Adventures in Outreach
Living Downstream is a new feature-length documentary about the links between cancer and environment. Now that the film is done, follow filmmaker Chanda Chevannes’ adventures as she works to ensure that it is seen – and has an impact! www.livingdownstream.com / www.theppcinc.com
Written by
Chanda
April 24, 2012
Before I began shooting Living Downstream, I did the usual prep work that most filmmakers do. I read a lot of research and background materials, I met with my crew members and showed them films that I admired, I closed my eyes and tried to visualize my own film in real time. But I did something else too. I spoke with potential end-users of the film. Dozens of them.
I did this for several reasons: I wanted to begin building buzz for the film early, to learn what would make my film most useful for environmental health activists, and to decide what additional resources I should create to make the film more attractive to nonprofit community.
So, I spent many hours during the spring of 2008 talking with heads of nonprofit organizations and grassroots environmental activists. I really liked having all those conversations. They energized and inspired me. They confirmed for me the value of the work I was doing. But they also connected me to the larger community—in several ways.
As someone who worked from home for years, I enjoyed having stimulating conversations with people in the outside world. Likewise, as a new mother, I enjoyed connecting intellectually with other adults. (Maybe you can envision me sitting on my living room couch, cradling the phone on my shoulder, holding a moving pen in one hand, and my nursing my daughter in the other.)
But beyond the act of having these many conversations, the ideas that were discussed four years ago still bind me deeply to the environmental health community today. The most common idea that emerged from these conversations was that various groups could hold a screening of the film, followed by a discussion. (And they have. To date, Living Downstream has been screened publicly about 200 times. I’m going to one tonight, as a matter of fact.)
But there were a few very creative folks with whom I spoke who took me a step farther in the planning. Folks like Jeanne Rizzo of the Breast Cancer Fund and Charlotte Brody then of Commonweal (now of the BlueGreen Alliance). Jeanne and Charlotte are both creative problem solvers and—coincidentally, or not—nurses. They energetically brainstormed ideas for the creative use of film in the work of nonprofit organizations. What about creating a series of screenings so that one event builds upon another? Or screening shorter clips from the film and using them as a springboard for workshops on environmental health? Or creating a training program so many people within one organization are empowered to hold smaller screenings? Or building a grassroots campaign around the film?
When these conversations ended, I felt like celebrating. I had been reminded of the need within the community for this documentary. And I had also become deeply aware of how the documentary would benefit from the input and involvement of the community.
At some point, I put the notes from these conversations on the shelf and went about the more typical work of making the film. But when the documentary was completed in 2010, I dove back into my notes and began exploring the ideas that had first emerged during my early conversations with activists and the leaders of nonprofit organizations.
As a result, I began the intensive work of writing two guides (one for nonprofit organizations and one for educators) to be used in tandem with the film. The first guide, Living Downstream ~ In the Community was directly inspired by the many energizing conversations I had during those early days. It’s grown a lot from its beginnings as informal phone conversations and scribbled notes. It’s now over 200 pages in length and features background information about the film; detailed workshops and screening worksheets; and many, many topical handouts.
That work is now coming to a close. Living Downstream ~ In the Community has just been released on our website for download. My hope for this publication is that it will inspire those who are using the film to keep using it. I hope it will give them new ideas for ways in which to use it. I hope it will reinvigorate their work within their individual communities.
So, once more, I’m celebrating community—and the feeling of being deeply connected to it.
Chanda Chevannes is the producer/director of the feature-length documentary adaptation of Sandra Steingraber’s book, Living Downstream. She is also the author of Living Downstream ~ In the Community, a guide for nonprofit organizations and community groups who are using the film as a catalyst for change.
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Written by
Chanda
April 3, 2012
Today is the second anniversary of the world premiere of my documentary film, Living Downstream. The film took a total of six years to complete. And now, two years after its completion, I’m still working on it! I’ll probably be working on it two years from now.
On a winter’s day back in 2004, I spoke with Sandra Steingraber for the first time. Before picking up the phone, I closed the door to my office and stared out my drafty bay window. My stomach was in knots. I had a detailed script for the conversation in front of me. I had prepared it several days earlier, just in case Sandra suddenly decided to call before the appointed time.
At exactly 10am, I picked up the phone and dialed Sandra’s number. She answered almost before the phone had even rung. This was the first time I ever heard Sandra’s voice. Up until this point, I had only read her words off the page. I hadn’t seen her speak publicly, listened to any of her radio interviews, or watched any of the films or television programs that used her as an on-camera expert.
Writing this now, it sounds crazy. I was calling Sandra Steingraber to ask her to allow me to make a film based on her book, Living Downstream. Like the book, the film would look at the connection between synthetic chemicals and human cancer, blending Sandra’s personal experiences as a cancer survivor with her scientific research as a biologist. Not only did I need Sandra’s permission to make the film, I needed her enthusiastic participation as an on-screen subject and an off-screen collaborator. It was a big ask. And I didn’t know how she came across on camera—or even what her voice sounded like.
But I had already decided that anyone who could write with Sandra’s eloquence must also be an eloquent speaker. Of course, we all know that good writers aren’t necessarily good speakers, but I was lucky to be very right about Sandra. Over the phone, she sounded just as I had imagined she would: calm, thoughtful, kind, direct. By the time of that first call, we had already exchanged several emails. During our correspondence, Sandra had told me that she couldn’t imagine being able to spare the time that would be required to make a film. She had basically already said no.
But I pride myself on being persistent. And now, on the phone with Sandra, I had a mission: to convince her that making a film with me would be a good idea. The points that I wanted to make were: 1) the film would help her to sell more books, spread her message, and reach a different audience; 2) making the film would be an enjoyable experience; and 3) it would all only take a small amount of time—maybe ten days at the most.
We had a brief but warm first conversation. My words caught in my throat several times. My heart pounded so loudly that there were times when I couldn’t hear what Sandra was saying. More than once, I winced as my voice pitched up, making my statements sound more like questions. But when I hung up the phone, I felt good. Although Sandra hadn’t agreed to be in the film yet, she hadn’t turned me down, either.
Sandra did eventually agree to participate in the making of a film. In fact, she jumped in with both feet. On April 3, 2010, our film, Living Downstream, premiered at the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival in Ithaca, New York. Just to be clear, this was six years after I first called Sandra. We started shooting together in earnest in 2008 and have been in regular contact since then. Most days we still speak on the phone or email each other at least once. And even though the film had its premiere two years ago, we are continuing to work on this project together. We’re writing guides for activists and educators who are using the film in their work, attending public screenings, selling DVDs, blogging, social networking, and more.
Looking back at that winter’s day in 2004, I can’t believe I promised Sandra that I would only need ten days of her time. When our work together is officially over, it will have taken a total of ten years. But in my defense, this isn’t the only time in the life of Living Downstream that ten days has become ten years. Sandra likes to say that when the book was released in 1997, she began a two-week book tour that lasted ten years. So I feel I’m in good company.
I like to tell this story during the director Q&A sessions which often following the screenings of Living Downstream. The line I sometimes use to end this anecdote, “Somehow, ten days turned into ten years” usually sparks laughter from the audience. And I usually laugh too. But sitting here now, I would be hard pressed to say what we’re all actually laughing about. Are we amused by the idea that a feature film could ever only take the main subject’s time for ten days? Or are we tickled by the fact that Sandra had allowed herself to be so carried away by the project after initially declining to participate? (Though she always says that she didn’t believe me when I said it would only take ten days.) Or is it simply that we are amazed by my obsession with this project—how could I have ever let ten days grow into ten years?
In the moments when I feel as though the various pieces of this project are taking too long to complete—or at the times when I feel as though our society isn’t making any progress on the issue of environmental health itself—it’s usually the last question that I end up asking myself. How did this project balloon out of control in this way? How did it get so big? How have I managed to spend almost my entire adult life thinking about cancer and the environment?
But in the sunnier moments of this project (and there have been just about as many sunny moments as there could have been, largely thanks to Sandra) I just feel lucky. Lucky that Sandra said yes. Lucky that I’ve found a film that I have wanted to work on so intensively. Lucky that the book and the film have a momentum of their own and that Sandra and I have been able to allow ourselves to be pulled along by the current-like forces of Living Downstream.
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Tags: activist, adventure, cancer, chanda chevannes, educator, environment, living downstream, outreach, sandra steingraber
Written by
Chanda
March 8, 2012
In celebration of International Women’s Day, here’s a piece I wrote for On The Issues magazine last year. It’s a reminder that reproductive health, women’s health, and children’s health are feminist issues, but also environmental issues.
A TALE OF TWO NURSING MOTHERS
When my husband, Nathan, and I first announced that we were expecting a baby, we quickly received a lot of unsolicited advice — advice we usually ignored. But we did hear at least one good idea: Don’t change your life to fit your baby; fit your baby into your life.
As documentary filmmakers, we immediately saw the wisdom in this suggestion. Which is why, at seven o’clock one Saturday night in July 2008, I found myself, with my mother and my three-month-old baby, in the tiny, wood-paneled village hall of Congerville (population 502), in central Illinois. I was there with my small Canadian film crew to shoot the night’s events for my new documentary, Living Downstream. The subject of the film, acclaimed ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, was preparing to give a public speech. And we were preparing to shoot it.
Sandra’s topic — the links between synthetic chemicals and human health—was sure to challenge many of her audience members, including local farmers and their families. But, maybe because Sandra had grown up nearby, the mood was welcoming. A patchwork quilt hung on the wall behind the podium where Sandra would speak. Smells wafted from Crock Pots, casserole dishes, and serving platters brought by the local residents for the evening’s potluck. Rows of chairs filled the room, and all those chairs were filling with people who were strangers to me. Except for two familiar faces in the back row: my mother and my daughter, Hannah.
This is where my personal life met my public life: my milk — Hannah’s milk — was about to be used by Sandra as her sole visual aid of the evening. She was planning to hold the jar up for all to see. First, she would list off the amazing benefits of breast milk. Then she would pass the jar through the room and invite audience members to contemplate it. And then the reveal: Sandra would go on to say that breast milk is the most contaminated human food on the planet. Over two hundred chemicals have the ability to trespass into breast milk, including toilet deodorizers, mothproofing agents, and dry cleaning fluids. Organochlorines such as dioxins, DDT, and PCBs also make regular appearances in our milk. So do farm chemicals.
And the revelation of this evidence would lead Sandra to the main points of her lecture: that inherently toxic chemicals find their way into the most intimate parts of our lives, even our milk. That our environment is within us. That what we love, we must protect.
Mammal to Mammal
As a new mother, I was already sold on the benefits of breastfeeding. The World Health Organization recommends that infants be breastfed exclusively for the first six months, and then non-exclusively until at least the age of two. We know that babies who are breastfed have better immune systems, better hearing and eyesight, and higher IQs. They respond better to vaccinations, are less prone to infections, and have fewer allergies. We also know that breastfeeding means busy working mothers don’t have to waste time mixing (or money buying) formula. Breastfeeding seemed like a really good idea to me.
I had chosen to breastfeed Hannah for all of these compelling reasons. But what began as the logical choice became a deeply emotional activity. Nursing my daughter was a bonding experience. I could feel myself getting closer to her with each feeding. As I held her close to me, and watched her drink the milk I produced for her, a deep feeling grew inside of me. More than anything, I wanted to protect her.
As a filmmaker working on a scientific film, I also knew some worrisome facts about breast milk. For example, in an ongoing study, researchers at the University of Montreal have discovered that, compared to their male counterparts, female beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River have a lower burden of organochlorine chemicals in their tissues. What sounds like good news is not. According to the investigators, this finding is “best explained through massive transfer to the newborn during lactation, resulting in juvenile [organochlorine chemical] concentrations equal to or higher than in adult males.”
To obtain this and other information, the researchers have been autopsying whales and collecting data for over twenty years. I had the opportunity to film one of these procedures for Living Downstream. An autopsy of a beluga takes more than four hours and about a dozen people. It is a smelly ordeal and by the end, the floor is slippery with blood. It’s a sad thing to witness the dissection of a whale. But this work could reveal at least a partial answer to the question of how these toxic chemicals may be affecting our health. About 25 percent of autopsied beluga whales in the highly polluted St. Lawrence River have been found to have cancer. And yet cancer has never been found in the belugas living in the less contaminated waters of the Arctic Ocean.
Standing in the autopsy room, I felt a strong connection to the mother beluga on the autopsy table. This feeling washed over me when veterinary professor Stéphane Lair, Ph.D., removed her mammary gland. Holding the whale’s breast in his gloved hands, Dr. Lair squeezed gently, and a greyish liquid oozed out. These were the last few drops of this mother’s milk. “What happened to her calf?” Dr. Lair wondered aloud. He spoke eloquently of the significance of this whale’s death. Not only does the population shrink when a mother whale dies, he said, but the entire community loses the knowledge she carried.
As he spoke, I thought of all the people who will meet a similar fate. One in four North Americans alive today will die of cancer. Even while breastfeeding clearly protects both mother and child against some types of cancer, the toxicants in our milk counteract its goodness.
Seeking Signs in Breast Milk
Back in Congerville, the camera rolled and the bright lights warmed the room, Sandra spoke with ease and humor. As she spoke tenderly about our children’s right to pure milk, I watched the audience absorb her words. But mostly, I watched the milk make its way through the audience. Some people passed it quickly, as if embarrassed to see human milk. Others looked at it with smiles of familiarity. A few even gripped the warm jar tightly, held it up to the light, swirled the creamy substance around and gazed at it as if they might catch a glimpse of one of the contaminants hidden within.
It was a meaningful moment for me. I knew the facts and figures Sandra was reciting, but I knew a few other things too. I knew these particular ounces of milk intimately. I had pumped and frozen them weeks ago when I was preparing for this trip. It had taken me three days to pump twelve ounces. (That’s four ounces each morning from my right breast. Now you know it intimately too.) My daughter also knew that milk. It was her sole source of energy and nutrition. She relied on it for her health and her survival.
Don’t fit your life to your baby; fit your baby to your life was good advice for me on a personal level. I wanted to stay independent. I wanted Hannah to learn how to live in the adult world. But that night as I watched my milk move through the audience of strangers, I realized that this motto doesn’t work at all on the public level. Bringing a child into a busy filmmaking family and asking her to adapt is one thing. Bringing her into a toxic world and continuing to ignore the practices that make it toxic is quite another. I don’t want my newborn infant to be ingesting toxic chemicals in her milk. I don’t want breast milk to become so contaminated with chemicals that infant formula suddenly seems like a good idea. (It’s not.) I don’t want to ask Hannah to live in the world the way it is. Instead, I want to change the world for her.
Strong evidence says that beluga whales are developing cancer and other health problems because of the toxicants that we have inserted into their habitat. Many researchers believe that the same is happening to humans. This unites us humans with the whales—as does the ability to feed our children from our own bodies, which is a distinct trait of all mammals. (We mammals are named for our mammary glands, after all.) But we are also united by the vulnerability of our bodies — and therefore the vulnerability of our children—to toxic chemicals. Like the beluga of the St. Lawrence, we have already lost a lot. Unlike the beluga, we can do something about it. This seems to me like the best idea of all.
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Written by
Chanda
February 9, 2012
On Tuesday February 7, Living Downstream screened at the Orillia, Ontario, campus of Lakehead University. What follows are some of the things I thought about during that screening. And some of the things I said to the audience during my introduction of the film that night.
Feb 7, 2012: Tonight, I am at a screening of my film in Orillia. As I write this, the film is playing in an auditorium about twenty meters away from where I sit. The audience is made up of a mixture of university students and community members.
I am always very grateful for the opportunity to attend a screening of my film. So often as filmmakers, we spend years making a single film and then release it into the world. We rarely know much about how it’s doing out there—who is watching it, what they are thinking after they see it, how it might contribute something new to their understanding of cancer. So attending screenings like this gives me some answers to these questions.
So when Dr. Cheryl Lousley invited me to speak at Lakehead following their screening, I immediately said yes. But I was more excited about this screening than I usually would be. And that’s because this area has played a pretty significant role in my life. The year before I was born, my parents bought an old house on the north bank of the Severn River. That’s about fifteen minutes away from here, up Highway 11. My parents wanted to use that home as a cottage, and so bit by bit, they began fixing it up. We spent most of our weekends from Victoria Day to Thanksgiving up here—and many weeks during the summer too. And there were two things I did up here more than anything else. I read. And I swam.
As my parents hammered and sawed and worked to make the house more livable, I would sit outside, or at my aunt’s house next door and read. I read everything from Shirley MacLaine to Alice Walker, and from Gloria Steinem to Truman Capote. And all those authors had an important influence on my thinking as a young teen. But a few years later, when I was just out of high school, I read the book that has had the biggest impact on my life to date. Lying in the grass in the backyard of my cottage, occasionally gazing out at the Severn River, I read a book about cancer and the environment, called Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber.
I was nineteen when I first read Sandra’s book. She was twenty when she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. That’s probably about the age a lot of the members of my audience are now. As I introduced the film to them tonight, I tried to put myself back into the place I was when I first read the book. I tried to remember all the ways in which it changed my view of the world. I remember being shocked by what I read. And I remember being inspired by the beautiful way in which the book was written. Standing in front of the audience, in the back of my mind, I was hoping that the film might have the same effect on some of them.
In addition to reading, I did a lot of swimming up here as a child. Almost every day, my parents would take a break from their dry-walling and painting and take me and my sister to the local beach in the neighboring village of Washago. Washago is a stereotypical village, with one main street, one main intersection, one hardware store, one gas station, one convenience story, and one watertower. Drive past all those things and over the train tracks at you’re at the tiny public beach. But I do remember one special time when my parents drove us down the highway to Orillia and we went swimming at Couchiching Beach Park. (This was way before I was reading Steingraber or Capote, just to be clear.) And the beach was a bit daunting—there were a lot more people than at our little beach. The washrooms were much farther away. And there was even a lifeguard on duty. After swimming for a while, I decided to sit on the beach—probably to read, or to sleep, which was another activity I did a lot of.
All of a sudden, the peace of the beach was interrupted by a screeching whistle. And then the lifeguard started shouting into the bullhorn for volunteers. She was asking for all available adults to get into the water, hold hands with one another, and walk in a straight line from one end of the beach to the other. There was a child missing and this was the strategy that they would employ to make sure he wasn’t below the surface of the shallow water.
I watched the scene unfold, riveted by it. It was kind of like something out of a movie. It was scary. What if they found a drowned child in the water? What if someone wasn’t dragging his feet in the exact right way and walked by the kid below the surface? But soon enough, the drama ended. The child had been found somewhere else in the park—he hadn’t been in the water at all.
That scene made a very strong impression on me. And here’s why: I was impressed by how quickly everyone jumped into the water. I was impressed by the single-minded focus that everyone shared in that moment. As far as I could tell, no one hesitated. Walking through the water, holding hands with strangers, possibly stepping on the lifeless body of a child is a scary thing to contemplate doing. But in the moment, no one let that fear stop them.
I told that story tonight because I thought it was a good metaphor for the problem of environmentally caused cancer. Like the prospect of finding a drowned child, the idea that we are poisoning ourselves with synthetic chemicals is a scary thought to contemplate. This knowledge can be paralyzing. In fact, I have heard from university teachers that their students often find my film to be frightening and depressing.
I have to admit, hearing that students find Living Downstream frightening and depressing made me feel frightened and depressed, too. I had intended to make Living Downstream informative and emotionally impactful, but also hopeful and inspiring. I think it’s okay to be afraid when we learn something new, at first. But if we let it, knowledge can also be energizing. When I first read Living Downstream, it energized me. It taught me to see the world, the environment and our bodies in a different way. It made me want to do something to help others to see it this way too. This film is what I chose to do.
Like that lifeguard on the beach here in Orillia, my film has an urgent message. We can let the message depress us and make us afraid, or we use the message to energize us to do something to change the problem. Luckily, there are rows and rows of strangers already standing in the water. And that’s part of what I asked my audience to remember tonight as they were watching the film. I’m also planning on asking them, when we begin the Q&A, if they are willing to join us in the water, or if they would rather stay warm and dry up on the beach. I hope they won’t let fear stop them from jumping in.
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Written by
Chanda
September 4, 2011
I am not a gardener. I wish I were. Especially because I come from a family of green thumbs. My mother trades bulbs and seeds and clippings with my aunts. My sister is a trained florist. And my father attended agricultural college, hoping to become a farmer.
But it seems I’ve never been able to hold any useful information about gardening in my head. I can’t remember the names of the few potted plants sitting in my kitchen. Truthfully, I can’t even remember when to water them. I love looking at other people’s plants and flowers, but growing them and caring for them is not something I know how to do. Obviously, then, I couldn’t possibly have any information about gardening that would be useful to someone else—especially a gardener. Right?
Well, in August, I received an email from a woman who had tracked down my contact information. She thought I might be able to help her, most likely because of my film, Living Downstream, which is about cancer and chemicals. Like most of my family, the woman who emailed me (let’s call her Lisa) is a gardener. And Lisa does not think it’s necessary—or wise—to spray pesticides on her garden. The garden in question is one that she started a few years ago. It is in a field in her neighborhood in the Midwestern United States. It is cultivated by an organic gardening club and when the club began growing vegetables in the field, the homeowner’s association agreed not to spray lawn chemicals on the field. But this has recently changed. Some residents have begun complaining about the dandelions.
Lisa is worried about the fate of her garden, of her neighborhood, and of her family’s health. Her son spends a lot of time in the garden, and has been learning a lot from the hands-on practice of planting, weeding and harvesting. In her email, she told me that she wants her neighborhood to be a less toxic place to live. To this end, she was hoping that I could send her information that she could present to the homeowner’s association.
I read Lisa’s email carefully. I felt sorry for her and her community. But couldn’t really think of what help I might be able to provide. So, I started to write my response, I am very sorry to hear about your situation. It’s an all-too familiar one, I am afraid. The film I produced, Living Downstream, does not deal directly with lawn chemicals, but rather agricultural chemicals. So I don’t think it would be much help to you.
And I was pretty much going to stop there. I would write a few more lines commiserating with my correspondent and then move on to the next email in my inbox. But that’s not what happened. Because I suddenly realized that I had lots of information I could share. Not specifically because I’m a filmmaker who made a film about environmental health. But rather because I am a Canadian filmmaker who made a film about environmental health.
And so, my email to my new gardener friend continued, However, I’m not sure if you are aware, but four provinces in Canada (where I live) have implemented bans on the “cosmetic use of pesticides” and these bans are supported and encouraged by the Canadian Cancer Society (the Canadian version of the American Cancer Society). I wonder if information like this might help to sway your opponents?
And then I sent her a list of several resources that took a closer look at our bans on the cosmetic use of pesticides. These include an article written by Sandra Steingraber, Canadian ByLaws; American Lawn Flags, the Canadian Cancer Society’s statement on the cosmetic use of pesticides, and a link to information about a documentary film called A Chemical Reaction, which tells the story of the first town in North America to enact a bylaw prohibiting the use of lawn chemicals.
I did this all very quickly. Lisa’s email had arrived in my inbox at 7:54am on a Wednesday morning, and I had replied by 8:10am. Something about her request felt urgent to me, and required that I respond with the same urgency. I hoped I would hear back from her, and that she would tell me that it had been useful; that it had convinced her homeowner’s association to continue with their policy of not spraying the area around her vegetables.
But I never heard back from my new friend. And I probably won’t ever know the outcome of her story. I won’t ever know whether the information that I hastily typed up was useful to Lisa. I hope it was. Maybe it will be useful to someone else. Maybe it will be useful to you. If so, I hope you’ll let me know. It would be nice to have confirmation that I do know something about gardening, after all.
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Written by
Chanda
October 16, 2010
Thursday was a milestone day for me. It’s the first time since shooting Living Downstream that I have been back in Illinois. We flew into Chicago’s Midway Airport that day. It was also a milestone day for Henry, my three-month-old son. It was his first plane ride.
Chanda, Henry and Jill on Henry's first plane ride
He slept most of the flight in his grandmother’s arms, continuing his habit of allowing me to get a lot of my work done. Thanks Henry. My mum has been on many trips with me to Illinois, watching Hannah when we were shooting, and now Henry while we’re screening. Allowing me to get a lot of my work done. Thanks Mum.
But even though she travels a lot with me, my family’s travel habits are still a bit of a mystery to my mother. Nathan and I are going to the UK mid-November for a much-needed vacation. Hannah and Henry are coming with us. We went to Australia for a conference last December, and Hannah stayed at home. As I’m typing this, we are driving down the I-55 to Peoria from Chicago. Henry is with us, but Hannah is at home. What’s the logic behind all of these decisions to leave the kids or to take them along?
Well, it’s simple. (At least, in my mind, it’s simple.) Our family has three rules for travel:
1) If the trip is a vacation, parents and kids all go.
2) If the trip is for business, parents go (Nathan and I are also business partners) and kids stay at home.
3) If the trip is for business but any of the kids are still breast-feeding, then they come along too.
It’s rule number three that causes the most commotion. There was the boarder guard who looked at me, my crew, my daughter, and my father-in-law (who was along to take care of Hannah on that occasion) and said: “When I go to work, I don’t take my whole family with me.” There was the time that I decided not to take a caregiver with me on a shoot. I strapped Hannah to me and trudged into an experimental forest with my director of photography and tried to shoot sound for an interview about tree coring, as Hannah cooed at the interview subject and played with the cables attached to the microphone. There is the constant search for hotels with freezers cold enough to keep my breast milk frozen and with cribs that don’t look like they were constructed at the turn of the century.
But as crazy as it can be, traveling with my kids while working is ultimately a lot of fun. And we get a lot of great photos out of it, too.
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Written by
Chanda
October 6, 2010
I spend a lot of time looking at the corkboard that hangs over my desk. To anyone but me, it is a disorderly mess. Covered in calendars, photographs, greeting cards, business cards, project budgets, maps, funding guidelines, post-it notes and scraps of paper, it is a mixture of inspiration, practical reminders, and regularly referenced information. Some days I get a crick in my neck from the length of time my head is turned to gaze at it.
Today I pinned a map of Illinois to my corkboard.
A photo taken by Ben Gervais of a farm in central Illinois on our first trip there.
Since then, my eyes have been busily tracing the lines that depict the highways between the cities and towns: Chicago down to Champaign-Urbana, to Bloomington-Normal, down to Springfield, up and over to Peoria and then all the way back up to Chicago again. My neck is getting that crick. I’m imagining driving over the flat land of this mid-western state at harvest time. In just over one week, I will be there.
The first time I was in Illinois was in October 2006. We were on our first shoot for Living Downstream and we were filming the corn harvest. We got some beautiful footage. Golden stalks of corn blowing in the wind underneath an expansive blue sky. Lines of old telephone poles fading into the distance, marking an unseen road cresting over a gently sloping hill. A green combine spitting dry kernels into a red truck, clouds of dust rising into the air.
After that, there were two more trips to Illinois – one in July 2008, the other in April 2009. Each time we filmed a different season. Each time we saw the cornfields in a new way. In April the fields were just being planted. The soil, newly turned, was a rich dark brown - almost like cocoa powder. In July, the cornstalks were an emerald green. They were so vibrant against the bright blue of the summer sky. I got another crick in my neck, trying to look up to see the tops of the stalks.
On October 14, I leave for Illinois again. Sandra will be there too. This time, we won’t be filming. We will be presenting the fruits of all the other trips. We will be screening Living Downstream in some of the places we filmed. And in some we did not.
The Illinois Screening Tour is five screenings in four days. There is a brunch and also a free public lecture. Our co-presenters of the tour are The Land Connection and Pesticide Action Network North America. We have also had a range of local partners helping us out: Chicago Foundation for Women, Illinois Stewardship Alliance, Morten Group, Organic Nation, and Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste. Some of these organizations helped us during our previous filming trips in Illinois. Others have come on board since the film was made. It’s exciting for me to meet and work with so many new people. It’s exciting for me to return to Illinois for a fourth time, and to share with our audiences the film, and the way it captures the beauty of the landscape of this state. It’s exciting for me to be able to publicly thank so many people who opened their homes and their lives to us and helped us to make this film.
It’s exciting to me that we will be tracing the lines on the map as we drive from city to city in Illinois: Chicago down to Champaign-Urbana, to Bloomington-Normal, down to Springfield, up and over to Peoria and then all the way back up to Chicago again.
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Written by
Chanda
May 10, 2010
Living Downstream is having its Canadian Premiere at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema on Tuesday May 18 at 7:30pm. For more information about the screening, and how to buy tickets, please visit: www.livingdownstream.com/toronto_screening.php
Read my full blog about the upcoming screening.
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Written by
Chanda
March 25, 2010
It’s early in the morning and I’m feeling stuck. I’m sitting in my home office, listening to my daughter’s voice on the baby monitor as she is beginning to awaken two floors up. Today is her birthday. She is physically close, but she feels very far away right now. Mentally, I’m all alone. Deep in thought. Read more.
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Written by
Chanda
March 16, 2010
When filling out forms that require this kind of information, I typically list my occupation as filmmaker or producer. But I also think of myself as a writer. After all, I spend more time writing than doing anything else. I also spend a lot of time thinking about language and the ways people use – and misuse words.
One word I have been thinking a lot about lately is, in fact, the same word that I list as my occupation. Filmmaker. What is the meaning behind that word? Am I using it properly to describe myself, and the work that I do?
(Photo Credit: Garrett Shields)
The photo above is of me and my director of photography, Ben Gervais, preparing for an interview in Washington DC last year. Read more…
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