Tribeca Film Festival Directors Series: Nathan Rissman

Everyone knows that Madonna has a vested interest in the African nation of Malawi -- she is quite publicly developing a foundation there (Raising Malawi Foundation), and even more publicly, is in the final stages of adopting a Malawian boy named David. I Am Because We Are is a documentary in which she seeks to explain, somewhat, Why Malawi? Madonna wrote and produced the film, and asked her friend Nathan Rissman, a first-time director, to helm the project.

Rebecca Carroll: How do you know Madonna?
Nathan Rissman: I was her gardener for a while. Both my wife and I have worked for her family. I’m just one of those guys, kind of a hustler. We have all become very good friends -- there’s a good dynamic between the Ritchies and the Rissmans. When Madonna said she wanted to raise awareness about Malawi, she asked me to help her.

RC: But you have directed before, no?
NR: First time.

RC: Wow, nicely done!
NR: Thank you. Never used a camera before.

RC: How did you bring yourself up to speed?
NR: First of all, I was more than happy about the opportunity, so I didn’t feel insecure about not having directed anything before. I actually think the success of the project is because I had no experience. Otherwise, everyone says, ‘You don’t want to do that, you need a camera, you need a crew.’ You get this ego involved in filmmaking from people that know too much, and what I was able to do was to head out [to Malawi] with a small handheld camera and a really tiny crew, and catch something really intimate.

RC: And how did you see the footage coming together as a story as you were filming?
NR: With this documentary, and most documentaries, you go out and film, come back and edit, go out and film, come back and edit. Basically, we had a lot of different stories and a lot of different footage. One thing that I think works well [in the film] is that a couple of nights in Malawi with Madonna, we set up like it was an interview session with audio recordings. I said to her, ‘I want your journal entries, I want to know how you feel while you’re here.’ And she just talked.

RC: You can definitely hear the change in tone from when she’s talking about Malawi as a narrator to when she’s talking about Malawi as Madonna experiencing the place.
NR: I didn’t think it would work well to see her sitting on camera discussing what we should and shouldn’t do for people living in poverty. But there was something quite intimate and personal about her voice and her story. By having her hold our hand and guiding us along her personal journey, we were able to create something that describes the situation.

RC: There are numerous times throughout the documentary when Madonna says, ‘How do we make a change?’ But when all is said and done, it didn’t seem that there were any real tangibles to make change other than the age-old attitude of going in and telling people how to live.
NR: I think that maybe you misunderstood it, because our intentions were not [to convey that idea.]

RC: I’m not saying that the documentary told me to do that -- I’m saying that the information, the raw footage is there, and I get how meaningful it is to Madonna. What I don’t get is how I can help or understand that world. For example, there is much discussion about how HIV/AIDS is killing the population of Malawi, and how the disease is stigmatized because of how it is transmitted. Yet, no one ever addresses with the Malawi people how it is transmitted: through sex. Why not?
NR: I think that is very good question. But what you find is that there are so many different aspects of poverty. I know there are points that were just briefly touched on. We’re giving you what the problem looks like, while remembering that we have a responsibility to create a dialogue about it.

RC: Yes, absolutely and the dialogue for me, with you or with anybody else, would be that HIV/AIDS is transmitted through sex. So what’s going on with sex here?
NR: In Malawi, they’re very closed about sex, about intimate sex and love. You don’t talk about that -- a mother and daughter will never have a discussion about sex, because it’s such a taboo. In the south of Malawi, if you get a new seat for your bicycle, in order for that bicycle to not have bad luck, you should have sex first because that brings about a good omen. If you’re not married, then you need to find somebody to have sex with. There is a weird disconnect between love and sex, and it’s very hard to explain. I don’t know how to explain that.

RC: I would be much more confused if I didn’t know anything about HIV/AIDS for someone to try to explain it scientifically than for someone to say, ‘Hey, if this point on his body touches this point on your body, there’s a good chance you’ll contract the disease.’
NR: But you have to combat it with hospitals and education and eventually, people will come to understand. In Malawi, when you get malaria you go to a witch doctor, and a witch doctor can’t do anything. But if you have a hospital nearby, people will start to see that malaria is curable.

RC: How did you reconcile the constant sense of need? There is that wonderful woman in the film who kept saying she had to somehow find 10 dollars for that kid and the next. She couldn’t walk away, but she didn’t really have it herself either.
NR: It’s hard because you really want to take care of people, but you can’t give out money because that would create jealousy within the village. We quickly learned that you can’t hand out cash -- but you feel this responsibility, because you have cash. I think what overcame that feeling of ‘I can give them cash,’ was spending time with them and realizing that you are giving them something very special. I think that they realized quite quickly and so did I, that the experience together is more important than cash -- that human connection made us all feel empowered.

RC: It must have been very emotional.
NR: Whenever you’re with another human being who is suffering, it’s hard not to feel emotional. For me it’s absolutely heartbreaking. But something that helped me is that during the project, my mom died after a long battle with cancer. I was with her with, and I held her hand when she died. This was right before I went to Africa for the third time, when I really started to get the footage of the true suffering. I think that experiencing her death gave me this amazing gift of being able to see how that process works. Does that make sense?

RC: It sure does.
NR: When I got to Malawi, I felt really powerful. I felt like I could be with someone who is dying.

RC: You filmed the funeral of a child -- tell me about that?
NR: It’s very special to be part of a Malawi funeral. Everybody gets involved. I bought some vegetables for the meal and the coffin. I told them I would like to film it and they said, ‘By all means, you’re part of our village now, you’re part of our family.’ There were times that I had the camera and the headphones on filming something, and it would get really hot, so I would take a break, and all of a sudden become overwhelmed with emotion because I was not just witnessing what was happening, I was a part of what was happening. At first I felt kind of guilty, because I live in a world full of celebrities and things, but then I thought, There’s no reason to feel guilty, you are in a very important position and you have to get your work done. You have to stop thinking about you. Just shut up, enjoy what you are doing right now, and remember you can make change, you can save five lives just by spending time in this village. So I constantly felt proud and empowered. And I think that attitude brought this film to where it is now.

RC: And how do you feel about the experience in retrospect?
NR: I have just learned so much about the culture, about poverty. I’m not an expert by any means, but I know that I was able to tell a story.

Photo by Aubrey Mayer