Project title: After Jonestown
Recipient Organization: African American Coalition for Health Improvement and Empowerment (AACHIE)
Fiscal Sponsor: Bay Area Video Coalition
Lead Artists: Paul VanDeCarr and Rick Butler
Genre and Date Awarded: Media Arts, June 2003
To be Completed: June 2004

The lead artists and the African-American Coalition for Health Improvement and Empowerment (AACHIE) are collaborating to create After Jonestown, a one-hour documentary film on the legacy of the Jonestown Guyana tragedy, focusing on the mental health issues it has left behind, particularly in San Francisco’s African American Community.

In 1978, some 900 Americans, members of the People’s Temple who had traveled from the United States, died in a mass murder/suicide at Jonestown, Guyana. Reverend Jim Jones had founded the People’s Temple in Indiana in 1955 and moved to California in 1965. The Temple was controversial for its support of racial integration, lauded for its social service programs, and politically influential because of its dedicated congregation and savvy pastor. While leadership of the Temple was almost entirely white, the congregation was some 70% African American. After the deaths, the stigma attached to Jonestown, racism, and the attendant lack of services available to survivors and relatives have combined to prevent the thousands of San Franciscans affected by this tragedy from grieving. The result is a serious, and almost totally unrecognized mental health problem for the Bay Area.

Co-director Paul VanDeCarr is a writer and researcher, former reporter and assignment editor for KPFA Radio News, and founder and coordinator of “Telling the Story.” Rick Butler has shot many films, including Paul Robeson: Here I Stand, Street Soldiers, and School Colors; and he directed The Fillmore, an Emmy-award winning documentary on the social, cultural and political upheaval in San Francisco’s most diverse community.

The co-directors will tell the film’s story in a hybrid documentary/cinema verite style. It will feature original interviews, original footage shot by the film’s subjects, home movies, personal photographs, and momentos of people involved in Jonestown, as well as archival news footage and historical photographs. The documentary will seek national PBS broadcast and screenings at film festivals.

AACHIE is a community-based coalition in partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s African American Health Initiative. Its mission is to improve the quality of life of African Americans in San Francisco by integrating an African-centered and cultural approach to prevention and health promotion; engaging residents to help plan and implement ways of improving community health; providing community health training, leadership development, and job opportunities; and building community coalitions around health concerns. AACHIE sees racism as a key health problem for African Americans just as After Jonestown explores how racism affected the people of Jonestown and the mental and physical health of survivors and family members. Through collaborating with AACHIE, the filmmakers seek to contribute a thoughtful public exposition of the legacy of the tragedy and help create a therapeutic dialogue among the many local families affected.

LEAD ARTISTS

Paul VanDeCarr

Co-director and producer, Paul VanDeCarr has ten years of experience in program management and production. He has worked extensively in storytelling in various media, including as director of a nonprofit program called “Telling the Story,” a news reporter for KPFA and the Pacifica Radio Network, an independent producer, and a volunteer interviewer for the Holocaust Oral History Project. His storytelling work led him to take a Master of Theology at Harvard Divinity School, where he became interested in Jonestown.

Videos

• “One-man Band: David Gegarty’s 25 Years at the Castro Organ,” documentary, 7 minutes, 2003
• “Sexual Orientation,” comedy, 6 minutes, 2002, screened at lesbian and gay film festivals in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Palm Springs, Mexico City
• “Dubya’s Big Day,” political/experimental, 3 minutes, 2001, Screened at 2003 Wisconsin Film Festival, Madison; 2002 Film Arts Festival and Zeitgeist Film Festival, San Francisco; featured video on Adbusters.org website as “Creative Resistance,” November 2002
• “Forgetting,” experimental, 3 minutes, 2000, Screened at Boston Lesbian/Gay Film Festival, Artists Television Access, San Francisco
• “The Anti-Gay Agenda: Homosexuality and the Religious Right,” documentary, 27 minutes, 1999, Produced for national conference of LGBT seminarians, activists, and academics at Harvard Divinity School, distributed to national offices of five denominational organizations, and to Political Research Associates right-wing watch center/library
• “Life and Death Plus Bonus Footage,” comedy, 10 minutes, 1998, Artists Television Access, San Francisco

Awards

• Martin Duberman Fellowship, Center for Lesbian/Gay Studies, 2002
• Echoing Green Public Service Fellow, Echoing Green Foundation, 1995-97
• Starr Public Service Fellow, Swearer Center for Public Service, 1987

Work Experience

• Writer-researcher, self-employed, San Francisco, 2000-02
• Founder and coordinator, “Telling the Story: San Francisco,” 1994-97
• Reporter and editor, KPFA Radio News, Berkeley, 1993-94

Rick Butler

Co-director and director of photography Rick Butler is an Emmy Award-winning director and director of photography with more than 25 years of experience in documentary and feature film work for PBS, BBC, and other networks and stations. He directed The Fillmore, an award-winning documentary and has shot such films as Paul Robeson: Here I Stand, Street Soldiers, School Colors, and Color Adjustment. As director of The Fillmore, he became interested in exploring the story of Jonestown more deeply.

Selected Film Credits

• Director, cameraman, Making Nemo, documentary on the making of Disney/Pixar Production Finding Nemo, 2003
• Director, Lonely Island, Hidden Alcatraz, three layers of history of the notorious “Rock,” shot and aired in HDTV, KQED, San Francisco, 2002
• Director of Photography,Beautiful Bay Area III, Our Beautiful Parks, 60-minutes, shot in HDTV, KQED, San Francisco, 2001
• Director, Sin, Fire, and Gold, an historical walk along the Barbary Coast Trail, shot and aired in HDTV, KQED, San Francisco, 2000.
• Director, The Fillmore, Emmy Award-winning documentary, PBS, 1999
• Director of Photography, Paul Robeson: Here I Stand, definitive biographical documentary for PBS’s American Masters series, 1998
• Director of Photography, Field Trip, syndicated children’s series featuring live action puppets, Dotted Line Entertainment, 1997
• Additional photography, Fight in the Fields, definitive documentary film on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, PBS, 1997
• Director of Photography,Street Soldiers, documentary on a year in the life of the Omega Boys Club of San Francisco, New Images Productions for PBS, 1996
• Director of Photography, Making Peace, documentary series, Moira Productions for PBS 1995
• Director of Photography,School Colors, Frontline, documentary on diversity and multiculturalism in public education, Center for Investigative Reporting/Telesis Productions, 1994.