Read an interview with Julian Pinder, director of Land, which screens May 9

"The production was basically finished by the time any financing came in. It was me dragging a few hundered pounds of equipment through 50c weather, in places with no electricity in the jungle. I did lighting, sound, camera, everything. It was a bit of a physical nightmare" - Julian Pinder, director, Land.

The world premiere of Land, Julian Pinder's directorial debut, took place at Hot Docs on May 2nd. Land screens again on May 9th at 2 pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre. Tickets are still available at www.hotdocs.ca/film/title/land. Land follows the conficting experiences between villagers in a coastal Nicaraguan village and a number of expatriates trying to develp American-style resorts in the regulatory relaxed country. DOCspace spoke with Julian Pinder two weeks ago in Toronto about Land and his earlier projects.

DOCspace: You're twenty eight years old. Give me some background on your filmmaking career.

Julian Pinder: I’ve been working in documentary for a while. This is my first feature doc that I’ve produced and directed. I assisted Nick de Pencier and Jennifer Baichwal [Act of God, Manufactured Landscapes] for a couple of years while I was in highschool. I produced some television and I went to school for film. Before that I used to do some experimental short docs but nothing of any note.

Where did you go to film schools?

I went to Queens, I did a double major in film and politics. I ended up leaving in my third year, I never finished the program. I was trying to make films and classes were keeping me from making films. Eventually I went to one of the professors. I had a great story about someone I knew in Paris who had been exiled during the war in Kosovo. I really wanted to go and just shoot a film for a month about this kid hitchhiking back to Kosovo after the war. I told the faculty I just wanted to take a couple weeks off to film this but the answer was always no. So I finally said, screw it, I’ll just go ahead and do it. I was in Bosnia and Kosovo during the wars. I was trying to teach myself. I think all that background in commercial and experimental work is what led me here now to make Land.

What was it like filming there at that time?

I ended up staying in Europe for five months. We hitchhiked with a camera and I stayed in Kosovo. It was such a weird, interesting, sad and human place to be at that time. It was the most interesting time to be anywhere. This was in the early 2000s. The war ended in late 1999 so this was right after the war, there was still a  lot of violence and issues left unresolved. There’s also something that really came alive there after the war. People had a real connection for life and a real joy of what was around them despite all the pain. When people come out of a situation like that you tend to appreciate what you have a lot more. 

Did the documentary air on television or screen in theatres?

Nothing came out of it. It was a really naïve project. I was young and in film school and unfortunately they don’t teach you how to finance a film or what to do with it. They teach you how to make them which doesn’t make too much sense anyway since everyone has a different perspective on that.

You still have the footage though?

I have the footage and I put something together that I think is quite nice but I unfortunately I didn’t have the financing for it. I was nineteen, young and naïve and so after a couple of years I put it aside. I learned a hell of a lot, both of myself and of filmmaking.

At what point did you start working with Nick de Pencier and Jennifer Baichwal?

I was in my late teens, so this was a little bit before film school and in the summers I worked with them when I was in film school. I was an assistant to both Jennifer and Nick. They’re fantastic people and great filmmakers. They were very inspirational and it was great to be in that atmosphere around people who are making films with a real passion.

So starting at quite a young age, did you grew up in a sense always knowing that you wanted to be a filmmaker? 

I had a lot of interests but I could never see myself doing anything besides making films.

Did you grow up in Toronto?

I grew up outside of Hamilton and I lived in a number of different places. I lived in Jamaica, in a small village when I was very young and then in France for a couple of years but my main home has been just outside of Hamilton. My parents were bohemian kind of people, they owned a bicycle shop outside of Hamilton, and then did some fishing and lived with some local people in Jamaica. We lived there for most of the year for a good part of the first seven years of my life. They loved the lifestyle, it was very laid back. Later on in life I went to France to go to high school.

So when did your connection to Nicaragua start to form?

I started going to Nicaragua in around 2002. My brother and I ended up buying a piece of farmland in a village near the coast of Nicaragua.  We loved the place so much and felt a real connection to it, we had a lot of Nicaraguan friends and it was quite beautiful. We had a strong connection to the history too.  I’ve always been fascinated by the history of Nicaragua. It’s always been the focal point of international attention for a number of different reason for centuries, which is fascinating because it’s just a tiny little speck of an impoverished country. Not to be derogatory, but normally if that’s what you are you don’t get a lot of international attention. But Nicaragua has always been at the forefront of a number of campaigns and government initiatives.

So I went down around 2002 and purchased a little piece of property with nothing on it with the intention of farming or to just build a little shack. Around that time a bunch of American and Canadian and European developers began invading the coast – invading is a term a lot of people used. They came down, some with more money than others, and saw a place that was very cheap and beautiful and easy too. The regulations were lax, there was really no enforcement of laws, and that goes for anything from child prostitution to environmental regulations. It was really sad to see the exploitation going on, how these people took advantage of a situation like that. It was a little bit disgraceful to be one of them, to be seen as a generic kind of white guy. And also it was a shame too because the place was a real wild west, and to see people take advantage of that was difficult.

I loved Nicaragua because it was such a frontier country, it was like a wild west movie. But over time the lawlessness became a bit more dangerous, between the Nicaraguans and the foreigners. I realized that there was an extremely interesting dynamic between the two forces at play here, and that whether or not I could come to terms with the dynamic, I knew there could be a great film. That’s when I picked up the camera and began to shoot the film we now have.

When did you last go back?

The last shoot was at the end of 2008. I was there in 2002 researching and finding characters and figuring out what the story was for a year on and off. I started shooting in 2004 or 2005 so it was a good four year shoot.

Did you have any financing?

The production was basically finished by the time any financing came in. It was me dragging a few hundered pounds of equipment through 50c weather, in places with no electricity in the jungle. I did lighting, sound, camera, everything. It was a bit of a physical nightmare. Thankfully the NFB did come in with a bit of development funding half way through the shoot, enough to pay for a couple of plane tickets. And thankfully my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, who is Argentinean, came down quite a number of time to help with some of the more complicated political interviews and to do some translation. So she was a huge help. But in terms of crew, usually it was just me and sometimes her in a broken down Jeep, driving around.

What did you film on?

We shot on a HDV, on a pro-HD camera. That’s really where I put most of the money in to so that at least the film could look really good. From the beginning I envisioned the film as really being a cinematic, theatrical film more than a handheld, broadcast film. I aimed for the more cinematic look. I’ll be the first to admit that this film is not perfectly shot by any stretch of the imagination but we wanted to give it the larger than life, dynamic, cinematic feel.

How did you find filming in such a tiny village? Did you become part of the community?

We know everyone there, it’s a tiny place, divided at times, but close physically. It’s the kind of place where everyone knowa everyone. That’s why it was kind of hard to get the story as well at times because everyone was so close and it was unclear exactly what was going on, who was correct and who wasn’t, and who was stretching the truth and who wasn’t. But in the end I wasn’t concerned about that, I was more concerned about why they would be doing that, what their motives were. To me, in the end, the film was more about people’s dreams and aspirations on a grand scale. To me the film is no longer about the transaction of land or territory in Nicaragua but about people’s dreams, about what they define as paradise and about how far they are willing to go to attain that.

I found it interesting to watch the cycle of power and corruption shift back and forth in Land.

I find a lot of humour in the story, about the human tragedy of this never ending cycle of power and corruption. I take issue, not on a large scale but personally when I see a lot of documentaries that pigeon hole the concept of what’s right and what’s wrong, particularly social issues when it comes to the ‘poor local kid’ or poor whatever. I think that the human joy and tragedy are so complex that I don’t think anyone can put a finger on what’s right or wrong. There’s always a black and a white and a grey to any situation. And what we really tried to put across in the story is that no matter what you think in the beginning or who you think is right or wrong in the beginning of the film, in the end you realize that we’re always human beings and we’re all deeply flawed no matter where we come from or who we are.

Definitely. I also wanted to ask you about the soundtrack which has a very strong presence in this doc. Tell me about the music.

Some of the broadcasters felt the music was way too much for a quote unquote, documentary. I totally agree with them, but I wanted to do that. This story kind of plays out to me like a bullshit musical. I feel like it’s like an ironic, human story. I know a lot of documentary filmmakers have a very principled approach, they think 'this is reality and we shouldn’t have music here or here'. There are different techniques. I thought in the end that if I’m going to go overboard with the entertainment or in-your-faceness of this film, and to get people shocked or jarred and to think a little bit about the subtext and what the story is, then what the hell, I may as well go for it. I don’t think the music ever takes over the film. I think in the end that the music works with story. I go through life with music in my head and so I thought I may as well give my whole perspective. This film to me is a tango. That’s why I use so much tango music in the film. When I was driving the broken down truck through the Nicaraugan countryside I had tango music blaring. It’s that dance, that passionate dance of humanity. Even the composer tried to work with that by creating an impassioned waltz and tango.

What’s the feedback been so far to Land?

People don’t want that kind of paradise image sullied. There’s really been some controversy.

I read online that Land was short listed for Cannes?

I just found out last week that Land was kyboshed. It’s unfortunate but we’re extremely happy just to be short listed. Cannes usually accepts just one doc a year.

Will Land be screened elsewhere besides Hot Docs?

I don’t know yet as we’re just starting the festival circuit. Hot Docs accepted us based on a rough cut. We just finished the mix two weeks ago. We’re just starting to send it to festivals. Hopefully we’ll be at some nice festivals. It’s nice to start it off at Hot Docs, it’s a great festival. And Robin at KinoSmith picked up Land so it will be released in Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal in the early summer. Robin has done great things for documentary film in the last few year, he’s been an absolute savior. 

You also had the amazing Elizabeth Klinck on board, working on sourcing archive footage.

She’s been great. As has Noel Baker, who wrote Hard Core Logo. He has also been great to have on board. The editor Alex Shuper is a great editor and a great guy and the producer Paul Scherzer is great as well. We just had a great team on board.

When does it air on TVO?

TVO commissioned it, so it will air in the early fall I believe.

What’s your next project?

We got some development financing from Hot Docs CanWest again for a film we want to start filming soon about the EnCana sour gas pipeline bombing. That will hopefully be a small town story about a small town detective looking for the perpetrator and figuring out whether it’s a terrorist or more of a savior figure. The community is divided with people pointing the finger at one another. There are interesting groups involved and everyone has a motive so hopefully we’ll do a little whodunit type doc based on that. And it’s based right here in Canada.

What docs are you looking forward to seeing at Hot Docs?

The Mirror and obviously Gasland as well as films in the Ripping Reality spectrum, which is showing documentaries like Darwin’s Nightmare and American Movie, both phenomenal films.

To find out more about Land and to see a trailer visitt www.sixisland.com.

Photo: Land, courtesy Julian Pinder, Canada, 2009.