|
 |
|
| Tuesday, November 13, 2007 |
Six Who Matter: The Activist Filmmaker
This is part of our Nov/Dec 2007 issue. More specifically, this article is part of our 2007 Six Who Matter series.
Her documentary films have tackled such topics as healthcare and the environment. Meet the Jewish, female version of muckracker Michael Moore.
Few people turn a lens on themselves during a bout with cancer, but for filmmaker Judith Helfand, she felt something bigger was at stake. Diagnosed in 1990 with cancer linked to a medication her mother took during pregnancy, she documented her five-year recovery from cancer, and then staked her career on other issues of health and environmental concern.
As such, Helfand's schedule these days is a veritable whirlwind of film festivals, screenings, shooting, and editing. She returns home to her Manhattan apartment temporarily mid-summer, when I meet her late one weekday night, the only time her schedule allows. In what seems to be a rare movement these days, she relaxes in a plush armchair in a living room made cozy by dark wood floors and a ceiling painted in shades of tangerine.
Two weeks ago, Helfand had the opportunity to meet the filmmaker Michael Moore, who in some ways is a large-scale counterpart to her as a Jewish filmmaker. "I don't think he takes his rock stardom for granted," she says of the visionary behind such films as Bowling for Columbine and Sicko. "Now that he has the public's attention, he has a responsibility to use it."
By age 15, Helfand says she was set on producing films. Even at a young age, her social conscious was finely tuned, and she sympathized with those who were struggling. "I don't think I ever imagined being objective," she says in her soft, almost childlike voice. In part, she indicates, her outlook was a reaction to her upbringing in a relatively quiet, middle-class Jewish home in Merrick, Long Island. Her parents were staunch Democrats who cared about social justice, but focused their attention on the family. "My parents weren't standing on picket lines," she jokes. Emerging from that environment, she recalls, "I wanted to be part of something that was bigger than us."
But Helfand says she never dreamed that she and her family would star in her films until she was diagnosed at age 25 with cervical cancer linked to a hormone her mother took during pregnancy. "My life was changed," she says, of a diagnosis that radically — and irreversibly — altered her personal and professional trajectory.
Between 1940 and 1970, an estimated four million women (including Helfand's mother) took DES, diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic hormone believed to prevent miscarriages. Born in 1964, Helfand came into the world in the middle of the DES-era.
For a woman who dreamt of having lots of children, Helfand recalls the moment of diagnosis, and says the room seemed to stop, and that she began to hear klezmer music playing in her head. An image of her paternal grandmother, with whom she had been close, popped into her mind, as she thought to herself, "How will I explain this to my grandmother?" The perverted connection, in her mind, between DES and cancer, underscored how unnatural the hormone was and set her on a path to revealing other such toxic substances.
For the next five years, she documented her family's experience with DES and Helfand's cancer, completing the 1997 film, A Healthy Baby Girl, which was an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival. Next, she turned a critical lens to the vinyl siding on her parent's home, traveling the world to capture the adverse affects of polyvinyl chloride, which culminated in the 2002 film, Blue Vinyl, the recipient of Sundance's best cinematography award. This year, Helfand's film, Everything's Cool, took on the growing dialogue about global warming. It was screened at Sundance, where it was an official film festival selection.
Throughout, Helfand's Jewish outlook underscores her work. Raised with a strong Zionistic sensibility, she finds nuance in the term, "Ldor vdor," the Hebrew phrase meaning, "From generation to generation." But she believes that unless society puts the brakes on environmental damage, "Ldor vdor" will increasingly refer to one generation bestowing toxic chemicals on another generation.
More recently, Helfand has grappled with the question not only of how to make the best film, but also on the question, "What happens when the lights come up?" Seven years ago, she co-founded a group called Working Films, which links films to grassroots organizing. It is part of the responsibility she bestowed on Moore.
"If you do your job really well, they're going to want to know what to do," she says. "You're never making your film in a vacuum."
-- Text by E.B. Solomont / Photo by Sam Norval
This is part of our Nov/Dec 2007 issue. More specifically, this article is part of our 2007 Six Who Matter series.
|
|
|
|
