Firelight Retreat Recap
Christen Marquez, E Haku Inoa: To Weave a Name producer/director recaps her experience at the Firelight Retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
As a documentary filmmaker, my occupation is something like being the master of an endless parade of coordinating, cajoling, teaching, writing, chasing after people with cameras and microphones, all while trying to raise the money to keep everyone fed and moving forward in a relatively straight line. When I touched down in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the Firelight “Developing Your Directorial Voice” I was having anxiety about my overwhelming workload. Grant deadlines loomed, and I truly needed some space to breathe and reconnect with the creative side of my work and continue to do what I do.
My first feature length documentary project, E Haku Inoa: To Weave A Name, was a small personal documentary. I am proud of the film, and every once in awhile I still get emails from people saying they enjoyed the film after seeing it on PBS, which is energizing. However, I know that I have grown as both a Director and Producer since finishing that project. I also know that when I was a first-time filmmaker, it was easy for me to put the creative aspect of filmmaking on the back burner amidst all of the organizational and funding challenges. During that project, I had allowed myself room for my voice and vision to change over time, which it did. However, now that I am in development of a second feature documentary with my filmmaking partner Ciara Lacy, we felt this retreat came at the perfect time for us to solidify a creative language and style for the film since we are early in the process for this project. This is why I found the Master Class session with filmmaker Arthur Dong inspiring. He showed clips from his films and broke down his themes, motifs, and premises. I also appreciated the advice of Esther Robinson in “The Artful Documentary” panel. Esther recommended making a “love book” of visually inspiring images and clips that you can use to remind you of your vision to guide you at moments when you are stuck in the weeds with your project. These may seem like deceptively simple things to do, but I need to do this more for my projects. It is easy to get mired in the frenzy of following a story, and let the artistic direction settle into a standard rut or become inconsistent. I now feel I have a more tools to focus on the artistic approach to my film.
The most invigorating aspect of the Firelight Retreat was simply sharing space with other diverse filmmakers. Director Loira Limbal broke it down from the top in her opening remarks “One of the most important aspects of the Firelight mission is to create community and solidarity across filmmakers in a diverse community.” It was liberating to not once over the entire weekend hear anyone ask why a “general audience” would care about their project. Our stories are important because we are in touch with our communities, we care about these issues, and that is enough. It was a rare and refreshingly empowered space to pitch and workshop our projects. As a Native Hawaiian filmmaker, it was also great to have the opportunity to meet other indigenous filmmakers from the continental U.S. I was excited that there was a panel that addressed the unique issues that indigenous filmmakers face when making films in our communities. Some of them are unique to us, but many challenges translate across other communities as well. It is again, unfortunately, so rare that we are given space to have these challenges heard outside our internal discussions.
I owe huge thank you’s to Firelight, Pacific Islanders in Communications, The Museum of Indian Arts and Cultures, and all the other partners, and panelists for making the weekend possible. I am sure, like me, all of the filmmakers who were fortunate enough to attend left revitalized to continue doing great work.
*Photo by Sandra Salas
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