Interview: Lacey Schwartz on Her Family’s “Little White Lie” — No One Told Her She Was a Black Daughter in a White Family

Posted on January 5, 2015 at 8:00 am

Lacey Schwartz grew up as the much-loved only child of warm, loving parents in a close-knit middle-class Jewish family. She did not resemble her parents, but they reassured her that she had a Sicilian grandparent who was the genetic source for her dark eyes and kinky hair. When she went to college and was invited to join the Black Students Alliance, she realized that she had find out the real story. That led to a documentary called Little White Lie.

Schwartz talked to me about making the film, including inviting a camera into the most intimate family conversations.

How did you get your parents to agree be filmed in such personal and intimate moments?

It’s a few things. One is I always try to acknowledge my own privilege in life and I think the biggest one I have is coming from a loving, supportive family – a family that you can definitely argue with and make mistakes in but nonetheless they have been in support of me for my whole life. And so I would say that’s the first part. The second part is that when I decided to do this film, I had to first go through the process of really having the conversation with myself about whose story is this to tell. And realizing that there’s always many different takes on one situation and that if I was going to make a film; I was setting up to tell my story. I wasn’t setting up to tell my parent’s story. And so what I did with not only just my parents but with my extended family is to tell them that them that I’m going to make a film about my life.

That kind of made it clear that I was going to do it no matter what. And I was asking everybody individually if they would participate and they would talk to me, and I was super lucky and again I am glad that everybody in my family was willing to do that. No one said no.

And we shot over the course of three years primarily and I would say a very high percentage of that footage was shot with one person shooting it who in the beginning he stayed at a hotel but by the end he was at my parents’ house for large periods of time. And in the beginning we didn’t have intense conversations it was the holidays, it was just hanging out. And so everybody really got to know him in a way that they became used to having conversations in front of him. So it wasn’t something where I just dropped in with a camera and asked them to talk about the stuff we had them talk about in a really personal way. It really took a long period of time and in the process of filming, it really worked in our favor.

At first, I thought, “Oh when we could afford it we are going to crew up.” I thought we would have a sound person and a producer there. That was the goal when I set out but from the beginning I couldn’t afford it. But it worked out for the best. He also was the co-director of the film because I’m a subject of the film. I can’t be directing and also be authentically living my life so when we actually shot I would step back from directing while the camera was rolling. And so he was the person who had to track what we were trying to get and figure out if we were getting it during the actual shooting. So he was really doing sound, he was shooting and he was really playing a crew director role. In retrospect I think it really worked in our favor because it did make it more intimate.

If you got a census form in the mail today how would you describe yourself?

When I’m checking off boxes I’m very aware of why people are asking the questions they are asking so I answer based on that- what will the information be used for. Also the forms have evolved since I was younger. For instance with the census form that gives you options to identify yourself in more than one way. But because I know the census is about how making sure that a community is counted I would check “black” because I want to make sure the black community is accounted for. I mean the President checks “black” right? I assume for the same reason.

Your participation in the Black Students Alliance in college was a real turning point for you. Did you ever experience any issues of not feeling fully accepted or connected to the other students in that group because you grew up in a white family and saw yourself as white?

That whole period of time for me, from when my parents got divorced until when I sat down with my mother and she told me the truth of why I look the way I do which is give or take about three years, was an incredible time, a positive, crazy time of discovery for me. One of the big themes that I look at in this film is denial. And not just the power of denial but the anatomy of denial – what does denial really look like? So one of the things I’m really trying to do is examine all the different elements. Every individual has their own timeline of denial including me even though it was learned behavior. And the way I break up the timeline is there is a period where you are really lying to yourself and you really can’t believe it. But there is sometimes the period where deep down you know that something is not right but you are not really yet ready to admit it. And I think that that period of time was those three years that I’m talking about for me.

Deep down I was like, “Something doesn’t make sense.” But I was getting to that place of build-up where I could ask the question. So in certain ways, getting to Georgetown and getting invited to the Black Students Alliance meeting, having black friends and being part of the black community for the first time although I wasn’t actually identifying with being black, I was just kind of mingling and connecting with them — that was such a interesting time. When that invitation came was like the first moment of awareness. My parents splitting up kind of opened up my consciousness, but the letter from Georgetown gave me some answers to try on and to get more comfortable with.

How did the students there welcome me? I know many people in my situation being biracial or whatever maybe didn’t always feel quite as accepted by the black community as I did. But I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I came into connecting with the black community at institutions of higher learning like Georgetown University and then like going on to Harvard Law school where it was so diverse and people were very educated about the diversity within the black community. I wasn’t the only person in the black community who really had not grown up around a lot of other black kids as well. I went to speak at Princeton recently in front of a bunch of students and a black guy from Toronto said, “I was like one of four blacks at my high school.” And he said, “So now the diversity at Princeton to me is like super diverse.” So I was not the unique person in that experience.

Why was it so important to begin and end with your wedding?

I think the wedding for me signifies how I was being held back by these family secrets. It is just the idea of ultimately a “coming of age story,” this idea of growing up for me. And I think for many other people, although not everyone of course, the first part of your life is until you go away to college and go out on your own, when your parents for a large part define who you are- that is what happened for me. And then for the second section of my life I was defined almost I would say in opposition to what my parents were. I think that’s the kind of quintessential coming of age experience and then the third section, although I know obviously there are other sections to come, the third section is how do I reconcile those two pieces? When I was editing this film, I was preparing for my own wedding and I was really thinking about my parents marriage. So I think the wedding really represents for me the fact that I had to get past this stuff before I could move forward in my life and be able to combine my life with somebody else and combine our families and to come to terms with my family.

Do you have a relationship with your biological relatives? In the movie you seem to relate more to your classmates than your half-siblings.

I do to a certain degree, but we are not very close. I wanted to be honest about it because I think that in certain ways people almost expect you to feel that connection. I think that with my classmates I met them while discovering the black community, but in the end I wasn’t friends with them because they’re black. And it’s the same thing with my family, I’m not going to connect with them because they are black. And the other thing is that families are much more loaded than friendship relationships. You opt in to your friends in a whole different way than your family. The sister you see in there, I continue to connect with her and we certainly have a relationship. In this day and age of Facebook and all that it is much easier.

What do you hope people will talk about after they see your movie?

I hope they talk about their own experiences. I really want the film to be a tool for conversation and to get people talking about their own stories with friends and also with families. I look at families as a building block to society and it’s really difficult I think for society to move past some of the difficult issues we are dealing with until we are having these conversations in real ways within our families. So that’s what I really want. I want people to talk about what they are not talking about and the things that are holding them back in whatever way and having a negative effect on them. I think by having these conversations in their families it reverberates in their communities and then it goes out to society so that’s what I want.

End the Year With Films About Justice

Posted on December 30, 2014 at 8:00 am

Bill Moyers has an excellent list of 2014’s best documentaries about the struggle for justice, covering issues from healthcare to the environment, politics, the collision between national security and privacy, domestic violence, human rights, and marriage equality. All are highly recommended.

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Exodus: Gods and Kings

Posted on December 11, 2014 at 9:51 pm

The story of Exodus is central to three of the world’s most significant religions and one of the Bible’s most cinematic stories, with a flawed but charismatic hero and a stirring story of slaves seeking freedom. It has already been filmed at least eight times, from Veggie Tales’ Moe & The Big Exit to Cecil B. DeMille’s epic The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s animated The Prince of Egypt. Now Ridley Scott, who showed his mastery of sword and sandal epics with Gladiator has taken on the story with an all-star (but mostly non Middle-Eastern) cast and the latest 3D technology to really deliver on the special effects. Not so much on the theology part, though, or even the morality or meaning of it. Scott is clearly more interested in chases and battles and plagues, and so busy with it that he leaves out some of the story’s most important incidents. For example, instead of having to leave the palace because he killed an Egyptian who was beating a slave, Scott gives us a soapy story about Ramses’ jealousy. And we know Ramses is decadent because every time we see him, he’s eating.

The action and special effects work well, though. This is a two and a half hour movie that starts in the middle of the story and Scott keeps it moving. We first see Moses (Christian Bale) and Ramses (Joel Edgerton) as Seti (John Turturro), the Pharaoh, is giving them each a sword. At first, Ramses, Seti’s son, thinks he has been given the wrong one. But Seti has given them each other’s swords on purpose, to remind them that they must care for each other as they are about to go into battle. A seer has a prophesy: “In the battle, a leader will be saved and his savior will someday lead.” This inflames Ramses’ insecurity, especially when it comes true.

After Seti’s death, Ramses puts Moses in prison and tries to have him killed. Moses finds a home with a small community of shepherds and falls in love with Zipporah (María Valverde). Their life there is very sweet for nine years until he sees a burning bush and receives a message from God. Scott makes an imaginative choice here about portraying the Deity that I won’t give away, but I am still trying to decide how I feel about it. God tells him what he already knew in his heart. The Hebrews are his people and he cannot run away from his responsibility to help them find freedom. So he goes back to Memphis.

Bale holds the screen well as Moses, but Turturro, Kingsley, and Sigourney Weaver as Ramses’ mother do not have enough to do to. But there is a lot of time devoted to spectacle. Well past the two-hour mark, there are still 40 years of wandering in the desert and the Ten Commandments (twice) to get through, and they are sped through very quickly. The striking of the rock to get water, manna, the golden calf, and Moses not being permitted to enter the promised land are all skipped over. Two significant ideas that are included are Moses’ disagreements with God (and God’s approval of it) and the journey from the first scene, where Ramses believes in omens and faith and Moses believes in reason, to the end of the film, where they switch places.

Moses tells Ramses he must free the slaves and Ramses says the same thing that people have said throughout history when there is no possible moral justification for their position. He says that it is not economically feasible and will take a long time. Moses, trained as a general, gets the Hebrews to attack the Egyptians’ supply chain, but God gets impatient and steps in with the plagues, which are very vivid and rather disturbing. After the death of the Egyptian first-born children, including his own son, Ramses tells the Hebrews to go. But then he and his army ride after them, until the miracle at the Red Sea, very impressively staged. But, again, the focus is shifted from the story of the Exodus to much less interesting battle between two cousins raised as brothers.

The visual scope here is impressive. There just isn’t much soul.

Parents should know that this movie includes Biblical themes including slavery, plagues and other kinds of peril and abuse, extensive peril and violence, battles, many characters injured and killed including children, and disturbing scenes with dismemberment and dead bodies.

Family discussion: How did being raised as a prince affect the way Moses saw himself and his role? How was he affected by learning the story of his birth? Why does he object to the plagues?

If you like this, try: “The Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston

Little Hope Was Arson

Posted on November 22, 2014 at 8:40 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Not Rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Arson
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 21, 2014

In a small East Texas community “with a church on every corner,” 10 churches were burned. One church showed the Christian film “Fireproof” one night and showed that it was far from fireproof itself the next day.

This is a documentary about the impact on the community and also about the investigation that led to the arrest and conviction of two young men who could barely explain why they did it. The title comes from graffiti carved into a wall that becomes a clue. And there is a wrenching twist. One of the two young men is the brother of a woman who works in law enforcement.

But the real themes of the film go beyond a crime procedural. This is the story of a culture that allows young people to get lost and the failure of religious institutions to reach them. And it is also the story of great resilience, compassion, and forgiveness. The most powerful scene in the film is at the sentencing proceeding, where one of the clergyman uses his time on the stand not to tell the judge about what he and his congregation had suffered but to speak from the heart, asking the young men who burned down his church for their forgiveness and assuring them that they had his.

“Getting slapped in the face by your hypocrisy hurts like hell,” one minister says somberly. He has reason to welcome this dose of humility. The young men who torched the churches belonged to his congregation. But of course the problem is that they did not feel they belonged anywhere. The film’s sympathetic portrayal of the believers is undercut in the final image by a quote from the anarchist Buenaventura Durruti: “The only church that illuminates is a burning church.”

If this was a feature film, we would have the satisfaction of some sort of cathartic breakthrough explaining what happened. But real life is messy and often unsatisfying. “I’ve been here for three years and still don’t know the motive,” one of the arsonists says. Have they learned anything? “When you fight with God, you’re just going to lose.”

Parents should know that this movie includes frank discussion of drug and alcohol abuse, crime, and a sad parental death.

Family discussion: What kind of punishment is appropriate here? If you disagree with what the judge ordered, why? Why do you think the boys burned the churches?

If you like this, try: “At the Death House Door” and “Into the Abyss”

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Interview: Laura Poitras of the Edward Snowden Documentary “Citizenfour”

Posted on November 5, 2014 at 12:00 pm

I normally begin my interviews by asking for permission to record the conversation for my notes. But there was something eerily resonant about that routine request when I spoke to journalist Laura Poitras, director of the new documentary “Citizenfour,” about Edward Snowden, a contractor for the NSA who leaked massive amounts of confidential information about the pervasive and invasive intrusion of government spies into private exchanges by phone or email, even without any evidence of a threat to national security. Snowden first contacted Poitras, identifying himself only as “citizenfour.” They agreed to meet in Hong Kong, and most of the film takes place in his hotel room, as, joined by Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, they prepare for the release of the information and their stories about it. Even though we know what happened, it is tense, gripping, and mesmerizing to see those last few moments before Snowden’s face was on front pages and every newscast around the world.

Poitras agreed to be taped, noting that she had to assume she was always being recorded. I began by asking her about the limitations she felt as a filmmaker in making a visually dynamic film while being confined to just one room. “At first when I walked in, it was like ‘oh wow, this represents limitations here. We are still stuck in this room, the walls, there is so much white in the room, there is no space.’ That was my first impression but I think actually in the editing room I realized that there are ways in which it was really a blessing, that you get this kind of claustrophobic feeling that increases over the days and that time sort of stops and then slowly we feel the outside world coming in. So I do think in the end it turned out to be a positive thing. And then in terms of the dynamics that happened, it was pretty extraordinary for the building of events – from the first meeting to the publication to the global reaction, and then ultimately to Snowden leaving and going underground so I feel it was really interesting in the fact that is kind of awkward in this contained place. Honestly I was thinking there is a lot of white in this room. White is not easy to work with but I think in retrospect I am appreciative of that circumstance.”

I asked how to achieve the right balance between secrecy and privacy. “From what I’ve seen since 9/11, we’ve eroded civil liberties in the name of national security and I think that the government is becoming increasingly secretive about what it is doing. People know less and less and so for instance in terms of NSA surveillance, there is a public law, and then the government has the secret law or secret interpretation of that law. And I think that is really problematic. I don’t think that these kinds of policies or decisions should be made behind the scenes by people in secret with no public debates or inner knowledge. I think that is problematic and I think we’ve been drifting more and more into increasing secrecy in the government. It’s a problem. Elected officials are there on our behalf and we should know what our government is doing. I think is also false to say it is making us more secure because what we have right now is a situation where the U.S. is going around the world and making more enemies than it is making friends. We should re-think our policies. James Risen has a book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. This idea of the endless war — we have been at war since 2001 with these various countries and now we are seeing some of the unintended consequences of that. I would question whether or not the policy direction that the U.S. is going is actually making us any safer and I think there are lots of evidence to suggest that it is not. And collecting information on people who are suspected of nothing on a large massive scale doesn’t make us safer either because then here we have intelligence agencies that are drowning in too much information plus we are violating fundamental rights of our citizens around the world.”

She disputes the argument that the massive collection of data makes it less personally invasive. “I don’t think so at all, I think if you look at for instance journalists, if you’re collecting the call records of all journalists and you want to know who are their sources then you just query their phone records and so I think that it can be used in very invasive ways. I don’t think that because they collect so much it means that it is less invasive.” And she does not think that this level of surveillance would have prevented 9/11. “The CIA knew that there were people who came into this country and they didn’t pass the information to the FBI. So that is not example that they are swimming information it is that they didn’t communicate it to the people who could have prevented what happened.

Poitras is concerned that the depth and breadth of the information collected is itself a security risk. “There are people saying something like five million people have security clearances in this country. That is a lot of people. And there is more and more contracting out to other people who are not even working for the government. They are working for private companies and all have access to this amount of information.” I asked her to compare the intrusion of government with the apparently even more massive use of personal data by corporations like Google and Facebook. ” I think it is different. The power that the government has is very different than the power that the private company has. So I think there are actual big differences in terms of how this information can be used. But I think they people should also questions about how much information these companies have about us.” And, she pointed out, the government can use the information collected by Google and Facebook as well. “I also think there is a question of consent. When do you consent to share information and what is not consent.”

She respects the work of Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall in trying to establish more accountability and better policies, “but I also think that they could go further. They have immunity, so that they can come forward and let the public know what is happening if they have concerns about the scope and extent of these kind of programs. I’d love to see a real inquiry into the extent of surveillance and I think that those two senators are the forefront of pushing for that, but I urge them to do more.” And is Edward Snowden a hero? “That is not a question I engage in. I just find it a bit reductive and so I will pass on that question.”

Documentary filmmaking is now one of the most dynamic and compelling forms of journalism, so I asked Poitras what a movie can do in reporting that print cannot. Her answer was more about the timing issue than the format.
“They are totally different. They are both bound by by journalistic principles of making sure you do your fact checking and all that kind of stuff but it also needs to have more lasting meaning and raise more universal questions. Otherwise it is not going to be interesting. When I work on a news story, it has a certain impact but in a documentary, we were very clear in editing room our job is not to break news. That I can continue to report on this material and work on the news but the film needs to say something that is not just interesting for a certain amount of time but that will have lasting resonance and so for me, it is a question about individuals who take personal risks and that becomes more of a universal story. Yes, it is about NSA and NSA surveillance but it’s about human nature in different ways.”