Jennifer Arnold's Small Act
- Posted: 15th Apr 2011
- Category: Articles
- Tags: jennifer arnold, feature, dogwoof, cooperative
by Matt Strachan
A Small Act rides the ripple effect of a good deed that runs from Sweden to Kenya, from Harvard to the UN, from World War II to the future of the Third World. Director Jennifer Arnold talks to DFG about balancing stories past and present, drunk 12 year old videographers, and filmmaking fate.
Matt Strachan: How did the idea for the film come about?
Jennifer Arnold: It actually started quite by accident because I was interested in sponsoring a Kenyan student and I had attended University of Nairobi for my year abroad as an undergraduate. When I was there I met Jane [cousin of Chris Mburu, the film’s protagonist]. I’d never heard of Chris, never met Chris, but I called Jane and asked who would be trustworthy if I wanted to donate some money. She started telling me the story of Chris looking for Hilde and that they were starting a fund, and I got excited and thought it would be a great movie. So I asked Jane – “Can I film you? Can you ask Chris if I can film him?” Chris and Jane assured me that it would be very boring, that there was nothing to film, but if I wanted to waste my time I was welcome to. So then I showed up in Sweden – the first thing we shot was Chris and Hilde together at Hilde’s birthday party. That was the first scene, and I met Chris sort of camera-in-hand, and then his life was forever changed – I’ve been following him around ever since.
MS: So you knew about Chris and Hilde’s backstory before that first meeting?
JA: Yes I did. I had heard most of the story and by that time Chris had met Hilde one time, so when I first heard the story I thought it would’ve been an amazing documentary film but I missed it. Then I talked to Chris on the phone and I found out that when Hilde had come to Kenya (the first time that Chris and Hilde had met) he had hired a videographer. I asked him to send me that tape. I don’t know who Chris hired - it was like a drunk 12 year old - but Chris tells me he was, and still is, the best in the village. The camera was every which way, but there was this fantastic three minutes of footage of Hilde being wrapped up in these Kikuyu clothes. When I saw that I thought we have that moment, so let me just try to risk it and see if we can pull off this film.
MS: There’s a sense that Chris and Hilde’s story is what initially drew you in but, because it has already happened, you had to find a way of expressing the seed of their story through the Fund and how it is impacting today’s children.
JA: Yes, we knew setting out that the story of Hilde and Chris was told and it would be past tense. We tried to bring it into present tense, and when I heard that Chris was going to see Hilde for a second time at her birthday party, that’s when I thought okay – so the story will start in the past but go into the future. I also knew about the Fund, and the Fund is going to sponsor kids, and the kids are going to want education, and there’s going to be a test, and the test is going to have a certain score, and that score will come out, and the scholarships will be announced – so there will be drama in the B story. That thinking was present from the get-go – it was the Kenyan violence [following the 2007 presidential election] that we never expected. That became the thematic thread and we really did re-conceive the film once that happened.
MS: Could you talk me through that then?
JA: Mostly, when the violence first started, we didn’t shoot any of it because at first it just seemed like it was just part of an election, and the election wasn’t part of the film. We were running out of hard drive space and thought alright – it’s not really part of the movie. But then as it turned ethnic it became very clear that this is what Chris works on in his life [as a human rights lawyer with the UN], and this is also part of Hilde’s history [as a Holocaust survivor], and it really clarifies the stakes of what Chris was talking about – about education being the key to conflict prevention. He had already given all those interviews about [it], so as soon as that happened we realised that the end of act one would be different. The end of act one would really be Chris’ work, and we hadn’t shot Chris at the UN – we didn’t have permission to shoot Chris at the UN, so we came back and shot that later. So that came as the next phase after the Kenyan violence.
MS: Was it an active decision to minimise any political context or signposting of the violence that comes towards the end of the film?
JA: Well no, it was not a decision. It was that we didn’t expect the violence to happen, period. We didn’t expect the election to be part of the story, so we shot nothing. The only thing we shot were those cars driving around with the speakers on top, and the only reason we shot those was because we were filming in the village and there was no electricity, so we were doing our interviews outside and that speaker noise would float into the interviews all the time. We thought we better visually establish what that weird noise is. So when it came to the edit, even when we were still in Kenya, we thought we’ve got to go shoot some stuff to establish this election, but there was no more campaigning – the elections had happened, so you can’t go shoot anything. We shot a couple of signs that said ‘polling station’ and a couple of voting signs, and we had the speaker cars. We just had to make do, but had I known the election violence would become such a big part of the story I definitely would’ve shot it differently.
MS: One of the film’s highlights is the drama of the kids [who are hoping for a scholarship from Mburu’s foundation] waiting (literally days) for their exam results by text message. How did you deal with that from a production standpoint?
JA: It was a nightmare. One – we got very lucky. We had one camera, a crew of two and no electricity, so we had to drive out to the village and then drive back to the city to charge our batteries every night. So we had three kids, one camera, and we were, like – how are we going to get these test scores? Then the kids decided they wanted to do it together, and we thought – thank God, they’re going to do it together, we’re going to get it all. Then Ruth didn’t show up, but we thought – we’ve got two here, so let’s stay with them. And then the scores didn’t come. So the entire time we were just thinking – is Ruth getting her score right now and we’re missing it? We would send our driver over to Ruth’s house and he would come back and say – “she hasn’t found a phone yet”. So in real life it was much more dramatic than even in the film. It took a couple of days for them to all get those scores.
MS: And you stayed with them for the duration?
JA: We stayed with Kimani all day long and then at night, in the village, there’s not a lot that happens. And the phone – they had to take it to a charging kiosk and drop it off. So we knew there was no risk of Kimani getting his score without us. We left and then decided to check in with Ruth, and we were just driving in a circle around the village, just afraid that someone would get their score when we were in transit, but we got very lucky. Caroline actually did get her score by text message before she saw it posted in that window, and we missed it. But when we saw her she said – “Yeah, I got my score by text message, but they made a mistake because it’s actually not my score”. So when she saw it in the window it was the second time she saw it, and she knew it was real. That was just total luck that we managed to get her, even after she got her score. The idea of fate in this film – you can’t deny there’s something. Something always worked out for us.
MS: Talking of fate – what are you working on now?
JA: I’m researching a project that is about this epidemic investigative unit in the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) in the US. So a film about epidemiology – I haven’t started yet, it’s in the research phase. I’ve also been helping another filmmaker do the script for a film about Van Jones, who’s an environmental activist. So both non-fiction right now.
A Small Act is released in the UK on Friday 15th April by Dogwoof and the Co-operative. Read Matt Strachan's review here.