The other half of the directing team behind "The Elect" shares her observations on the Westboro Baptist Church and what she's been up to since graduating.
Erin Zacek is a documentary filmmaker
who now works in news programming.
Appropriate for an artist more interested in concrete rather than
abstract subjects. Her documentary “The
Elect,” co-directed by Dan Moore, was a runaway hit at Visions ’12. Moore, who now works at a prestigious
entertainment agency, was featured in a previous follow-up article. He went in
depth with us about the cinema-verite style and life as a freelance editor. Zacek shared in Moore’s experiences of making
the documentary, but took away from them a slightly different perspective.
Erin Zacek says of her approach to "The Elect": “We wanted to make the audience
work a little harder… taking away that on screen person that speaks for
the audience causes a tension that makes the viewer much more active.” When a documentary takes one such approach,
viewers are tasked with forming their own opinions of what the film is
really about. For some, the
close-up shots of Shirley’s children as they sing and protest stand out most emphatically.
The film occasionally cuts to Shirley Phelps-Rogers, the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, answering phone calls from disgruntled people badmouthing the church. At one point a caller accuses Shirley of
brainwashing her children, which she follows with “Like your parents brainwashed
you?” The debate of nature
vs. nurture underlines a great deal of the film’s subject matter. Zacek, indeed, indicated a certain pull toward
the children while she and Moore were filming:
“I was more interested in how any human being can actually believe the
things that they say, and how they pass those beliefs to their children.” Still, years after shooting the documentary,
it’s still what strikes her the most: “… I feel a lot more sympathy for them,
especially for the kids. When you have had the same messages drilled into your
head every day since birth it's hard to imagine anyone turning out differently.”
The Westboro Baptist Church had seen
plenty of previous media exposure--even nationally, having been featured in a piece for
BBC entitled The Most Hated Family in
America. Says Erin: “They keep that as a point of pride, so I
don’t think they really cared how we portrayed them in our documentary.” Yet their unguarded nature yielded an unexpected
and altogether strange juxtaposition of their infamous image. According to Zacek, Shirley and her children,
despite certain outlandish beliefs, are “an affectionate, close-knit
family.” She says that they bought her
and Moore lunch one day, and Shirley even referred to the filmmakers as her
“chickens,” the pet name she gives her children.
Since graduating, Zacek’s ultimate goal is to create a
body of work comprising wholly original pieces of filmmaking. “I like putting a new spin on existing
genres,” she says. While unique pieces are few and
far between, Zacek let us in on an exciting venture that just might meet the
criteria. She describes it as an
animated documentary. All she could say was this: “I want to put
recorded interviews on top of animation… It's a little pet project I would love
to work and am excited about."
Many young filmmakers could learn from
Zacek’s outlook on filmmaking. She
carries a sprint-before-walking mentality when it comes to taking on new
projects. “With the availability of
technology, and with an online audience at your fingertips there is no excuse
for not making films. Without investing too much into new equipment I've been
able to experiment with stop motion, and other little docs since graduating.
You learn and improve the best when you are working through a project.”
For those of you interested in an unbiased, non-manipulative look at a protest-group-turned-a-capella-band, have a look at the full documentary bellow. It's a great example of how subtle filmmaking elevates bombastic subject matter.
By Joey Powell
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