Nettie wild biography of mahatma

The thirty page draft about the NPA documentary, using the working title of Kalasikas meaning "a rustling of leaves" in Tagalog , was more popular. Wild later chose to translate the title as "nobody could pronounce it" and instead used Kalasikas as the name of her production company. Pinney became a producer on the film, but requested a pseudonym, Chris James, due to its political nature.

They planned on starting filming in , but had a difficult time finding financial support. TVOntario was interested, but chose not to finance it while the CBC declined as "Canadians aren't interested in little brown people on the other side of the world" according to Wild. Wild met with NBC , but the network demanded that it provide the crew, on-camera journalist, producers, and final edit control while Wild would be an associate producer.

PBS was making a three-part series on the Philippines and considered making Wild's film a fourth part of the series, but felt that it did not structurally fit in. Pinney was on the committee that chose to hire Katadotis. He became the head of production and development at Telefilm Canada during the film's production. Production started in , with Martin Duckworth as cinematographer and Aerlyn Weissman as the sound recordist.

Wild, fearful of being spied on, spoke in code and used other people's phones. Katadotis told her that he was contacted by an official in the Department of Communications who stated that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service wanted every file involving Wild from the NFB as she was "a threat to national security". The Canada Council received a similar demand and the organization's offices in Ottawa were broken into and had documents related to A Rustling of Leaves stolen.

Macerola stated that he was never asked to withdraw the NFB's funding. Wild planned to start filming in February , but postponed it after Corazon Aquino 's victory in the Philippine presidential election. The delay resulted in her losing her crew. Kirk Tougas was selected to be the cinematographer and Gary Marcuse as the sound recordist. A second crew, for shooting in Mindanao , was retained at a higher price.

Wild restarted filming during a ceasefire and negotiations between Aquino's government and the NPA. Tougas refused to film in the mountains which resulted in them focusing on legal left-wing groups in Manilla and sugar workers on Negros rather than "people with guns coming out of their noses". WIld planned on filming the NPA in the mountains with a new crew, but one hour before her plane was to leave she was told by a NPA agent that they cancelled it as they did not have editorial control.

Wild decided to expand the scope of the film to be about both legal and illegal left-wing organizations. JoJo Sescon, a local Filipino photographer, attempted to film the execution of this soldier despite Wild telling him to stop and she pushed his camera away before the firing started. NW: Yes, it was. I have always liked the pattern of alternating between shooting abroad and at home.

There were a lot of blockades happening all over British Columbia, but there was a confusion at that time between environmentalists who were fighting logging and trying to establish parks and natives who were struggling to establish their own sovereignty. And then there were natives and non-natives on both sides of the logging debate.

Their claim to over 22, square miles of land presented a phenomenal challenge on three fronts: in the courts, on the land on blockades and moving very strategically on the political front. At the heart of it, they were saying that their oral history is as legitimate as white written history. And that once the white courts accept that, then non-natives have to accept that the First Nations existed in the past with laws and a system of government that was in place at the point of contact.

So it was very profound. And it took me deep into a mountain valley in northern British Columbia, which both First Nations and non-natives called home. Don Ryan, the chief negotiator for the Gitsxan, was the person who, when the going got tough, not only said that I could continue filming, but dared me not to stop. We had just filmed an extraordinary sequence following the Frog clan as they evicted a white couple off their land.

The Jonkmans were from Ontario and were pouring the foundations of their retirement home on riverfront property they had just purchased from a white real estate agent. Unbeknownst to them, the Jonkmans had bought one of the most hotly contested hereditary fishing sites in Gitsxan territory. Following the eviction, we subsequently filmed a Frog clan meeting, which was interrupted by members of the Killer Whale clan.

MG: You tend to not take sides in an easy way. NW: Objectivity is a goal to pursue with rigour, but you can never reach it. I explore both sides of the story—or the many sides of a story—in search of the complexity of the drama, not to prove my objectivity. How in the world can you show a conflict if you only have one side? MG: What was the reaction to Blockade?

The press response was fine, naturally, but locally, how did people respond? NW: We had our first screening in Hazelton. Pretty soon the audience started to argue with everybody on the screen. The room was just cooking throughout the entire film. We had a discussion afterwards and the whole debate started all over again, right there and then.

It just kind of exploded. And it was hilarious. There it was, 20 below at midnight on the usually sleepy, snowy streets and this reporter was running around recording the good citizens of Old Hazelton arguing at the top of their lungs. As Blockade moved out throughout the province, particularly at the Vancouver screenings, people were shocked.

Nettie wild biography of mahatma

He drove a logging truck and was part of the whole deal. The politics up there were way more nuanced than had been translated and boiled down to fit the rhetoric in the urban settings. MG: So then Chiapas. When did you decide to go down to Mexico to check out Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista uprising? NW: I can tell you exactly. It was January 1, And there was Marcos, this totally bizarre, charismatic guy smoking a pipe, wearing a mask and a radio headset, quoting poetry, and in cahoots with an indigenous army that had managed to take over five towns and ranches.

It was all part of the Free Trade hoo-ha. And they programmed Blockade. It was terribly promoted and nobody showed up to any of the movies but Wing Chief Art Loring and I jumped on a plane, went to Chiapas and brought along Blockade. We talked our way into Zapatista territory, got a TV set and a long extension cord, ran it out from a generator and sat in a basketball court surrounded by barefoot indigenous people with a translator and showed the film.

They understood that there were Indians in Canada and they were fighting for their land just like the Indigenous people were in Mexico. To me, it was a high stakes drama driven by unforgettable characters. To ask for permission to film, I met with the indigenous leadership of the Zapatistas during ceasefire negotia- tions. The Zapatistas spoke five different indigenous languages.

They had to learn Spanish to come to the negotiating table. These teeny Zapatista comandantes with their masks and traditional clothing would meet with guys in suits and briefcases from Mexico City. The extraordinary, mind-bending negotiations would last all day. After their evening meal, the Zapatistas would meet people who had come from all over Mexico and the world to see them—including me.

I explained to them that I needed to film their communities, but I also needed to film the ranchers and the military. The mainstream media is covering their story all the time. We can barely get our voice out. Thank you, whoever you are behind that mask. She has worked throughout her professional career as an actor, director, producer, and cameraperson.

Their occupations were journalist and opera singer, respectively. The production company was named in part after Wild's full name and reflects their general interest in Canadian based issues, despite making several films on more global issues. One of Wild's earliest documentaries was Right to Fight [ 2 ] which focused on the housing crisis that was taking place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which caused many people to have difficulty finding adequate housing or to live under the poverty line.

Despite this, the film was received poorly and did not gain the filmmaker critical acclaim. Wild would go on to make A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution after spending months in the Philippines, recording footage and interviewing individuals. After threats of violence from this individual, Wild would go on to interview the president of the Philippines who showed support for the DJ.

A Place Called Chiapas is a documentary by Wild following the protests and revolts that took place in Chiapas, a rural state in Mexico, known for its high rates of poverty. Wild focused her documentary on an outsider's perspective of the rebellion, and in that way the film became immensely successful. One of Wild's most successful films was Fix: The Story of an Addicted City which focused on the drug issue in Vancouver and the fight over whether safe injection sites should be constructed.

The film followed the two sides of the fight over safe injection sites and how to remedy the drug issue killing hundreds of residents every year. When she returned to the Philippines, the political landscape was changing drastically. Cory Aquino ran for the presidency and eventually succeeded in beating Marcos. Now, the black and white opposition in politics was replaced by a continually changing multi-coloured spectrum.

For Wild this was a dilemma: should she stick to her former plans or tell the story of Cory's election who, Wild thought, did not bring about essential alterations in the structures of power. She chose the first, set in a wider context.