Felipe Bustos Sierra on Nae Pasaran, Kenmure Street and Making Space for Stories
A discussion about making documentary films, the politics of storytelling and how to not get your script seen by Francis Ford Coppola.
Dear Reader
This week’s chat is with BAFTA-winning director of Nae Pasaran, Felipe Bustos Sierra. His new film Everybody To Kenmure Street just launched a crowdfunder which you can support here!
I had a great experience working with Felipe on his film GOVANHILL (2024), which will be screened again this August at the Govanhill International Festival, and learned lots from his exploratory and humanistic style. This was a very fun chat and it includes a couple of incredible stories at the end.
Much love,
Sam
Nae Pasaran is a film that meant a lot to a lot of people, what did it mean for you?
I find it difficult to separate the making and the reception. In the making there were times I thought I was going crazy. [I kept asking] why am I doing this when I could barely afford to pay my rent. Nobody seemed to really believe in it aside from the people involved. Some people were saying to my face ‘this is a bunch of old men on their sofas, what’s interesting about that?’. The film is incredibly important to me. I grew up with someone who went through exile, had to go into hiding, so films at a young age showed me what the world could offer. I tried to get as much of that into Nae Pasaran as possible, showing that everyone is so connected. Connecting these viewpoints from people who did not think their viewpoint mattered, makes the film what it is.
Right, I wondered if growing up seeing your dad’s experience of being exiled makes you interested in these silenced stories. Is there a connection there?
There is. Kissinger talked about ‘Latin America being the backyard of the US’ and that ‘Nothing of significance has ever happened there’. That shit trickles down to people’s self-esteem. I think Nae Pasaran felt like a lot of self-care for me and Chileans who were involved. I invited a lot of them to the medal ceremony and this guy came up to me and he said: ‘we should have done this years ago’. I think connecting these people allowed them to have that dialogue.
“If you give somebody the space and support to express themselves, they're always going to surprise you.”
How do you see your role as a filmmaker? Are you just an observer, an activist…?
I never really used those labels. More than anything the process is about building a community I feel at home in. Knowing how long it takes to make feature documentary films in Scotland, you know you’ll need things to sustain you through that time. Those films can only exist because we took time for the barriers to come down. It’s stressful for financial reasons, but it does take time for all these conversations that create something more true to the person I’m talking with. I think I’m just the guy in the middle, trying to get everybody together.
I’m excited to watch the Kenmure Street film. How’s that shaping up?
There are stories in the film that people haven’t heard of yet. We have that footage and have put something together that has really impressed some pitching forums, but then there’s that next step of tying everybody together in the film. My first question in most of those interviews has been why - ‘why would you do this?’. The answers are making this more universal aspect of the film and leading into a deep dive into the history of protest.
That seems to be a bit of a recurring theme in your films: a chronicling of people who take time to make a difference. What’s the common thread in their responses to that question from the different films you’ve made?
The common thread is: ‘I’m doing it because no one else is’. It’s a bit of a fallacy because as you research you realise people are doing what you’ve done over and over again. But I guess it’s in the interest of the people in power for us to feel like no one is doing it. Reading the news after Kenmure Street, what’s really evolved is the Government’s effort in curtailing these kinds of protests. That’s where they’re putting their time.
I had the pleasure of helping out with research for your film GOVANHILL (2024). What I found interesting is that so much of your process was just sitting in rooms with a wide variety of people and having really broad conversations, way before the cameras were rolling. You must have found yourself in some fascinating conversations over the years. Is there one that stands out?
At some point during Nae Pasaran I was interviewing somebody who had been tortured. Just by pure circumstance I needed two cameras for this interview and I didn’t have a second person. So, an old friend of my dad’s, who was also a journalist in his 70s, helped me. He’s a guy who stayed in Chile and was brutally tortured. He was blacklisted and so made a living as a camera operator. We are out there for the interview, and this was off camera, but I’m just suddenly witnessing a conversation between two people who suffered torture. They started chatting about this in the most banal and friendly way. One of the questions was, do you know who your torturer was? And the other was like ‘yeah, he lives in the other town, do you know yours?’ and he says ‘yeah’. So they’re both there, different survivors, different torturers, different parts of the country. One of them said that sometimes he bumps into [his torturer]. He’ll see him in the streets. The other guy says ‘how do you deal with that?’ the other responds ‘well, it just fills me with anger. I need to go home and calm down. So, it’s come to a point where I started avoiding the places where I bump into him. So, I came up with a plan… I had this one window where I could get some revenge and feel at peace with myself. I planned how I was gonna kill this guy. I went through this whole process of figuring out how I would do it and then I went ok, I could kill him. Once I knew how I’d get away, the anger went away, so I didn’t do it.’
Oh my god…
It was quite a beautiful conversation, but it would be impossible for a documentary.
Are we ever gonna see fiction from you?
I’d love to. There are stories I’d like to explore as a documentary that I realise are impossible because the access isn’t there. After Nae Pasaran, there are interviews I’ll never be able to get because now I’m the guy from Nae Pasaran who has clearly shown ‘his side’. I started with fiction, so yes I do wanna do that.
How do you figure out what will be a good film?
It’s about the unknowns of the story. What do I know about the story that I can tell you in the first 15 minutes, and what have I not explored yet but heard that there is room to take it to a whole different place? It’s what I love about documentaries, if you give somebody the space and support to express themselves, they're always going to surprise you. I love when people figure things out during an interview.
So, I know you have a good Francis Ford Coppola story, but I never heard the end of it. Can you tell it again?
When I was 17, I had an uncle who lived in San Francisco and I was staying with him. I was writing screenplays, and they really must have been terrible because I was learning English at the same time. I was writing letters to try to get my scripts seen and agents were like ‘who the fuck are you?’. But my uncle told me Coppola had this massive office building nearby. So I would wander around San Francisco, and I walked near the building with copies of the screenplay in my backpack with cover letters. One day this DHL van drove by and I saw this guy going into the building with a large box that was obscuring his view, so I just ran across the street and as the guy buzzed in I held the door for him and I used him as a shield to walk past reception. There were all these different rooms and one of them was empty but had a stack of scripts on the desk. So I just went in, put my script on top and left.
I can’t believe it. Did you ever hear back?
Yeah. A few days later I got a phone call and they were like ‘Are you Felipe Bustos Sierra? Did you write this screenplay?’. And I was like ‘Yeah… Yeah…’. And they said ‘yeah we saw you on CCTV, you can’t do this again’.
[Laughs]
Yeah…
That’s very funny… ok, let me do a dramatic change of tone here. I always ask this question: How does change happen?
I’ve been reading Everything Mixtape for a while, and it’s the theme of Kenmure Street… frustratingly, it’s such a boring answer… It’s persistence and resilience. And I’d add some understanding of history. Everything we need to change is available, it just needs to be sustained.
If I died today and left this newsletter to you in my inheritance, who would you interview next?
Well, I would say Victor Jara who was this singer/songwriter in Chile before the coup. He could write, to coin Britney Spears ‘a good tune that you can dance to’, but also managed to find a balance and make people feel seen and represented. Also, this week Paul Auster died. I loved his stuff… The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace… He had an amazing way of using humour and making me feel like life can only reveal itself to you if you take a chance.