Alma Har’el is a commercial and music video director whose first feature film, the documentary “Bombay Beach”, was named Best Documentary at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

The film focuses on the impoverished but cinematic Southern Californian outpost of the same name, with Har’el giving it some context by aiming her camera, vérité-style, at a few of its denizens, including a hyperactive 7-year-old child (Benny), his family, and CeeJay, an ambitious teenager who escaped the drugs and violence of his Los Angeles home to “make it” here. Har’el also collaborated with her subjects to incorporate dance sequences, giving the film an otherworldly dimension that inexplicably feels right.

Adam Schartoff: Bombay Beach presents a real relationship between people and place. Was that something you were conscious of creating from the start?

Alma Har’el, director of “Bombay Beach”: You know, I talk a lot but I’m really not that cerebral when it comes to making art. What you’re describing wasn’t something I thought about during the process of making the film, but with some distance, yes, it is like that

When I first visited Bombay Beach I was very much drawn to something that I know from being an Israeli, from my own past. I can relate to a place on the outskirts of society where there was once a promise and turned out very violent and disappointing to many people. But it’s a place that you live as a kid that has a history that you will never really comprehend. You might not care, though people will tell you what it used to be like. And then that mythology that sort of gets build up. Benny (one of the film’s primary subjects) touches on this when he talks about having been in jail for 100 years. He might not even know what jail is, perhaps. He’s only seven. He knows his parents were in jail but he says he was in jail. He even describes it, how it has scorpions and there’s nothing to do, no food, no television. That got to me. I was grappling with the same idea about creating a mythology that is, in fact, quite broken. The thing about Bombay Beach was that it was some place that really showed that, and I wouldn’t have to say anything or explain it. You don’t need a narrator to tell you. Every frame tells a story in that place. Read more →

Danfung Dennis is a photojournalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Time and Newsweek, to name a few. With “Hell and Back Again”, a documentary that follows a Marine sergeant from combat in Afghanistan to his transition back to North Carolina, Dennis makes his debut as a filmmaker.

Adam Schartoff, P.O.V.: How long have you been a war photographer?

Danfung Dennis, director of “Hell and Back Again”: My dad gave me my first camera when I was 13. I had studied applied economics in school but made an abrupt change to photography. I started woking in 2005 as a photojournalist. I still remember opening the book Inferno by James Nachtwey. The images were photos he shot in various conflicts over a period of 30 years. It seared into my consciousness. He was bearing witness, showing the mistakes we were making and reminding us not to repeat them. Shooting these inhumanities was a moral act on his part — images could impact people and change how they think.

Schartoff: When did you get the idea to start making documentaries?

Dennis: After a few years I felt my work wasn’t really having any impact. I felt that as a society we’ve become so inundated with still images, that they weren’t having the same impact they once did. So I wanted to take the same ideas that still images had but bring it to the new medium of filmmaking. So I brought a Canon 5D, began shooting high-quality video. I wanted to meld the ethics and methods of photojournalism with documentary filmmaking — to be an observer and let events unfold in front of the lens.

Schartoff: What kind of impact did the death of Tim Hetherington (“Restrepo”) have on you?

Dennis: Tim was an inspirational figure. He was our prince. He pioneered storytelling in so many ways. And he pushed the boundaries of film and in media in general. He was so artful in the way he made mass communication. He really inspired me and his loss was deeply, deeply saddening. In my own small way, I hope to continue his work and to honor his legacy.

Schartoff: The film is definitely not pedantic in any way but you still can’t help but read the anti-war message. Did you ever discuss the tone with Sgt. Harris?

Dennis: We actually never talked about politics. I think it’s this unspoken rule among soldiers. They were there to be professionals and to execute their orders. You’re fighting for the men around you and so you can get home. The bigger picture never came up. I never sat down with Nathan about what he thought of the war, or the film for that matter. He never saw any footage until it was finished. He trusted me to tell his story.

Schartoff: And what was your way in to “Hell and Back Again”?

Dennis: In 2009 I was embedded with the Echo Company during a very large offensive. This was a key operation to break the military stalemate that we had reached in Afghanistan. Echo Company was dropped behind enemy lines, and shortly after landing they were surrounded and attacked on all sides. The fighting was mainly focused around this pile of rubble which became known as Machine Gun Hill. That was the first day and one Marine was killed, and others collapsed from exhaustion. It was at that time when I met Sgt. Nathan Harris.

Schartoff: What were your initial thoughts about Sgt. Harris?

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