Press Packet

The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture
P.O. Box 22748
Oakland CA 94609
Phone: (510) 647-9115
[email protected]
www.speakoutnow.org
Peter Weirich Bratt
Peter Weirich Bratt is an acclaimed independent filmmaker and
screenwriter whose first motion picture FOLLOW ME
HOME won the Best Feature Film Audience Award at the 1996
San Francisco International Film Festival. The film, which Bratt
wrote, directed and produced, also earned him the Best Director
Award at the 1996 American Indian Film Festival and was an
official selection in competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
That same year Bratt and his brother, Benjamin Bratt, also
produced ART OF SURVIVAL, a short documentary on the AfroBrazilian martial art "capoeira" and it's impact on the lives of San
Francisco Mission youth.
In 2008, the Bratt brothers produced La MISSION, a feature film
set in San Francisco's Mission district that Peter Bratt also wrote and
directed. La MISSION, starring Benjamin Bratt, premiered at the
2009 Sundance Film Festival and was released in theaters
nationwide later that year. La MISSION was also one of ten films invited to participate in the
prestigious 2011 FILM FORWARD INITIATIVE, a collaboration between the Sundance Institute and
the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities designed to enhance cross-cultural
understanding, collaboration and dialogue around the globe by engaging audiences through the
exhibition of film and conversation with filmmakers.
Bratt is currently the producer and director of a feature documentary on the life of acclaimed social
justice activist, Dolores Huerta, a film he is co-producing with Grammy Award winning musician,
Carlos Santana.
Bratt is the recipient of a number of honors including a Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/Multimedia
Fellowship, the prestigious Norman Lear Writer’s Award, as well as an Estella Award, an honor
bestowed by the National Association of Latino independent Producers to filmmakers “whose
achievements reveal leadership, creativity, and tenacity, as well as vision and passion for their craft.”
In addition to writing, directing and producing, Bratt also serves on the San Francisco Film Commission
and consults with several Bay Area non-profit organizations.
Written & Directed by Peter Bratt
Starring Benjamin Bratt
Growing up in San Francisco’s Mission District, Che
Rivera (Benjamin Bratt) has always had to be tough to
survive. He’s a powerful man respected through-out
the barrio for his masculinity and his strength, as well
as for his hobby building lowrider cars. At the same
time, he’s also a man feared for his street-tough ways
and violent temper.
A reformed inmate and recovering alcoholic, Che has
worked hard to redeem his life and do right by his
pride and joy: his only son, Jes, whom he raised on his
own after the death of his wife. Che’s path to
redemption is tested, however, when he discovers Jes
is gay.
In a rage, Che violently beats Jes, disowning him. He
loses his son – and loses himself in the process.
Isolated and alone, Chec comes to realize that his
patriarchal pride is meaningless to him, and to
maintain his idea of masculinity, he’s sacrificed the
one thing that he cherishes most – the love of his son.
To survive his neighborhood, Che has always lived with his fists. To survive as a complete man, he’ll
have to embrace the side of himself he’s never shown.
FOLLOW ME HOME
Written & Directed by Peter Bratt
Starring Alfre Woodard, Benjamin Bratt
Jesse Borrego, Calvin Levels and Steve Reevis
Follow Me Home is a defiant, humorous, poetic tale exploring race and
identity.
Weaving together traditions of
Native, African and Latino cultures,
the film tells the story of four artists
and their journey across the American
landscape.
Tudee
(Jesse
Borrego),
Abel
(Benjamin Bratt), Kaz (Calvin
Levels) and Freddy (Steve Reevis)
are joined by Evey (Alfre Woodard)
an enigmatic African Ameri-can
woman on a journey of her own.
The film earned Bratt the Best
Director award at the 1996 American
Indian Film Festival and the Best
Feature Film Audience Award at the
1996 San Francisco International
Film Festival. It was also an Official Selection in the 1996 Sundance Film Festival.
"...a work of genius."
— Alice Walker, Pultizer Prize winning author
"Follow Me Home is a dazzling film that not only confronts the nightmare of today's
dehumanized, racist society, but also suggests how we might build a different world."
— Elizabeth Martinez, award-winning Chicana writer and activist
"The collision of race, identity, history, and culture affects all Americans....
'Follow Me Home' provides a point of entry to a long-overdue discussion."
— Jill Nelson, The Nation
Bratts roll out 'La Mission,' hometown-style
Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle Movie Correspondent
(April 26, 2009) The San Francisco International Film Festival's opening-night party was a double
homecoming for Benjamin and Peter Bratt: It took place in the Mission District, where the brothers grew
up and where they shot "La Mission" - the
family drama that inaugurated the 2009
festival - starring Benjamin and directed by
Peter.
As kids, they would sneak into the New
Mission Theater a few blocks away from
where the partygoers gathered. The Bratt
boys' love of movies was sparked watching
"Planet of the Apes" in the back of the
theater when they were barely out of
kindergarten.
Thursday night's festivities were held in
another grand movie house from their youth,
the El Capitan. Sadly, all that's left of it is a
splendid Mexican Baroque facade. The gu
tted foyer, now used as a parking lot, offered ample space for festivalgoers to congregate. The night was
a bit nippy for milling around outdoors and for the dancers dressed in sequin halters and short shorts
who perform with one of the bands. People could be heard lamenting the fact that the party hadn't been
Monday, during the city's brief hot spell. As Thursday night wore on, they spilled over into Bruno's
restaurant next door to keep warm.
The Bratts were too exuberant to notice if they were cold. Asked how it felt to have their movie open the
festival in their hometown, Benjamin said, "As you can imagine, it feels wonderful."
This is the second time that Benjamin - who became famous as a detective on TV's "Law & Order" in
the 1990s and recently appeared in the A&E series "The Cleaner" - has been directed by his older
brother. The first was "Follow Me Home," a 1996 indie that wasn't seen much but has developed a
following.
"We've formed an eternal theater troupe, and whatever Peter does I am going to be in now and forever,"
he said.
While Benjamin is used to dressing up for openings, his brother isn't. The elegant brown suit Peter had
on was bought for his wedding a few years back. "This is only the second time I've worn it," he said,
laughing. "I'm not a suit-and-tie kind of guy. I'm more comfortable in my tennis shoes." He had a pair in
his car to change into.
He told the audience that he wrote the characters in "La Mission" with real people in mind. Benjamin's
character, Che, evokes the "OGs," or "original gangsters," as they are called in the neighborhood. They
aren't really gangsters but rather guys who have been around for a long time and are respected.
Che restores junked cards to shiny perfection and parades them through the Mission. In a nod to his
hobby, the festival arranged for a procession of lowriders to arrive for the screening. The cars - several
in two-tone red and black or gold and black - headed up Market for the Castro Theatre, hugging the
ground with their immaculate tires and wheels. More restored cars were on display at the El Capitan.
In another nod to the movie, the screening was preceded by what Peter called "a prayer from the spirit
world." People wearing ornate feathered headdresses and carrying incense made their way down the
aisles at the Castro. Ceremonies like this one appear several times in "La Mission."
At the end of the credits, Peter thanked
all his relatives for their contributions.
Several of them were in the audience,
including the Bratts' mother and Peter's
wife, Maya, who was a nurseconsultant on the movie.
Benjamin's wife, Talisa Soto Bratt,
plays Che's sister-in-law. A former
supermodel, she is distractingly
beautiful in the role and in person.
Erika Alexander, who appears as Che's
neighbor and romantic interest, called
the Bratt brothers "gorgeous."
Looking into the Castro audience, she
said, "When I say 'gorgeous,' I say that
with all due respect to their wives who are here tonight."
Introducing "La Mission," Graham Leggat, the festival's executive director, said it is one of 30 Bay Area
films to show over the next two weeks in the 52nd edition of the festival.
A NIGHT OUT WITH | BENJAMIN AND PETER BRATT
Take a Little Trip and See
By Brad Stone | April 2, 2010
BENJAMIN BRATT was cruising the Mission District in style. It was a cold, blustery night, but
pedestrians stopped and gawked — and not just because they recognized Mr. Bratt, who rose to
prominence with “Law and Order” and recently starred in two seasons of the A & E show “The
Cleaner.”
It was his car that drew stares: a 1964 cherry-red Chevrolet Impala with a pearl-white convertible top
and an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe across the trunk. This is a lowrider, with a modified suspension
and a V-8 engine that scrawls its auditory signature on every street.
“With lowriders, it’s all about show — every corner is a doorway, and we take it slow,” Mr. Bratt said
from behind the wheel, with his older brother, Peter, next to him. As they returned people’s greetings on
every block, he added, “When the car stops, people stop.”
The Mission has special meaning for the Bratt brothers. Peter wrote and directed the film “La Mission,”
which had its premiere at Sundance last year and will open in a dozen American cities this month. The
movie, starring Benjamin as Che, a tormented ex-convict who learns that his only son is gay, depicts the
clash between homosexuality and Catholic values.
The film is also a paean to the Mission, lowrider culture and the Bratts’ past. Their mother, a native of
Peru, moved to San Francisco when she was 14 and became a nurse and community activist. Though the
brothers grew up in nearby Glen Park along with three other siblings, they spent their early years here in
the Mission, in an eclectic stew of Latino culture and immigrant hardship.
“L.A. often doesn’t feel like a real place,” said Benjamin Bratt, who lives there with his wife — the
actress Talisa Soto— and their two children. “The Mission has art, culture and food, but there’s also
real-life struggle, with family being the center of focus.”
An iPod playlist of classic and Latin soul music provided the booming soundtrack as the Bratts
navigated their past: there’s the apartment they once shared on the corner at 23rd and Mission; that’s
where several members of their close-knit Native American community perished in a fire.
The neighborhood still has plenty of living connections for the brothers. They parked at La Reyna, a
family-owned bakery on 24th Street, and embraced its proprietor, Louis Gutierrez, whom they described
as a brother. Outside, they ran into Alex Hernandez, a neighborhood teenager who had no acting
experience when they cast him as the homophobic antagonist in “La Mission.”
“When you go out in the Mission, you are going to run into people you know,” Benjamin Bratt said.
“It’s a real neighborhood.”
With the sun setting, the brothers stopped at La Taqueria, their favorite burrito restaurant, for tacos and
tamarind juice, and they ruminated about the neighborhood’s resilience to the forces of gentrification
and progress.
“You can walk down the street and experience sights and sounds from nearly every corner of the world,”
said Peter Bratt, who still lives in the area. “Walk down one block, and there’s a West African beat, a
Latin American cumbia, and a Brazilian samba. Turn down another, and you might hear a Buddhist
chant or a Native American prayer song.”
Benjamin Bratt said that the Mission still beckons to him, despite its designer shops and trendy bars.
“Even though it’s constantly evolving,” he said, “it remains true to what it is.”
Following Peter: An Interview with Peter Bratt
By Michelle Svenson, Film and Video Specialist, NMAI
June 2004
World-Bridging
MS: Do you mind telling us your full name and tribal affiliation?
PB: My name is Peter (Wyric) Bratt and my father is Anglo and
my mother is from Peru from the Quechua people. If you go to
different regions of Peru, instead of calling them tribes, they're like
communities, they call them ayllus. I feel like it's really different
there than it is in the US. There are tribes, tribus, but for a large
part of the population when colonization came in, even though
Quechua is spoken by 60% of the population, colonization kind of
destroyed tribal affiliation. In general, if you go into the Amazon,
or into the highlands of the Andes you'll find tribes, communities
that still maintain tribal identity.
But for the most part even full-blooded Indians moved to the
cities. Once they move to the city, they're no longer Indians, they're campesinos, or they're
peruanos. In Latin America, I found that people try to distance themselves from being Indian
because of the stigma it carries. It's changing, but it's nowhere near where it is in the United
States or in Canada, where people actually take pride and say, "I'm Native."
MS: You have a degree in political science, yes? Your work
seems to fuse your many disciplines and communities. Can
you speak about that?
PB: I have one Native friend who lives in L.A., an aspiring
filmmaker…and he's always telling me, "Yeah bro, it's really
tough living in two worlds. I got one foot over here and one
foot over here." And I said, "Well you know bro, I used to say
that too. Living in two worlds—but it's only one world, you
know—and it's got many dimensions, many different aspects
to it."
"But what I find about Follow Me Home, your politics, your
worldview, your spiritual outlook your family life, community
life, I feel like they're so interrelated. It's hard to be, "Now I'm
this person, I have this set of values—and now I'm this person
and I have this set of values." For me, you have a certain set
of principles and you live by them no matter what sphere of life you're in, no matter who you're
interacting with.
You [can] belong to a community of filmmakers, a community of writers, the Native community,
a Latino community, a community of people who are educated in a university so you could say
middle class community, a working class community, I mean, there's just so many….a spiritual
community.
MS: With Follow Me Home particularly, it seems like you found a way to use filmmaking as a
reflexive tool in mirroring a marriage of several communities.
PB: Right. Part of it is the neighborhood where I grew up. A lot of the characters and all the
different cultures are literally colliding, intermarrying and borrowing from one another, day in
and day out. And you really see it in art, in the young people. And there's this, I won't say it's
appropriation, it's like adoption, where you have Vietnamese and Cambodian and Native and
Mexicanos and Brazilians and African-Americans and Afro-Haitians and working-class whites
and everyone is living in close proximity. You have this restaurant and that restaurant and this
cuisine and this music and that music, and someone's sampling from this and sampling from
that. They are very distinct, but there's a constant borrowing, I find. I grew up around that, I
was influenced by so much of that, even though I felt like I was grounded in one [culture], I
definitely felt like I was influenced.
MS: You also seem to belong to a number of organizations like Wicapi Koyaka in Wanblee, do
you mind talking about that a little?
PB: Oh yeah, that's with Richard Movescamp, who
is
a
spiritual
leader
on
Pine
Ridge
[Reservation]…he's trying to bring back Lakota
tradition to address and redress some of the
issues that are facing his people, mainly
alcoholism, all the different substance abuse,
domestic violence, child molestation—you name it.
MS: And you also belong to the organization
Peace Through Strength?
PB: Peace Through Strength. That's here in New
York, Washington Heights. I have a really good friend who was one of the investors in Follow
Me Home. I sold him a share. (Laugh) He's been a social worker in San Francisco for over 30
years, and he's a Buddhist. Part of his teaching is you're supposed to spend 20 minutes a day
in nature and you're supposed to take up a martial art to work on physical discipline, to train
the mind. So, I've been doing martial arts for over 15 years and he happened to join my school,
that's how I met him. He moved out here [New York] and he started a meditation academy
that's married with the martial art program. He works with mostly Dominicans, Puerto Rican
youth, troubled youth. He asked me to be on the board. In fact, I'm going over there tomorrow.
I'm going to go train with the class. He's doing some really great stuff.
On the Road
MS: One of the things that I thought was really interesting and different about your film, is that
it's a road movie-obviously-but that it has become another kind of road movie for you, right?
You've been traveling with the film for how many years now?
PB: Let's see, we had our official release in 1997, and so it's literally been on the road up until
right now.
MS: About how many times a year do you think you've screened it?
PB: I would say it's screened anywhere from 20 to 40 times a year. I don't always accompany
the film, I have a sister named Lakota Harden who [also] does it. Or there will be other people
who go and lead the Q&A afterwards, or sometimes no one at all, the film will just go out.
MS: It's created an almost cult-like status, through word of mouth, because most of the people
call Speak Out [a non-profit artists and speakers bureau], it's not like you guys are still going
out there and advertising [the film].
PB: Yeah, well, that's the thing, it wasn't by design. We didn't get a distribution deal so we
started to do self-distribution. We developed a strategy. The first few months the actors, the
lead actors, would get up there with me and we would tell people, "Here, take a flyer. Tell your
friends and relatives to come see this film." We
didn't have a budget to advertise on film, TV, radio.
And that would turn into, "Well, I have a question
about the film." And so this Q&A thing developed.
We would end up staying an hour after the film
taking these question and answers and sometimes
three hours! If there was no other screening
following, sometimes people didn't want to leave.
"That helped spread this word-of-mouth. Pretty soon
these discussions became sometimes emotionally
charged, race, you know, race and class and just all
these different issues would come up. The next thing we knew, even though we got panned by
mainstream reviewers, cultural critics like Alice Walker and June Jordan started writing about
the film and we got this incredible article published in Z magazine. Pretty soon we started
getting invited to universities, and fairly prestigious universities. We went to Harvard three
times. Right now the film primarily exists on campuses, but sometimes community groups
[have screenings]. So it developed into this, kind of like you said, a road movie. We just
followed the film wherever it went.
MS: And it sounds like you love it too, for the community, because it brings it all back around.
PB: Yeah, it's been great. Had it gotten picked up by the distributor, my life would have been
so different….[when] Follow Me Home screened at the Sundance Film Festival I was really
shy, and, man, I could not get up in front of a crowd of people. I was just terrified. But out of
necessity, to get the word out, get Follow Me Home out [I had to do it]. Now I can go before
audiences and speak. I find it developed this whole other aspect of my life. It takes you down
these roads that you have no idea of, and they're really beautiful and [so are] the people you
meet.
MS: And it's great too because it's become quite an educational tool. An educator at the same
time as a filmmaker.
PB: (Laugh) I just wanted to make movies! But you know I never intended to get into the
distribution game. That wasn't my intention. I feel like distribution is more complex of an animal
than filmmaking. And I realize that it's not my niche, it's not my forte. So, for me, once in a
while I'll go out and do something with Follow Me Home to promote it, but I really want to make
films. I'm kind of putting the distribution game on hold for a while.
Chacras and Mom
MS: You spent some time on Alcatraz as a kid during the occupation?
PB: My mom was a single mother of five children. I was four-and-a-half years old when she
divorced my father. She had no family here in the States. She was thinking of moving back to
Peru, and she turned on the TV and she saw this young Mohawk, Richard Oakes, calling
people of all tribes to come to Alcatraz Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. She said
something about that just reached out and grabbed her. He happened to be at this TV station.
She called and actually got him, and she said, "I'm Native you know, but I'm a Native from
South America," and he said, "Sister, Indians of all tribes." So she went down in the boat and
all these brown hands reached up. And she said it was the first time since she'd been in the
States, and she'd been here 13 years, that she felt like she was home.
She's an RN [registered nurse] and she got involved in the fishing rights struggle, she was at
Wounded Knee in '73, the occupation on Alcatraz, and, somehow, like she said on the first
day, she was a movement lady. Wherever she went, she'd pack all her five kids in her station
wagon, Indian caravans, and we just went from one thing to the next.
I feel like for all my brothers and sisters, that laid the foundation. No matter what you do, you
have to give something back, you have to help your people. That was drilled [into us]. And, you
know, it wasn't like we resisted it, but as we grew up, we originally wanted to pursue our own
things. I feel you like become more and more like your parents as you get older. I see that with
all my siblings.
MS: So you guys traveled from different communities. Hence, road trips…
PB: Yeah, road trips, Hopi reservation, Navajo reservation, Pima River, various tribes in
Oregon, Canada, Nevada, all the Four Corners area, the Dakotas. During the late 1960's and
1970's there were just so many struggles. You would find that Indian people would go and
support [other Indians]. Even though they weren't from that tribe, they would go and support
that Indian cause. My mom was one of those people.
MS: And what's she doing now?
PB: Now she's just chilling with her grandchildren. She's pushing 70 and she has six
grandkids. She still has a strong opinion, but she kind of stands to the back now, and she says,
"I've paid my dues and I'm an elder." She says, "It's your turn," basically.
MS: Have you been back to visit the community where your mom's from?
PB: Oh yeah. In fact, I took my fiancé and a couple of relatives. We went down in December
and we met with some traditional medicine people down there. I try to go back at least about
once a year.
MS: I was just curious, you speak so highly of your mom, I'm wondering what she thinks of
Follow Me Home.
PB: When she read the script, she said, "Peter!—some of this language in here!" because
there's a lot of street vernacular. My mom worked on the set and we called her the executive,
executive producer. (Laugh). She was the set medic and she was becoming everyone's mom.
She came up with our film company's name, Chacras, which is a Quechua word meaning
that's the land where you grow food, corn. At the Sundance Film Festival…she hadn't seen
any dailies, she didn't want to see anything, and just when the music comes up and says
"Chacras Filmworks," she just started sobbing, she just started crying.
If she's in the audience, she'll come up on the stage with me and start taking questions. You'll
see this old activist come out in her. She gets really fired up…she sees new things in it every
time. Course she says, "Does your next film have to be so heavy?"(Laugh) And it will be
heavy! It doesn't have a title yet, but they'll probably rate it R.
MS: That's "The Four Mary's" right? And is it a contemporary story?
PB: I'm not going to tell you, you have to see it at the movie theatre!
Having a Vision
MS: So how did you go about making Follow Me Home?
"PB: I had the script and then I found some actors.
My brother had made a few films. He wasn't a
very successful actor at the time, but he had
made some B films, and he knew some other B
actors. So we went down to Los Angeles, and we
staged a reading of the script and pretty much hire
d everyone on the spot. Steve Reevis had just
finished Geronimo. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, they
would say, "Steve Reevis, who's that? Benjamin
Bratt? Who's that?" because they'd been in small
films. But in the Indian community they'd be like, "Wow, Steve Reevis, wow, superstar," you
know what I mean? So when we'd have fundraisers Steve would come and Jesse [Borrego]
and Benjamin [Bratt] and they'd be like, "Wow, these guys have made films."
We started raising funds and prayed a lot. Next thing you know we had $50,000, and that was
enough to get it going. If I were talking to a young filmmaker I'd say, "Get your budget first." But
that's not what we did. We went in with like $50,000 and we were going to run out of money in
a week, and we would have to send everyone home, the crew and the cast.
But luckily we'd go back to the office, and we'd get on the phone and we'd raise more money.
In hindsight I wouldn't do that today, and I would probably discourage a young filmmaker from
doing that. But there's something about naiveté and just pure faith that makes magical things
happen. It's like that saying, "You've got to jump off the cliff and you may fall and die, but the
only way to grow wings is if you jump off the cliff. You're not going to grow them standing here
or debating. You have to take a leap of faith."
MS: And you've worked on a couple of shorts?
PB: My brother and I produced a short documentary that we hope to develop into a featurelength documentary on the Afro-Brazilian art called capoeira, which is the martial art that I've
been doing for a number of years. I have one script that's for a three-hour epic. But we need a
large sum of money, so as a means to an end, I'm going to do a smaller film with probably
some Hollywood stars.
MS: Is it a smaller film of that film?
PB: No it's a smaller film, like Follow Me Home was a low-budget, no-budget movie. This film
will be mid-range…It's an urban epic, contemporary film piece. It's got multiple locations and
takes place in the heart of a city. And so the budget's a little more than moderate.
MS: And you're just going to take that around and do the fundraising?
PB: Because the structure of the film is a little unconventional, I'm probably going to have to
raise the money outside…before I can take that next step. From what I've found from talking to
investors, I need to make a film that's accessible
and that gets a distribution deal. Since Follow
Me Home didn't get distribution, in order to make
people feel comfortable who are investing, I have
to produce something that actually gets a
distribution deal.
MS: Have you watched or do you view much
Native cinema?
PB: I try to watch everything…films from the
silent era, German films, French films, Indian films from India. There's some incredible films
coming out of India and Latin America. I try to watch everything.
Where I get my fill of Native film is at the American Indian Film Fest every November in San
Francisco. And I find that the majority of films are coming from Canada. The Canadian
government seems to be really supportive of Native filmmakers. I think they even helped fund
The Fast Runner, which is an incredible film. I love that film, I study that film. I consider the
Whale Rider, which is about the Maori [though not directed by a Maori], I [still] consider that a
Native film. And there's another [Moari] film that I actually took a few Lakota spiritual leaders to
see a couple of years ago called Once Were Warriors. And they were just like, "Man, this is a
straight up Indian movie. We have to get this to the reservation." That was one that [made it]
into the theatres.
I find that a lot of Native filmmakers, because of the financial restrictions, tend to go more into
documentary. Right now, I think, in the United States there's basically like one Native
filmmaker that everyone is aware of, that's Chris Eyre. And then Sherman [Alexie] made The
Business of Fancydancing. He's a writer and a filmmaker. I feel like there are so many young
filmmakers out there but because of lack of funding they're doing shorts, or documentaries or
short documentaries, and so you don't really hear of them too much. It seems like Canada has
a lot more in terms of feature materials.
There's [also] this film, I think it was made in 1973 in Mexico. It's called Chac. The entire film is
in Teltzal and it is a powerful story. It's a traditional story, it's all Native people, I think the
director is Chilean. I saw it for the first time a year ago and I thought 'Wow! Why haven't I
heard of this film before?'
MS: Out of all the different arts, do you feel like filmmaking is definitely your medium?
PB: Truth be told, if God had granted me a voice, I would have been a singer because I love
music. But I find that I can bring my love for music to film. And film seems to incorporate it, I
mean, it's the ultimate collaborative art, because you are working with so many different people
from so many different areas of life, so many different kinds of artists. And you are constantly
learning from one another. You cannot make a film by yourself, it's like multifaceted
collaboration. And I feel that's what makes it so exciting. You have a
script that's like a blueprint, but you never know what the final
outcome is going to be. Things happen magically on the set and in
postproduction when you bring music into it and stuff.
What I always say to filmmakers, especially independent filmmakers,
is, "You have to love it." You know, for one—you might not get rich.
And when you're making your film, you're begging and you're
borrowing and you're stealing and you're living with your reels in your
house and you're living with this material for a couple of years, night
and day. So you know you should love it. Because it can burn you
out if you don't.
MS: Do you have a ny advice for young Native filmmakers?
PB: My advice is to take in all advice and sometimes you have to
discard it. All of it. Because, for instance, in my case, I had no experience with filmmaking,
whatsoever. And I said,
Peter: "You know what? I want to make a film."
Advisor: "Make a short film."
Peter: "I'm going to make a motion picture."
Advisor: "But you have no experience."
Peter: "I know but I want to make one."
Advisor: "But you have no money."
Peter: "I know, but I want to make one."
Advisor: "You're crazy, you're dreaming."
I feel that if you really have something that you believe strongly in, you find a way. You find
people who can help and support you. The money, that's a small part of it. You can raise the
money, that's doable. The hard part is getting people to believe in whatever that vision is; to
come along with you for the ride. And once you have that, really any door, any avenue is open.
Especially with the camera equipment that's available. Ever shoot in digital? You can really be
creative and inventive and shoot a low-budget film, a well-made film, a well-crafted film, if that's
what you really want to do. So, I would say take in all the advice, but if you find that the advice
is overwhelming, discouraging, saying it's impossible…[then discard it]. That's my belief. But at
the same time you'll also hear some good things that will help you, so you take it all in and use
what you can.
I feel like [we're] storytellers, I mean, that's what filmmakers are, they're storytellers, whether
they're making documentary or features. I feel that storytellers have always had an important
role in, but in most indigenous societies, storytellers man, that's where a lot of it comes
together. That's where things are passed on, knowledge, ethics,
Today I feel what governs the industry…[as] someone told me, "This is the entertainment
business, small e, capital B." A lot of young filmmakers feel like they have to make a certain
kind of film if they're going to make it. I really encourage Native filmmakers, or all filmmakers,
to answer to and follow their personal vision. If it's something that's really from the heart and
sincere, it's going to appeal to people.
And I feel that's what we need today—we need an infusion of new blood, new vision…a lot of
the material out there, I don't find that exciting, or original. I love all films, but [in] different eras
of cinema, like the 70's or the 60's in France, or like the 50's in India, or even right now in
Mexico—there's just really exciting things that happen in film during those times. I feel that
happened because people were thinking outside of the box.
I went to this film bookstore and there are all these how-to-make-film books and how-to-writescreenplay books—there's like this formula that you plug into. A lot of traditional Native story
telling, it definitely doesn't fit into the model, like the Western paradigm, the linear structure and
times. It's good to borrow from everything, but I really think it's important today to think outside
of the box. I think we need it.