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Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
FREEDOM’S FURY-Filmmaker Interview
FREEDOM’S FURY is a fantastic new documentary that has been making the rounds at film festivals. Below is my interview with the filmmaker. Look for this film to hit theaters here in Los Angeles this fall. In the meantime, you can log on to the official website and MySpace page for updates!
How did you get involved in this project?
My sister Megan & I (The Sibs) have always been attracted to provocative social justice stories and we consider ourselves incredibly privileged to be able to tell this long-overlooked story of the Hungarian people power revolt in 1956 and the remarkable journey of the 1956 Hungarian Olympic water polo team.
Our interest in the film goes back twenty years. I grew up playing high school water polo in Canada and fell in love with the game. I went on to play at college where my coach at the University of Michigan was Ben Quittner, a Hungarian who it turns out was actually coached by Deszo Gyarmati, the captain of the 1956 Hungarian water polo team!
When I started my career as a writer/director in Los Angeles, I realized that the infamous Hungary-Soviet Union match could make a great documentary, especially set against the backdrop of the Hungarian Revolution and the people’s fight for freedom. I brought the story to my sister, Megan, who was eager to make our shared vision for the film a reality. When I formed WOLO Entertainment in 1998 with producer Kristine Lacey, I showed Kristine an article I had clipped about this game that described the heroic journey of the 1956 Hungarian Olympic water polo team in Melbourne (an article from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics). Kristine also felt it was an incredible story. Without further ado, we set about making the film—a five year production journey had begun.
Was there any one aspect of this story that interested you the most?
That’s a tough one. I suppose on one level, we see this film as a love letter to the sport of water polo. It is such an intense, physically demanding, yet balletic sport and we wanted to try and bring it to life on-screen while celebrating Hungary’s century-long dominance of what most people call the toughest team sport in the Olympics. The infamous water polo showdown between Hungary and the Soviet Union at the Melbourne Olympics, the climax of our doc, is also one of the greatest underdog sports triumph stories we’ve ever come across.
On another level, we also wanted to celebrate this incredible, yet largely over-looked people power movement in Hungary and try to expose it to a younger generation. Very few people outside of Hungary know much about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, especially people our age and younger.
Though the Revolution was crushed, it remains one of the most powerful stories about the courage of the individual and the universal desire of people to be free. We were fascinated by the way everyday Hungarians risked so much, in the face of insurmountable odds, to stand up and fight for their rights.
As Camus wrote about the Hungarian Revolution back in the late 50’s: Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people… we have only one way of being true to Hungary, and that is never to betray, among ourselves and everywhere, what the Hungarians died for.
It’s a powerful lesson—especially in today’s climate where so many of our freedoms are either taken for granted, or are slowly being eroded by the drumbeat of fear that propels the so-called “War on Terror”. I think it’s important to remember the sacrifices from the past and to put them in context against the political climate we live in today. We hope our film will provoke people on many levels.
How long did it take to make the film?
Five years (whew!). We started fundraising in the Fall of 2001, just after 9-11. We filmed in the Spring and Summer of 2002, started editing that Fall, ran out of money in early 2003, put the project on hold for over a year until we raised enough completion financing to finish the edit late last year.
How did you go about gathering the funds?
After reviewing the marketplace (and wanting to retain creative control!), we decided to fund the project exclusively through independent sources. We formed a Limited Partnership and units were sold to a select group of private investors. A series of fundraising events were held around the country in late 2001 and early 2002 (Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York) where we raised the lion’s share of the budget.
How did you garner the involvement of Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu? What made them respond to the project?
Lucy is a college buddy of mine. We met at the University of Michigan performing in a production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” (go figure). It was 1989, the year of Tiannamen Square and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain. Lucy and I both became very politicized around this time. We’ve been fast friends ever since and when Megan and I told her about our new project, she was immediately drawn to the story. She saw obvious parallels between the brutal repression of the fragile democracy movement in China in 89 and the events in Hungary in 1956.
Lucy quickly became a strong backer of the project and hosted our first fund-raising event in LA in 2001. Lucy was just starting to work on Kill Bill at the time and brought Quentin Tarantino down to the event. Quentin hadn’t heard much about the Hungarian Revolution, or water polo for that matter, and he was instantly captivated by the dual narrative story. He told us that the sports redemption part of the doc was one of “the greatest stories never told”.
Both Quentin and Lucy then signed on as investors and provided some essential initial backing. They eventually became Executive Producers along with Amy Sommer and Andrew G. Vajna (who, incidentally, is now producing a feature film based on the events in our documentary called Children of Glory) . Andy’s feature will be released just after Freedom’s Fury hits theatres – so audiences will get the chance to meet the real people and actual participants first in our doc, then go see a dramatized version with his film. Very exciting!
What have you taken with you from the experience of making this film?
This film has impacted us more than any other creative experience so far in our lives. It has been a totally humbling, exhausting and yet utterly rewarding journey. The pressure of doing justice to a story about a nation that was bombed and invaded, where over 5,000 people were killed in a matter of days, was a daunting challenge to say the least. Especially since neither Megan, myself, or our fantastic editor Mike Rogers was Hungarian.
I think, more than anything, we’ve learned that you have to stand up for what you believe in – the Hungarian people of 1956 taught us that. As filmmakers, we’ve learned about perseverance and persistence. No-one wanted this story or thought it had any commercial value when we first began. Five years later, we’ve had a great festival run and the film’s about to be released around the globe. We’ve also learned why film is considered the ultimate collaborative art form – there were so many talented people who contributed so selflessly to this project. We had a truly amazing team from the beginning of the research phase, through filming (we had over 200 hours of our own footage), to the massive post production effort with our editor, graphics team and composer.
Will this film be theatrically released?
Yes, we will be released theatrically in many territories and we’re incredibly grateful for that. We begin with a major theatrical release in Hungary starting the first week of September, followed by a limited theatrical release here in the US and in Canada in late September, as well as limited released in Australia and certain European & East European territories in advance of the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution on October 23rd.
What do you hope people take away from seeing this film?
We hope that people will see this film and realize that they can make a difference – that individual courage combined with collective purpose and action can truly change the world. We also hope that people will recognize that the struggle for freedom and liberty is an ongoing struggle that requires constant vigilance. Finally, we hope people walk away from our doc realizing that water polo rocks!
Written by Karie (site owner) on 06/28 at 09:20 AM 9 Comments:
Great story, and I’m glad to hear you’ve got this documentary made and on its way to being released. I look forward to the film coming out and plan to see it. I’ve passed the link (this blogpost) on to some water polo people in Northern California. Hopefully you can get it into theaters in water polo territory around Stanford and Berkeley. It looks ideal for that university audience.
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Posted by Crystal Martinez on 10/11 at 06:03 PM I am very happy to see that people around the world are interested in our history. I hope the feature will be shown in Hungary as well.
Posted by Krisztina Vattay on 10/27 at 10:01 AM I look forward to the film coming out and plan to see it.
Posted by Technology Transfer Services on 02/01 at 08:38 AM Excellent history, very much I love such, it was pleasant to me, it is beautifully written, an interesting post!
Posted by kot on 04/10 at 09:28 AM I hope you can share the word of God to evryone you know.I’m sure other people might be able to relate to life story. You have encouraged other people who nver Hnew Christ To follow in you footsteps. You Really Are AN Insperation to Everyone.
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