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Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 2: They want cold sodas, hot popcorn and no monsters.
Speaker 4: In the Protection Booths, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring don at.
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Speaker 7: Florence has Son doesn't.
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Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, Martin, Okay, someone can be this.
Speaker 1: Just through Amazonian empirety just to be a lost mass.
Speaker 7: My in spress of fourful fast crazy.
Speaker 5: That's some must gradualists.
Speaker 8: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 8: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 8: with Chelsea Green and Rob Grobman all about their twenty
Speaker 8: twenty three film called We Are Guardians. It is a
Speaker 8: documentary all about the burning of the Amazon in Brazil.
Speaker 8: Had a great time talking with them. I definitely fucked
Speaker 8: up in this episode and referred to producer Fisher Stevens
Speaker 8: as producing Blackfish. Yeah, I was totally thinking of the Cove,
Speaker 8: but said Blackfish anyway, because you know, what's one devastating
Speaker 8: documentary versus another. Right, just give me a punch in
Speaker 8: the stomach. Hopefully this interview is better than a punch
Speaker 8: in the stomach. Had a great time talking with Ms
Speaker 8: Green and mister Grobman, and I hope you enjoy listening
Speaker 8: to it. Chelsea and Rob, thank you so much for
Speaker 8: coming on. I'm really excited to talk with you about
Speaker 8: we are guardians. How do you two know each other?
Speaker 8: What's your working relationship?
Speaker 9: Like me and Rob? Interestingly enough, and this is part
Speaker 9: of the story of many synchronicities of making this film.
Speaker 9: We met making this film after we had both gone
Speaker 9: to the Amazon independently to try to do something anything
Speaker 9: we could do to help with the Amazon fires. We
Speaker 9: were introduced by a journalist that we had both worked with,
Speaker 9: and he told me, oh, there is this guy from
Speaker 9: Oregon who's shooting all the same things with as you.
Speaker 9: You're shooting all the same content. You should give him
Speaker 9: a call. And I was living on the East Coast
Speaker 9: at a time, and I've always wanted to go to Oregon,
Speaker 9: and I called him months later and we figured out
Speaker 9: we had complimentary footage, and he said, come out to
Speaker 9: Oregon and let's see about working together. And so I
Speaker 9: moved to Oregon right before the COVID lockdown.
Speaker 6: Our relationship and friendship was born out of COVID, and
Speaker 6: I mean just a shared passion for making films that
Speaker 6: inspire and hope being to bring these messages and these
Speaker 6: important voices into the folds. We even interviewed the same
Speaker 6: scientist on the same afternoon back to back. Our two teams,
Speaker 6: like ships in the night, passed and we never met
Speaker 6: each other at that moment, but I mean months later
Speaker 6: in the editing room, we realized that we had done that,
Speaker 6: and yeah, I just kind of felt faded that we
Speaker 6: were meant to meet each other and make this film.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and speaking of our you know, voices that need
Speaker 9: to be heard, it's like we also co directed this
Speaker 9: with an indigenous director too, So like the story of
Speaker 9: all of us coming together to make this film. The
Speaker 9: director and team can't you know, be without him. We
Speaker 9: found it. We met him on a beach one day
Speaker 9: in Pada State, by the mouth of the Amazon River.
Speaker 9: He was shooting something with Media Indigena, his journalistic group,
Speaker 9: and that was another fated moment, right rob we found
Speaker 9: a Jubon.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was really cool because you just like meet
Speaker 6: certain people in your life and it feels like you've
Speaker 6: known each other for a lot long time, and that
Speaker 6: was the case with both Chelsea and Edgibon, and he
Speaker 6: was just excited to help us with our project. He
Speaker 6: was working with Sonya Guajeshara. He's actually cousins to Sonya
Speaker 6: Gua Jeshara, who's the Indigenous the Minister of Indigenous Peoples
Speaker 6: in Brazil and one of the most important indigenous leaders
Speaker 6: in the world. And he was just super excited to
Speaker 6: hop into our project and support us. He was at
Speaker 6: first a camera person and doing what he could to
Speaker 6: help us in the field as a producer, and that
Speaker 6: was very clear that from early on we needed his
Speaker 6: guidance and leadership, especially as we were navigating relationships and
Speaker 6: filming with indigenous communities. And yeah, just the three of
Speaker 6: our talents and the ways that we look at the
Speaker 6: world combined, I think it's a real testament of what
Speaker 6: this film is, and the film in general is a
Speaker 6: testament of the kind of global team that we brought
Speaker 6: around it. We had autianist Georgiev who is an editor
Speaker 6: from Macedonia who helped us initially really kind of like
Speaker 6: get the film structure together and bring in a whole
Speaker 6: other sensibility than we have as people from the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it was a world effort to make Weird Guardians. For sure.
Speaker 8: You both independently decide we need to go down to
Speaker 8: the Amazon and start shooting stuff, like when is this
Speaker 8: Because you talked about the pandemic and this was before that,
Speaker 8: but what is the time frame here that you were
Speaker 8: actually shooting.
Speaker 6: It was August of twenty nineteen, and the fires, if
Speaker 6: you remember, made international headlines in the Brazilian Amazon, and
Speaker 6: it was all over you know, CNN, Fox News, everybody
Speaker 6: was covering it, you know, for a news cycle basically
Speaker 6: probably a week or two. I was there in Oregon
Speaker 6: with my creative partner Antonio, and it was just like, man, like,
Speaker 6: we've got to do something. It's just like, what are
Speaker 6: we doing if we're burning the Amazon rainforest? We have
Speaker 6: wildfires that happen in Oregon every year. They're unprecedented wildfires
Speaker 6: happening all over the world. It just did not make
Speaker 6: sense to me that we could be burning the Amazon
Speaker 6: at a time like this on purpose, and so yeah,
Speaker 6: just a deep calling to support with our talents and
Speaker 6: our efforts, and we jumped in. I mean, it was
Speaker 6: maybe a naive decision, not realizing how big of a
Speaker 6: project and how big of a topic we were diving into.
Speaker 6: But it has been just an incredible journey where we've
Speaker 6: come from and what we've been able to do, and
Speaker 6: to be at the end, like really really excited to
Speaker 6: share we are Guardians. You know. It's a project I'm
Speaker 6: proud of and it's something I think that it's a
Speaker 6: really important message for the world to year. Right.
Speaker 9: I had been studying deforestation before that for a previous
Speaker 9: film about palm oil and deforestation in Borneo and Indonesia,
Speaker 9: and until twenty seventeen, Brazil was actually a leader in
Speaker 9: the world and reducing deforestation. And after knowing that and
Speaker 9: seeing that the president was on the news telling everybody
Speaker 9: to burn it down now and just getting rid of
Speaker 9: all the legislation and changes that have been made to
Speaker 9: make progress, it just stabbed.
Speaker 7: Me in the heart.
Speaker 9: I said, oh my god, what else should I be
Speaker 9: doing with my life but addressing this.
Speaker 8: And it's so admirable that that y'all came together. It
Speaker 8: could have been the armageddon and deep impact of Amazon
Speaker 8: documentaries and said that you joined forces is pretty great.
Speaker 6: It was pretty cool at that moment because I think
Speaker 6: the project just got some juice. You know, we got
Speaker 6: some unprecedented momentum at that moment where we decided to
Speaker 6: come together and quickly we had our producing team that
Speaker 6: was kind of locked into the project. Zach Kilberg and
Speaker 6: is Web came on a social construct and they really
Speaker 6: helped us formulate the team, made connections with Bruce Cohen,
Speaker 6: who is an amazing producer on the film, and Fisher Stevens,
Speaker 6: and at that point we had kind of rocket fuel
Speaker 6: and it was it was just off to the races
Speaker 6: and we were down back in the Amazon in October
Speaker 6: of twenty twenty for five months and that was that
Speaker 6: ended up being like one of our longest production trips
Speaker 6: of the whole.
Speaker 9: Project, right, and we found Edgibon, our indigenous co director
Speaker 9: at that time, which then changed the project again. It
Speaker 9: turned us into a strong tripod where instead of two Americans,
Speaker 9: we were a Brazilian indigenous you know, lead team. That
Speaker 9: was a huge one and you know that also was
Speaker 9: mid process for me and Rob learning Portuguese because Chiun
Speaker 9: does not speak English, and so we also got to
Speaker 9: learn some of his indigenous language of Tupi. What a
Speaker 9: beautiful process. It all was right that we could meet
Speaker 9: each other in that way.
Speaker 6: Chelsea's basically I would say fluent in Portuguese at this moment,
Speaker 6: and like I'm I can I can struggle through, you know,
Speaker 6: a conversation, and it's It's taken a lot to make
Speaker 6: this film happen, you know, like we were down there
Speaker 6: over fifteen sixteen months between twenty nineteen team and twenty
Speaker 6: twenty three, twenty twenty four, and back and forth, and
Speaker 6: every time we were back in the States or back
Speaker 6: in Europe were we were editing, and it just yeah,
Speaker 6: it was an incredible effort to get it done as
Speaker 6: quickly as we did, feeling just the urgency of the
Speaker 6: topic and that it needed to get out as quickly
Speaker 6: as we could.
Speaker 9: Rob is being bashful, they call him Hobby Gada.
Speaker 6: I really enjoyed learning Toupee and get you know, my
Speaker 6: time with the Guajesara and the indigenous peoples was just
Speaker 6: an experience of a lifetime. You know, it's just really
Speaker 6: unique when you get to drop in with people that
Speaker 6: are are living in a different paradigm and different reality
Speaker 6: and truly live from the forest in a lot of ways,
Speaker 6: in a lot of their traditional ways. And yeah, I
Speaker 6: just have a certain resonance with different languages, and Tupe
Speaker 6: was one that I picked up quickly, much more quickly
Speaker 6: than Portuguese. Portuguese as tough, it is a difficult language,
Speaker 6: at least.
Speaker 9: For I was just captured by the soul of Brazil,
Speaker 9: like I had to learn Portuguese. You know, for those
Speaker 9: of you who haven't been to Brazil, there's just a
Speaker 9: special vibe and the people are so warm you just
Speaker 9: really want to.
Speaker 7: Be a part of it.
Speaker 6: It's fun. Yeah, they're amazing culture.
Speaker 9: And I'll never forget Rob playing guitar, playing Bob Marley
Speaker 9: covers to the indigenous communities and them just they love reggae.
Speaker 9: They were dancing and just going wild. It was so fun.
Speaker 9: So you speak the language of music as.
Speaker 6: Well, Yeah, Yeah, having guitar on production is pretty useful.
Speaker 6: And meeting people, you know, it's a pretty disarming thing.
Speaker 9: So I think you bought a guitar three times when
Speaker 9: we went down there and gave it away each time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, we got a guitar on each production trip,
Speaker 6: and yeah, you gotta have fun along the way, you know,
Speaker 6: and we did. We had so much fun making this film.
Speaker 6: As much of the challenge and the struggle that we
Speaker 6: had throughout it was. It was really incredibly amazing and
Speaker 6: testament to the people that were you know, came around
Speaker 6: and were a part of it. It was so fun.
Speaker 6: They're like family to us.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 9: It's so heavy. We're heading on missions deep in the
Speaker 9: forests that take all day, multiple days, with loggers that
Speaker 9: are life threatening, don't want to be found, armed and dangerous,
Speaker 9: and we got to make light of the situation and
Speaker 9: enjoy ourselves at the same time maintain relationships.
Speaker 8: I was going to ask about some of the challenges,
Speaker 8: but that sounds pretty challenging. I mean, the language is
Speaker 8: one thing, but having these armed, dangerous loggers is something
Speaker 8: else entirely, I'm.
Speaker 9: Sure, right, Well, part of the backbone of the narrative
Speaker 9: of the film is the indigenous people risking their lives
Speaker 9: to go and monitor and patrol the territory and try
Speaker 9: and find the loggers that don't want to be found
Speaker 9: and know they're committing a federal crime and capture them
Speaker 9: on camera. So that was difficult.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's fun. You mentioned Fisher Stevens and like, until
Speaker 8: Blackfish came out, I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 8: realize just how much he is invested in documentaries and
Speaker 8: making great documentaries.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's fantastic. I mean The Cove was, I think
Speaker 6: for Chelsea and I just a pivotal documentary and he
Speaker 6: was a large part of a as a producer on that,
Speaker 6: and he was just an incredible friend and mentor for us.
Speaker 6: You know, you have producers on some projects that you know,
Speaker 6: lend their name or lend their connections and they kind of,
Speaker 6: you know, helicopter through the project and help in different ways.
Speaker 6: But he was there in the trenches with us throughout
Speaker 6: the process and teaching us about, you know, just experiences
Speaker 6: that he's had in the past and just thoughts that
Speaker 6: he had in the direction of the film. I mean,
Speaker 6: he really pushed us to be as raw and as
Speaker 6: intimate with the participants as possible, with our protagonists and
Speaker 6: kind of go in that direction of a verite, true
Speaker 6: verite style documentary. And incredibly grateful for his insights in
Speaker 6: that way. Yeah, just a great guy. You know, Fisher
Speaker 6: is awesome and just really believed in us and believed
Speaker 6: in what we were doing. And I think that that alone,
Speaker 6: like just help propel us. Right.
Speaker 9: Having his insights was so helpful. I'll never forget showing
Speaker 9: him the footage of Valgier or the illegal Logger for
Speaker 9: the first time and him saying, Wow, that's a main character,
Speaker 9: you know, because we were interviewing so many people to
Speaker 9: find the right person to carry the story and to
Speaker 9: find the pieces to the puzzle, because it's a complicated
Speaker 9: mosaic of a character driven story, right, And so yeah,
Speaker 9: when Fisher said, that's the most compelling person I've ever
Speaker 9: seen you guys film, we were like, Okay, we're onto something.
Speaker 6: I also remember, I think in the next sentence he
Speaker 6: was like, and you guys are going to need to
Speaker 6: go back and fill more with him. Wow, okay, because
Speaker 6: getting to Valgier from the United States is literally a
Speaker 6: three or four day journey from you know airplane, you know,
Speaker 6: flying to sal Paula or Rio, flying up to Portobellio
Speaker 6: in the Amazon, taking a twelve hour car ride to
Speaker 6: the city that's nearest to the indigenous reserve where it
Speaker 6: was happening, and then driving out another like half day
Speaker 6: to a full day into the jungle where we met him.
Speaker 6: Incredible lengths to get out there, and of course you're
Speaker 6: going into a space that people are very, if not
Speaker 6: like it's much more than suspicious of journalists there, they
Speaker 6: outright hostile towards journalists. And you know, we we tried
Speaker 6: our best to just first off hire really great translators
Speaker 6: who could be you know, just a really wonderful energy
Speaker 6: and kind of forward face of our of our small
Speaker 6: production team, but also then carrying an energy that was
Speaker 6: like an a genuine way of like, we really want
Speaker 6: to understand your story, We really want to understand what's
Speaker 6: happening for you. We're not coming in with an agenda
Speaker 6: or trying to deceive you into being a part of
Speaker 6: this film, and we're going to just make you into
Speaker 6: the bad guy here. I think we're really lucky to
Speaker 6: find Valgier because he felt that, I think initially and
Speaker 6: and and very quickly was like cool, yeah, you guys
Speaker 6: can hang around, and and he was it was almost
Speaker 6: like as if he was waiting for somebody to ask
Speaker 6: him what was happening in his life and to be
Speaker 6: asked that question. He was he's a bit of a showman,
Speaker 6: like he definitely like in the camp as well, amongst
Speaker 6: all the other loggers, like he is the guy that's
Speaker 6: holding court every night by the fire. He's the guy
Speaker 6: that's just yeah, he's he's he's very full life in
Speaker 6: his in his way. And so I think also he
Speaker 6: really took to just like, oh, great, there's a bunch
Speaker 6: of cameras following me around right now, and since this
Speaker 6: is what I've been waiting.
Speaker 9: For, and it's funny because he's the same off camera
Speaker 9: as on. Yeah, I mean, I think the craziest part
Speaker 9: of that whole thing was six months past from when
Speaker 9: we first met him, been filmed as much as we
Speaker 9: could with him over about a week's time, and then
Speaker 9: we came back to Brazil, and I mean Rob is
Speaker 9: not even saying like the difficulty of coordinating all these
Speaker 9: amazing you know, we had like a sound guy and
Speaker 9: a translator and you know, an indigenous liaison who worked
Speaker 9: with the loggers in the past but now wanted to
Speaker 9: help us coordinating everybody's schedules to get to this remote
Speaker 9: corner of the Amazon. But then finding Valgeer again, he
Speaker 9: doesn't use a phone. It's like, where do we find him?
Speaker 9: The people that used to work with him were no
Speaker 9: longer working with him anymore, and so it was like
Speaker 9: finding a needle in a haysack in an area, you know,
Speaker 9: bigger the size of Massachusetts, with a tangled web of
Speaker 9: logging roads and no service. And the craziest thing happened.
Speaker 9: We were coming back to the territory and as we
Speaker 9: rolled out into this like main logging road where other
Speaker 9: roads branched off, we were saying, oh man, how are
Speaker 9: we going to find this guy? And somebody was sitting
Speaker 9: by this out of the road in the exact moment
Speaker 9: that we were going to give up, and said, Valgier
Speaker 9: has been waiting for you. He sent me to meet
Speaker 9: up with you. He had an intuition that we were
Speaker 9: coming back. We don't know how he either.
Speaker 6: Was a tuition or somebody let him know that we
Speaker 6: were there, but he knew that we were there, and
Speaker 6: he was like a mile away from from where we
Speaker 6: were at at that time. And the guy brought us.
Speaker 9: Wed well the Americans that were over there.
Speaker 6: Another like insane synchronicity was just yeah, remarkable.
Speaker 9: He got very close to the forest, I mean he's
Speaker 9: been working in the forest for his whole life, and
Speaker 9: he got very tuned in with the spirit of the
Speaker 9: forest in many ways. He actually from the first time
Speaker 9: we met him, just six months later, he lost his path.
Speaker 9: You know, he's out looking for Teresa cut and he
Speaker 9: marks a path with a machete, and he lost his
Speaker 9: path and was lost out there in the woods for
Speaker 9: a week. He had got dysentery, almost died. He said,
Speaker 9: the jaguar was just waiting for him to get a
Speaker 9: little weaker so she could eat him. And he made
Speaker 9: it out of that situation, and then we filmed the
Speaker 9: most of the film with him. You know. A couple
Speaker 9: months after that.
Speaker 8: You talked about how you met up before COVID, and
Speaker 8: I was curious, how did COVID affect the production.
Speaker 6: It, I mean affected it in a lot of ways.
Speaker 6: We had to be of course, like traveling during COVID
Speaker 6: was a big mystery, and like what would be allowed
Speaker 6: and what would you know, Like what were we able
Speaker 6: to do? And then of course interacting with pretty sensitive communities.
Speaker 6: I mean a lot of the indigenous communities and reserves
Speaker 6: completely shut down for a number of years, so there
Speaker 6: was just no contact that was happening there, But I
Speaker 6: don't know. I think for better or for worse, Brazil
Speaker 6: took a fairly relaxed approach to COVID in a lot
Speaker 6: of ways, and so we were able to move without
Speaker 6: too much restriction in that way. I mean, we were
Speaker 6: getting tested like every week every time we were interacting
Speaker 6: with somebody new, you know, following all that COVID protocol.
Speaker 6: But I think Chelsea and I both felt like we
Speaker 6: couldn't let that stop us from finishing the film in
Speaker 6: a timely way. And it was an interesting window at
Speaker 6: that time because a lot of production in the film
Speaker 6: industry shut down in twenty twenty, so a lot of
Speaker 6: people were looking for different projects that were happening, and
Speaker 6: we had a project that was already rolling, that was
Speaker 6: ready to go, and we were ready to continue to shoot.
Speaker 6: So it was a strange window that allowed a lot
Speaker 6: to happen for us as well.
Speaker 9: Even backing up, yeah to right when we first got
Speaker 9: together in Oregon, rob having everyone be at home, not
Speaker 9: without any with other things to do, we were able
Speaker 9: to get on the phone with so many high powered
Speaker 9: people to really bring the team together. Imagine getting a
Speaker 9: hold of our funders at that time without there being
Speaker 9: so much space and time in their life, so have
Speaker 9: these and depth conversations and really help them feel the
Speaker 9: spirit of the project when they get so many other
Speaker 9: funding lass. You know, some of the things came together,
Speaker 9: and of course we had to follow Netflix protocol for
Speaker 9: shooting and imagine the suffocating humidity and heat of the
Speaker 9: Amazon but wearing a mask the whole time.
Speaker 8: Tell me about the post process. Were you editing throughout this?
Speaker 8: I mean you talked about how many times you had
Speaker 8: to go back down to shoot. Are you editing in between?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so we edited in between the second and third
Speaker 9: and for It shoots, and that was because we found
Speaker 9: an Oscar winning editor, Atinis Georgiev, who has you know,
Speaker 9: limited time, and he came on after our big six
Speaker 9: month shoot when we were pretty certain that we'd found
Speaker 9: all our main characters, and he's actually now a professor
Speaker 9: in dramaturgy, and so we said, let's construct what we
Speaker 9: have and we ended up going back two more times,
Speaker 9: which was needed, you know, in actually having Edgibon in
Speaker 9: the territory too, to be able to film some of
Speaker 9: the things that were ongoing was you know, happening throughout
Speaker 9: so that was critical for constructing the story as it
Speaker 9: unfolded over to time.
Speaker 6: And then in the end, Chelsea and I took over
Speaker 6: the editing, the main editing role we had. We learned
Speaker 6: so much from Atanus and learned Avid through the process
Speaker 6: of editing with him, and Uh, it was just a
Speaker 6: vision that we needed to see through. And we were
Speaker 6: so blessed to find a last Spiegel who is our
Speaker 6: editing consultant at the very end of the process, who
Speaker 6: really helped to transform the project into what you see today.
Speaker 6: She did a number of amazing documentaries This is Congo,
Speaker 6: uh and and a Crude some some great documentaries and
Speaker 6: just again was was like it was a whole education
Speaker 6: working with with her, working with Atanis and and then
Speaker 6: we were there at the computer. I mean, it was
Speaker 6: a slog at the end. It was a real, real slog,
Speaker 6: just trying to muscle out what we had and battling
Speaker 6: with out about would we ever finish the film, would
Speaker 6: it be what we were hoping it would be. And
Speaker 6: yet we got it together and we you know, got
Speaker 6: into Hot Dogs in the spring of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 6: and that was just a deadline now that we needed
Speaker 6: to finish the film, which was huge. It was it
Speaker 6: changed changed everything there. So within a couple of weeks
Speaker 6: we had a whole new score, which was amazing. Jacob
Speaker 6: Yaffi and his team that just did fantastic work with
Speaker 6: the music. They did that in twenty twenty days. It
Speaker 6: was like thirty pieces of music. It was a marathon,
Speaker 6: but we felt like we were sprinting the whole time.
Speaker 9: I've never been more burned out in my life.
Speaker 8: So what is it like when you actually get to
Speaker 8: watch this with an audience for the first time.
Speaker 9: My heart was going to explode out of my chest.
Speaker 9: I was sitting in the audience at Hot Dogs and
Speaker 9: the huge theater Theater, and my whole family and all
Speaker 9: my friends had flown to Toronto, and of course we
Speaker 9: have Fisher there and phuy on and you know, it
Speaker 9: was just I couldn't relax the entire time. I was
Speaker 9: so yeah, excited, anxious. Everyone loved it though. It was
Speaker 9: also one of my first times speaking on stage. And
Speaker 9: now it's funny looking back at that because doing a
Speaker 9: Q and A or speaking to the audience is so
Speaker 9: second nature now don't even think about it, Whereas then
Speaker 9: I was very nervous.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we hadn't shown it to anybody, so we really
Speaker 6: didn't know how people would react. And at that time,
Speaker 6: I just remember like people were clapping and it felt
Speaker 6: like well received at the end of you know, when
Speaker 6: the credits rolled for that first screening, but I still
Speaker 6: was just like unsure what people would say. Was it
Speaker 6: clear enough? You know, all these different questions that you're
Speaker 6: battling in post production, and in general, it seems like
Speaker 6: people really have loved the film. It's a mental lots,
Speaker 6: it's been very clear and uh so, yeah, but that
Speaker 6: first screening was really just nerve racking.
Speaker 9: Yeah, people were moved to tears. I remember looking around
Speaker 9: and seeing the way people were affected by it and
Speaker 9: feeling it. It's different when you watch a film in theaters, right,
Speaker 9: you can feel people's energy as we were watching, and
Speaker 9: I was seeing the way that the scenes were poetically
Speaker 9: stitched together and all of our hard work. It really
Speaker 9: was a joyful moment to see that people were feeling
Speaker 9: and to feel that people were understanding and feeling and
Speaker 9: getting emotionally invested.
Speaker 8: You mentioned doing a lot of Q and as I'm curious,
Speaker 8: how many times have you had this at different festivals
Speaker 8: or venues where you were doing Q and as afterwards.
Speaker 8: I don't need an exec number, but like an estimate.
Speaker 9: Well, that's a great question, because that was a huge
Speaker 9: part of our impact campaign, right, and less about me
Speaker 9: and Rob being there, but having the indigenous leaders themselves
Speaker 9: and our co director and we attended must have been
Speaker 9: at least ten to twenty festival premieres with somebody to
Speaker 9: do a Q and A from the team.
Speaker 7: And then we did.
Speaker 9: I think a thousand in person screenings worldwide, you know,
Speaker 9: not necessarily with a Q and A, but sometimes having
Speaker 9: you know, experts in the field speaking. And then last
Speaker 9: summer we did a theatrical release in North America with
Speaker 9: sixty four cities that we attended thirteen screenings and so
Speaker 9: that was and a lot of screenings too, had again
Speaker 9: experts in local Native American indigenous leadership to bless in
Speaker 9: new a prayer or a song, and so there was
Speaker 9: a lot of in person event building which we felt
Speaker 9: was really important for impact.
Speaker 6: Also getting the screen on Capitol Hill, getting the screen
Speaker 6: the parliament members in the UK Spain, and getting to
Speaker 6: go places with Edgibon and Guri Tembe. You know, like
Speaker 6: Chelsea said, this part of around Impact was really like
Speaker 6: this is more than just like an afterthought. It was
Speaker 6: like a seed of what the film was. It was like,
Speaker 6: we need to do something to help change the situation,
Speaker 6: and how can we best do that utilize the film
Speaker 6: as a tool to bring about change. So it was
Speaker 6: it's been amazing to get to, like especially travel with
Speaker 6: Edgiwan and Pui and allow them the you know, space
Speaker 6: to speak and in these really important spaces.
Speaker 9: I wish we could have brought Marsol two more screenings.
Speaker 9: You know, he's like the teddy bear warrior heart of
Speaker 9: the film type character and the audience loves him. Remember
Speaker 9: we brought him to Blaine. It was like one of
Speaker 9: his first times leaving the territory and seeing his wonderment
Speaker 9: at the big city. We brought him to the Amazon Summit,
Speaker 9: and we brought him to the Rio, Brazil premiere as well.
Speaker 9: He got to see he got to hang out on
Speaker 9: the beach in Rio, see the city.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was hard for him though, I remember it
Speaker 6: being especially Rio was really hard, just being it.
Speaker 9: Was overwhelmed, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Overwhelmed and being out of the territory and yeah, it
Speaker 6: was just like it was. It was tough, tough for
Speaker 6: him to leave what he's now in that way.
Speaker 8: I know you're still supporting the film, but are you
Speaker 8: working on other things now?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so we are. We just premiered the film on
Speaker 9: global streaming platforms and are ongoing in some ways, mostly
Speaker 9: just supporting how we can with the territories and you
Speaker 9: know Pui and Ajibon that are doing reforestation projects and
Speaker 9: the territories and continuing to protect their land and attend
Speaker 9: events and leverage the film. So supporting that from Afar,
Speaker 9: But I'm working more with Random Good Films now to
Speaker 9: help impact, produce and finish three films that they're working
Speaker 9: on about indigenous communities actually in different ways. One is
Speaker 9: about the is about Hindu who is a global figure
Speaker 9: and speaking for indigenous people and getting direct access funding
Speaker 9: for territorial and environmental protection. Another is about the BaAka
Speaker 9: indigenous musicians and the Congo, and another is about the
Speaker 9: Quai bushmen and Botswana getting their land back, which means
Speaker 9: some of if it's the success of it, if the
Speaker 9: campaign is successful, they'll get one of the largest pieces
Speaker 9: of land back in Southern Africa and are under indigenous hands.
Speaker 9: Utilizing the niche that we've developed, bringing this film into
Speaker 9: an impact campaign space for other films is currently what
Speaker 9: I'm working on. I have dreams of making another feature
Speaker 9: film and directing it, but I just have I want
Speaker 9: to wait until the perfect story comes across, you know.
Speaker 9: And Rob and I are also directing a short series
Speaker 9: that we're going to put on YouTube, utilizing some of
Speaker 9: the content from We Our Guardians, so we hadn't been
Speaker 9: able to put in the film.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I'm also working on a film about flow state
Speaker 6: with a good friend of mine, director Lose Fox, and
Speaker 6: it's kind of a modern interpretation of doubt the dabi Jing,
Speaker 6: I would say, through the eyes of a number of
Speaker 6: amazing protagonists. Taichi Master, a graffiti artist, indigenous Hawaiian boat
Speaker 6: builder and navigator from the Big Island weaves almost it's
Speaker 6: like a film, I would say, like a philosophical continuation
Speaker 6: of a lot of the themes that we brought up.
Speaker 6: And we are guardians, you know, the concept of like
Speaker 6: how do we reforest our mind? Uh, it's it's a
Speaker 6: bit of an answer to those types of questions of
Speaker 6: how do we how do we get closer to nature?
Speaker 6: How do we recognize our place within it and flow
Speaker 6: with it? Both as individuals and as a collective, and.
Speaker 9: How do we shift our very colonistic, patriarchal, structured system
Speaker 9: to a more regenerative and matriarchal one. You know, That's
Speaker 9: one thing. One of the films I'm producing is looking
Speaker 9: at It's about It's also in the Amazon, with an
Speaker 9: indigenous woman protagonist whose name is Ma Pulu, and she's
Speaker 9: the first shaman of her culture, which she had to
Speaker 9: fight a patriarchal system that said women cannot be healers,
Speaker 9: they cannot have the role of a shaman. And so
Speaker 9: that's a really interesting story that's in production right now
Speaker 9: that I've been working on.
Speaker 8: Where's the best place for people to keep up with
Speaker 8: you guys in the movie?
Speaker 9: So you can follow We Are Guardians film on Instagram
Speaker 9: and Facebook and subscribe to our email list on the
Speaker 9: website and Random Good Films is a place a good
Speaker 9: place to find out and keep up to date with
Speaker 9: these films that I've just mentioned. Random Good is a
Speaker 9: production company that also produce We Are Guardians. So moving forward,
Speaker 9: if you're interested in this type of content, it's there's
Speaker 9: going to be amazing things more coming out soon. So
Speaker 9: you can subscribe on Random Goodfilms dot Com as well
Speaker 9: and on the YouTube channel. We just launched a YouTube channel,
Speaker 9: so find random good Films on YouTube and that's where
Speaker 9: Rob and I are going to launch our short series
Speaker 9: about the Amazon.
Speaker 8: Rob and Chelsea thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 8: This was great talking with you.
Speaker 9: It was so great to talk with you too. Thank
Speaker 9: you so much.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you, Mike, it was great.
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