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American documentary director Kate Ryan wanted to be working in the film industry ever since she was a child, thinking that she would be either acting or making feel-good movies within traditional studio system. But life had other plans for her.
Ryan would go on directing a feature documentary Welcome Nowhere, which centers on a boxcar Roma community on the outskirts of Sofia, Bulgaria. The film, narrated by Academy Award-nominee Ethan Hawke, is being screened all over the festivals in the US and Europe to the warm reception of people in the documentary filmmaking business.
While still in film school, Ryan shot countless promos in the 25 Third-World countries for non-profit organisations, trying to expose to her domestic audience what life was like outside of America.
“These experiences helped me realise that my strength was in documentaries and non-fiction, and that instead of being a famous actress or director, I wanted to give a voice to the voiceless,” says Ryan. And being a documentary filmmaker seemed like the perfect way to do that.
Ryan’s exposure to the Roma people began in 2001, when she took a trip to Eastern Europe with an NGO she was working for. She was fascinated to learn about this ethnic group, who’d been living on the outskirts of European society for over 500 years.
“I couldn’t understand how it is possible to have people to live in such misery in our time. I realised that there were so many questions unanswered,” Ryan says. She adds that prior to going to Bulgaria for principal photography, she’d researched the Roma people thoroughly, from their history to culture and customs per region.
“Yet, I still learned more in five weeks of film production and interviews than I did in that entire year of reading.”
From 2004 to 2009, Ryan would return to Europe every summer, eventually settling on making a feature documentary as a way to find and document answers to her questions. One particular group of Roma people in Bulgaria, which came to known as the boxcar community, stood out to her.
The boxcar community was a community of Roma people in Sofia, who had been removed from their houses in 2001 to the boxcars in order to make way for a new supermarket to be built in that area. Though the mayor of Sofia promised them they will be moved to the new houses in six-months time, their precarious existence in the gutter would span for more than a decade.
Ryan says that by using the eviction and lack of required follow-through on the part of the government as a background, their story painted a detailed picture of what is going on all over Europe. It finally helped her to understand why the situation was the way it was.
“I hope that what I learned and documented in Welcome Nowhere can help educate other people about this pressing issue,” Ryan says on her first documentary.
During pre-production stages of Welcome Nowhere in Bulgaria, Ryan ran into luck that helped her get the top officials of the country. Initially, she intended to dedicate the whole film to the Roma community. However, early on in her trip she was connected through a mutual friend with a woman who had served as a translator for numerous Bulgarian politicians and had also started her own non-profit organisation that did tolerance training.
The woman, Antoinette Shishmanova, who is now one of the leading Bulgarian NGO activists, offered Ryan help in setting up interviews with her own former colleagues and friends, including the former mayor and the former President of Bulgaria.
Another lucky connection for Ryan happened to be Leslie Hawke, who ran a Roma organisation in Romania to provide early education to impoverished children in the country. Leslie Hawke also happened to be the mother of famous Hollywood actor Ethan Hawke, helping Ryan to secure him as a narrator for her film.
Convincing the boxcar community that she would fairly tell their side of the story became the toughest challenge for Kate Ryan during production of the film. “They had been so misrepresented by the media that they distrusted anyone who came in, no matter what they claimed,” Ryan says. “It took incredible effort to persuade them my intentions to do their story justice were sincere.”
On the technical side of things, it was incredibly difficult for Ryan to direct a documentary in a Bulgarian language she did not speak. Not knowing what her subjects were saying and not being able to have them translated right away – Ryan says she did not want the audience to hear a translator on screen – left her hoping half the time that she was getting the answers that she needed. “Most of the time, it wasn’t until I got home and was able to get all of the footage transcribed that I finally knew what I had to work with,” Ryan says.
Ryan had been working on Welcome Nowhere part-time for the last six years, joggling directing with working full-time as a film/television editor to afford making the film. Although this lifestyle barely left her any spare time to develop her next projects, it did not deter her enthusiasm of continuing filmmaking career.
“As Welcome Nowhere screening tour is officially wrapped up towards the end of this year, I will begin to look into my options for future films,” Ryan says.
Kate Ryan Top 3 Film Recommendations
Mad Hot Ballroom, 2005. Dir. by Marilyn Agrelo. – Since I make docs about heavy subjects, my favorite documentaries to watch often tend to be about lighthearted kids competitions. This one manages to be lighthearted and still have social commentary.
Before Midnight, 2013. Dir. by Richard Linklater. – “I am a huge fan of anything Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke do together, so the entire “Before” trilogy is a must-watch.”
District 9, 2009. Dir. by Neill Blomkamp. – “The attitudes and message in this film are incredibly timely when discussing attitudes towards minorities, and it naturally reminds me of the situation with the Roma evictions in Europe.”
Read FilmDoo’s review of Kate Ryan’s documentary Welcome Nowhere at: http://filmdooworld.com/2014/03/19/film-review-welcome-nowhere-dir-kate-ryan-2013-bulgaria/
