We were fortunate to have director of photography and filmmaker Jake Swantko in our studio to share what goes into producing compelling films like Icarus, which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Orwell Award for its artful uncovering of an international doping scandal involving one of Russia's top anti-doping scientists.
About our guest:
Jake Swantko has worked on a number of films, shooting for the Associated Press, ESPN, HBO, National Geographic, PBS Frontline, Time Magazine, Passion Pictures, and Nike. He is a 2011 graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.
As director of photography, he has shown three films at Sundance: Entrapped (2016), Icarus (2017), and The Dissident (2020), which explored the story of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
At the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Icarus received a special jury prize, the first ever "Orwell Award" for revealing "the truth at a time when the truth is no longer a commodity."
Find Jake online:
Website
IMDB page
Q&A with Around the O
Show Notes:
0:04 - Introductions
01:24 - What is The Dissident about?
05:14 - The role of hacking in Jamal Khashoggi's murder
06:20 - Audience takeaways from The Dissident at Sundance
09:22 - What goes into film distribution?
11:14 - The ethics of film distribution
13:48 - A documentarian's sense of duty to the subject
16:38 - The relationship between documentarian and subject
19:41 - Choosing a stopping point/conclusion for a documentary
26:51 - The importance of screening one's work
31:06 - How to please your audience
33:51 - How did you launch your career in documentary?
35:55 - What have you learned that you didn't know when you started in this field?
37:59 - Media recommendations for aspiring documentarians
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Podchaser
Damian Radcliffe: (00:04)
Hello and welcome to the Demystifying Media Podcast. I'm Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon and today we're going to be talking about documentary storytelling. Joining us in the studio today is Jake Swantko, a cinematographer and documentary producer who graduated in 2011 from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. Jake served as Director of Photography and Assistant Producer for the film, Icarus, which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Orwell Award for revealing “the truth at a time when the truth is no longer a commodity.”
Damian Radcliffe: (00:38)
Alongside this, he's also made films for a wide range of organizations, including the Associated Press, CNN, ESPN, HBO, National Geographic Television, and many others. His new film, The Dissident, about slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Jake, thank you very much for joining us.
Jake Swantko: (00:55)
Thank you so much for having me.
Damian Radcliffe: (00:57)
So, [I’m] really excited to be able to have a chance to talk to you both about your life and work since you left the SOJC, but I wanted to really start by talking about your new film, The Dissident. I mentioned when we were talking off air that it's had kind of a really kind of positive reception. It's been quite a challenging film, in many cases, to kind of put together. Could you perhaps describe a little bit about what the film is about and how it came to be?
Jake Swantko: (01:24)
Well, the story is about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who is a journalist, a columnist for The Washington Post. He was critical throughout his career of the Saudi regime, in particular Mohammed bin Salman, MBS for short, and his rise to power. He was considered an enemy of the Saudi regime after a certain extent and sort of transitioned from a journalist to being known by the Saudi regime as a dissident and an opponent almost. What we uncovered through the story was sort of a long history of Saudi Arabia silencing freedom of expression and silencing voices that are of political opposition to the crown price and the monarchy. Ultimately, our story centers around what happened on October 2nd when Jamal Khashoggi . . . he had started his new life. He had left Saudi Arabia and was writing for the Washington Post. He had met a Turkish woman by the name of Hatice Cengiz and he wanted to get married.
Jake Swantko: (02:54)
She became his fiancé. And on October 2nd, in Istanbul, he had to go in to acquire the correct paperwork to get married to his fiancé. When he walked into that building, he was greeted with pleasantries and tea and coffee and things. Ultimately, a team of assassins subdued him and suffocated him and then dismembered his body, which led to a massive global coverup which eventually Saudi Arabia admitted through a series of trials and tribulations that he was, in fact, killed in that consulate.
Jake Swantko: (03:40)
We start off from there and it really unravels with this story about dissidence, those speaking out against the Saudi regime. One person in particular was Omar Abdulaziz in Montreal and then we start then with the story of Hatice Cengiz . . . let me say that again. We then start with the story of Hatice Cengiz, who fell in love with this man, leading into the final moments of his life. Then, we kind of dovetail into how all this happened and what it means for, specifically how the Saudi regime has manipulated Twitter, which is in Saudi Arabia. Eight out of 10 [in Saudi Arabia] are using Twitter. It is the basis of freedom of expression in the country and how they've used that and manipulated the platform to push their own agenda. We also go into sort of the cyber warfare, the espionage and the hacking tools that are available to many regimes, many governments that want to spy on political opponents, dissidents, journalists, and to subvert their activities.
Damian Radcliffe: (04:58)
It felt... Or, I think one of the things you so touch on in the film is that that hacking may in part have made it possible for the Saudi regime to know where Jamal Khashoggi was going to be and actually make his murder possible.
Jake Swantko: (05:14)
We feel that the hacking of Jamal Khashoggi's phone and also another prominent dissident that he was working with were some of the moments that ultimately sealed his fate. They had hacked his phone. They realized that they were starting to create a Twitter army to combat the army that Saudi Arabia was using. They were beginning other plans to actively create a platform for freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia and all those things, we think, ultimately led to him being murdered that day and that he had to be silenced.
Damian Radcliffe: (05:54)
So there were a lot of things in there. Obviously, on the one hand, you have the kind of wide shot, if you like, of this is the kind of big picture in Saudi Arabia and then through the lens of one particular, kind of very famous journalist. What do you want people to take away from the film? Is it a film where you just want to tell that story or do you actually want to create a kind of impact and change and get people talking as a result of what they've seen?
Jake Swantko: (06:20)
I think the really great thing . . . And, when you go to a Sundance or one of these festivals, you spend so much time and you're in basically an edit suite with a handful of creative people making decisions. You get into an audience, like Sundance, where you have a couple thousand people, 2000, still a small pool. Right? You haven't released it to the world. You have people come to you and they have a whole myriad of reactions to it. I think that's so great. I love it when people can come and see a film and they say one thing. They picked out one thing, like some people really love this story of the cyber espionage of the Pegasus tool. Version two of it was licensed by the Israeli government and they want to know more about that. Others had the most heartfelt sympathy for Hatice and this love story that ultimately ended in such a tragic, unbelievable way. Other people really gravitated towards Omar Abdulaziz's story where this guy had basically . . . Saudi Arabia had sent two of his brothers over, along with a Saudi agent. to try and convince him to go back where he would ultimately be tortured and maybe even killed.
Jake Swantko: (07:36)
The take away is, I think . . . I have never really gone out to make films that I thought would make a huge change. I think I always thought that was kind of the loftier ideas of another type of film maker. What I do think is that you kind of isolate a story and you find those aspects that touch you and reach to the type of story you want to tell and you tell it the best way you possibly can. The great thing with this one is people have watched it and we got better reviews for this film then we did with Icarus. I've never seen a crowd come up to you and their hands are shaking and they're literally speechless and they just thank you and thank you and thank you for making this.
Jake Swantko: (08:25)
Hillary Clinton was there at the premier of our film and she said . . . . She was standing up talking about another film and she just went of course and started talking about how people had to come and watch our film. Which is just amazing. That's really great and to bring the level of production value and the attention to detail to a story that otherwise could be swept under the rug and which there is so much money and political influence to throw this under the rug. No one wants to talk about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi any more. I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. The Trump administration has flatly said that they're not going to be "foolish" with Saudi Arabia.
Damian Radcliffe: (09:08)
Is that a challenge for you then? Both in terms of whilst making the film and then now when it's completed and the despite these positive reviews, getting the right distribution deal to ensure that as many people as possible can see this?
Jake Swantko: (09:22)
Yeah. We knew what we were making was red hot. We knew that it was a fire.
Damian Radcliffe: (09:31)
And it still is.
Jake Swantko: (09:33)
And it's incendiary. And so we, for years, had speculated. For the year of making it had speculated who's going to do this? Who's got the gumption to take this on? I think the unfortunate thing is a lot of these social media platforms, these entertainment platforms, they don't really see a moral incentive or a moral duty to some of the audiences they serve. That's what's really bothered me over the year, and I've kind of had to relax my expectations of what I expect. But, to make a really . . . a film that people are responding to in a very good way and then to not know what's going to happen in terms of distribution is really kind of heartbreaking because you would hope that somebody would step to the table and be like this story is too important to let the shadow of money and influence overcast it. We're still working to do that and my hope is not quelled and nor will it ever be, but it's one of those age-old stories of truth to power. You know? I think distributors should ask themselves what side of the history do they want to stand on ultimately.
Damian Radcliffe: (10:56)
Is that also partly a contributing factor there, that a lot of these distributors, particularly kind of the tech platforms, they're exactly that? They are kind of delivery mechanisms. They don't... They're not necessarily driven by journalistic values or kind of wider, lofty societal goals. They are there to deliver a value to their shareholders.
Jake Swantko: (11:14)
And what do you think about that? I mean, that's sort of this thing where I disagree with that. I think there should be some... You need to have some sort of moral responsibility to the public you serve. Then again, you could just say it's about globalization and have a markup cost-benefit sort of analysis... I mean, I would love to know your opinion about it. You know?
Damian Radcliffe: (11:39)
It's a film I want to see. And I've had to kind of look at reviews of it and people who've been in the room, been able to watch it and I haven't had the chance to do that yet. You'd like to think that distributors would recognize this is an incredibly important story about human rights, about holding the kind of society we want to be... As you said about holding truth to power, of not being cowed by commercial relationships. I've also recognized that the kind of content that is on offer and that is available... If we look at Icarus being picked up by Netflix and distributed there, there's a spectrum of content that is being offered. So, if you want to watch Love is Blind and that's your thing and you don't want anything that's more challenging, that's fine. But, there are opportunities to be exposed to a wide variety of different ideas and points of view which includes everything from originals made in different markets through to documentaries like this.
Jake Swantko: (12:39)
Yeah, and I think there's also the question of censoring your platform not based off of the entertainment value or the reception the film received, but based off of the foreign influence that's being pressured on your company. I think there's a big difference between being an entertainment company and then censoring your platform as well. So, we're in this headlong battle and, in a lot of ways, it's indicative of the battle that Jamal Khashoggi fought for freedom of expression and to speak his mind and the fact that he couldn't let it go, and he left his whole life... He left a life in Saudi Arabia to pursue his voice because he felt like it was that important.
Damian Radcliffe: (13:30)
Do you feel a duty to your subject to also tell his story? That he's not here, able to put that point of view forward anymore? Do you feel a sort of a moral compunction to act as a facilitator for him and to keep his voice current and alive in the world?
Jake Swantko: (13:48)
Well, 100% it weighs on you. Imagine telling a story of and fighting for the access to be one of the few film makers to tell this story and it definitely weighs on you. The implications and also the density and the sadness of the story of what actually transpired on that day. You want to do the best you possibly can, given your background. You push for the biggest budget on this and we did. I think all of us that were involved in the project are very proud of what we created. For people to respond to that, is that vindication you search for? Now, it's a matter of pressuring power that be to make sure that a lot of people see the film. So, we feel like we did the best we could and we have the level of access that required us to be intensively involved for up to 250 days from last year. We got more information than any news outlet did. It's a difficult question to answer because you can never really do someone's life justice.
Jake Swantko: (15:15)
But, I think the important thing is that we really tried and we pulled out all the stops and we spent a lot of money to do it. I think that's as much as you can ask from a team of film makers in a year.
Damian Radcliffe: (15:31)
I think the access point you've made there was also something that was very striking for me when I saw Icarus, and just seeing obviously... It's well known this film starts in one direction and then suddenly does a hard 180 and goes in a completely different route through how anybody would've expected. I was curious, with that, what the relationship was like with your subject and how that potentially kind of changed as their circumstances changed because you really feel for-
Jake Swantko: (16:08)
Grigory Rodchenkov.
Damian Radcliffe: (16:10)
Grigory, yeah. Sorry, I wanted to make sure I pronounced his name correctly. But, you really feel for Grigory and it's very clear that he's made an enormous sacrifice leaving his family behind. The revelations that he makes very much puts his own life at risk and still do, to this day. Did that... Did you find during the course of making that film that not only did it go in an unexpected direction, but did your relationship with him also changed as a result of that?
Jake Swantko: (16:38)
Yeah. The film definitely changed and I think the thing that Brian and I kind of come at with working with people and stories and with The Dissident and also with Icarus, we try and explain to people that we're in it for the long run and that we're there to support their decisions, too. With Grigory, he ultimately came out and said that all of Sochi Olympics was a fraud and that he was the mastermind of that massive scandal. We've continued to take care of him and work closely with his lawyers, although he's in hiding, and do the best we can to continually make sure that his information is corroborated and brought to the highest level of sports. We're on that same sort of trajectory with this film, only in a very different way. Working to hold responsibility to the distributors to get this out into the world and to make as big of a splash as possible, bring attention to human rights in Saudi Arabia.
Jake Swantko: (17:46)
With Grigory, he is without a doubt a once in a lifetime sort of character and we had developed a very close relationship in working with him in Moscow. Then, when he ultimately came to L.A. and then when he moved on to non-disclosed locations, it was just this really... He would always say to me, "Jake, can you imagine meeting me in 2015 in Moscow and now we're sitting here in bar having drink." And there's no other world where this ever takes place. I mean, it's just... And, then for Russia to be banned from the Olympics that year and then him to go into hiding. Stranger than fiction doesn't seem to do it enough justice. It reminds you that anything in this world's kind of possible. That story in particular and working with Grigory was one of my favorites definitely because of... He was just really a child at heart and a very fun, infectious sort of personality. Everybody, even his security guards and secret service guys or his... God, what's the term they use for it? But, I'd probably better not to even say. But, the security that manages him even love him and bring him whiskey and snacks and things like that whenever they see him.
Damian Radcliffe: (19:19)
With both of these films, given that they were kind of evolving in front of you whilst you're filming, how does that shape the storytelling process? Because you don't know what the end point is going to be. Do you have a sense of, as this is unfolding, this is the arc? Or is there a point where you just say, actually we're going to stop kind of around about now and then we make sense of it?
Jake Swantko: (19:41)
Well, this one in particular, The Dissident, was different then Icarus. They're similar kind of stories but with Icarus, we were in the center. We were like the stone that dropped in the middle of the pond and then everybody was the ripple. We were the epicenter of this thing because we had Grigory. Now, with The Dissident, we entered into the story after somebody threw the rock in the pond already and we were battling through those ripples to get to the epicenter and become part of the circular information, sort of gathering. So, we worked through that and we moved quickly. We were really nimble. We're not a big company. We found some money and we just started to work and we started to work on our access with these people.
Jake Swantko: (20:33)
With this story, we understood it took place in the past, very recent past, but it was nonetheless the past. And I understood that with the storytelling of it, we needed a much better production value. I understood there was going to be more interviews, we needed a lot of people sitting and explaining. It is a very dense political, geo-political situation then between the relationship with Russia... Sorry, between the relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United States and understanding what led ultimately to his death and the hacking of prominent distance phone. So, I just understood we needed to have a greater production value and we needed to come win. And I also think part of me really wanted to prove something after Icarus, that this just wasn't like... It was the story of the year and it was dropped in our laps and we ultimately made the film. But, with this one, we really wanted to prove that we could take on a big, big subject matter and do justice to it.
Jake Swantko: (21:37)
So, we went kind of with our hair on fire to make sure that we did it right. In terms of the story evolving, I think that's sort of a criteria for us picking the stories. We really want to feel like up until the last day, our deadline's basically Sundance. We keep pushing by the time we send them the finished film, they keep getting angrier and angrier because we did the same... But, that's ultimately our deadline is we work within this scope of like okay, that's where we're going. We're premiering the film at Sundance and we're going to push it for as far as we can. Then news starts to happen. And the good thing is even once you've finished the film, you're ultimately waiting for its global release. When you have something like the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia or, in this case or previously the case of Russia and doping, this story stays in the headlines so it keeps the story that you made, the ultimately... So, if somebody picks up The New York Times and they say Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, so on so forth and they're like, "You want to know some more about that guy? Go watch The Dissident." And they say, "Oh wow. Okay." That makes sense or this gives you a greater context.
Jake Swantko: (22:54)
But, films like ours do... They're plucked straight from the headlines. But, in the inverted pyramid of what you need to know fact basis, a ton of minutia and understanding this story and building it out visually and... So, when you leave it, you don't read an article that took you four or five minutes to read. You leave a two hour film saying wow. I have a really complex understanding but I was not bored. The evolving nature of the story also allows us to keep pressure on people to watch the film and to ultimately spread the word or make decisions, policy decisions about their handling or the dealing with certain regimes.
Damian Radcliffe: (23:46)
And it is the type of film making that you always to do?
Jake Swantko: (23:50)
No. I was... I think that's kind of... I think some people set out and I know Brian's the same way. I don't think Brian ever really meant to make films like this. It was just-
Damian Radcliffe: (24:00)
[crosstalk 00:24:09] He started as a stand up and...
Jake Swantko: (24:01)
Yeah, yeah.
Damian Radcliffe: (24:01)
... did off Broadway shows.
Jake Swantko: (24:01)
Yeah, he did off Broadway for a long time. He was a screenwriter when I had met him in 2003 or so. I was giving documentary a try and... Yeah, I think after Icarus, we kind of really started to put this equation together. We like taking on big, powerful subject matter and at its root, in order to take on people of unfathomable power and corruption, you kind of need a personal story to jump off from and dive into that complex geo-political thriller. Because otherwise, if we don't have a person at the center of this, it's hard for people to relate to it. Otherwise, I'm just spewing a lot of information at you. So, when Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, we had this sensationally terrible story that immediately brought people in his life to almost a level of infamy and particularly his fiance, Hatice. We knew that this was the way to jump in and show how corrupt the Saudi regime is. So, yeah.
Jake Swantko: (25:25)
To answer your question, I don't think-
Damian Radcliffe: (25:27)
I'm trying to bring some levity to the conversation.
Jake Swantko: (25:29)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't think... I think, you never... I think we've always just wanted to make... I've always wanted to make artistic films, experimental films. I wanted to bend what non-fiction can do and I think we're in a great place now with documentary where it's sort of expected for you to use the attributes and the tricks of the trade of feature films. And the production values are beginning to merge, not even close but the Indies and the docs are getting a little bit closer. My hope is that line will get closer and closer. We've never really thought to take on the biggest power and creed in the world, but it's just the stories usually have the most interesting stuff about them.
Damian Radcliffe: (26:27)
And given that you're seeing this blending of kind of feature film characteristics and sensibilities and that you're bringing that into the sort of documentary space, how important is it for you to potentially have your work shown on a big screen, not just people sitting at home and streaming this? Does that matter to you when you're putting something together?
Jake Swantko: (26:51)
I'm like right on that... And same with you, too. You're probably more of a theater guy, but you watch probably a ton of streaming stuff, as everybody does.
Damian Radcliffe: (27:00)
Yep. I have two small kids, so the cinema is a rare, rare [crosstalk 00:27:12]-
Jake Swantko: (27:03)
Well, see that's the other problem, right? Is for you to go to a theater, you got to have two babysitters or a babysitter for... Your movie going experience is a couple hundred dollars, maybe more. So, the streamer, the great thing about that is to be able to go, hey. You want to go see a movie about Jamal Khashoggi or you want to see a crazy movie? Or what happened with Icarus. You know, it's like, if you would go sit at... I mean, I would be in a bar in New York and so you hear somebody talking about Icarus and you think the great thing about that is they can go, well there's no reason not to watch. It's in your living room. Turn it on. Watch it tonight. You got to see it. Absolutely got to see it.
Jake Swantko: (27:44)
What's frustrating right now is we have one of those movies, like you got to see this. People are taking you by the hand. Go watch it, go watch it. And it's like, we're not in your living room. And there's no reason other than the fact that distributors are scared of it, which is... You're sort of approaching like the banned book of movies, which is kind of cool too. But, I think theaters serve a purpose and I hope they stay around forever. There's definitely an experience, a catharsis of entering in a dark theater and sitting with a group of people and your attention's undivided from a screen. You can sit and watch Roger Deakins' work and the last two films I went to go see in a theater, I did a double feature seeing Parasites and then 1917. So, I usually kind of wait until the Oscar season's over or getting close and then I watch all these movies that were kind of acclaimed. But, it's just like... It would be a Greek Tragedy if 1917 wasn't on a big screen.
Damian Radcliffe: (28:52)
Right. It started streaming this week and I'm like no. I refuse. I need to go and see it in a theater.
Jake Swantko: (28:57)
It's like this gorgeous movie that cost Gods knows how much. I mean, I guess the price of it. I mean how did they pay for the Irishman? Like $150 million for like a three hour movie. I mean it doesn't really, the budget doesn't really matter but it's like some movies are just meant to be seen in the theater. I think they're a part of our culture is just to go into a theater and lose yourself in it. And whereas with streaming things, you could look at your phone and that's okay. And then you could walk off, cook dinner, pause a movie. There's...
Damian Radcliffe: (29:36)
Is there for you, as a documentary film maker, almost an aspiration of well, I want you to concentrate on this. This matters and I want you to watch this from the beginning to the end without distraction. It's almost a bit like David Simon talking about the wire when somebody, I think it was at the Edinburgh Television Festival, said to him, "Oh yeah. We'd have to concentrate when you watch your show." And he was like, "Yes." Absolutely. That is the whole point.
Jake Swantko: (19:57)
Yeah. I think... I don't come at it as a hard line of like "You need to listen to this. It's important." But, I get what you're saying. Our movie is so dense if you start to wander around in your brain, you're going to get lost. There is so much stuff leading to this... It's such a matrix of information and we kind of wrap that around all these different narratives and so... You want the accessibility first and then you... I think the nature of our minds are becoming increasingly fractured, though. That's just something with society as it goes on. Just the nature of the point and click sort of mentality is...
Damian Radcliffe: (30:43)
And so does that mean you make films differently now to the way you would have done-
Jake Swantko: (30:47)
Well, we've only-
Damian Radcliffe: (30:48)
...at the start of this decade?
Jake Swantko: (30:49)
We only made two-
Damian Radcliffe: (30:49)
I mean, you've done the two... But in terms of also the other... I listed off at the beginning some of your other credits, is that also a sensibility that you're seeing across the spectrum of your work? That you're having to respond to changes in audience behavior? Changes in audience preferences?
Jake Swantko: (31:06)
I think that what I have also kind of thought is no one will forgive you for boring them. So, I don't care how important you think it is, what you're saying, I don't care how much change you want. If you sit people down for two hours and you bore the shit out of them and say, "Wow. That was really important. I hope you learned a lot." They're not going to forgive you for that. So, what we have to do is employ all of the techniques of film making, narrative film making, that means the score, that means the cinematography, that means the cutting, that means the animation and you have to walk that line of not sensationalizing a story. We definitely walked that line with The Dissident, and I think the thing about great films, right... And, Sundance is a great place to see films.
Jake Swantko: (32:00)
If you ever have a chance to go, it's a great place to see films because you watch a lot of long, kind of sometimes pretty mediocre or very bad foreign films or not even the foreign films are the bad ones, but sometimes a lot of the movies are bad. You sit through two, three screenings a day. And you realize, oh. This movie did that, this and that. Then, you sit down and you watch a movie like Whiplash. Your hands are sweating and you're watching that movie and you didn't reach for one bite of popcorn. You look around and everybody's doing the same thing and that movie is just like moving and moving and moving. It's just... You wouldn't want to take your eyes away from it. I think that's how we compel or are trying to compel people to believe in real life things that are happening in The New York Times and are happening in our world is how do we wrap this narrative. Tell this story so people are drawn into it and they're invested in it and then we can take breaths in the middle section of the film for them to invest more in the context and then go and then deliver some greater stuff in the end and finish hard.
Jake Swantko: (33:23)
It's really a matter of theater or streaming, you want to have the ability just for people to be engrossed and to watch something. That's so much of the craft of filmmaking is in slaving over and not letting any detail overlooked because ultimately every single little detail contributes to the mosaic of whatever film you're making.
Damian Radcliffe: (33:51)
Is it fair to say you kind of almost chanced upon this career? That you sort of... When you were here as a student, you did a lot of kind of writing and then you've talked about saying that didn't quite work for you. And the moment someone put a camera in your hand, you found your voice and you found a means to be able to communicate.
Jake Swantko: (34:07)
Yeah, I think a lot of my career's been really lucky and been very humbled and fortunate to have met the people that I have. Just my life from the time I graduated in 2011 until now has been this mosaic of extremely interesting people at the fringes or have extraordinary jobs or careers. I think it was a chance and you kind of take a chance on the work that you want to do and what you kind of gravitated towards. You get one good story under your belt and then you're kind of hooked. That started with me at the SOJC with the first story I told about the Columbia River Bar Pilots and then I went on to that to travel in West Africa. Then worked with heroin addicts in Seattle. I worked in Crimea during the revolution in Ukraine. All this stuff is like these series of people and then it's all what it boils down to is that I had this immense interest in other people and understanding their story and how it related to my story. These kind of timeless stories that have echoed through our lives about... In our last film, truth to power and Icarus was also another truth to power film. The revolutions and freedom of information and things of that nature.
Jake Swantko: (35:37)
But, ultimately it's people that bring these things to light and anchor it. For me, that experience has been amazing. And then just going and traveling and meeting these people and talking to them. That's been really the pretty extraordinary thing. You know?
Damian Radcliffe: (35:55)
If the students that you're meeting during the couple of days that you're with back on campus, what is the main advice that you kind of want to pass on to them as a benefit of someone who was in their shoes? Sort of nine, 10 years ago. What have you learned now that you didn't know then that you want them to know?
Jake Swantko: (36:12)
I think what applied then doesn't always apply now. The main thing is just want to like slap the phones out of people's hands and say go out and do something. Inspiring. Go out and do something. For as many people that are out there in this field and extremely skilled, the reason I come here is because the youth... These people that are just leaving school now, they come with the most spark, the most interest. They have still this grittiness and greenness, also. They don't how stupid they are. I think that's a great thing. But they have an idea and they go towards it. I just hope, especially now in this world of kind of misinformation and a constant battle for the truth and truth specifically to power is that journalism is very viable. You just have to find, in yourself, what interests you and other people.
Jake Swantko: (37:12)
You can breathe smoke into them and convince them that it's interesting and then all of a sudden, you have this kind of ripple effect. That's part of what I'm trying to do here is just get people inspired about what work they do. To take it seriously and ultimately the field is really open. It's a new frontier and your willingness to evolve in it, to work and understand many different disciplines is nothing but an advantage to you. The more you become centralized in one particular discipline, you should really... Once you master that, you should move on and try and master something else.
Damian Radcliffe: (35:51)
Is there anything in particular you recommend that they should watch or read?
Jake Swantko: (37:56)
Oh, so many things.
Damian Radcliffe: (37:57)
It's a $64,000 question.
Jake Swantko: (37:59)
Well, Tarkovsky on film making, Sculpting and Time Borders on turning movies in a religion. It's extremely dense, but I've read it three or four times. I'm rereading 1984, which is just a masterpiece. It's just one of these books that has kind of always been in my career in terms of the nature of the work I do. 1984 is just such a brilliantly written piece of work by George Orwell and you just can tell he had this remarkable, almost super human understanding of mannerisms and of people. He was just this really remarkable journalist. So, 1984, Tarkovsky on sculpting of time... What else? Movies. 8 1/2 is a really great movie. If you want a feel-good documentary, Searching for Sugarman. If you've ever seen that, that's one of those rare beams of light that documentaries are actually like truly uplifting. So, maybe watch, when it comes out, watch The Dissident and then not immediately, you could watch Searching for Sugarman after that. Just so you could feel at least good about some things.
Jake Swantko: (39:13)
But, you know, documentary is really great because it's evolving and it started from this point of true activism. What was the Sally Fields movie that was like kind of... Oh, Barbara Coppel was sort of the start of this movement to make sure that documentaries really served an activism point of view. I think documentaries is... We're kind of trying to move that space of activism and entertainment. Just to understand the nature of where documentaries came from is extremely helpful. And, there's a lot of really great documentaries that touch on things that are of unfathomable depth. The Act of Killing is one of those movies that I think is probably top 20 or 30, not just in non-fiction but in fictional. It's just a remarkable achievement.
Damian Radcliffe: (40:12)
You probably need to watch Searching for Sugarman after that.
Jake Swantko: (40:14)
Yes, exactly. [crosstalk 00:40:24] Maybe just keep Sugarman going. Yes, I can see it. [crosstalk 00:40:27] But, The Act of Killing is just such a bizarre, interesting film. I think the great thing is just like in this space of documentary film making, people are encroaching on this fiction and non-fiction world and I love that. I love that. I think that's really fascinating.
Damian Radcliffe: (40:38)
Yeah. Well, Jake thank you so much for joining us today. We wish you all the best with your new film, The Dissident. I hopefully will be able to see that in the cinema or streaming or both sometime soon. Jake will also be giving us a film documentary film making master class tomorrow, which we'll be recording. So, keep an eye for that on our YouTube channel and on our website Demystifying.UOregon.edu. In the meantime, it just remains me to thank my guest today, Jake Swantko. Until next time, thanks for listening.
Jake Swantko: (41:06)
Thank you so much.
Damian Radcliffe: (41:09)
Thank you.
Jake Swantko: (41:09)
Awesome man.