The MFJS Reporter — Winter 2020 T-R

Shapiro obtained her undergraduate degree from Tufts University and then went on to get a degree in law from Boston University. She then went on to practice law as a public defender for about ten years. In that time, she found that law wasn’t satisfying her desire to impact people for the better, and thus, began to explore the possibility of filmmaking by taking classes at The Independent Film Project.

On another hand, independent film since its inception in the 1920s has been a field that anyone with a camera can get in to, no matter their education, class, race, religion, etc. Shapiro said that the best thing that one can do to get into the field is to make things and learn from the things that you make, so no formal education is needed.

“I took some classes there,” Shapiro said. “I met the teacher who was a documentary filmmaker herself and she was working on a project and I was very interested, and I volunteered to help.”

Thus, her journey in independent documentary filmmaking began, but that doesn’t mean that it was easy. Documentary filmmaking has always been a very difficult and niche field to be in, as it was very physically demanding. The whole genre actually stems from the use of Soviet montage in the early 1920s, a technique in which a bunch of images are shown in a certain order to portray a certain message.

Shapiro has made a variety of films, but her most famous is Time for Ilhan (2018) which won her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing – Special Class.

“[Omar’s] arc became stratospheric as I was filming. That doesn’t happen on an average day,” said Shapiro. “And then to have my desire to be impacting what was quickly becoming a very messed up and dangerous world was very satisfying.”

However remarkable it was chronicling the first ever Somali- American congresswoman’s rise into the national spotlight wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

“[Documentary filmmaking] is not a financially lucrative arena by any stretch,” said Shapiro.

As mentioned above, there are no typical days, no routine, and no regularity in the life of a documentary filmmaker. In a way they are much like reporters, having to drop everything and go wherever the story is taking them without a second thought, and without an abundance of capital either.

“I wouldn’t recommend this, but we did not have the money as we went,” said Shapiro in regard to the filming of Time for Ilhan. “A lot of people deferred being paid.”

Budget constraints is an obstacle that almost every documentary filmmaker has to overcome. It is a rule of thumb that one minute of finished, corporate production footage costs about one $1,000-$10,000 USD, which, no matter how you slice it, for an 89-minute film is quite a bit of cash to come by.

Nobody in their right minds should go into documentary filmmaking with wealth in mind. The average salary for a filmmaker ranges from about $70,000 to $100,000 USD annually, and though that sounds amazing, remember how many man hours and travel costs go into that. Furthermore, a lot of that salary will probably end up going into personally funding the next project, much like a painter or sculptor.

Shapiro took a massive risk in continuing filming without the funding to be doing so, but with no risk comes no reward.

“I had no funding, and I had this remarkable opportunity in front of me,” said Shapiro. “I had to sort of talk a lot of people into being willing to go on this ride with me.”

Budget issues are normal in documentary filmmaking, which is a large reason why filmmakers don’t make much money in general, but in Shapiro’s experience with this film, all of these obstacles had to be overcome in an extremely tight timeframe, as it was the middle of a political campaign, and that train doesn’t stop for anybody.

The limited time and funds meant that she had to make some compromises with the filming at times.

“It was really a mad race to sort of figure out how to follow [Omar] through that political process, and what to capture,” said Shapiro. “Sometimes that meant one cameraman, sometimes that meant cameraman and/or woman and myself, sometimes it meant running seven or nine people during the caucuses or the convention.”

Shapiro’s mad dash in making this film led her everywhere, flying with Omar to various events, sitting in on, as she puts it, “sometimes incredibly boring meetings,” and such. All in all, after the filming process, Shapiro and her small crew had compiled hundreds of hours of film, which was then sifted through and condensed into an 89-minute, Tribeca film festival featured, NAACP award nominated, Emmy award winning documentary film.

One doesn’t start making movies and win an Emmy on your first try. It takes persistence, patience curiosity, people skills, and a lot of self-motivation to make a film like this. Time for Ilhan was made extremely quickly, as it only took two-and-a-half years. Filmmakers throw their lives into their work, sacrificing much in the process, but those sacrifices aren’t made in vain.

On the weekend of Mar. 6, 2020, the Civil Rights Memorial Museum and the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama are screening Time for Ilhan, and are bringing Shapiro to speak about the film.

“At this moment in time, the fact that it continues to have a life, that’s extremely satisfying,” said Shapiro.

Time for Ilhan is available now on Amazon Prime.