The following is the second part of a discussion begun yesterday in regards to context and how information flows through the world in the age of blogs.

We have been shooting our film for 6 years now, focusing mainly on an individual who refused to sell his home to make way for the arena project because he felt that it was wrong for the government to use its power to sieze his home in order to transfer it to another private owner. He was also deeply upset by the process by which the area would be developed, with virtually no local input. While the subject of the Atlantic Yards has been discussed a great deal in the local media, the context of these discussions has primarily been driven by press releases about the process of the project, rather than the larger context of the story. There has been almost no in-depth coverage in the main stream media. As such, from the very beginning of our project we found that when we talked to other people they had almost no understanding of the situation. We also found that there was a sense of inevitability, and as such, people almost seemed reticent to learn about it because they had a sense that it was all beyond their control. In fact the vast majority of people in Brooklyn thought that it was simply an arena project and they were shocked when renderings were released nearly 2 years later showing massive skyscrapers.

When we started shooting the film, blogs were not a major part of our national culture like they are now. In some ways the development of these web communication/journalism tools have had a major impact on our story. The “legitimate” media has done an awful job of covering this complex story. In fact, we came to be interested because the NY Times story about the projects announcement read like a press release and it piqued our interest. We wanted to find out what was really going on. Since then, almost every story about the project has been led by the developer’s release of information. However, there are a couple of blogs that have had a major impact on the public and media understanding of the situation. Nolandgrab.org is basically a clearing house of every story that appears on the web, in print, and on TV. Including limited commentary that helps to contextualize the coverage from an anti-project point of view, this blog has done a powerful job of distilling the story as it moves through the media landscape. By compiling all of these stories in one place it’s easy to see how the information moves through the factory, so to speak. The other major force is a website called Atlantic Yards Report. This blog was started by a journalist named Norman Oder who lives near the project area. A little over a year after the project was announced, he too became increasingly frustrated by the NY Times coverage. He wrote a long critique of the Grey Lady’s coverage, and this morphed into one of the only sources of original reporting on the subject. As an editor at Library Journal, Mr. Oder has feet firmly planted in the august world of journalism. However, because his writing appeared on a blog, it took a very long time for the mainstream media to take his work seriously. Now anyone assigned to cover the story knows that they need to do some serious reading at AY Report so that they can catch up to speed. The stories that he covers are often not that “sexy,” but they deal with the real issues that are often hidden behind the massive PR machine that is pushing this story forward. In addition, the main opposition group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn has a site that also compiles news, breaks stories, and has detailed information about the project and the opposition.

From our perspective, Norman Oder is a “journalist,” and we are not. We don’t read through the documents, we actually never took a journalism class, and we don’t think about these stories from the perspective of a reporter. We’re more like William Hurt in Broadcast News than Albert Brooks or Holly Hunter.

On Wed Oct 14th, when 40 members of the community fighting the project gathered together to take a bus to Albany to witness a court hearing about the use of eminent domain for this project, it was important for our camera to be on the bus as we needed to capture the community as it gathered together. Today I was thinking a lot about the idea of community in light of last week’s hearing. At this point, 6 years into our story, much of the physical community of the project site has been decimated. Buildings have been torn down and hundreds of residents have been moved away. Yet the crowd that gathered to ride that bus is probably more connected now than before this fight began. These people constitute a very real and physical community despite the fact that they don’t all live in apartments and houses next door to each other. They are connected by the powerful belief that the government, like the medical profession, should do no harm. They are bound by their opposition to this project- they see each other at functions related to that opposition and they connect daily through email, blogs, and phone.

As stated above, we don’t consider ourselves activist filmmakers, setting out to make a film that argues for a specific point of view. We absolutely did not start this film project with a preconceived notion of what we would capture. However, after only a few days of following characters, and interviewing the major supporters of the project, it became pretty clear to us that the film would follow those fighting the project rather than those working to make it happen.

We are filmmakers, following a character passionately fighting for what he believes. If the film didn’t reflect his point of view, then it would be a very bad film. However, this film will not always show the main character in a positive light. He is human, and like all humans, he makes mistakes. Like any good character in a movie, he will be seen under extreme pressure, and it’s seeing how people act under pressure that make movies great and heroes heroic.

Sometimes things move more quickly than we expect. A few weeks ago Yvette found out that she had twin half-brothers. Friday morning was the first time in her life that Yvette had met a blood relative- her brother came to visit. On Saturday her brother set off for NJ to meet their father.

Yvette, her boyfriend Paul, and I waited and waited for him to return. At first there were a few text messages letting us know how things were going… at 5 “he’s heavy and a little taller than me”- and at 6 a quick one- and then nothing…. until midnight. A rush of short texts.

On the way
It was great
He wants to have lunch with you tomorrow.

Yvette nearly dropped dead. she was going to meet her father. As we waited for her brother to return from the meeting she nervously cleaned the kitchen and explained that she didn’t know if she was ready. For some time her life had been all about searching. Now the searching was coming to an end and she didn’t know how to deal with the emotions of that transition.

As a filmmaker I always try to stay out of the way. I keep my mouth shut as much as possible and hope the subjects forget about the camera. However, this is a different film for me. I’m a part of it. Yvette and her brother meeting- yvette meeting her father- these are part of the story of possibly meeting my own child- their reactions inform my own understanding of this complex mess of emotions.

So as I watched, listened and participated I constantly thought about the film that I’m making and how the shots I was making might fit into that story- and I felt compelled to insert myself.

As Yvette rushed around getting ready she and her brother discussed that she might might wear something that would make her look like one of their father’s younger daughters. Paul firmly stated that Yvette should dress like herself and I loudly agreed. I had been mostly watching the drama unfold. Both Yvette and her brother wanted to meet their father and were terrified of having things go awry. The were putting his needs in front of theirs in a powerful way and it struck me as wrong and i explained why. Her brother had a convincing response- especially given the fact that he had already met his father and felt deeply at peace about it all.

(the following is in quotes but i’m not basing it off the tape- just off the top of my head) “I’m not mad at him. I just wanted to meet him. To me it was a sales call, and i wanted to close the sale. So of course I tried to make it all comfortable for him… and I closed the sale. it was awesome. I got to learn so much about our family.”

He had a good point- he didn’t really want a relationship. He didn’t need to have another father. His social father is great, and he’s deeply connected to him- yet he had a deep desire to know to know meet his blood relative.

As we discussed all this Yvette and her brother brushed their teeth with electric toothbrushes. They are both worried about receeding gums- and have a lot of other things in common. They not only look alike, they talk alike, act alike…. are alike. It was odd to see them quickly become so comfortable with each other.

more to come….

Last week NY Times Local blogger (and friend of mine) Andy Newman inadvertently brought up some complex ethical issues when he wrote a story about a business that had decided to renovate in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The problem was that the deli that decided it needed a spiffy new facade was in an historic district and the owners hadn’t bothered to get any kind of permits whatsoever. As the blog is part of a ‘hyper-local” reporting experiment the journalist has become involved with the community he covers, in a way that he might not have in the past. In this case the commenters argued back and forth about the rights of the owner vs. the community as well as the role of the local journalist/blogger in creating a difficult situation for the owner. Andy wrote a longer story to discuss these ideas.

It all started when someone sent him a note asking him to look into the fact that the deli had taken down its historic sign. He put on his journalist hat and called the buildings department and left a message in reference to whether or not permits had been filed. Then he went to the site to ask questions. While he was there he got a call back from the buildings department letting him know that no permits had been filed but that someone had called in a complaint 6 days earlier. He was told that an inspector would be checking out the site in the near future.

Then as he writes, “After taking the call from Buildings, I returned to Jimmy [the owner's grandson] and asked, again, if I could see the sign, and take pictures of it. He agreed. As we were heading toward the basement, he said, ‘Make a nice story about us. You’re not going to get us in trouble, right?’ ”

You can guess what happened next. The buildings department showed up the next day and shut them down. The truth is that they should have known better. Directly across the street a business owner had tried to renovate without basic building permits or historic preservation permits and has remained closed and stymied by the process for over a year. Across the street from our house (on the other side of this same neighborhood) an owner was trying to fix the side of his building without permits and … it fell down… oops. Some people tagged the journalist as tattle tale despite the fact that others had lodged complaints before he called to inquire.

The question then becomes how can a journalist be an impartial observer of such a small community. As my dad used to like to point out- it’s not a good idea to sh*t where you eat. Will Andy be able to write any hard hitting stories if doing so might turn significant segments of the small community against him? These issues become increasingly important as we get more and more of our news from hyper local sources. At the same time we also get more of our information from hyper-specific sources.

Earlier this week I answered some questions about our Atlantic Yards film, “The Battle of Brooklyn” for a NJ Nets fan blog, netsarescorching.com. Nets fans are interested in the Atlantic Yards story because if the project moves forward the Nets will move to Brooklyn. As the blog is focused on basketball one of the first questions was about whether or not we had interviewed anyone in the Nets front office. In this case, the point of view of the audience is basketball focused. However, our film has almost nothing to do with basketball beyond the fact that the real estate debacle we are following involves an arena. I took great pains to clarify the films point of view and our style of filmaking. What I was attempting to do was “manage audience expectations”. Our films tend to be a little different from what average people expect in a documentary. Either they expect a Michael Moore style hell ride, or standard PBS fodder. In our films we often raise questions that aren’t answered in an overly direct way. One problem that we consistently run into is that when an audience expects X and you give them Y they think that the film has failed in its goals. As such, we try to manage the expectation of the audience so that they go in knowing what to expect. In this case I explained that we aren’t activists and aren’t journalists in the traditional sense. I wanted to make sure that they didn’t expect a film with a lot of talking heads talking about facts, figures, and policy. Instead it’s a film that follows characters through a narrative structure. Like any Hollywood film we’ll take some liberties with time frame in the interest of the drama. In addition the film will largely be told by following a small number of people, so it will be from a very specific perspective.

As stories move through the world they often bubble from the real world; of people connected by place, family, and physical community, to the virtual world of community through connection. Another hyper focused blog (focused on the technical aspects of documentary), found the story (most likely through a google alert on “documentary”) and took issue with the idea that we could make a film about this complex story without it being a journalistic exercise. I wrote a comment clarifying our position and explained that I wasn’t trying to wriggle out of any kind of responsibility to the truth, but instead managing expectations as explained above. In this case, our very local story about real estate was discussed by a blog that focuses on professional basketball, and my comments were then critiqued on a documentary blog written by a journalist interested in the technical aspects of documentary. When context is a primary concern and it gets lost, ideas get knocked out of whack.

I have been working on other projects a lot the last few weeks but on Friday I got an astounding call from my friend Yvette.

A couple of months ago I filmed with Alana and Yvette who both contacted me after I posted my op-ed on donor issues. Yvette is an old friend, and it turns out she was adopted and had recently begun unraveling the complex tale of her birth. Alana is a donor kid who has written a screenplay and some terrific songs about her past. Yvette is also a musician so I thought it would be interesting to get their take on how their adoptive/donor conceived status affected them and their work.

When we sat down Yvette explained that her birth mother was a college student who had been impregnated by an Iranian exchange student. For many years she had been trying to track down information about her birth parents and had managed to make phone contact with her birth mother, but her father proved to be more elusive. She had a picture but that was it- until two weeks ago.

Late one night she got a google alert on her father’s name. She followed the link and found that a man had responded to an old post from a half-sister (as an exchange student her father had been very busy and she has a half sister that’s three months older than her) who was seeking information about her father. The respondent said that he had information that might be useful. Yvette contacted him and found that he too was the son of the elusive Iranian and that he was on the hunt as well. Her new half-brother, G, has a twin brother. Their father was married to their mother for 6 years but divorced and dissapeared when the boys were one year old. Pooling their resources and their know how Yvette, her half sister and two new half brothers (the poster has a twin) quickly made progress.

In addition to making progress on their shared search they also got to know each other a bit. One of Yvette’s new half brothers, G, was fairly aggressive and soon found that their father had re-married after leaving their family and that he has two younger daughters. Through contacting one of the daughters on facebook he eventually reached their father and got him to agree to meet with him soon when he “travels for business”.

I filmed a performance that Yvette put together to deal with the new information. it’s posted below. It was a haunting and beautiful event and it became clear while watching it that while yvette’s story has a lot to do with the documentary that I’m working on, it also deserves a more thorough treatment. Yvette is a wonderful storyteller and artist. Rather than make a straightforward documentary about her search we have discussed the idea of a documentary that tracks her efforts to put together a performance based on her work. As such it will be part narrative of her life and part narrative of her struggle to take these complex and personal stories and weave them into a work of art that will define her life as an artist…

In the meantime Alana is back from Iceland/Sweden and we are going to finish the script. Yvette, Alana and I got to sit down with the camera as well this weekend.

This video is a work-in-progress performance of “Adoption Story”. This performance chronicles recent events in her search for her Iranian birth father. Also performing are Danny Tunick, Peter Zummo, and Sohrab Sadaat Ladjevardi.