Mosh pits and monks, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Such are the contradictions that converge in the award-winning documentary, Free Tibet, by director Sarah Pirozek of bicoastal OneSuch Films. The film centers on the first Tibetan Freedom Concert, the largest benefit show since Live Aid. Held in the summer of ’96 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the two-day event drew 100,000 people-the bulk of them MTV’s target audience-who showed up to watch performances by the Beastie Boys, the Smashing Pumpkins, A Tribe Called Quest, Beck, Bjork, the Foo Fighters and the Fugees, among others. The concert was organized by the Milarepa Fund, a grassroots foundation dedicated to spreading universal compassion and nonviolence.
Pirozek’s film, however, which was named Best of Fest at the 1998 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and distributed nationally by The Shooting Gallery, ventures beyond the music and the crowd, alternating concert footage with socio-political commentary about the Tibetan people. Free Tibet also demonstrates the slow process by which awareness spreads, as evidenced by the many concert-goers who weren’t familiar with the Tibetan cause they had ostensibly come to support. In another example, a Milarepa volunteer is on the phone saying, "No, not the Tahitian Freedom Concert." The film also features archival footage and moving interviews with Buddhist dissidents who have been tortured, beaten and raped by Chinese persecutors. One Tibetan monk, who was imprisoned for 33 years, tells of being forced to eat a Chinese guard’s vomit and excrement in order to survive.
Pirozek first got involved with the project when Beastie Boy and Tibetan activist Adam Yauch asked her to direct a PSA promoting the concert. Then, when Yauch got the idea to produce a short educational film documenting the show, he again approached Pirozek.
The New York-based director flew out to San Francisco five days before the concert to shoot preliminary footage of the preparations and the blessing of the concert grounds. Soon, what began as a short film grew to 90 minutes. "I started filming things," Pirozek said, "like the nuns who arrived from Tibet and had never left their country before, which for all intents and purposes is like a medieval existence. We took them to the sci-
ence museum and they totally dug it. It was so interesting, so I immediately called [Milarepa president] Erin Potts and said, ‘You know, we should make this a film.’ " They did just that with the help of exec. producers Yauch and Jay Faires (the founder of Mammoth Records) and select footage contributed by several spot/music videomakers who donated their time-directors Roman Coppola of The Directors Bureau, Hollywood, Spike Jonze of bicoastal/international Satellite and Evan Bernard of bicoastal X-Ray Productions, and DP Lance Accord who’s repped by L.A.-based Dattner and Associates.
In all, Pirozek spent a year on the project. After shooting the concert, she returned to New York and began researching, interviewing, working out a story-arc, and, in her words, "filling in holes." "The real beauty of it," she said, "was that I knew nothing about Tibet. So I was learning as I went along, asking all these dumb questions like, ‘Where is Tibet?’ "
Providing the answers were, among others, Robert Thurman, professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University (and Uma’s dad), Pema, a Tibetan monk in New York who fled his country as a boy and now holds prayer meetings, and Dechen Wangdu, a 20-year-old Tibetan refugee and student activist. "It was interesting but difficult because this film is for the MTV market and they’re not going to get the metaphysics [behind the theory of a nonviolent struggle]," Pirozek said. "I wanted someone who would bridge the world between Tibet and America. Dechen is Tibetan born, raised in America and a very beautiful spirit … she was a good choice because she’s very American but also very emotionally articulate about the plight of her country."
Another challenge for the director was sifting through and cutting down 350 hours in archival footage. "It was magical digging up all that old footage," she said, but "cutting it all, that took forever."
What she enjoyed most about the project was getting "a heavy dose" of Buddhism. "It’s so benign compared to other religions and it made sense to me," she said. "Their whole worldview is that things happen for a reason and there’s a cycle of karma that affects everything. Buddha doesn’t say that you should live this way, and in our Judeo-Christian world we’re always hearing things like that. Buddha says there is a good way to do things and if it works for you, you should use it."
Descended from a long line of painters on her mother’s side, Pirozek felt compelled to study painting at the Chelsea College of Art in London. But, while she enjoyed it, she realized it wasn’t the career for her and at the age of 18 she dropped out. "I felt disconnected from people," she said, "so I went and did things like join a band."
In a roundabout way, the band led her to directing. She’d started filming demos for a friend’s band when it dawned on her to try film school. After graduating from London’s St. Martins School of Art in ’86, she came to New York and was accepted into the Whitney Museum’s independent study program. On the side she got a PA job on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. "It was weird because I was doing this fine arts thing and also working in the commercial world," she said. "I didn’t think I was going to stay but then it all seemed to make sense. Then I started figuring out how to make money." She did some promos for MTV before meeting Robert Valentine, who at the time was Bloomingdales’ creative director. Valentine hired Pirozek to shoot several in-store fashion films for featured designers. "It was a great learning process," Pirozek said, "because I really had no idea how to make a film and deal with people in front of a camera. And they were things to start a reel up."
That reel led to some music video work. "A lot of it was one-hit wonders," Pirozek said, but she has directed music videos for Queen Latifah and Shaquille O’Neal. Then, in ’94, she and a friend, Elizabeth Spinzia, formed New York-based Dame Work. At the time, Pirozek wanted to break into commercials and Spinzia was between posts after leaving bicoastal Johns+Gorman Films (now JGF, Hollywood), where she was head of production. Within a year Dame Work landed its first $1 million job. (When Pirozek was busy with Free Tibet, Spinzia left the company to take a production job at bicoastal HSI; she has since moved on from HSI.)
A year ago Pirozek joined OneSuch because, she said, "I didn’t want to deal with the day-to-day of running a company … If you have a bad day that’s fine. But if you have a bad day and your company depends on it, it’s not so good." She does, however, maintain Dame Work for her own independent projects.
One of them, The Coffee and Cream Club, is a documentary she has been working on for several years. While she said it’s 80 percent shot, she is still struggling with funding. The film, according to the director, explores the concept of race and how it plays out in America through the guise of interracial relationships.
On the commercial front, Pirozek recently helmed two Jergens spots, "Mask" and "Dome," via L.A.-based Suissa Miller, and she directed an assignment for Lexmark printers out of Grey Advertising, New York. Currently, she is in pre-production on a music video for a new artist called Olu on G Street Records. "It’s interesting," Pirozek said, "because he’s born and bred in Harlem but he’s a Buddhist, so he was interested in the Free Tibet thing, which is how I ended up doing [the music video]."
