Nine Lives
The Documentary Institute plans to finish Angel of Ahlem in January. Its previous eight productions all aired on PBS. Negroes With Guns (pictured above) screened last month at the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of American History in Washington and airs Feb. 7 on PBS.
- 2004:
- Negroes With Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power, 65 minutes
- 2000:
- Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore, 86 minutes
- 1996:
- Deciding Who Dies, 57 minutes
- 1994:
- Last Days of the Revolution, 57 minutes
- 1992:
- Campaign for Cuba, 57 minutes
- 1990:
- Giving Up the Canal, 57 minutes
- 1988:
- Cuba, Castro, and Christianity, 29 minutes
- 1986:
- Religion and Revolution in Nicaragua, 53 minutes
Making documentaries
By Boaz Dvir
One of only a handful of such programs in the country, the College’s Documentary Institute took roots in the 1980s when Churchill Roberts met Sandra Dickson. The then-University of West Florida communication chair hired Dickson to teach broadcast journalism and ethics but approached her separately about making documentaries.
“It just sounded like fun,” said Dickson, who, along with Roberts, now serves as the institute’s co-director. “What was not to like?”
They made their first documentary, “Religion and Revolution in Nicaragua,” in 1986. The next year, a special $287,000 appropriation from the Florida Legislature allowed them to buy professional-level gear and hire former West Florida students Cindy Hill and Cara Pilson to operate the equipment and conduct research, respectively. The team quickly went to work on a documentary on the transfer of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama. It aired nationally on PBS in 1990.
In 1995, Roberts met Dean Terry Hynes at a conference in Texas. During a group dinner, she heard him describe his documentaries. A week later, after consulting with Department of Telecommunication faculty, she called to invite him and his teammates to set up shop and start a master’s program in documentary at the College.
“She wanted us to create a magnet for high-caliber filmmakers,” he said.
Once again, the Legislature stepped in, granting recurring funding for the expanded program at its new location in Gainesville.
Dickson relocated first, moving from the small Pensacola commuter school to the sprawling UF campus in fall 1997. “I was the test subject,” she said. “We wanted to see if I’d get fired.” The following spring semester, her teammates joined her. Their goal: teach by example, pass along hard-earned lessons and educate students to create network-worthy documentaries.
They teach in the fall and spring semesters, while working year-round on their documentaries, which usually take two to three years to complete. They use the summers to tackle demanding tasks such as editing, as they’ve done on their latest project, Angel of Ahlem.
Over the years, they’ve taken on several controversial issues in their documentaries. They angered the Cuban government and the Cuban-American community with Cuba, Castro, and Christianity in 1988 and Campaign for Cuba four years later.
“We interviewed dissidents on camera – revered poets, intellectuals – who said to Castro, ‘You lied to us,’” recalled Roberts, who also serves as the College’s interim associate dean for research. “And they were critical of Cuban-Americans, too.”
In recent years, Roberts and his teammates shifted their focus from public affairs to history – not to avoid controversy but to ensure a longer shelf life for their projects.
“You like to have things last longer, in terms of impact,” Roberts said. “It’s risky to do something on public affairs. Events overtake you. Some of our [public affairs] projects are outdated.”
Their roles have evolved through the years. Roberts and Dickson direct, Dickson writes when necessary, Hill operates the camera and other equipment, and Pilson conducts research.
They edit as a team. Meeting in Hill’s home office, they dissected footage on a Mac as they edited Angel of Ahlem this summer. They disagreed fast and often, but eventually came to a resolution. For instance, they debated a scene in which one of the main characters, Nazi labor camp survivor Ben Sieradski, visits his Lodz Ghetto dwelling in Poland. He recalls the horrors he witnessed when the Nazis deported the children and the elderly to Auschwitz and other death camps. His parents ended up at Chelmno, where they were gassed.
Dickson argued that in the sequence, Sieradski showed little emotion. Pilson went a step further, questioning the scene’s content and length. But Roberts said the retired Berkeley engineer displayed signs of being internally affected by his horrific memories.
After they watched it a couple of times, Hill started trimming the scene. Within 15 minutes of back-and-forth cutting and reattaching, it won acceptance among all four teammates.
“We’ve been doing this a long time,” Pilson said. “We’re like family.”
