Henrik Georgsson's film shows Larsson understood threat of resurgent right long before others When Stieg Larsson died in 2004 he had yet to see his crime trilogy Millennium (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) appear in print. The posthumous publication of his work turned him into one of the world's best-selling authors, with sales exceeding 90 million copies. But the documentary Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played with Fire, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, establishes that crime writing was a mere sideline for Larsson. His real mission in life was to document the activities of neo-Nazis and right-wing nationalists in his native Sweden. His dedication to the work arguably killed him. "When he was 17 or 18, he saw some neo-Nazis on the street, in the city where he lived, and he was fascinated. Scared, in a way," director Henrik Georgsson tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "He didn't like them, but he was also fascinated by the phenomenon. 'How can you be a Nazi?' This was like 1970, and so it was not really an issue in Sweden with neo-Nazis and right-wing people, at that time." Georgsson continues, "He started to look into it and investigate it and research, trying to map out all those [right-wing] organizations. They weren't public. They didn't want anyone to know what they were doing, so. And it was old-school. [Larsson] had to go take pictures of them and try to find out abut them. 'So, okay, this guy knows this one, or they went to the same meeting,' and so on, so he could try to map it out...He actually became the expert in Sweden on these issues." Larsson's left-wing politics were influenced by his grandfather, who was largely responsible for raising him from the age of 1-8. "He was very much inspired, especially by his grandfather who was actually a Communist, and he hated Nazi ideology," Georgsson comments. "I guess that's where it came from, [Larsson's] almost obsession with the extreme right." He eventually went to work for the Swedish news agency TT, not as writer but a graphic designer. "He was trying to be a writing journalist. But they [management] didn't really believe in him," the director explains. "He had a boss who said once, 'No, he can't write.'" Larsson did write on the side, as the Swedish correspondent for Searchlight, a British magazine that covered racist, fascist and anti-Semitic activities in the U.K. Later he set up a foundation and a magazine devoted to tracking the far right in Sweden. "It was hard work, no money," Georgsson says. In the 1980s anti-immigrant sentiment grew in Sweden as the country started to become more multi-cultural, with newcomers arriving from Iran, other parts of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Yugoslavia, Georgsson says. In some cases, Swedish industry went in search of laborers abroad. "The company called Allgots, they had these airplanes, they flew down [to Yugoslavia], and they went around in the villages, and said, 'Do you want to work? Well, just get on the plane. Come to Sweden,'" Georgsson relates. 'We had a long tradition, actually, of immigration since the '50s." The documentary contains alarming archival footage of violent protests staged by right-wing nationalist groups, who preyed on fears of a loss of Swedish racial identity. "There is a quite strong Nordic resistance movement, they call themselves. And they are actually openly Nazis, right now. They march on the streets," Georgsson notes. "They can't do it with their Nazi symbols, but they create other symbols." The political power of the far right has grown in Sweden, as it has in other parts of Europe and, arguably, the U.S. A desire to ward off undesirable immigrants is the common theme. "It's connected to all these tendencies, all over the world--the nationalism, the authoritarianism...in countries like Poland, Hungary, and with Trump, and Brexit," Georgsson asserts. Larsson saw the warning signs. "This film is kind of relevant, in that way," the director observes, "that [Larsson] was seeing this a long time ago, where we were going." How did Larsson go from being a far right antagonist to a crime novelist? "He was very much interested in crime novels, but as a reader, actually," Georgsson reveals. "He was not a fiction writer. He was just doing that the last two or three years of his life, actually. He wrote those three books before he went to the publisher. He had an idea they would become successful. He was confident that would be his--what do you call it--retirement." The Millennium series may have been a form of entertainment, but the novels were not disconnected from his political viewpoints. "The books, they were kind of like an amusement to him. It was like a relaxing thing. It was more or less for fun," Georgsson believes. "But at the same time he put all the subjective content into them from what he was interested in [politically] and what he cared about. So, in a way the film is about the background of the books and the content of the books." Larsson's all-consuming efforts as an editor, publisher and part-time crime writer put him under immense strain.
"He died from his work, actually. Because he worked very hard. He didn't sleep very much," Georgsson comments. "He didn't take care of his health that good. He was not a drinker, but he was smoking many cigarettes, drinking a lot of black coffee, and just eating junk food, no exercise at all." Larsson died of a heart attack at 50, never to know how popular his books would become. His death deprived the world of a champion of humanist values and an indefatigable combatant in the struggle against retrograde ideology. "This film is kind of like a tragedy because his opponents, they are in the Parliament in Sweden now. Stieg's dead, so he lost that battle, in a way," notes Georgsson. "He could have done a lot of good things because he would have had this platform from his books. He would be interviewed all over the world and could speak about what he thought was important, really. And he would have had a lot of money to put into that [anti-right wing] magazine. I think he would probably have done that." Janice Engel directed Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins: "The whole idea of objectivity really rubbed her the wrong way" Oh, to have journalist Molly Ivins around in the Trump era. What she would have had to say about the orange-hued occupant of the White House. After all, it's Ivins who is credited with coming up with a withering moniker for one of Trump's predecessors, George W. Bush. She dubbed him "Shrub." On another occasion she wrote of the 43rd president, "George W. Bush is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America." Ivins (1944-2007) is fondly remembered in the documentary Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins, directed by Janice Engel, which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival. The film recounts Ivins' upbringing--she was born in Houston to a wealthy family and educated at elite schools, including a private, segregated high school. But she rebelled against the values of her social set and especially her conservative, autocratic father, manifesting that most boldly in her embrace of liberal politics and civil rights. An iconoclastic streak would never leave her as she moved up through the ranks of newspaper and magazine journalism, eventually becoming a much-treasured syndicated columnist and author. Nonfictionfilm.com editor Matt Carey spoke with Engel about her film and earning a coveted berth in the Sundance lineup. What was your reaction when you got the news that Sundance wanted your film? Janice Engel: It was unbelievable. In LA you get a lot of robocalls and solicitations, and so when the phone rang I was like, "Oh God, here's another one." The caller said, "Janice Engel?" I said, "Yeah, this is Janice, how can I help you?" And he said, this is Harry Vaughn from the Sundance Film Festival." I actually wrote down on a Post-it to my editor, "Sun... Sun... and I didn't even finish writing "Sundance." I ran into my dining room and put him on speaker and I said, "Holy fuck!" And then I said, "Oh my God, I'm sorry I said fuck!" And he said, "No, no, I love it!" [My editor Monique] and I jumped up and down like we had won "The Gong Show." My nearly 14-year-old golden retriever started howling and my nine-year-old border collie started barking. I think a little profanity is definitely in order when you get great news like that and when your film is about the colorful and uncensored Molly Ivins. Without question. It's certainly an apt title you came up with for your film. Thank you! Tell me about her journey raising hell in journalism--in Texas, Minneapolis, New York and elsewhere. JE: She started at the Houston Chronicle and then she went to the Minneapolis Tribune. She was a straightforward reporter, but the whole idea of objectivity really rubbed her the wrong way. It's not who she was. In her gut, she knew it wasn't her truth. When she got the offer to go to the Texas Observer, she called it the best graduate school of journalism--Ronnie Dugger's Texas Observer. It was 1970 and two women in their early 20's got to run it. That was a first. Then she jumped ship to the New York Times, but she came back to Texas after leaving the Times when the Dallas Times Herald told her, "Come back. You can write whatever you want, you can say whatever you want." To a journalist and to a writer, Molly said, it doesn't get much better than that. The Quotable Molly: Her experience at the New York Times forms a really interesting part of the film. She just did not fit the culture of the Times in that era, or certainly what editor Abe Rosenthal wanted the paper to sound like. JE: As I like to say, ya think? No, she didn't fit at all. Abe Rosenthal was another patriarchal authoritarian-type figure. That's what she bucked from the time she was a teenager growing up under the "General," her father, Jim Ivins. She dubbed him the General. The Quotable Molly: George W. Bush's presidency was an exceedingly frustrating time for people on the left, because it was very hard to get any traction against him during the post-9/11 patriotic fervor. I think liberals really treasured Molly, in part, because she never hesitated to point out his failings. JE: She really wanted to shine a light on what Bush did as governor [of Texas], and she very bravely did so. What Bush did as governor, he was gonna do to the rest of the country. She said Texas was the national laboratory for bad government. She really shined a light, a big light, in the first book, Shrub, and then she took it a step further with Lou Dubose. They wrote Bushwhacked together...She could be acerbic and her satire was just so sharp. But it was painless, because it made you laugh. She was empathetic to W. She said nobody would've wished a major foreign policy crisis [on a president] in their first year in office. And when she said that, I found it amazing because even though she disagreed with him--I mean, really disagreed with him, and she went after him--she had real empathy for him. That polarization that we find ourselves in now you don't see a lot of that [with her]. She had empathy for him. Texans are friendly, really super-friendly people. Molly knew George [Bush], she knew him. They came up at the same time in Houston...There was a friendliness [between them]. She said he was affable, you know? As she liked to say in her quaint Texas fashion, "affable out the ass." The Quotable Molly: One of the great tragedies of Molly's death is not having her here during the Trump presidency. JE: Oh, she'd be dining on him. Oh my God, it would be a feast! And Twitter, could you imagine Molly on Twitter? She would just tear it up. She was so brilliant. Did she ever write anything or express any thoughts about Trump--obviously this would have been well before he ran for president. It's funny, I looked. When I Googled certain things and I found columns, she wrote some things about Trump, but when he was just this kind of grandstanding New York real estate mogul. It was not specific to where he is now at all. You know, I didn't want Trump anywhere in my documentary, and he's not. It's implied. The Quotable Molly: At the Sundance opening day news conference it was noted that one of the themes of this year's festival, among documentaries, is the critical role of the press. There's the documentary Mike Wallace Is Here, for instance, as well as your film. Raise Hell can be seen as a defense of journalism and the importance of independent-minded thinking and reporting. Is that partly why you wanted to make it? JE: What made me want to do the film was Molly and who she is. This has taken me six-and-a-half years to make. As I got to know Molly and I got to know her friends and her family who let me in, journalism is a part of it. It's really about who she is. The themes for me are speaking truth to power and giving voice to those that don't have one. I can't bear unfairness and hierarchies and things like that. I've always bucked that stuff and I found in Molly a heroine who did the same thing. And used her words and, most importantly, her humor. That made me want to tell her story...I think now, hopefully the greater world will find out [more about her] and be entertained. Not just entertained, but also wake up, because Molly had a call to action and the fact is that it's "we the people." It's our responsibility. She said it. We're the deciders. Those people up in your state capitol, those people up in Washington, they're just the people we've hired to drive the bus for a while. It's our deal. It's our country. Let's take it back. I couldn't think of a time more perfect for this film to be put out there to the greater public than right now. People are hungry. They're hungry. The Quotable Molly: JE: To address your question about journalism, we are in a time of threats to the Fourth Estate. It's happened before. You know, Molly was a student of history. She knew it was cyclical. She was incredibly prescient, but the reason she was so prescient is because she was a student of history. She knew history repeats itself. She was so erudite and so smart and read so many books and she knew.
The threat to the Fourth Estate is a threat to our democracy. I feel like, in many ways, we're hanging on by a thread. But I do think, from this period, that we will come out stronger and better. I really do. Molly used to say, "I'm an optimist to the point of idiocy," and Matthew, so am I. Liza Mandelup's film reveals a world misunderstood by many adults, but of huge emotional power for millions of girls In the brilliantly-directed documentary Jawline, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Austyn Tester's mom says of her handsome son, "He's got that strive about him." What 16-year-old Austyn is striving for, simply put, is fame--but of a distinctly 21st century variety. He dreams of becoming a success in "live internet broadcasting," a subset of social media where cute boys engage with fangirls daily on YouNow and similar platforms. Stars in this online arena can attract hundreds of thousands of followers or more--a relationship that can be monetized through meet-and-greets where adoring girls pay to meet young heartthrobs. Yes, my looks help me in this industry but it's my message and my motivation that I want to use for my presence on the social media realm. For Austyn, success in this field could be his ticket out of Kingsport, Tennessee, a smallish town where he lives in very modest circumstances with his mom, brother Donovan, a sister and a bunch of cats. "What really motivated me to seek the public attention was just I acknowledged early on when I was new to social media the power of social media influencers," Tester told Nonfictionfilm.com at Sundance. "The things they do on social media the younger audience is like, 'Whoa, I want to do that.' They start making decisions because these people they look up to, you're influencing them." The above statement might sound frightening to some parents--the idea that their impressionable daughter could be influenced by someone whom their teen doesn't really know. But Austyn and many of the other live broadcasting stars in the film appear to be using their influence for good. "When I was aware of this power you had, I was like, 'Wow. I'd love to be able to have this power but use it in a positive way. Change people's lives," Tester says. "Also being hype on the social media realm you make good money so that you can invest that in good things. For me, I'd love to have a lot of money one day invested in my small town but also, most importantly, I just want to inspire people and motivate them to do what they seek to do." I think girls at that age fantasize about someone just being nice to them, really, and paying attention to them. Mandelup filmed many meet-and-greets--some of them small get-togethers in malls, others on a much grander scale, where Tester and fellow stars like Jovani and Julian Jara--twins with a huge social media following--dispensed hugs to trembling girls. It melted my heart to see, but maybe I'm a softy. "I think a lot of the girls that are watching people like Austyn, they're escapist. And they're trying to get out of their situation, whatever their situation is, whether it's family problems, they're being bullied at school, whether they have self-esteem issues," Mandelup observes. "I think they're looking for a way to feel more comfortable and confident in themselves and what girls want at that age is validation. And I think that the way that Austyn treats them, he kind of just in the simplest of ways just tells them, 'You look pretty.' And 'I hope you had a good day.' And, 'How was your day?' I think girls at that age fantasize about someone just being nice to them, really, and paying attention to them." Tester comes off as utterly guileless and sincere. Some viewers might dismiss him, mistaking his Tennessee lilt and humble background for a lack of discernment. But I found him to possess surprising wisdom in such a young person (he's now 18). I asked him how he had managed to remain positive when some of his early experiences were quite difficult--physical abuse from his father (according to his mom) and hunger. "I'm always positive because why do I got to look at a struggle as a bad thing? I've grown so much throughout the film, too," he responded. "I started learning from famous, positive leaders who have motivational things that I look up to, like the Dalai Lama. It teaches you to just look at your struggles as lessons. I'm in control of my emotions so why would I want to be upset about my struggles? They're just lessons. Just use them to help me and stay positive." Another fascinating character in the film is Michael Weist, around age 20 at the time of filming, who possesses a wisdom of a different sort--in the area of business. He has already built an empire developing social media stars like Mikey Barone (more than half a million followers on Instagram) and Bryce Hall (1.5 million followers on Instagram). He "gets" that world at an intuitive level well beyond the grasp of most people who didn't grow up with it. "It can be kind of overwhelming for people to understand what social media is, more than just like Facebook posts or a tweet," he notes. "It can be much more difficult to understand the ecosystem that is the entire community of social media--people having conversations with their best friend online who they've never met but then they're going to come to an event, a meet--and-greet, and meet them for the first time and it's going to change their life forever. It's kind of hard for people to grasp but when they do it's kind of an amazing thing." Weist is openly gay (commenting at one point that he is "way too homosexual to be eating pizza out of a box"), an interesting counterpoint to Austyn who says he is perceived as gay by classmates because of his live broadcasting endeavors. Tester's somewhat androgynous appearance, like that of the Jara twins, seems significant to their appeal to teen girls (and no doubt to some gay male fans). Austyn accepts that people view him as handsome, but in a curiously matter of fact way--like it's a random twist of fate that does not entitle him to feel superior. "I remember I asked what do girls like about boys these days and [someone] definitely said jawline," he recalls. "I didn't even know what a jawline was at first. My best friend told me, 'Girls like it when a guy has a good jawline.' I was like, 'Really?' He was, 'Yeah.' I was like, 'I got one?' He said, 'You got a pretty good jawline.'" That's one physical attribute these stars of a new facet of mass communication have in common.
"I think the entry into this world for these boys," says Mandelup, "starts with a beautiful chiseled jawline." Her film is an acquisition title at Sundance. Negotiations are ongoing with potential distributors. "We're just hoping a lot of people get to see this film because that's the point. And we also hope that people that are of all ages, all generations, everybody can appreciate the film because it's a human story about Austyn's struggle and the age-old tale of wanting to get out of your town as a teenager, having big dreams," Mandelup comments. "I think those are all things that I related to when we were making the film so I think it's a universal message in that way."
The director of the Institute's Documentary Film Program also talks the value of "press inclusion" with Nonfictionfilm.com
I owe a lot to Tabitha Jackson, the Sundance Institute's Director of Documentary Film. My cell phone, for one thing (*more on that below). More importantly, I am indebted to her for sharing insights with me on a number of topics, including this year's slate of documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival, and her observations on the Oscar nominations announcement, which saw a majority of documentary feature nods go to films that premiered at Sundance last year.
We also discussed a new initiative this year at Sundance, where the festival partnered with the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Netflix and other entities to offer stipends to a diverse array of journalists, helping to defray their travel costs to cover Sundance 2019. (As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I am very fortunate to have been granted one of the stipends). Our conversation has been edited for time. Of the five Oscar-nominated documentary features this year, three held their world premieres at Sundance last year (Of Fathers and Sons made its North American premiere at Sundance). That's quite an accomplishment. Tabitha Jackson: In addition to four of the films premiering at the festival, three of the films were supported by the documentary film program [at the Sundance Institute] which is to say that when they're in the middle and at the beginning of their creative process, when one doesn't know what they're going to be but one sees a bold vision from filmmakers, that that is also gratifying. The thing that I was particularly pleased to see was people like RaMell Ross with Hale County -- it's his first feature documentary and it is not using conventional narratives. His ambition is to really see the way the black body is represented on screen and in cinema. He's intentionally trying to upend that through this film and that is not a film that you would necessarily expect to end up on the Oscar [nomination] list.
TJ: And the same with Bing [Liu], with Minding the Gap, a first time feature doc -- both him and RaMell exemplify communities that perhaps previously had not had access to the resources and to this ecosystem of filmmaking but are now not only changing the language of what we see but are being recognized by places like the Academy. What that means is that then people engaged in this kind of cinematic culture are having to talk about it and having to watch these films because they're [nominated] and there's a kind of visibility that we hope will embolden other filmmakers to pursue their visions and take risks and don't feel that you have to make a particular kind of film if you're going to be recognized by the Academy.
There are no white male directors on that [Oscar nomination] list. It's notable.
TJ: The new kind of cinematic language that are being expressed in this [nomination] list -- the fact that it's international, the fact that it includes first-time filmmakers, the fact that -- and this is not a victory in itself -- but there are no white male directors on that list. It's notable. The question one then asks is this a blip or is there a reason why this has happened this year. And I think one answer might be with the Academy intentionally opening up the people who are voting members to be more representative of the population at large, and certainly of the filmmaking population, means you're going to get a different kind of film recognized and anointed and projected forward. And if that is the reason why that happened this year I'm extremely excited to see what's going to come next.
TJ: One of my disappointments [is that] documentaries are eligible to be nominated for Best Picture but you never see them on there. There are titles that clearly through their box office performance showed that audiences are appreciative, hungry for this kind of work and there's no reason why we shouldn't be considering films like this up against the other ones that are vying for Best Picture. So there's still something in the psyche that says there are movies and then there are documentaries. I think that what the summer showed us is that actually a ticket-buying public is not necessarily making that distinction, so the Institute needs to be a better job of breaking down those barriers.
What observations would you make about this year's slate of documentary films at the Sundance Film Festival? TJ: In terms of themes, I'm struck by work dealing with democracy, threats to democracy, the rise of the right and journalism. The festival is not just about which films are going to sell the most tickets at the box office. It's like which ones are going to inform and change our culture and help us to a different understanding of the world in which we live. There is one I would mention -- Always in Season, a documentary directed by Jackie Olive. I mention this because it reminds both of Bing's film Minding the Gap and RaMell's to a certain extent. Jackie is somebody who spent 10 years making this film about lynching in the United States, from both a historical and a present-day perspective. And these are films with subject matter that people don't necessarily want to confront and so the job of the filmmaker or the artist is -- through the use of creativity and art -- to allow people to look at this and see it anew. And I just think it's such a powerful film and without festivals like Sundance to kind of catapult them into the culture with a propulsive force that a festival like this can have, films like this and filmmakers like this probably wouldn't find the support that they needed.
This is the first year for the Press Inclusion Initiative, a major undertaking to support diverse journalists at Sundance.
TJ: We're trying to ensure there is a representative critics corps who are writing about these films as they meet the world for the first time. We've greatly expanded our credentialing to ensure that the people who are going to write about this work when it first lands and situate it in the culture have enough of a variety of perspectives that there's a chance that one of them might "get it" (laughs). That's not a very elegant way of putting it. But it really matters. I suppose what I'm saying is it really matters who your first audience is, especially when they're translating that into a broader culture. And it makes a difference between what is bought and what is distributed and what is seen and therefore what lasts. And so it couldn't be more important. Write about the little films, too. It's so important to us not just what happens on the mountain but what gets off the mountain and that [question] of who chooses to cover it, talk about it, write about it, it's all part of this ecosystem. So much of it is about this curation and people can do that as individuals now and not just as big media organizations.
*Editor's note: re that reference to Tabitha Jackson and my cell phone, I dropped my phone near The Canyons while sprinting to catch a shuttle to see RaMell Ross at the premiere of his short doc Easter Snap. When I realized the phone was missing, I thought "that's the end of that" (well, perhaps a few expletives were uttered as well).
But a kind person discovered the phone in the snow. It was still on and in an attempt to identify the owner he cleverly called the most recent numbers in the phone log. Eventually he reached Tabitha Jackson, because Tabitha and I had spoken by phone for the interview transcribed above. Long story short, poor Tabitha was then pressed into service to reunite me with my phone, a mission she and others with the Sundance press office successfully accomplished, for which I am very grateful!
Sundance: Matt Tyrnauer's documentary 'Where's My Roy Cohn?' sells to Sony Pictures Classics1/28/2019 Film explores Cohn's nefarious influence on American politics, from abetting Sen. Joe McCarthy's Communist witch hunt to mentoring Donald Trump Sony Pictures Classics has scooped up rights to Matt Tyrnauer's incisive documentary Where's My Roy Cohn? just days after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The SPC deal covers North America, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Australia, Asia and Latin America, among other territories, and includes rights to air the film on airlines and cruise ships. It ensures a wide audience will get to see the film, which makes a compelling case for Roy Cohn as a corrupt and unscrupulous manipulator who sullied American politics by exploiting the basest fears of the electorate. "As a filmmaker I have always had the greatest admiration for Sony Pictures Classics, and their extraordinary taste and curatorial eye," Tyrnauer said in a statement. "They have been behind many of the films I admire most. I can’t think of a better company to bring this film and its message to theatrical audiences across the nation and beyond." Among those who benefitted from Cohn's mastery of the dark political arts were presidents Nixon and Reagan, Sen. Joe McCarthy, real estate magnate Fred Trump and his son Donald. He also tutored Roger Stone, who served as an informal adviser to Donald Trump during his presidential campaign. Tyrnauer noted that his film premiered on the same day Stone was charged with obstruction of justice, making false statements and witness tampering. Stone's indictment stems from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between Trump's campaign and administration with Russia. Tyrnauer's film suggests Donald Trump learned important lessons from Cohn, including to never admit wrongdoing and always attack instead of defend. The title of the film refers to a line Trump is reported to have said in frustration over his inability to use the Justice Department to serve his personal and political ends.
In his statement Tyrnauer noted, "The Sundance reception for ‘Where’s My Roy Cohn?’ has been overwhelming, affirming in the extreme." |
AuthorMatthew Carey is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. His work has appeared on Deadline.com, CNN, CNN.com, TheWrap.com, NBCNews.com and in Documentary magazine. |