While many a UCLA alum can be seen on hit television shows or in the latest and greatest blockbusters, more and more recent Bruin graduates are finding their way to the entertainment limelight through what might be called alternative transportation ““ by way of the documentary.
With America still reeling from Sept. 11 and currently at war, it only seems natural that this visual form of social activism has made a name for itself at large and socially active college campuses across the country, and especially in Westwood, home to one of the top film programs. Documentary work is becoming the new post-graduation career plan for both the impassioned student leaders on Bruin Walk and the cinemaphiles who inhabit the soundstages of Melnitz Hall.
Take for example, 2006 graduate Adam Sterling. Currently featured in the new documentary “Darfur Now” alongside famous actors and politicians, the political science and Afro-American studies graduate wasn’t always so politically inclined.
“I was never that type,” Sterling said. “I prided myself on being able to walk from one end on Bruin Walk to the other without taking a single flier. I was so good at it.”
Though Sterling entered college far from being the typical student activist, it was Political Science 151, a class on African politics, that would lead him to his current vocation: publicizing the problems in Darfur, an undertaking highlighted in the film.
Thanks to his on-campus activism with the UC Sudan Divestment Task Force, which successfully lobbied for the UC Regents divestment in 2006, Sterling was recruited after graduation by former California assemblyman Paul Koretz to help write a similar state law, which is where the documentary “Darfur Now” comes in.
Director Ted Braun approached Sterling about a possible documentary following six people involved with different efforts to bring attention to the area’s serious problems; the rest is history.
“He called me a few days later and said, “˜We’d like to follow you around with a camera and see how it goes,'” Sterling said.
Sterling’s long involvement in “Darfur Now,” to be released theatrically in Los Angeles on Friday, was the direct result of his passion to end genocide in Sudan. But for 2004 UCLA graduate Sommer Mathis, her passion for filmmaking and journalism took her halfway across the world to cover political uproar in Ukraine for the new documentary “Orange Revolution.”
“I (got) involved with documentary working because it was the only idea of merging the work I had (done), which was TV work and journalism,” said Mathis, a former Daily Bruin writer.
The film, screening at Los Angeles’ AFI Film Fest on Nov. 4 and 5, follows the 2004 Ukrainian protests after the discovery that the country’s presidential election was rigged by election officials. A graduate of the international development studies department, Mathis served as an associate producer while working with seasoned documentary director Steve York.
While York’s style of documentary is more commonly found in shorter PBS specials than at the local multiplex, Mathis has high hopes for the future of documentary features, considering the rise in the genre’s popularity.
“I think that over the last six or seven years with the war, a lot of Americans have become more politically aware,” Mathis said. “(It’s) just the coincidence of the rise of the blogosphere and these political documentaries with this very unpopular administration. Maybe if the White House changes hands and everyone’s happier, they won’t want to pay $10 to see an angry documentary, but I don’t know.
“This is (one of) my director’s first features and I think that says a lot. He’s a really respected documentary filmmaker and he’s been around for a long time.”
From the perspective of both Beltway documentarians like Mathis and Hollywood producers such as “Darfur Now” producer and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Professor Cathy Schulman, documentaries are wanted and needed, now more than ever.
“I heard a pitch that was a narrative pitch … about a soldier in Darfur, and at that moment I had this sort of epiphany that truth is stranger than fiction,” Schulman said. “We can’t possibly do a narrative film about a subject people don’t even know exists yet, and it was at that moment that I felt a documentary on Darfur was my calling.”
Fans of Schulman’s Best Picture Oscar-winning “Crash” may notice more similarities than expected between the fictional 2004 film and the documentary “Darfur Now,” and it’s part of an overall trend in Hollywood to structure documentaries more like feature films in order to gain traction with audiences.
“I … liked the notion of the intercepting story lines because they were actually a lot like what I had done with “˜Crash’ and I thought it was a really good way to attack an issue,” Schulman said. “I think that when making a movie about an issue, the key is to get all the different strands or all the different subjects together to give you a sort of patchwork quilt of the issue, rather than just any one person spouting a bunch of issues.
“I don’t think audiences need to come into a theater anymore and (see) a more standard format like romantic comedy anymore. … We’re onto that now. There’s awareness that it’s a tricky time in the world; people want to know what’s going on and what they can do to be a part of it.”
After three months of following the young Sudan Divestment Task Force co-founder in “Darfur Now,” Sterling’s story line ended on a high note, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreeing to sign the state divestment bill, and Sterling hopes to make an even bigger impact with the release of “Darfur Now.”
“From the social activism perspective, I think raising awareness is the bottom line in everything we do, and what a greater way to do that than through a phenomenal film that hopefully millions of people will see.”