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Toronto International Film Festival -
Variety Hosted Event |
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During the recently concluded Toronto International Film Festival in
Canada, Variety hosted the Creative Conscience Symposium, which had as
its main topic social activism in films, particularly in independent
documentary films. A panel consisting of Mexican actor, producer and
director Gael Garcia Bernal (The
Motorcycle Diaries in which he portrayed Che Guevara, directed Los
Invisibles in collaboration with Amnesty International, directed
Rosewater and won a Golden Globe Award in 2016 for the lead role in
Mozart in the Jungle), American
filmmaker Morgan Spurlock who first reached notoriety with debut film
Super Size Me in 2004, later Where In the World is Osama Bin Laden, and
the television series 30 Days among many others.) Joining Gael Garcia
Bernal on the panel were filmmakers Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani
whose documentary film The Ivory Game that was viewed at this year’s
festival. Actress and author Maria Bello was also originally scheduled
to take part in the panel, but due to the sudden death of a close friend
she sent her regrets.
The session began with Variety’s award winning editor Jenelle Riley
asking the directors to talk about their most recent films. Spurlock
began by talking about The Eagle
Huntress, which he described as being about a 13 year old girl from
Mongolia. He called it “One of the most inspiring films you will ever
see.” This trailer will do far more to tell you about the film than this
writer could possibly do justice to.
Spurlock went on to talk about his other film at this year’s festival,
“The other movie is Rats and
it is inspiring, but for a different reason. I grew up loving horror
films and I always wanted to make a horror film, so when somebody
brought to me the Robert Sullivan book
Rats, I said, well why can’t
I make a horror documentary? We made a documentary that is just as
scary, just as creepy, just as heart pounding as any film you will see.
It is about rat infestations around the world. We shot in New York, the
rat capitol of America. For those of you who haven’t been there it is
ratastic (this comment evoked laughter from the audience). It is great.
We filmed in New Orleans. We filmed in Mumbai. We filmed in Cambodia and
Vietnam and in the countryside of England, which sounds very quaint
until you see what we shot there.”
Ladkani, “We’re here for The Ivory Game. It premiered yesterday in
Toronto. We had the world premiere with Telluride last week. It is a
film about ivory trafficking and all of these poachers and syndicates
out to kill elephants and selling the ivory tusks to China. It is about
the possible extinction of elephants. It is a very serious film that we
came together on about three years ago. We decided to make it and to do
what we can to stop the killing. What we can do is to make movies and
that is what we did. Three years later and many, many crazy lifestyles
later we’re here and we are very excited to get it out to the world.”
Riley then asked Kief Davidson about The Ivory Game, “Did you ever think
of making it more of a narrative film or was a documentary always the
way to go?”
Davidson replied, “It is a documentary and it is a topic that is very
urgent to get out there, because elephants are close to extinction.
Locally there are areas in Africa where eighty-five percent of the
elephants have been decimated. In Tanzania sixty percent of the
elephants have been decimated. It is a topic that needed to get out
there immediately, so we didn’t want to wait at all.”
Ladkani joined in the conversation, “It premiered September 10th in
Toronto. We had the world premiere with Telluride (Film Festival) last
week. It is a film about ivory trafficking and all of these poachers and
syndicates out to kill elephants and selling the ivory tusks to China.
It is about the possible extinction of elephants. It is a very serious
film that we came together on about three years ago. We decided to make
it and to do what we can to stop the killing. What we can do is to make
movies and that is what we did. Three years later and many, many crazy
lifestyles later we’re here and we are very excited to get it out to the
world.”
Responding to Davidson’s point about the urgency to get The Ivory Game
out there, Morgan Spurlock says, “I think you are hitting on an
important point. There is such immediacy for a documentary. They need to
have an impact immediately. The impact of a narrative film is also
something that we measured. Using
The Eagle Huntress as an example, which is a movie that we love,
right on the heels of that we did a deal with Fox Animation (Studios) to
do the film as an animated movie. We sold that film right on the heels
of Sundance. There is a reach that documentaries can have that can
really be amplified by fiction and I think the two of them can play
together very nicely. I think you are seeing a lot of non-fiction films
that are being optioned now to be turned into films. That is a great way
for those two to play nicely in the sandbox together.”
“I think when people watch our film they are going to feel that this
looks like fiction. It is a very elevated film. We were really in the
middle of an action thriller, the people we were following. We were
embedded with undercover ops, activists who were risking their lives
with hidden cameras. We really told a film like we saw it and it felt
like a scripted movie at times,” says Davidson.
Riley says, “Honestly, in watching your movie I felt the way that I was
when I was watching The Cove.
If someone told me this is a narrative film I almost wouldn’t believe it
and that these people could be so evil. It has a text book villain.”
Ladkani says, “We
tried to make this film in a way, so it is also very cinematic, because
it has a very hard topic, like
The Cove. It took me a very long time, before I was able to sit down
and watch it. We had a very tough topic, elephants being killed, but we
said okay, we have a tough topic, but we need to make it accessible to
millions of people who will want to see it. The first thing that you do
is to make it as cinematic as possible. It is also about beautiful
animals and amazing landscapes out there. You enhance it so that you
make it more accessible to enough people and then try to make sure that
it is commercial enough so it reaches a large audience.”
“It probably doesn’t hurt to have Leonardo DiCaprio involved,” mused
Riley.
Ladkani replies, “It never hurts. He is a great influencer. His voice
amplifies the message of the movie a million times and that is why it
was amazing to have him on board, just as it is to have Jane Goodall who
is one of our ambassadors. Together they can get this message out. With
Netflix as a partner and they have eighty million subscribers, the whole
concept works, we hope.”
Kief adds, “We decided pretty early on that we would surround ourselves
with a team that was going to give 100 percent. You can’t find anyone
out there who cares more than Jane Goodall and it was good to have her
involved. She was very inspiring, especially when you are dealing with
such difficult subject matter and being out there, risking your lives
and having such a strong team.”
Gael Garcia Bernal solicits polite laughter from the audience when he
says, “I prefer to watch documentaries than to make them. Well of course
I think that we all prefer to watch documentaries than to make them in a
way. That is why we became what we do, because we started to watch films
and we liked them.
For me the reason is never upfront, because we can fall into a trap I
think especially with fiction. It is better not to define the motivation
or the authenticity or the outcome beforehand. It is like this is an
arts movie; it is social, so watch it. The outcome is what tells the
film. We work with tangents as well. For instance there is the direct
approach (he then turns to
Ladkani and Davidson), which for instance your documentary built. It
goes to the very issue and opens up the complexities. Documentaries, the
best thing they have is that they eliminate the single discourse. They
open up a world of complexities like not many can. It cannot be solved
in a tweet. It cannot be argued in a tweet or counter argued in a
tweet.”
One of the things very evident during the panel discussion is how much
documentary filmmaking has evolved. There now is a very strong
entertainment element in documentary films and the cinematography is
fabulous.
Kief Davidson addresses that, “We (he
and Richard Ladkani) are both filmmakers first, before activists. We are
activists as well and we believe one hundred percent in what we are
trying to fight and in this case it is (about) the elephants, but we
still need to make films that are going to work. We still need to have
very strong characters and a very strong story. We made the conscious
decision very early on to tell this like a thriller, because that is
exactly what it is. We were like wow it is incredible what is going on
here and what these people are doing, by going undercover in China and
Africa.
When you watch the film there is very much a lo-fi component, which is
the hidden camera footage and then there is the majestic hi-fi
component, with large format cameras and beautiful aerial
cinematography. Richard was also the cinematographer and he did some
unbelievable work with that.
It is a balance. At the end of the day we still had to tell a story that
people would want to watch, be inspired by and they would want to take
action. Action is required right now. We couldn’t wait to get this film
out there and we couldn’t wait to go through certain distribution
channels. That is why we went to Netflix, because we knew very quickly
we could get this out to eighty million plus people in nine different
languages. The topic and the urgency of it call for a partner like
Netflix.”
Spurlock says, “One of the things that I love about what Netflix is
doing is they seem to be able to reach an audience of that size and that
scope. I am a real believer that ultimately you should have an
understanding that you will have an audience watching this. You never
come in with an attitude I am going to change the world with this thing.
It has to be about the story first and simultaneously you have to
understand that the film is part of the entertainment industry and this
is an entertainment based business. You need to entertain an audience.
There is only so much doom and gloom and browbeating someone can take
while watching a ninety minute or longer documentary. There has to be
something that sucks me in and whether it is the character, the story or
the emotion, there has to be something that I connect with as a human
being immediately.
I think that is something that we strive for from the minute that we
look at a story. What’s the story and who are the people involved. Why
do I care? If you can find and circle those three things early on then
likely you can find a really great movie.”
Ladkani says, “I can add to that, because it reminds me of the first
conversation that we (he and Davidson) had when we found out about the
elephants. It was a New York Times article that triggered it.”
Spurlock interjects, “Everybody loves elephants.”
Richard laughs and says, “Yes.”
Davidson jokes, “Rats though, I don’t know.” (It evoked much laughter
from the audience and from Spurlock)
Ladkani continues, “We read this headline that said ten years until
extinction for the African elephant. In reading it, it kind of reads
like a spy, thriller movie with all of these elements that you would
want in a good movie. You had this cause to stop this from happening. We
had the right ingredients and that is why it was obvious that this could
work. There were the spies, the whole undercover element. We had the
Chinese syndicates and mafia and the Vietnamese mafia. There were gangs
across Africa killing elephants and working together with traders and
putting them in containers. You have the western world that comes in and
tries to stop this from happening. When you put this all in there you
have this strong cause. Why are they doing all of this? They are
fighting it to stop the largest land mammal to go extinct. You had all
of these elements, so we thought this could work.”
Riley guides the conversation to focus for a few minutes on potential
dangers faced by these filmmakers.
While acknowledging that there are dangers, Davidson says, “but it is
really nothing in comparison to the people that we follow who are in
danger every single day. I think that it is important to know that. We
were flies on the wall following these people, undercover intelligence
operatives and undercover activists who were going into very difficult
and dangerous situations. In those situations we had to be really
careful not to interfere and to lurk in the shadows and never, ever
expose them. They are the ones who were risking their lives.
We did a film together twelve years ago and we haven’t worked together
since mainly because you (Richard) is in Munich and I am in Los Angeles
and maybe (he jokes) it was traumatizing by the time we finished the
last one. (Morgan interjects “and therapy”) There was a lot of therapy.
That was a movie called The
Devil’s Miner and we were working 17,000 feet up (he gestures
upward) and then 3,000 feet below (he
points downward). That was substantially more dangerous, but we were
also twelve years younger, dumber probably and we didn’t have families.
The family situation was a conversation that we had and I think was our
original hesitation to want to even be doing this project. What will we
tell our families? Will they support us? Can we do this and minimize the
risk as much as possible. You have to watch out for your crew people as
well. It is not just us; you have other people to consider as well.”
Ladkani recalls, “But it was my wife who kicked me in the butt and said
you have to go out there and do this. Even though we have two kids and
everything, she was the one who said the cause is so big. You can’t say
no to this. She lived in Kenya for three years, so she was very attached
to it. Without her, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to
convince her and to explain to the children why we would be going into
the field for three years and risking a lot. I felt that this film was
more dangerous, because it was more unpredictable. You go in and you are
not prepared for gun raids in the village in the middle of the night and
with night vision goggles. I didn’t train for that. We are filmmakers.
What was great and what was very crucial is we put technology onto these
people and they could get footage that took us out of the line of fire.
GoPros, Spy cams and thermal imagery cameras. We placed those technology
elements with a task force going in and with the undercover agents. That
helped us a lot of the time. They came back and they had the great
footage.”
Davidson lightens up the conversation by asking Spurlock, “Did you get
any kind of rat POVs with hidden cameras on the rats?”
At first Spurlock was caught off guard and then he replies, “There are
some great rat POVs.”
Returning to the topic of danger, Morgan Spurlock notes, “The moment you
have that child you become infinitely more mortal. (Kief and Richard)
were saying what do they tell their wives and while I was in the middle
of Afghanistan making Where in
the World is Osama Bin Laden, I am telling my wife it’s all fine,
but I was out with the military in the middle of a Taliban ambush, as we
were being shot at. I lied a lot during the course of making that film.
She said to me, I can never believe anything that you tell me again.
This is not what happened.
After we had our son, my priorities changed. I don’t think they changed
in terms of wanting to make movies or telling them differently. They
change in terms of where you want to put yourself and how much danger
you want to go for.”
We could write a lot more about this excellent panel discussion and the
fabulous participants who did not need to be coaxed into talking about
their craft and in a very transparent fashion. There was no sense of
competition and they all had an equal opportunity to share their views
and stories. They also interjected just enough wit and humor to keep the
discussion from becoming too heavy.
Riveting Riffs Magazine would like to thank Variety and the Chief
Marketing Officer for Variety, Dea Lawrence for giving us the
opportunity to sit in on this wonderful event.
Top Photo: Gael Garcia Bernal, Middle Photo: Morgan
Spurlock, Bottom Photo: Kief Davidson
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