CINE: 2009 Educational Advisory Board

Paul Stekler

Paul Stekler's documentaries about American politics have won numerous national honors including multiple Emmys, Peabodys and du-Pont-Columbia awards. His films include Sundance Special Jury Prize winner George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire (directed and produced with Dan McCabe), Vote for Me: Politics in America (directed and produced with Louie Alvarez and Andy Kolker), Last Man Standing: Politics Texas Style, and two segments of the Eyes on the Prize civil rights series. His latest project, Frontline's The Choice 2008, which he co-produced and wrote with director Michael Kirk, aired last October. Stekler lives in Austin and teaches documentary film production in the Radio-Television-Film Dept. at the University of Texas.

If you could give one piece of advice to beginning filmmakers, what would it be?
Documentary filmmaking to me is a real labor of love. You work for a long time with subjects and their stories, often years, on location and then in the editing room. The trick is to find subjects and stories that really interest you, that will involve you long enough for you to truly understand them in depth, and to keep your filmmaking energy past that time when the inevitable exhaustion of post-production sets in. You have to learn to love the process in that way. You have to choose subjects and stories that really mean something to you. Otherwise, making films is just work.

At what point in your life did you realize you wanted to be a filmmaker, and why did you? How long have you been making films?
Thirty years ago, I was in graduate school, teaching Southern politics as a teaching assistant, when a friend at MIT told me they'd met a filmmaker teaching there who'd worked on a film about the South, specifically George Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama back in 1963. Intrigued, I went by and met the filmmaker, Ricky Leacock. He told me stories and then showed me the film, Crisis. I really couldn't believe the access they'd gotten and I think I knew, right then, that that's the sort of inside view of "politics" that I wanted to work with. It was another three years, until I'd moved to New Orleans to teach at Tulane, that I got a chance to essentially make a documentary version of my PhD dissertation, working with the local PBS station, WYES, about early grassroots African-American electoral efforts in the rural South. But that day with Ricky Leacock was where it all started for me. And twenty plus years later, Bob Drew gave me permission to use footage from Crisis in my own feature film about Wallace.

Who or what are your major influences, stylistically or substantively?
I think I'm influenced by all types of films. Early on, I watched all of the social issue and politics documentaries I could. Politics films like Crisis, Primary, Peter Davis' The Campaign, Ken Burns' Huey Long. I watched the entire first Eyes on the Prize series before I was brought on to make two of the films for the second series. I remember being alone in a mid-day screening of Sherman's March and laughing till it hurt. Remember being awed by Alan Berliner's Intimate Stranger. And thinking about moments in feature films, like the backlit train going across the high railroad bridge in Terry Malick's Days of Heaven, might be translated into non-fiction work. Once I started making films, everything I saw influenced me.

How long have you been teaching? Why do you like teaching filmmaking? What knowledge and ideals to you try to instill in your students?
I've been teaching for 12 years, ever since I came down to the University of Texas to run their film production program. I love teaching because my students make multiple films every year, films that all are different in some way because they're made from their different perspectives. They're young and unafraid to try different things. Knowledge and ideals? I try to show them different ways to tell stories. And install in them the responsibility of portraying subjects the way they really are, not taking short cuts but getting to know their subjects enough to know what's real and what's not on film.

Has the changing nature of filmmaking - the advent of new media, the changes in distribution, etc. - had an effect on either the way you make films or the way you teach filmmaking?
It certainly has affected the ability to raise funds and to reach an audience. I have this discussion with my students all of the time, but I'm afraid that I don't have the answers of what the future holds. I know that I can teach how to tell a story or guide students on the craft of filmmaking. But the answer of how to deal with the these changes will be figured out by my students, as they make their way in this brave new media world.

Has it become more important for film students to understand the business component of filmmaking, for example, the need to understand legal concepts such as fair use, rights clearance, etc.?
That's always been the case, unless one is lucky enough to have producers doing all that work for you. But then, how many documentary filmmakers have that luxury?

Do you find your students are more interested in new media outlets, television or traditional release, or does this simply vary?
My students are more at home in new media outlets, but their main interest is in figuring out how to reach the largest audience they can - and to figure out how to make a living doing that.

Full Board