to detail. He’s also very focused on the manufacturing process, and the strengths and weaknesses of producing in huge volume. His team spends as much time designing the manufacturing systems that enable them to make the objects as they spend on designing the objects themselves. That’s not very glamorous, but probably a big part of Apple’s success.

Q. Objectified is the second film of a trilogy – can you tell us a bit about your first film (Helvetica) and your plans for the next film in the series?

A. I guess I just make films about things that I want to learn more about personally. Helvetica looked at the world of fonts and graphic design, which is a subject I’m fascinated by, and one that I couldn’t believe no one had done a proper documentary on. So I’m drawn to subjects that influence our lives, but that most of us don’t really think about. The third film will follow that idea as well, but I think it’s probably more ambitious than the first two films in terms of its scope. So I’m looking forward to showing it to THIRTEEN viewers a few years from now.

Many people have big dreams, but only a few bold adventurers live them. Denis Belliveau and Francis O’Donnell took a wild idea — retrace Marco Polo’s entire 25,000-mile, land-and-sea route from Venice to China and back — and spent two years of their lives making their dream a reality. “In the Footsteps of Marco Polo” chronicles the journey of Denis — a wedding photographer — and Francis — an artist and former Marine — as they set out to follow Polo’s historic route. “In the Footsteps of Marco Polo” airs Thursday, November 19 at 8 p.m. but you can also watch it online now. Inside THIRTEEN spoke with Denis and Francis about their incredible journey.

Q. So what made you and Denis decide to go on a 25,000-mile trip to retrace Marco Polo’s journey?

Francis: Well the main reason is that no one had ever retraced Marco Polo’s entire route, several Expeditions tried and failed for a lot of different reasons. Plus we love art, history, travel & adventure. What better way than to follow the path of the world’s greatest traveler? How often are you confronted with an opportunity like that?

Denis: Also there has always been controversy regarding Polo’s account. Even in his own lifetime he gained the nickname Il millione, which means the man of a million unbelievable stories! So we took his book and used it as our guide. What we would do is go to the city, place or town that Polo wrote about and try to find the things he mentioned seven hundred years ago, and see for ourselves whether his account rings true!
Read More …

“A Death in Tehran” premieres Tuesday, November 17 at 9pm on THIRTEEN

At the height of the protests following Iran’s controversial presidential election this summer, a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran. Her death — filmed on a cameraphone, then uploaded to the web — quickly became an international outrage, and Agha Soltan became the face of a powerful movement that threatened the hard-line government’s hold on power. With the help of a unique network of correspondents in and out of the country, FRONTLINE investigates the life and death of the woman whose image remains a potent symbol for those who want to keep the reform movement alive. The film also explores a number of unanswered questions in the aftermath of the greatest upheaval in Iran since the 1979 revolution: How many were arrested and killed as the security forces attempted to contain the growing protest movement? To what extent was the presidential vote manipulated? What is the future of the movement that seems to have been silenced?

Watch a preview of “A Death in Tehran” now:

As the world remembers the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, watch “After the Fall,” which aired on PBS’ Global Voices in 2008. The film is a portrait of modern Berlin, recounting the story and disappearance of the most absurd of the world’s constructions: the Berlin Wall.

By Daniel T. Allen
Community Engagement Coordinator
Friends of Thirteen, Inc.

Watch National Parks: New Yorkers’ Memories

In 2007, as an intern for Friends of Thirteen, I was the first line of defense in screening the 1,500+ user generated war stories for our producer to use in a local companion to Ken Burns’ The War . From that experience I learned the ropes of “localizing” a national program and the potential for such projects to engage new communities.

So when WNET.ORG President Neal Shapiro asked Friends of Thirteen to help recruit college students to help produce a local program related to Burns’ latest, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, the answer was a resounding yes!

I first turned to Daniel Cowen, a Macaulay Honors Scholar (MHC) and film student at Hunter College here in Manhattan. He founded the CUNY Film Festival last year and works hard to cultivate the cross-campus CUNY film community.

Daniel introduced me to Andres F. Otero from Hunter College, an accomplished documentarian who has free-lanced for the NY Daily News and NY Post, and Davi Santos, another MHC Scholar who hosts a TV program at Lehman College in the Bronx.

At our first pre-production meeting with producer Cyndee Readdean and project researcher Michael Skocay, the students were charged with creating a pilot video that would illustrate how each National Parks interview would flow.
Read More …

“Tito Puente: The King of Latin Music” explores the life and career of one of the most recognizable names in the history of Latin music, the percussionist and bandleader Tito Puente. Inside THIRTEEN spoke with producer and director George Rivera about his documentary. “Tito Puente: The King of Latin Music” airs on THIRTEEN Thursday, September 24 at 8 pm and Friday, September 25 at 1:30 am.

Q: Did you know Tito Puente personally? How did you get involved in doing this film?

Tito was an acquaintance, though I did not know him well, and he was familiar with my work as a producer and director. Over a period of time, others had asked to do a biographic film and he always refused. Eventually, through a mutual friend, he let it be known that he would do one with me.

Q: So what was Tito Puente like off the stage? What kind of access did you have to him?

For Tito, being off-stage was very much an extension of being on-stage.
He was lots of fun and at the same time a real leader. He was a member of the community, who cared very much about his family and where he came from. He was an ordinary guy: He didn’t project “star” or was a prima donna, and he didn’t expect or ask people to treat him like one. He was very cooperative. We had complete access. Tito made himself available before, after and during performances.

Q: Tito Puente and his music is beloved all over the world – was there a lot of pressure in how you approached the film?

I don’t think there was any pressure except what was self-imposed to get the story right and give the music the respect that it deserved.

Q: Tito Puente passed away in 2000 while you were making the film; what challenges did you face as you finished the film without him?

Originally, we had planned to travel with him to Europe later that year and to record much more footage. We had no idea that the interview that we did with him in San Juan and the performance recorded that evening would be his last. When Tito died a few weeks later, we had to think quickly and change the scope of the project. Fortunately, so many celebrities who knew and admired Tito, as well as his family members, were willing to step up and be interviewed. In the wake of his loss, everyone felt such a tribute was important, and we were able to get the documentary done fairly quickly.

In the film The Market Maker, Wide Angle travels to East Africa to tell the dramatic story of an Ethiopian economist on a mission. Seeking a market-based solution to ending hunger in her famine-plagued country, Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin creates Ethiopia’s first commodities exchange. What she didn’t count on was a world financial crisis getting in the way. In this edition of “Inside Thirteen,” Lauren Feeney, Senior Web Producer at Wide Angle, spoke with The Market Maker’s director, Hugo Berkeley, and the film’s producer, Eli Cane. The Market Maker premieres on Wide Angle on Wednesday, July 22 at 10:00 p.m. (check local listings).

Lauren Feeney, Wide Angle: Can you tell us about your film, The Market Maker?

Eli Cane, Producer, The Market Maker: The film is about an Ethiopian economist, a woman named Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin, who has developed a commodities exchange, which she hopes will revolutionize the country’s agricultural markets and bolster the country’s defenses against famine, and improve the livelihoods of the country’s millions of small-scale farmers.

The core of the idea came from the famine in 1984, when, in the north, close to a million people died, as many Westerners know. But what I think a lot of people don’t know is there was also a surplus of food in the southern part of the country the same year. So, she said, we need a market mechanism to get these localized markets talking to each other on a national scale, and if that happens, food will move around the country more efficiently and more smoothly. So the film follows the better part of the first year of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, or ECX.

Hugo Berkeley, Director, The Market Maker: It’s also a film about, I think, a person who saw a solution to a problem that a lot of people think is endemic, that, really what can you do, you know? It’s a story about someone who saw a problem, thought of a solution, and then has had to overcome incredible obstacles to make that solution work. She’s an Ethiopian woman, so I think also it’s a story about sort of African solutions to African problems, about what a group of people have to go through to enact the change that they see, that they envisage.

Lauren: What was it like working and traveling in Ethiopia?

Hugo: Ethiopia is a beautiful country, really a wonderful place to get to know. I think we both felt really privileged to have the opportunity to travel around. One of the great things is that the work that Eleni and her team are doing isn’t just in the center of the city and the capital, it’s everywhere, it’s out in the fields and out in the countryside, and we were able to go to all these incredible places with them. Ethiopia is a very diverse country – it has like Rift Valley, which is very lush and green and hills, and then you up to the north and it’s desert and it’s arid, and it’s dusty and difficult and very hot, and in the middle you have all the highlands.

It wasn’t without its difficulties. Like, electricity is not very constant, so if you’re dealing with camera equipment and all of that, you have a lot of problems just charging equipment and keeping it clean, because of all of the dirt and dust. But as a country and as a people, everybody was so welcoming and friendly and open, and helpful all the time.

Lauren: Can you talk about how the two of you work together?

Hugo: Eli and I actually met on a project about a Senegalese singer called Youssou N’Dour. This is our first big collaboration of this variety.

Eli: In the field, Hugo was the DP, and I’m on sound, and generally that means we’re attached, literally. So aside from a couple of miscommunications when he’s walking one way and I’m walking the other, I think that we work quite well together.

Hugo: We both have a strong interest in African music, so we heard a lot of music – there’s a lot of great music in Addis. If you go to Gonder, there are these spectacular castles, or in Lalibela, these wonderful churches that are built into the rocks. It wasn’t just work. There was a lot of enjoyment.

Eli: And I think that doing those things and seeing those things and getting a sense of place contributes hugely to the feel of the film.

Hugo: In that sense, maybe the film isn’t just about Eleni, it’s also to get a feel and flavor, and hear and see Ethiopia.

Lauren: What was it like to work with Aaron Brown?

Eli: It was great. He is a consummate professional. He showed up after an 18 hour flight, landed in Addis, slept for, I don’t know, six hours or so, then at six in the morning got up, went to the airport, got into a little rickety one prop or two engine plane, and flew a few hours to the countryside. Then got in a car and drove for few hours down a bumpy road, and did his first interview.

We inundated him with details over dinner and other meals, and he was able to take four hours of pent up rambling from Hugo and me and boil it down to its most essential elements, and ask the right questions and draw out what we hoped would be drawn out of characters in his interviews.

Hugo: This is a complicated story, a complicated place, a lot of history, and I think Aaron works as a kind of translator, in a way. He’s able to take all that information and boil it down to something that people can identify with, and in that sense, I think he really brings a great deal to her story.

Lisa Biagiotti is working on signature stories for Worldfocus on HIV/AIDS and homophobia in Jamaica. She reported with Producer Micah Fink and Director of Photography Gabrielle Weiss, both from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their reports will air on Worldfocus later this summer.

Q: Gay pride is celebrated across the U.S. every June. Could there be similar celebrations of gay pride in Jamaica?

Lisa Biagiotti: No, there could not be an openly gay pride parade on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, as in New York or San Francisco. In Jamaica, anti-sodomy laws criminalize sex between men, fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible and pride in reproduction contribute to the general disdain and non-acceptance of the gay lifestyle. The idea of a “glass closet” best describes the public’s expectations of homosexuals, meaning, “We know you’re gay, and we can see you, but stay in that glass closet.” In fairness, Jamaica tends not to be a heavily PDA (public display of affection) culture. You don’t see men and women petting each other or even holding hands in public, with the exception of the dancehalls.

One thing that was interesting was the way homophobia finds its way into the language, in the choosing (or avoiding) of certain “gay” words. When little boys call each other “sissy” names, they say “you’re a battyman.” “Batty” means buttocks and is a derogatory name for a gay man. Saying the number “two” — referring to the anus — is also avoided. We heard a story of a father instructing his two-year-old son to say he’s going to be three. You’d say “come forward” instead of “come back.” If you’re ordering fish to eat, you’d say, “Give me a swimmer or a sea creature.” “Fish” is another term for a gay man.

Q: This anti-gay side of Jamaica doesn’t really jive with what many Americans may think of Jamaica. (Stereotypically, sun, fun, Bob Marley and “no problem, mon.”) How did you become interested in this topic?

Lisa Biagiotti: I first became interested in the subject of gay Jamaicans about 18 months ago. I was reporting on gay asylum in the U.S. and was told that Jamaica was one of the most violent and homophobic places for gays. I was told by human rights organizations that if you’re gay and Jamaican, you’d qualify for asylum. I then spent a year profiling Alex Brown, a gay Jamaican who received asylum in the U.S. In all honesty, this portrait of Jamaica was completely foreign to me — it contradicted the image of the Jamaica I know and love.

Q: Your mom is Jamaican and your family ties to Jamaica span three generations. Was it difficult to report these seemingly negative stories for Worldfocus? What did your family think?

Lisa Biagiotti: At first, I was concerned we were doing advocacy journalism. I questioned whether we were imposing our U.S.-centric views on a country with a different cultural bedrock. Did we really understand the Jamaican culture, which is steeped in religion? Admittedly, I was protective of Jamaican people, who I still hold to be some of the warmest and most resilient people on Earth.

Going into these stories, I was aware of my bias. As a journalist, first-hand observation served as my guide. My team and I went to the places where people were literally living in hiding. We listened to the palpable stories of many gay men — the violence against them, the families that rejected them, the double lives they lead and the idea of mainstreaming their lifestyle to “make it right with God.”
We spoke to hundreds of Jamaicans from all walks of life to try to understand the cultural nuances and attitudes toward homosexuals. And everywhere we went, we heard the same things — said with varying levels of vitriol. Open homosexuality is not accepted. Tolerance and violence really depends on class and whether people act on their general disgust toward gays.

After observing and speaking with people on the ground, I’m confident that the stories we’re producing are fair and accurate illustrations of Jamaican attitudes toward homosexuals. As for my family in Jamaica and abroad, I believe they will respect that. Our goal is not to change Jamaican culture and mores, but to present what it’s like to be gay in Jamaica, and why it is important for the general population to talk about homosexuality because gay men are living double lives in secret.

Q: What do you mean by “double lives?” How is this playing into the spread of HIV?

Lisa Biagiotti: A recent Ministry of Health study showed that more than 30 percent of gay men are HIV+. It was a small sampling of about 200 gay men. But it was one of the first surveys conducted within the gay community. Whether or not the study is actually reflective of the larger gay community is questionable, but this rate is still 20 times higher than the general population.

What’s important here is that gay men are not isolated from the rest of the population. These men lead double lives — one gay life underground and another “heterosexual” life to save face in their communities. Gay men have girlfriends and wives and children, who likely do not know of their secret lives. This poses a threat to spreading HIV into the general population. So, when you layer this 30+ percent figure over the laws, religion and general stigma against homosexuality, you’re masking the problem and potentially spreading the infection into the general population.

Q: How does the Jamaican government address the HIV problem without acknowledging the gay community?

Lisa Biagiotti: It’s difficult to target the gay community because they’re not out in the open. There could be no ad campaign in Jamaica talking about using condoms for anal sex because anal sex is illegal and punishable with a 12-year prison sentence of hard labor. The channels of awareness and education of gay men are limited and insufficient. I should also mention that, on the flip side, Jamaica has made incredible strides in making anti-retroviral medication free and accessible to everyone. Early testing has whittled the mother-to-child HIV transmission rate down to under 5 percent. But the gay community is not siloed from the general population and could potentially reintroduce the disease into the general population.

Q: Given the extreme anti-gay discrimination and level of violence in Jamaica, did you ever feel that you were in danger as you covered these stories?

Lisa Biagiotti: Every day, approximately four or five people are murdered in Jamaica. For a country the size of Connecticut, with 2.8 million people, that’s a staggering murder rate. I don’t know if I had a false sense of security, but I never felt in danger. We had local guides taking us around and introducing us to communities, and I think that was key. We made sure we had an introduction wherever we went. We told people we were reporting on homosexuality, HIV and AIDS. We knew these were touchy topics, but we were open and I think Jamaicans appreciated our honesty, and were in turn welcoming.