Filmmaker Laurel Chiten, director of THE JEW IN THE LOTUS, TWITCH AND SHOUT, and HOUSES OF HEALING, among others.

W hen I met Laurel Chiten at an outdoor cafe one recent rare lovely summer afternoon, she was on her cell phone changing her teaching plans for fall. In the space of one week, she and her film THE JEW IN THE LOTUS had been invited to the Haifa International Film Festival in October, and she had been accepted into the prestigious Bellagio Conference Center, an artists’ colony in Italy where she’ll be spending the month of November. None of this news surprised me as I got talking with this brilliant, funny woman. Laurel started learning ASL at age nineteen, becoming an certified interpreter at twenty-two. She worked in Deaf Theater and wrote a play A LITTLE OUT OF HAND, the story of a romance between a hearing and a deaf teenager. After several years of working as an interpreter, she felt "ready to have my own voice, or what I called my palette." Working at Public Access television was an inspiration to her.

Soon she was working on a dramatic series, finished in 1988, called TWO IN TWENTY, a "consciously kitsch lesbian soap opera." Not long after this series ended, Laurel began to notice some symptoms she’d had since childhood becoming worse. No doctor she went to seemed to able to make a diagnosis. Finally, a physician told her she had a mild case of Tourette’s Syndrome. Her years of frustration resulted in her determination to make TWITCH AND SHOUT, a documentary on the syndrome. Completed in 1994, the film took "five long years" to make, but she was determined that no one else go through what we went through, or at least the torture of going so long without a diagnosis. Though she’d been wanting to do a dramatic feature for some time around the subject, she realized she had to get the word out first so people would be educated.

She talked about the struggles of first-time filmmaking. "We worked on a shoestring. I was constantly trying to raise money. We did every kind of fund raiser, looked for donations, went into debt. I was living in a tiny room in New York City and had some very dark days." But the day the film screened at MOMA was the day that changed her life. Though the film had been reviewed before, it had never been reviewed with an audience of people with Tourette’s Syndrome. "You couldn’t hear the movie, with all the vocalizing going on: mostly cursing and barking."

This event made the New Yorker’s "Talk of the Town" and finally, P.O.V. bought the film. Laurel was on her way. THE JEW IN THE LOTUS, a stunning documentary inspired by Rodger Kamenetz’ book by the same name, explores as its starting point a spiritual summit between a group of rabbis and the Dalai Lama that took place in 1990. Rodger’s own spiritual path of grief and healing resonates in an utterly unforced, moving way with the underlying humanity these two cultures discover they share. Unexpected humor (Rodger quips re: the culture clash "monks like silence, Jews like to yak") peppers this brilliantly edited film. The screening I attended was the 45th at the MFA, and the most popular film in its series. It was the third viewing for several members of the audience. Laurel told me "it was a very difficult film to make, a very complex film. People usually have strong feelings about it either way, but I’m very proud of it, I felt I really built a story in an artistic way." One problem she faced was that the film is essentially all backstory–there was very little footage available. "It was a movie built from nothing." Laurel consulted with Chris Keane, author of HOW TO WRITE A SELLING SCREENPLAY, to help structure the film in the classic three acts, something she believes gives needed form to documentaries.

Laurel’s most recent project came to her when she wasn’t looking to do any more documentaries; her focus had begun to shift toward narrative film. But she was approached by Harvard’s Dr. John Mack, a psychologist who wanted to make a film based on his research on people who believe they have been abducted by aliens. "No way was I going to do this," she said; "that book scared the hell out of me." But Dr. Mack didn’t give up; he invited her to a dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club where she heard these people, called "Experiencers" speak. She was blown away by their sincerity and intelligence, simply by how normal and everyday they seemed. "Every film starts with a question. For ‘Jew’ it was ‘Why are so many Jews drawn to Buddhism? For this film it was: ‘How will these people go on with their lives after having had an experience like this?’" Laurel explained that the initial inspiration for all her films has been people’s lives. I couldn’t resist asking if she believed these people’s stories. She said: "I remain agnostic. I believe they believe their stories and that SOMETHING happened to them. But what it is, that I don’t know." Though her film TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN is still seeking funding, the inspiration for the film is firmly in place.

Last year Laurel completed a ten part educational video called HOUSES OF HEALING, designed as a companion piece for Robin Casarijian’s book of the same name. This series explored issues of "emotional literacy" among inmates in prison. Laurel found this an intensely emotional, moving experience, and ranks the series as some of her most important work so far. I asked Laurel how she really felt about filmmaking, and if she had advice to those considering this path:

"If you think you have a choice, then don’t do it. You should feel as if you must do this or die–that’s how much passion you need, because it’s just too hard. I mean, what’s the Latin translation of passion–isn’t it suffering? Think of what you have to go through: the creative process, grueling at best, finding money, making the thing, writing proposals, putting a budget together, getting out of debt, finding distribution. The whole time you don’t even know if a) you will even get the film done; b) you really will ever get out of debt; c) anyone will watch it, (as in, will it get broadcast or have a venue to screen it); d) if they watch it, will they even understand it; and e) will they like it."

But when I asked Laurel if it was all worth it, the answer was an unqualified "Absolutely. If I can reach people, touch them somehow, educate them, move them, then it’s worth every minute I’ve put into it. And I think I have."

Erica Ferencik, Director of Development for Frye Productions, is a novelist and prize winning screenwriter. She can be contacted at 617 573-0000, or email: EBGF@aol.com