theartstar

SUNDANCE '08 SPOTLIGHT:
'The Art Star And The Sudanese Twins'

Interview with Pietra BrettKelly, Producer/ Director 'The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins' '

AFFP: What was the genesis of 'Art Star and the Sudanese Twins'?

I met Vanessa Beecroft in February 2006 in South Sudan. I was filming a documentary on landmines left after Africa’s
longest running civil war. She had been drawn initially to Sudan with a need to understand the Darfur situation, and was
beginning the process of adopting the twins she’d been breastfeeding at the local orphanage.

After my team and I departed for the Ethiopian border, and she and her team returned to New York where she lived, I
contacted her wanting to document the adoption.

Six weeks after we first met, we were again back in Africa, this time meeting in Nairobi before boarding a charter flight
through Lokichokio and into Rumbek, South Sudan.

In New Zealand with such a small population and therefore limited funding opportunities, there isn’t support for
international films not about New Zealanders. But I knew that this was an opportunity to broach the subject of
international adoptions in a country still raw from war. I leapt into the self-funding abyss and thereby the uncertainty all
that entails – when is the conclusion, who is my audience, is it a feature film or a commercial one hour documentary?

I part owned a Sony HDV camera and some sound equipment and managed to buy Director of Photography Jake Bryant’s
and my flights on airpoints that I’d saved. We flew from New Zealand to Australia to Dubai to Nairobi, exhausted but
charged by a return to the beautiful, stark strength of sub-saharan Africa.

We filmed with Vanessa in Rumbek, South Sudan for two weeks. Some days she concentrated on her artwork and
others the adoption. Often Jake and I grappled with what our film was about.   It was becoming more and more apparent
that as her gallerist Jeffrey Deitch would later tell me, with Vanessa there is no boundary between life and art.

I realised I couldn’t make a film about the adoption without including her art. But to what extent?

Those who know Vanessa realise she is somebody who pushes boundaries and some days were difficult, not only
because of her intentions with her art and the adoption, but because this was a country still grappling with its place in
peace.

Other people Vanessa approached for views or assistance to further the adoption were open to us filming them - the
local Catholic bishop, Bishop Caesar Mazollari, the Minister for Legal Affairs, Southern Sudan, Justice Michael Makuei
Lueth, the twins’ father Akot Makoi Tueny and his family.

Vanessa had been told she was possibly the first to legally adopt out of South Sudan. After two weeks we realised the
process would be a case of her driving the possibilities, through international law and the US embassy in Cairo, Egypt.
It would soon be the rainy season and South Sudan would be shut off for a large part. Vanessa realised her return
wouldn’t be until much later in the year.

Two months after departing Sudan Jake and I were in the Amazon filming. I took the opportunity to book us flights to
New York and without documentation, work permits or import/export licences we landed with our well-worn story – we
were just a honeymoon couple with semi professional camera equipment, wanting to film our holiday video REALLY
WELL.

In New York Vanessa’s husband Greg Durkin offered his own strong opinions on international adoptions.   He
questioned whether this is the best we in the developed world can do for those in developing countries, to help their
parentless children. Once again I was blessed with an interviewee who was open, and talked about how he knew
nothing of the adoptions until recently and had offered Vanessa a divorce so she could proceed on her own.

I also managed to interview Vanessa’s gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, and capture Vanessa at home with her own two
children. On our last hours in New York we filmed with Vanessa shopping for underwear for her next exhibition and she
broke down, tearful that her world was falling apart, with Greg talking divorce and the adoption having stalled. As she
said “like rolling off a cliff”. It was a sad end to our New York shoot. And on the plane back to New Zealand I felt I was
truly at the whim of the documentary. That I had no idea where my story was going to go next. Would Vanessa’s
intentions to adopt collapse with her desire to keep together her family? Or was I instead watching the dissolution of a
marriage, and a highly creative, highly charged person at an important cross-roads of her life?

Vanessa and I kept in constant contact. I was keen to try to understand where we should film next.

And with the next shoot of the end of September in Milan where Vanessa was to exhibit her South Sudan work, I was
suffering under the strain of continuing to finance the documentary myself.

But I could feel the strength of a complex and multi-layered story in the boxes of tapes we’d already shot.

En route to Milan we stopped in London to interview Vanessa’s father Andrew Beecroft, a charming host who on a wet
autumn day welcomed us with red wine and British bonhomie.

In the following six months we met up with Vanessa at a fasting camp in Palm Springs with her mother, in Korea at a
performance, in Rome for an exhibition of some early drawings.

I had shot nearly 70 hours of footage and cut together a few scenes and ventured to Amsterdam to the International
Documentary Film Festival to try to get financial interest. I was lucky to be a wildcard selection one morning to pitch at
The Forum, the marketplace for documentaries in production. And in front of 300 commissioners from around the globe, I
pitched my documentary, for the first time naming it The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins.

It was possibly the most nervous I have ever felt. And though unfortunately no commissioner was prepared to take the
risk with me, I was spurred on by the intelligent questions fired and the interest my footage generated.

In May 2007 Vanessa was invited to Khartoum. And Greg was travelling with her. She’d raised E50,000 towards an
extraordinary hospital that Emergency, an Italian aid agency was building. We met her there but I was unsure where this
scene would fit into my documentary.

From Khartoum we travelled south to the twins. We rose at 1.30 in the morning, to be out at the airport and plead our
way onto a flight, breaking our visa that only permitted us to go a maximum of 25 kilometres from the capital.

We were heading 1200km.

And between this trip to the twins and the extraordinary performance VB61 at Venice Biennale I knew I had the
conclusion to my documentary.

And though the film was entirely shot overseas I was determined to use the craftspeople I had around me in New
Zealand.

My editor Irena Dol and I had continued editing through the months of me travelling and filming with Vanessa. But now
we could solidly concentrate on finishing it. Irena and I have worked together for three years. She has a beautiful
sensibility with story and a creative touch with pictures and I believe has edited an extraordinary film. Mercifully her
husband Phil said they could survive on his salary which truly saved me as we headed into the final weeks.

And then I received the email from Sundance early one morning before I headed out to the edit suite. I immediately
called her and we both cried. And then I called Jake and there was silence at the other end of the phone. The three of
us felt we’d been working away at the bottom of the world for nearly two years, not knowing where our project would
end up. And the place we’d only dreamt of had accepted it.

AFFP: Is there a common thread between the films you've been involved with?

I am very much interested in personal journeys, reflecting contemporary issues. But as is the beauty of documentary, I
started with an idea but then real life took over and the film truly began. My initial interest in Vanessa Beecroft's story
was an interest in international adoptions, an issue I was also tackling with a two part documentary in Romania, though
Vanessa's story became more complex than just the single thread of adoption.
>
> - What is your background as a filmmaker?
I trained as a journalist, and then as most young New Zealanders do, travelled. For me and my backpack that lasted six
years away from home. And then on my return I was employed my Phil Keoghan (now the presenter of The Amazing
Race) and his wife Louise Rodriguez on a show for TV3 here in New Zealand. From there my experience grew, I moved
into documentaries and have been focussing on that for over 10 years.

AFFP: Have you been to Sundance before?

I have never been to Sundance before and this will be the first documentary from New Zealand ever to screen at
Sundance, though past drama films like The Whale Rider and Eagle versus Shark have done our country proud at
Sundance.

AFFP: What is your next project?

I have a few ideas, one that has been germinating possibly since I was born. I'm a redhead and have always wanted to
do a film on the culture of redheads, a group of people that my initial research has uncovered are a dying breed.

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