Bridge Film Festival : BFF Judge Bernardo Ruiz

Courtesy of Quiet Pictures

Bernardo Ruiz is a filmmaker who has been associated with the Bridge Film Festival for 10 years as a guest lecturer and Festival judge. He is currently working on a documentary about the Mexican border.

Project Description - Gardens of Paradise

There are ebbs and flows to the news cycle, but what is the deeper story of a place? That is the question tugging at a veteran reporter and photojournalist on the Mexican border. He tackles the same stories that filled his reporter's notebook early in his career: immigration, corruption and narco-related violence. Today, the stakes are vastly different.

BFF - Why did you choose the border crossing issue to explore?

BR - The film I am making, Gardens of Paradise, is the story of a place. In this case, the place is the California-Mexico border, which is home to the world’s busiest land-border crossing in the world. I’m working to create a sense of both the beauty and the challenges facing the residents of this region through the work of a veteran reporter and photojournalist. Investigative journalism is hard work anywhere, but it is especially so in Mexico. More than 30 journalists and media workers have been murdered or vanished there since December 2006.[1]

BFF - What about the issue has been confirmed from your research?

Courtesy of Quiet Pictures

BR - Here in the U.S. we are in the midst of a conversation about the decline of print journalism. Conventional wisdom would say that “print is dead.” In Mexico, only 27%[2] of the population is wired and the country has an adult literacy rate of somewhere between 86%[3] and 92%[4] depending on which source you use. What that means in practice is that for Mexicans, print is anything but dead – it continues to be a necessary and vital part of how people get their information. However, many news outlets self-censor for many reasons—most recently, for very real fears of violent reprisals from the drug cartels. But the news organization we feature in our film has refused to bow to many outside pressures. They, and the reporter at the center of our film, publish crime articles under a collective byline to protect the individual identities of journalists. But they don’t stop reporting.

BFF - What has surprised you most about what you've learned?

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BR - On a recent production trip, I met an American woman from Philadelphia in Tijuana. She had flown to Mexico to have a complicated dental procedure done there. Her U.S. insurance wouldn’t cover the work. It ended up being cheaper for her to fly all the way from Philadelphia to Mexico to have work done. She is part of the growing phenomenon of “medical tourism.” She is a migrant from the north, traveling to the south seeking economic advantage. We don’t often hear this woman’s story, or the stories of people like her.

BFF - What are you trying to communicate with this film, and to whom? Who is your audience?

Courtesy of Quiet Pictures

BR - Often times, films about “the border” or “immigration” provoke yawns or glazed eyes. Understandably, there is a kind of fatigue about this issue. I think part of that has to do with how many activist films have been made. Many “issue-oriented” films neglect the aesthetic side of filmmaking. On the other end of the spectrum, the news media here—especially the cable news media—often create shallow and sensational coverage without context. It can be de-sensitizing. The typical scenario is a production team that just “parachutes” in for a day or two, gets the “story” and flies right out. My goal is to make a longer-form reflection on what this region is like, day-to-day. It's not breaking news I’m after and it’s not what I would consider activist or propaganda filmmaking. What I’m most interested in is how people lead lives in difficult situations. I’m hoping to catch glimpses of the unexpected beauty and humor in the lives of the region’s residents…let’s see if I can pull it off.

BFF - Can you see any relationship between the Quaker testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality and the content of the film you are making?

Courtesy of Quiet Pictures

BR - What a good question. I think in some ways this film is an examination of the meaning of community. In speaking about television dramas, David Mamet says that the concept of “tribe” is central. “We all want to be part of this little tribe…The small clan.”[5] How do we construct a community? Who gets to decide who is part of our community, who is not? I would say those questions apply to our story. Another theme that I think applies is integrity. How do you maintain integrity in situations where it is easier to do the opposite? How does one push for equality and transparency in the world? I certainly don’t have these answers—not by a long shot—but I think it's valuable to pose these questions within the world of the film.

“What are the risks you are taking to see this project to its conclusion?"

The people at risk are the Mexican journalists who cover organized crime and corruption, as well as the ordinary citizens trying to go about their daily lives. I and my production team have the luxury of leaving if things get hairy. Having said that, we do take basic precautions. Even from far away, though, I think it is important to ask ourselves, what is our country’s responsibility in Mexico’s security crisis? Last year, Hilary Clinton acknowledged that the biggest market for drugs shipped through Mexico is in the U.S. and that guns from the U.S. are illegally smuggled across the border into Mexico. “I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility,"[6] she said. The idea that our two nations are linked isn’t an abstract concept.

Courtesy of Quiet Pictures

BFF - Please add anything else you would like the student filmmakers to know.

BR - If you really believe in turning an idea into a film, don’t let anybody stop you from doing it. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's true. Sometimes you have to stick with something for a long time before it bears fruit. I started developing this project back in 2006—only now in 2010 am I in production! I struggled to get support from a variety of sources. I was rejected by a number of funders. It was just hard. I decided to stick with it. I kept reading, asking questions, filling a folder on my desktop with articles and interviews. I made playlists of music that inspired me and I talked to my friends to test out my ideas. Eventually support came from four different and important funders, including some that had rejected my project early on. But I listened to advice that resonated with me and continued to develop my idea. There’s something to be said for committing to an idea. If you really believe in something, make it happen!

Director Bio – Bernardo Ruiz

Bernardo is the director/producer of American Experience: Roberto Clemente (PBS, 2008). The broadcast documentary was awarded the Alma Award for Outstanding Made for Television Documentary. He is the co-producer of The Sixth Section (P.O.V.), winner of the top short documentary prize at the 2003 Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. As a director/producer for hire, he has directed programs for PBS, MTV, the Discovery Networks, Travel Channel, Planet Green, and the National Geographic Channel. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation on the Arts fellowship in film and his work has been supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, Sundance Doc Fund, Cinereach, and ITVS, among others. He is at work on Gardens of Paradise and teaches a course on producing in the newly created MFA Social Documentary program at the School of Visual Arts.

For more information about this and other projects, visit:

http://www.quietpictures.com

[1] http://cpj.org/reports/2010/09/silence-or-death-in-mexicos-press.php

[2] http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/mx.htm

[3] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html

[4] http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/mexico_statistics.html

[5] http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tt/tt060405david_mamet

[6] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE52O5RF20090325