Guamology picks the brain of Vanessa Warheit, the mind behind this powerful film. She talks with us about her passion for making ‘The Insular Empire’, screening the movie on Guam and what she’s learned about Guam over the 8 years of making this film.

From Horse Opera’s Website: “Part political tragedy, part personal history, The Insular Empire is about believing in the American dream, even while being denied the rights and privileges that most Americans take for granted. From the beaches of Guam to the White House, from the CIA to the Peace Corps, from beauty pageants to the UN — The Insular Empire goes on a journey to discover what it really means to belong to America’s ‘insular empire’ in the Pacific. Ultimately, it is a story of loyalty and betrayal, about a patriotic indigenous people struggling to find their place within the American political family.”

Guamology: List your name, age and profession.

Vanessa: Vanessa Warheit, 40, Documentary Filmmaker.

Guamology: Before establishing yourself as a filmmaker with works aired on PBS, NBC, HBO and being associated with accolades from Sundance, take us to the point in your life when you wanted to start a career as a filmmaker. How old were you and what led you towards the path of filmmaking?

Vanessa: According to my mother’s cousin David, who let me play with his professional camera kit, I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker back when I was 12 years old. I don’t actually remember saying that but all through high school I did sort of compulsively take photos of my friends, documenting all of our exploits. So I guess my passion goes a long way back. But I didn’t consciously know I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker until I was in my late 20s.

I was working as a graphic designer and corporate copywriter and not enjoying it very much. I took a skills assessment course and decided to apply to film school. Stanford was the only school I go into but once in the program, I realized that documentary was something I truly enjoyed, and was really good at.

Guamology: Judging by the powerful body of work that you’ve been a part of (the acclaimed Great Wall Across the Yangtze, Paragraph 175, Constructing Experience: The Many Lives of Treasure Island and others) I notice that you’ve made an interesting decision to base your career on non-fiction pieces. Tell us why you’ve decided to go this route versus writing, producing or directing fiction?

Vanessa: The Stanford program focused exclusively on documentary production, so that’s where my training was. I’m also drawn to documentary because I believe strongly in leaving the world a better place than you found it God knows the world is full of problems that need solving and documentaries are a powerful way to help create positive change. Some day I’d like to work on a fiction piece, though. By contrast, in many ways, it’s much easier!

Guamology: Your education in media is extensive - a BA with honors and then a Master’s from Stanford. How valuable has your film school education been throughout your film career outside of the classroom?

Vanessa: My undergraduate education was actually in language and literature and fine art not in film. But it taught me a lot about how to think about the world around me, how to see things from all angles, how to ask questions and how to make decisions for myself. My last two years of undergraduate study were at a women’s college, which also made a huge difference in my being conscious of the challenges presented to women, and having the confidence to try to overcome them.

As for my film training - the Stanford program is very hands-on and rigorous, and it taught me the soup-to-nuts skills that have been invaluable to this project in particular. It’s often impossible to raise enough money to hire people to fulfill all the roles needed shooter, editor, director, writer, etc…. but I’m trained in all of them, and I have a bad habit of working for free! It’s sometimes more of a curse than a blessing, really… but without that training, I’d never have been able to make The Insular Empire. The education has also made it possible for me to teach others, which I really enjoy doing.

Guamology: Filmmaking or anything art-related is hardly ever traditional in terms of making a living and it could get real tough at times just to put food on the table. Being a mother and a filmmaker, how do you balance it all? What is your motivation behind what you do?

Vanessa: Balance is a huge, ongoing struggle in my life. I find I am much happier if I can work as a filmmaker all day and not have to take care of my son at all… and then spend a whole day with my son and not be working on the film at all… the two jobs take radically different skills, and I find when I try to do them both I tend to do both poorly. And it’s incredibly stressful to jump back and forth between them. I’m looking forward to taking a month off this summer, once the film is done, and just spending some time with my family!

As for my motivation… that’s a good question. I got started on this film because I wanted to put my skills to work on something meaningful, and because I was curious about the Marianas, about the Chamoru and Carolinian people, about the history of the islands and their relationship with America. Part of my motivation for sticking it through for this long is that the project has constantly and continually challenged me and taught me new things.

I have grown tremendously as a filmmaker over the last eight years, because of my work on this film it has continued to fuel my curiosity and thirst for knowledge. I also just can’t leave something half-done, which is probably what has kept me at it during the hardest times. And then there’s my husband, who won’t let me quit. I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude without his emotional and financial support this film would never have even gotten off the ground, and definitely never have come this far.

Guamology: I first came across the blog and trailer for your movie, “The Insular Empire”, a few months ago and was extremely impressed with the subject matter and the approach of telling such a potent story . But what surprised me most of all was that is being made by a US mainlander who initially, has had no previous ties to Guam and the Marianas. Most average Americans don’t even know of Guam, let alone know of the Marianas.

Obviously, you could be making a movie about anything you wanted, but you chose the delicate story about us islanders in the Marianas. Why was it so important for you, being from the mainland, to invest yourself and your time on a task about the struggles of people that are thousands of miles away from you?

Vanessa: I originally planned on making a series of short films about America’s insular areas all of them, if you can believe it! but it was only one of several ideas I was developing, when I got laid off from my full-time job. Shortly afterwards, I happened to mention the idea to my friend Amy Robinson (who was working on a PhD in imperial history at Stanford at the time), and she got really excited and offered to help.

And then, with her help, I wrote a grant that got us enough seed money to make a trip to Guam, and to start filming. Without her involvement, and without that grant, I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved with the project in a serious way. But once I’d spent time in the islands once I’d spent that first five weeks, meeting people, hearing their stories, realizing what a big, important, and untold story it was, I couldn’t let it go.

Guamology: I understand you’re in the post-production phase of the film and have been taking “The Insular Empire” rough-cut out on the road for screenings this year from Canada, to the CSU Campuses of Hayward and Long Beach as well as the UCLA campus. How has the film been received by the Chamorros/Pacific Islanders in attendance? Non-islanders?

Vanessa: I’ve screened rough cuts of the film now in Vancouer (BC), Seattle, Northern and Southern California, Washington, DC, and Portland, Oregon and the response has been universally positive. Pacific Islanders seem thrilled to have their people, and their stories, ‘up on the big screen’… a lot of people from the Marianas come up to me afterwards and tell me their own stories that echo the stories from the film: stories of losing their language, of not knowing their identity, of learning US history but not their own, of not feeling that they truly ‘belong’ anywhere. Many people just thank me.

There are some (usually non-islanders) however, who don’t ‘get’ the complexity of the colonial relationship the film is trying to explore… who wish the film were more black-and-white, who don’t understand why there isn’t an easy good-guy/bad-guy dichotomy set up in the film. And some Canadians just tend to be confused about why the US doesn’t just go ahead and let the people of Guam vote and get on with it… But the most interesting responses, to me, are from people from other colonized places, who tell me about the similarities between their stories and the film’s.

One man a distinguished middle-aged politician from Okinawa was moved to tears, and said the stories were the same back in Okinawa. Several people from Okinawa have asked me if I can bring the film there, to show in Japan, and I’m hoping to be able to do that later this winter.

Guamology: Congratulations on seeing the light at the end of the tunnel regarding your fundraising! If I’m not mistaken, you have only a little over $10,000 left to raise in order to finish post-production from your total listed budget for “The Insular Empire” at $350,000. With the availability of all the desktop publishing tools and your ability alone to produce, write, direct, edit and operate the camera, have you considered a more scaled-down approach to production and the amount of crew involved in order to reduce the 8 years it took to make the of film and its budget?

Vanessa: First, a clarification: the actual cash budget for the film is only about $200,000 which, for a film of this scope and magnitude, is actually quite low. Almost half of the total budget came from in-kind donations from myself, but also from Amy, from our many interns and assistants and sound recordists along the way, from hotels and car dealerships and restaurants in the islands that gave us great deals, and from a lot of people just feeding us and letting us sleep on their couches. This film has been supported from the grassroots and has truly been done on a shoestring.

The editing has all been done on my computer, most of the time in a corner of my living room. The sorry truth of the matter, though, is that films just cost a lot of money to do right. And when the financing doesn’t come early, they end up taking longer, and costing more. So the money we’re trying to raise ($9000 now we’ve managed to raise $1000 over the past two months) is the last bit we need to pay people who do stuff I *can’t* do, like audio mix and design, music composition, professional narration, and color correction. I also need to pay for archival rights and legal fees that are required to get the film distributed to the public. I’m already doing the job of five people but it takes more than just one person who can ‘do it all’ to make a PBS film.

Guamology: Will “The Insular Empire” hold a screening in Guam? If so, when can we expect to see it?

Vanessa: Yes, I am absolutely planning on bringing the film back to Guam for a screening. I can’t wait! I know that Lisa Natividad wants me to bring it back in time for the conference she is organizing in September, but right now I don’t have the funds to make the trip, so it might have to be later in the winter. As soon as the film is made, I’ll start trying to fundraise to come back with it. What I’m really hoping to do is to come back with my husband (who was my sound man on Saipan, but who’s never yet been to Guam) and our son, and to spend some time enjoying the islands instead of working!

Guamology: Within the 8 years spent making this film, what would you say is the most important thing that you’ve learned regarding Guam’s current situation with the military build-up?

Vanessa: Well, keep in mind that when I started this film, the buildup was not yet happening talk of the buildup started right after we stopped shooting. But I guess I would have to say that  in my opinion the Chamorro people need to first recognize that they no longer owe anything to the United States, that they have given more than enough, and that they need to stand up for what they want, for their children and for their homeland. Personally, I don’t think the US has the right to build any more bases on Guam without first letting the Chamorro people determine their island’s political status.

I think it the US’ obligation to provide the assistance necessary to educate the Chamorro people on what their options are for political status, and that the Chamorro people owe it to themselves to pursue that obligation, and to get ALL the information they can, and to disseminate it to the entire community both on Guam and throughout the diaspora. I would also say that there should be a lot more communication between the Northern Marianas and Guam. To me, the Marianas are still an archipelago, divided (but not entirely conquered) by the colonizing influences of the United States and Japan. Together, the islands could be much stronger than they are apart.

Guamology: What advice would you give to those budding filmmakers contemplating going to film school?

Vanessa: I guess I would suggest going to work as an intern for a filmmaker, getting involved in a film’s production and/or post-production, to see if it’s really the work you want to do. Film has a very high ‘glamour’ factor, that is often unmerited… in my line of work there is a lot of rejection, and not much money or fame or prestige at all so if bright lights and red carpet are what you’re after, don’t go into documentary!

In both documentary and in fiction filmmaking, there is a lot of just really hard work, and very long hours which don’t jibe well with trying to raise a family. But there are many wonderful things about making documentaries like learning about new places and cultures, meeting new people, and the satisfaction of telling stories to people who need to hear them. Just be sure it’s the work you like to do before you spend a lot of money learning how to do it.

Guamology: What’s the best piece of advice you can give to an aspiring filmmaker?

Vanessa: Think about two things: what is the STORY you’re going to tell? and where is the money going to come from? If you’ve got a good story, and the money to tell it, it’s hard to go wrong.

Guamology: Is there anything at all that you’d like to add? Any special thanks or acknowledgements to anyone?

Vanessa: I don’t think there’s room here to list everyone! At one point on our old website we had a list of people we’d talked to and that was just from our first two visits and it was soooo long, there wasn’t room for it when we had to redesign the site. So I’d like to send a blanket thank you to ALL of the people who, over the years, have donated their time and money and wisdom and advice, and all the people we interviewed (most of whom didn’t make it into the final cut, but whose thoughts and ideas percolated into us and helped shape the film nonetheless).

I’d like to thank Hope Cristobal and her family, Lino Olopai and Pete A. Tenorio, and the family of the late Carlos Taitano, for opening up and trusting me with their stories. I’d like to thank Larry and Cheryl Cunningham, for letting us live in their house for two weeks, and Cinta and Gus Kaipat, for helping in a thousand ways… And of course all of the financial sponsors of this project, including the Humanities Councils on both Guam and in the CNMI, Pacific Islanders in Communications, and businesses and foundations and individuals too numerous to mention here… and I’d like to thank my husband, Nik Ingle, without whom this film would just be a few notes in a long-forgotten notebook.

Guamology: And finally, our remix of James Lipton’s/Bernard Pivo Questions (one word or short answers please):

Guamology: What does being Chamorro mean to you?

Vanessa: Holding a precious 4,000 year legacy.

Guamology: Who’s your favorite local (Chamorro) artist?

Vanessa: Ti Napu. And Gus Kaipat (but he’s Chamo-linian!)

Guamology: Do you speak Chamorro?

Vanessa: Unfortunately, only a few words.

Guamology: As a person, what turns you on?

Vanessa: Meeting new and interesting people and learning new things.

Guamology: As a person, what turns you off?

Vanessa: Close-mindedness and negativity.

Guamology: What’s your favorite curse word?

Vanessa: Porca Madonna. (Italian)

Guamology: What sound or noise do you love?

Vanessa: My son’s laughter.

Guamology: What sound or noise do you hate?

Vanessa: Anything loud at 6am.

Guamology: What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Vanessa: Linguistic anthropology.

Guamology: What profession would you not like to attempt?

Vanessa: Experimental physics.

Guamology: If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

Vanessa: “Well done!”

For more information on “The Insular Empire: America in the Marianas” and to make a contribution toward the completion of the film, please visit their website at: www.HORSEOPERA.org<-->