The first time Ross Kauffman had a film of his selected for the Sundance Festival–Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids, which he and Zana Briski wrote, directed and shot–it won the Audience Award and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in 2004. Born Into Brothels went on to earn a Best Feature Documentary Oscar and a DGA Award nomination, among assorted other honors.
Fast forward to today and another documentary co-directed by Kauffman (with Katy Chevigny), titled E-Team, has again made the final cut at Sundance, set for this month's U.S. Documentary competition.
E-Team, which is short for the Human Rights Watch’s Emergencies Team, introduces us to human rights workers hired to document war crimes and report them to the rest of the world. The film centers not only on the high-stakes investigative work of four E-Team members–Peter Bouckaert, Fred Abrahams, Anne Neistat and Ole Solvang–but also their personal lives. “We see them on the front lines and at home,” said Kauffman. “We see the world through their eyes. I’m not an activist by any stretch but I care about issues. And I’m a big proponent of films that touch people, get people involved. Hopefully viewers will come away emotionally moved by these human rights workers’ stories and perspectives.”
Kauffman noted that the inclusion of E-Team into the Sundance competition means a great deal to him. “Sundance is an incredibly important place to showcase a documentary. And Sundance has been integral to my documentary career,” said Kauffman. Born Into Brothels received a grant from the Sundance Documentary Fund which enabled us to finish the film. So Sundance literally helped launch me in the documentary world.”
In between Born Into Brothels and E-Team–his two major credits in feature documentary directing–Kauffman has been writing, producing, developing, consulting on and writing varied projects. For example, he executive produced In a Dream, shortlisted for the 2009 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. He has also directed short films and commercials in recent years. On the latter front, Kauffman has helmed spots for GE. And his short film directorial endeavors include Fire with Fire, part of a series of films in the GE-commissioned Focus Forward initiative, Fire with Fire was a documentary short about a girl who goes through a trial treatment for leukemia at Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Carl June heads the Penn team of researchers and scientists. The youngster’s cancer is now in remission.
Kauffman would like to take on more short-form work and commercials to complement his longer-form exploits. Last year he landed at production house Mugsy which handles him as a director for commercials and branded content.
Informed opinion
Kauffman noted that his commercial and short filmmaking experience has informed his work in feature-length documentaries. “Everything informs everything else. Short-form projects in particular inform my abilities as a documentary feature director in terms of efficiency–how to tell a story in the most efficient and effective way. That’s inherently a must in commercials in which you have to convey a story in 30 or 15 seconds. Sometimes you only have five seconds to tell the most effective story in the most efficient manner. I carry that over into the documentary feature world and hopefully someday when I’m directing feature narrative scripts.”
Kauffman and Chevigny have known each other for a long time, dating back to when he started out as a documentary film editor and she as a producer. Some six years ago, the two began directing several shorter-form projects as a team and, said Kauffman, they naturally came together on E-Team.
A partner at Big Mouth Productions, Chevigny directed Election Day, which premiered at SXSW in 2007 and was broadcast on P.O.V. in 2008. Chevigny co-directed the Emmy Award–nominated film Deadline, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on NBC to an audience of more than 6 million people.
Kauffman noted that the Sundance experience is invaluable. “Having your film screened in front of an audience is something we don’t often get to do these days,” he observed. “A lot of documentaries are seen through the Internet. The opportunity to screen in front of a live audience is a rare pleasure and it’s important because it informs you as to how your film is being received by an audience.”
From a business standpoint, Kauffman’s experience at Sundance this time around will be different from the one on Born Into Brothels back in 2004. “For Born Into Brothels, we had a broadcaster on board before we went to Sundance,” recalled Kauffman. “By contrast, E-Team goes into Sundance with distribution outlets wide open.” Plans call for the festival exposure to help drive deals for E-Team on the theatrical, TV and other media fronts.
