By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 18, 2006; D01
They are here to "pitch," but truly, for this collection of student filmmakers, gathered at the Silverdocs Documentary Festival, it's their first time at bat. They are standing at a lectern on a Saturday afternoon, sliding side glances at those who are there to judge them, cueing the lights, talking up their dreams, their babies, that which has sucked up so much of their time, their money, their life.
For these six filmmakers, graduate students all, it's their first time ever presenting a project to a prospective distributor/film festival organizer/network exec. You would think that they would be nervous, and well, yes, they are. Quite. Voices wobble, eyes glaze over, papers rattle in shaky hands. You would think that, as students, they'd be a little rough around the edges, and well, yes, they are. (Says one industry pitchee to a student: "When you make a pitch, always send your best or don't send it at all.")
But they've been handpicked by their schools to be here, and they've been at this for a bit. The subjects of their documentaries reflect a sophisticated worldview: a firsthand account of Afghanistan's bloody history; Siberian shamans; a world-traveling hitchhiker who has logged 62,000 miles; Dominican kids who are Civil War reenactors; local governments seizing private property; and a Slovakian inventor who may have invented the parachute. They've got ambitions and they think they know how to get there. "I'm just trying to finish my film and shop it to the festivals," says one filmmaker, Kimberly Cooke, 36, from the University of Florida. They know from Sundance and Slamdance, from Project Greenlight and Telluride, from grant proposals and distribution plans.
Still . . . yesterday was a first. And first times are always fraught with tension.
"Was I nervous?" says New York University doctoral candidate Wazhmah Osman, whose film "Postcards From Tora Bora" details her family's escape from and return to Afghanistan, "Absolutely. It's my first pitch. . . . It's trial by fire."
It is a trial, of sorts, though this is not a competition. No best-of-show will be awarded, no prizes to be won, only experience to be gained. It's not likely that someone will snare a distribution deal here. But hope springs, as Osman admits: "You want to go for everything [while you're here], money, getting signed . . . . It's a great opportunity."
It's an opportunity to be seized in a minimum of time.
"When you pitch a story," the Discovery Channel's Steve Burns tells them, "you've got one chance."
So it is in this tiny screening room in the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring. Up on the podium, they've got just a few minutes to take advantage of that opportunity, with the moderator murmuring into the microphone, "One minute left." They've got time for a short intro, a film clip, and then they have to stand and take it while six panelists from the Discovery Channel, Sundance Institute, PBS, Current TV, the Independent Television Service and an independent consulting firm ever so politely tear apart their work.
Jes Therkelsen steps up to the mike, all righteous indignation and controlled fury. At 26, he's one of the younger filmmakers here, an American University film student whose doc "Seize This!" takes on the convoluted legal terrain of eminent domain, the right of a government to seize private property if it's deemed to be for the public good. He has profiled a family in New London, Conn., some Pennsylvania Dutch and the Washington Sculpture Center, which is located on the same patch of land where the new baseball stadium will be built.
There is no doubt that this will be a film with a point of view. Perhaps too much of a point of view. The panelists ask Therkelsen about "balance" and getting the other side of the story, no matter "how distasteful that may be." And then Alyce Wyatt, the independent consultant with a cuddly vibe and an intimidating bio -- including work for PBS, ABC's "20/20" and Nickelodeon, to name a very few -- lowers the boom:
"It's important that you don't come across as smarter than your audience," Wyatt says. "Your audience may very well be stupid . . . but you don't want to tell your audience that they're stupid."
Wyatt, the students all will admit afterward, is the one they fear. She does not blow smoke. She does not mince words. She demands -- Where's the aesthetics? -- as if she were demanding to know where's the beef like in that old Wendy's commercial. Aesthetics are important. So is hooking the audience. Providing some "sensory" thrills. Painting pretty pictures while you're hammering home your point. It needs to feel "valuable," and new, like nothing you've never seen before.
Osman steps to the dais, and with a wave of her hand the clip of her film begins. There is Super 8 footage of her parents' wedding at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. Children's drawings of guns that come to animated life. Pictures of her father in prison, hair gone gray at 33 after he was tortured and placed in solitary confinement. Osman herself, back at home in 2004, dressed in a shalwar kameez and head scarf, wiping away tears as she walks through the rubble of her birthplace.
The lights come up. Even the panelists are silent, for just a moment.
Then they begin to speak.
"I think you have a hit," Burns tells her.