The first step is to be convinced. To become convinced that there’s value and importance in a documentary’s work. To understand that this type of work, these films work. This type of work is very hard to do in film school. I don’t think it’s going to be possible. There are also a lot of variables that need to be addressed while taking a class in film school. You really need to look at how these films came to be made. This is just a sample of some of the things that need to be considered and how they worked. The problem is that you really can’t look at a group of films and say, “Oh, this is the best film the class made. It’s the most interesting film the class made to date.” You have to really examine a group that you’re watching. If you don’t have that information from a group of films that you’re watching, you’re going to make mistakes in your analysis. In the case of The Hunting Ground, we didn’t have that knowledge and didn’t look into that group of films thoroughly, so as an instructor, I had some kind of bias or assumption about just where the movie was going. The biggest error that I made was that I didn’t get back to this group of films at the very end of the class. I did not follow up and talk to them, and then I actually tried to teach a class for a student who was interested in the film.
Your first film school class was at UCLA. It just happens to be the school that’s being sued now. How did that affect you?
Well, the whole thing actually sort of put a damper on things. It would just take so long to show the movies at a decent pace. I had to get my students in front of a lot of films. I was really disappointed, because I thought we were gonna have a really big, high-quality group of films. It just felt like I never reached them, at least initially, so when I had to leave, I was bummed, but overall, I kind of felt like I learned, as an instructor, a lot about film. But that wasn’t really really the purpose of the class. I wanted to kind of get into film for what it was and what it was for. I started out in order to do this class after I graduated, but I didn’t know how big it would be.
How did you get involved in this lawsuit?
It was one thing.
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