Director Rod Lamborn has signed with Rubicon Pictures, New York.
Lamborn has no spots to his credit, but he has shot several documentaries for director Dodge Billingsley of Combat Films, New York, including Immortal Fortress, about the Chechnya rebellion in the North Caucasus.
An Idaho native, Lamborn moved to New York in ’97, after graduating from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in film. Lamborn supported himself by serving as a production assistant on such features as John Turturro’s Illuminata, until he met Billingsley in mid ’97. Billingsley was heading off to Chechnya to make a film about the rebellion and needed a DP. As Lamborn explained, "His usual shooters didn’t want to go out there because it was too dangerous." But Lamborn was game, so in November ’97 they traveled to Triblisi in the Republic of Georgia—and spent most of the next six weeks trying to enter Chechnya.
Their adventure was reminiscent of a James Bond film: "We were only in Chechnya for nine days, trying to meet up with Chechen operatives," Lamborn recalled. Local Mafioso smuggled them in and provided round-the-clock bodyguards, because "the Russian government wasn’t allowing any Westerners through the checkpoint." Billingsley and Lamborn were billeted at the homes of Mafioso and twice avoided abduction. In Vladikavkaz in the Republic of Ossetia (a member state of the Russian Federation, near Chechnya), Lamborn and Billingsley were detained by Russian police officers who suspected the pair of being journalists. Luckily, "The Chechens made bribes and got us out of there," related Lamborn.
Fortunately, their footage also escaped unscathed: "We had been meeting and interviewing some of the prime people involved in the rebellion, the men that really ran the entire thing," said Lamborn. "So when we were stopped, we grabbed the most important tapes and hid them in our socks and coat pockets." The filmmakers’ connections with the underworld served them well. "The only reason why we were able to do it was because we went in with the Chechens. Once we got to FSB [the Russian government’s Federal Security Service] headquarters, the Chechens who were escorting us made calls to some of the local Mafia guys, and they came in and starting dealing with the Russians. I think under normal circumstances, our stuff would have been taken away and we probably would have been imprisoned."
The hour-long documentary Immortal Fortress has aired on several PBS stations.
Lamborn has since traveled with Billingsley to China, where he shot Helen Foster Snow: Witness to Revolution and Yan’an: Birthplace of Communist Art, both for a Salt Lake City-Provo PBS station. Lamborn has also shot in Azerbaijan (near Turkey) and the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan.
In ’98 and ’99, Lamborn and Billingsley filmed weapons trade shows in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates for an as-yet-untitled documentary. Lamborn laughed, "It’s like a legitimate convention, except they have missiles on one side of the room, and on the other side they have the countermeasures and bullets." When he wasn’t filming rebellions or weapons conventions, Lamborn freelanced, shooting Miracle Boy and Nyquist, about BMX cyclists Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist, for director Steve Olpin of Solpin Pictures in Provo.
