When director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering started filming The Invisible War, a documentary about sexual assault in the military, they quickly realized that they wanted their work to influence change. They knew it was a lofty goal, considering both that the subject matter of rape was not necessarily a topic for Good Morning America and that the Department of Defense wasn?t necessarily the most progressive institution in Washington. But since their film premiered at Sundance, it has facilitated astounding strides in policy, reaching as high as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who?two days after watching the film?created a special-victims unit for each branch of the military and directed military commanders to transfer all sexual-assault investigations to a higher-ranking colonel. All this and a nomination from the Academy for best documentary feature.
The Hollywood Blog spoke with Dick and Ziering about their post-premiere outreach, how they found their film subjects on Facebook, and why an Oscar would change everything. Highlights from our chat:
The Hollywood Blog: At what point during the making of the film did you decide you could use it for real change?
Kirby Dick: We were talking to all these women and men, hearing these incredible stories of their patriotism and commitment to serve, and then the betrayal they experienced. We realized that even though we were speaking to hundreds, there were hundreds of thousands of men and women that this had happened to.
I personally didn?t think these kind of changes would happen this quickly. I remember Amy and I having this discussion with people in the Pentagon, and they were just adamant that it could not even be raised, that the unit commander had to make those decisions [about reporting rape]. . . . Likewise, we did not expect that the military would be using this film as part of its sexual-assault training programs. Today, the estimate is that over 250,000 men and women in the military have seen this film.
Amy Ziering: That?s incredible. That?s 10 percent.
Dick: Even slightly over 10 percent now. Maybe 12 percent. We?re moving up. It?s also happened from the top down, too. For example, the chief of staff of the Air Force, General Wells, flew in all 135 wing commanders from around the globe to the Pentagon to watch the film, and then had a discussion about the issue. We later learned, in more than three decades, there had been no instance where all the wing commanders were called back . . . it may never have happened before.
Ziering: Also, just as a reference point, Senator Richard Blumenthal during Hagel?s confirmation hearing, one of his questions was, ?Senator Hagel, have you seen The Invisible War?? Which I think is pretty amazing that he used that as a question to the nominee. Hagel responded, ?Yes.?
Rape isn?t necessarily a topic that?s easy to advertise to the public. Why were you able to make it happen and get important people to pay attention?
Ziering: The question is more cinematic. Artistically, it was our aim and ambition to expect policy change. We have lofty goals in that mission, and that certainly was one of ours, but we also did want to make an extremely compelling and moving film. That was the interesting challenge of an art and political film. Everybody warned us from the start the difficulty of making this kind of film.
I credit Kirby?s incredible editing skills and directorial skills, and the material we have. It just all ended up coming together in a very effective, calculated way, where people were able to watch the film and respond to it in the way that they have.
Dick: Also, I think that Amy did the interviews with the survivors. She was able to get them to a place where they could not only talk about their experience but in the most intimate and revealing way. These interviews became the soul of the film. I remember being initially concerned because it?s very hard to get v?rit? footage of going on bases and things like that. You?re not really even allowed on bases. Certainly we wouldn?t have been allowed on bases.
You tracked down some of your interview subjects online. What was that process like?
Ziering: That was mostly [executive producer] Ken Burns. We put up a Facebook page. I remember that, signing off on the copy, and it was like, ?We?re a documentary-film team. Here?s who we are. We?re interested if you have any experiences of sexual assault in the military. Our conversation will be confidential, off the record. Please get in touch.? Then they?d e-mail, and I?d follow up with a phone call.
Dick: The other thing that [producer] Tanner King Barklow would do was search the Internet and Facebook, looking for any kind of conversations about this issue, where perhaps somebody might obliquely say, ?I know what you?re talking about.? Then we would Facebook them and see if they would be interested in speaking off the record about what they did know, and in most cases their experience was that they were assaulted in the military. It?s very hard to find these people. They were afraid, with justification because their perpetrators are still out there. For the people who report it, almost all of them experience very severe reprisals, so that made them reluctant, but Amy was able in those initial conversations to convey to them that this was an entirely different situation.?
Your film is inspiring because, despite incredible trauma, these women remained strong and proactive. Were there any subjects who weren?t in situations that were as supportive?
Ziering: [Rape in the military is] the number one cause of homelessness in our women veterans. The vast majority are not uplifting stories. I?ve been so haunted, honestly, by the level of the debilitation of these women, who were cut short so early in life, and in such a way that they couldn?t ever recuperate and again reintegrate into society in any way.
After we finished the film, I made this promise that I would try and find a way to physically help some of these women that I really was very worried about. A lot of the homes we visited, all the shades were drawn for years. Children would grow up in these dark homes, because that?s the only way these women feel safe.
One of our executive producers, I talked to her about this vision, and she said, ?I?ll fund it.? So we just started our first recovery program. It?s up in Santa Barbara. It?s the five women from the film. It?s a two-week program. If it works, we?re going to do one more and go from there. Hopefully, it can be some kind of prototype or model.
One thing that absolutely confounded me is the court ruling in the survivors? case: essentially, that rape was an occupational hazard of military service.
Dick: The actual court ruling was what happened to them was incident to military service and therefore they couldn?t sue. Which is the same thing as an occupational hazard. It?s a real challenge, there?s no question about it. Lower courts have interpreted the fairest doctrine, and it?s very much in the military?s favor, as courts tend to be in the United States.
Susan Burke has filed for more cases in different jurisdictions, and she is hoping that one or more of them is actually heard by a court and moved up the judicial system to the Supreme Court. She eventually hopes the Supreme Court revisits its decision. It?s a long shot, but what it does do is that it introduces all this testimony and evidence into our court system.
The documentary puts forth that sexual aggressors are drawn to the military, specifically because they believe it?s easier to rape people and get away with it. Are people with a history of sexual assault allowed to join?
Ziering: There was a period where they granted what were ?moral waivers.? People who had certain crimes?I?m not sure exactly which crimes?on their record, were [still] allowed into the military. Very recently, Senator Barbara Boxer had an amendment passed, which was signed into law by the president, which prohibited people with a sex crime on their record from joining the military. She said she?s been trying to pass that bill since 2005 and really was unable to get anywhere with it until the film came out.
Was there anything that surprised you when speaking to higher-ups about this problem?
Ziering: One general, very, very high ranking, said to me that the film explained to him this issue better than 40 years of briefing papers. He never really understood it in all sorts of ways until he came to our film.
Dick: Then also, there?s a series of Navy recruit studies that I think one or two of my statistics are from. The military has done very few studies on this. The military is an institution that can very easily conduct studies because it can just order its population to take them. In my opinion, it deliberately wasn?t doing that because it didn?t want this information to get out and get to the public. But one of the few studies they were doing were these Navy recruit studies. They had not been very widely disseminated, but when we were in the Pentagon, half the people we spoke to whose job it was to deal with this issue of sexual assault were unaware of those studies. It was really shocking.
What would an Oscar do for you in terms of change?
Ziering: Awards are nice, but this kind of recognition would really help move this issue along and get us greater political capital with the administration and the Department of Defense. No question. It would take it to another level.
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/02/invisible-war-oscar-nominated-documentary
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