June 2004

Following Peter: An Interview with Peter Bratt
By Michelle Svenson, Film and Video Specialist, NMAI

World-Bridging

MS: Do you mind telling us your full name and tribal affiliation?

PB: My name is Peter (Wyric) Bratt and my father is Anglo and my mother is from Peru from the Quechua people. If you go to different regions of Peru, instead of calling them tribes, they're like communities, they call them ayllus. I feel like it's really different there than it is in the US. There are tribes, tribus, but for a large part of the population when colonization came in, even though Quechua is spoken by 60% of the population, colonization kind of destroyed tribal affiliation. In general, if you go into the Amazon, or into the highlands of the Andes you'll find tribes, communities that still maintain tribal identity.

But for the most part even full-blooded Indians moved to the cities. Once they move to the city, they're no longer Indians, they're campesinos, or they're peruanos. In Latin America, I found that people try to distance themselves from being Indian because of the stigma it carries. It's changing, but it's nowhere near where it is in the United States or in Canada, where people actually take pride and say, "I'm Native."

MS: You have a degree in political science, yes? Your work seems to fuse your many disciplines and communities. Can you speak about that?

PB: I have one Native friend who lives in L.A., an aspiring filmmaker…and he's always telling me, "Yeah bro, it's really tough living in two worlds. I got one foot over here and one foot over here." And I said, "Well you know bro, I used to say that too. Living in two worlds—but it's only one world, you know—and it's got many dimensions, many different aspects to it."

But what I find about Follow Me Home, your politics, your worldview, your spiritual outlook your family life, community life, I feel like they're so interrelated. It's hard to be, "Now I'm this person, I have this set of values—and now I'm this person and I have this set of values." For me, you have a certain set of principles and you live by them no matter what sphere of life you're in, no matter who you're interacting with.

You [can] belong to a community of filmmakers, a community of writers, the Native community, a Latino community, a community of people who are educated in a university so you could say middle class community, a working class community, I mean, there's just so many….a spiritual community.

MS: With Follow Me Home particularly, it seems like you found a way to use filmmaking as a reflexive tool in mirroring a marriage of several communities.

PB: Right. Part of it is the neighborhood where I grew up. A lot of the characters and all the different cultures are literally colliding, intermarrying and borrowing from one another, day in and day out. And you really see it in art, in the young people. And there's this, I won't say it's appropriation, it's like adoption, where you have Vietnamese and Cambodian and Native and Mexicanos and Brazilians and African-Americans and Afro-Haitians and working-class whites and everyone is living in close proximity. You have this restaurant and that restaurant and this cuisine and this music and that music, and someone's sampling from this and sampling from that. They are very distinct, but there's a constant borrowing, I find. I grew up around that, I was influenced by so much of that, even though I felt like I was grounded in one [culture], I definitely felt like I was influenced.

MS: You also seem to belong to a number of organizations like Wicapi Koyaka in Wanblee, do you mind talking about that a little?

PB: Oh yeah, that's with Richard Movescamp, who is a spiritual leader on Pine Ridge [Reservation]…he's trying to bring back Lakota tradition to address and redress some of the issues that are facing his people, mainly alcoholism, all the different substance abuse, domestic violence, child molestation—you name it.

MS: And you also belong to the organization Peace Through Strength?

PB: Peace Through Strength. That's here in New York, Washington Heights. I have a really good friend who was one of the investors in Follow Me Home. I sold him a share. (Laugh) He's been a social worker in San Francisco for over 30 years, and he's a Buddhist. Part of his teaching is you're supposed to spend 20 minutes a day in nature and you're supposed to take up a martial art to work on physical discipline, to train the mind. So, I've been doing martial arts for over 15 years and he happened to join my school, that's how I met him. He moved out here [New York] and he started a meditation academy that's married with the martial art program. He works with mostly Dominicans, Puerto Rican youth, troubled youth. He asked me to be on the board. In fact, I'm going over there tomorrow. I'm going to go train with the class. He's doing some really great stuff.

On the Road

MS: One of the things that I thought was really interesting and different about your film, is that it's a road movie-obviously-but that it has become another kind of road movie for you, right? You've been traveling with the film for how many years now?

PB: Let's see, we had our official release in 1997, and so it's literally been on the road up until right now.

MS: About how many times a year do you think you've screened it?

PB: I would say it's screened anywhere from 20 to 40 times a year. I don't always accompany the film, I have a sister named Lakota Harden who [also] does it. Or there will be other people who go and lead the Q&A afterwards, or sometimes no one at all, the film will just go out.

MS: It's created an almost cult-like status, through word of mouth, because most of the people call Speak Out [a non-profit artists and speakers bureau], it's not like you guys are still going out there and advertising [the film].

PB: Yeah, well, that's the thing, it wasn't by design. We didn't get a distribution deal so we started to do self-distribution. We developed a strategy. The first few months the actors, the lead actors, would get up there with me and we would tell people, "Here, take a flyer. Tell your friends and relatives to come see this film." We didn't have a budget to advertise on film, TV, radio. And that would turn into, "Well, I have a question about the film." And so this Q&A thing developed. We would end up staying an hour after the film taking these question and answers and sometimes three hours! If there was no other screening following, sometimes people didn't want to leave.

That helped spread this word-of-mouth. Pretty soon these discussions became sometimes emotionally charged, race, you know, race and class and just all these different issues would come up. The next thing we knew, even though we got panned by mainstream reviewers, cultural critics like Alice Walker and June Jordan started writing about the film and we got this incredible article published in Z magazine. Pretty soon we started getting invited to universities, and fairly prestigious universities. We went to Harvard three times. Right now the film primarily exists on campuses, but sometimes community groups [have screenings]. So it developed into this, kind of like you said, a road movie. We just followed the film wherever it went.

MS: And it sounds like you love it too, for the community, because it brings it all back around.

PB: Yeah, it's been great. Had it gotten picked up by the distributor, my life would have been so different….[when] Follow Me Home screened at the Sundance Film Festival I was really shy, and, man, I could not get up in front of a crowd of people. I was just terrified. But out of necessity, to get the word out, get Follow Me Home out [I had to do it]. Now I can go before audiences and speak. I find it developed this whole other aspect of my life. It takes you down these roads that you have no idea of, and they're really beautiful and [so are] the people you meet.

MS: And it's great too because it's become quite an educational tool. An educator at the same time as a filmmaker.

PB: (Laugh) I just wanted to make movies! But you know I never intended to get into the distribution game. That wasn't my intention. I feel like distribution is more complex of an animal than filmmaking. And I realize that it's not my niche, it's not my forte. So, for me, once in a while I'll go out and do something with Follow Me Home to promote it, but I really want to make films. I'm kind of putting the distribution game on hold for a while.

Chacras and Mom

MS: You spent some time on Alcatraz as a kid during the occupation?

PB: My mom was a single mother of five children. I was four-and-a-half years old when she divorced my father. She had no family here in the States. She was thinking of moving back to Peru, and she turned on the TV and she saw this young Mohawk, Richard Oakes, calling people of all tribes to come to Alcatraz Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. She said something about that just reached out and grabbed her. He happened to be at this TV station. She called and actually got him, and she said, "I'm Native you know, but I'm a Native from South America," and he said, "Sister, Indians of all tribes." So she went down in the boat and all these brown hands reached up. And she said it was the first time since she'd been in the States, and she'd been here 13 years, that she felt like she was home.

She's an RN [registered nurse] and she got involved in the fishing rights struggle, she was at Wounded Knee in '73, the occupation on Alcatraz, and, somehow, like she said on the first day, she was a movement lady. Wherever she went, she'd pack all her five kids in her station wagon, Indian caravans, and we just went from one thing to the next.

I feel like for all my brothers and sisters, that laid the foundation. No matter what you do, you have to give something back, you have to help your people. That was drilled [into us]. And, you know, it wasn't like we resisted it, but as we grew up, we originally wanted to pursue our own things. I feel you like become more and more like your parents as you get older. I see that with all my siblings.

MS: So you guys traveled from different communities. Hence, road trips…

PB: Yeah, road trips, Hopi reservation, Navajo reservation, Pima River, various tribes in Oregon, Canada, Nevada, all the Four Corners area, the Dakotas. During the late 1960's and 1970's there were just so many struggles. You would find that Indian people would go and support [other Indians]. Even though they weren't from that tribe, they would go and support that Indian cause. My mom was one of those people.

MS: And what's she doing now?

PB: Now she's just chilling with her grandchildren. She's pushing 70 and she has six grandkids. She still has a strong opinion, but she kind of stands to the back now, and she says, "I've paid my dues and I'm an elder." She says, "It's your turn," basically.

MS: Have you been back to visit the community where your mom's from?

PB: Oh yeah. In fact, I took my fiancé and a couple of relatives. We went down in December and we met with some traditional medicine people down there. I try to go back at least about once a year.

MS: I was just curious, you speak so highly of your mom, I'm wondering what she thinks of Follow Me Home.

PB: When she read the script, she said, "Peter!—some of this language in here!" because there's a lot of street vernacular. My mom worked on the set and we called her the executive, executive producer. (Laugh). She was the set medic and she was becoming everyone's mom. She came up with our film company's name, Chacras, which is a Quechua word meaning that's the land where you grow food, corn. At the Sundance Film Festival…she hadn't seen any dailies, she didn't want to see anything, and just when the music comes up and says "Chacras Filmworks," she just started sobbing, she just started crying.

If she's in the audience, she'll come up on the stage with me and start taking questions. You'll see this old activist come out in her. She gets really fired up…she sees new things in it every time. Course she says, "Does your next film have to be so heavy?"(Laugh) And it will be heavy! It doesn't have a title yet, but they'll probably rate it R.

MS: That's "The Four Mary's" right? And is it a contemporary story?

PB: I'm not going to tell you, you have to see it at the movie theatre!

Having a Vision

MS: So how did you go about making Follow Me Home?

PB: I had the script and then I found some actors. My brother had made a few films. He wasn't a very successful actor at the time, but he had made some B films, and he knew some other B actors. So we went down to Los Angeles, and we staged a reading of the script and pretty much hired everyone on the spot. Steve Reevis had just finished Geronimo. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, they would say, "Steve Reevis, who's that? Benjamin Bratt? Who's that?" because they'd been in small films. But in the Indian community they'd be like, "Wow, Steve Reevis, wow, superstar," you know what I mean? So when we'd have fundraisers Steve would come and Jesse [Borrego] and Benjamin [Bratt] and they'd be like, "Wow, these guys have made films."

We started raising funds and prayed a lot. Next thing you know we had $50,000, and that was enough to get it going. If I were talking to a young filmmaker I'd say, "Get your budget first." But that's not what we did. We went in with like $50,000 and we were going to run out of money in a week, and we would have to send everyone home, the crew and the cast.

But luckily we'd go back to the office, and we'd get on the phone and we'd raise more money. In hindsight I wouldn't do that today, and I would probably discourage a young filmmaker from doing that. But there's something about naiveté and just pure faith that makes magical things happen. It's like that saying, "You've got to jump off the cliff and you may fall and die, but the only way to grow wings is if you jump off the cliff. You're not going to grow them standing here or debating. You have to take a leap of faith."

MS: And you've worked on a couple of shorts?

PB: My brother and I produced a short documentary that we hope to develop into a feature-length documentary on the Afro-Brazilian art called capoeira, which is the martial art that I've been doing for a number of years. I have one script that's for a three-hour epic. But we need a large sum of money, so as a means to an end, I'm going to do a smaller film with probably some Hollywood stars.

MS: Is it a smaller film of that film?

PB: No it's a smaller film, like Follow Me Home was a low-budget, no-budget movie. This film will be mid-range…It's an urban epic, contemporary film piece. It's got multiple locations and takes place in the heart of a city. And so the budget's a little more than moderate.

MS: And you're just going to take that around and do the fundraising?

PB: Because the structure of the film is a little unconventional, I'm probably going to have to raise the money outside…before I can take that next step. From what I've found from talking to investors, I need to make a film that's accessible and that gets a distribution deal. Since Follow Me Home didn't get distribution, in order to make people feel comfortable who are investing, I have to produce something that actually gets a distribution deal.

MS: Have you watched or do you view much Native cinema?

PB: I try to watch everything…films from the silent era, German films, French films, Indian films from India. There's some incredible films coming out of India and Latin America. I try to watch everything.

Where I get my fill of Native film is at the American Indian Film Fest every November in San Francisco. And I find that the majority of films are coming from Canada. The Canadian government seems to be really supportive of Native filmmakers. I think they even helped fund The Fast Runner, which is an incredible film. I love that film, I study that film. I consider the Whale Rider, which is about the Maori [though not directed by a Maori], I [still] consider that a Native film. And there's another [Moari] film that I actually took a few Lakota spiritual leaders to see a couple of years ago called Once Were Warriors. And they were just like, "Man, this is a straight up Indian movie. We have to get this to the reservation." That was one that [made it] into the theatres.

I find that a lot of Native filmmakers, because of the financial restrictions, tend to go more into documentary. Right now, I think, in the United States there's basically like one Native filmmaker that everyone is aware of, that's Chris Eyre. And then Sherman [Alexie] made The Business of Fancydancing. He's a writer and a filmmaker. I feel like there are so many young filmmakers out there but because of lack of funding they're doing shorts, or documentaries or short documentaries, and so you don't really hear of them too much. It seems like Canada has a lot more in terms of feature materials.

There's [also] this film, I think it was made in 1973 in Mexico. It's called Chac. The entire film is in Teltzal and it is a powerful story. It's a traditional story, it's all Native people, I think the director is Chilean. I saw it for the first time a year ago and I thought 'Wow! Why haven't I heard of this film before?'

MS: Out of all the different arts, do you feel like filmmaking is definitely your medium?

PB: Truth be told, if God had granted me a voice, I would have been a singer because I love music. But I find that I can bring my love for music to film. And film seems to incorporate it, I mean, it's the ultimate collaborative art, because you are working with so many different people from so many different areas of life, so many different kinds of artists. And you are constantly learning from one another. You cannot make a film by yourself, it's like multifaceted collaboration. And I feel that's what makes it so exciting. You have a script that's like a blueprint, but you never know what the final outcome is going to be. Things happen magically on the set and in postproduction when you bring music into it and stuff.

What I always say to filmmakers, especially independent filmmakers, is, "You have to love it." You know, for one—you might not get rich. And when you're making your film, you're begging and you're borrowing and you're stealing and you're living with your reels in your house and you're living with this material for a couple of years, night and day. So you know you should love it. Because it can burn you out if you don't.

MS: Do you have any advice for young Native filmmakers?

PB: My advice is to take in all advice and sometimes you have to discard it. All of it. Because, for instance, in my case, I had no experience with filmmaking, whatsoever. And I said,

Peter: "You know what? I want to make a film."
Advisor: "Make a short film."
Peter: "I'm going to make a motion picture."
Advisor: "But you have no experience."
Peter: "I know but I want to make one."
Advisor: "But you have no money."
Peter: "I know, but I want to make one."
Advisor: "You're crazy, you're dreaming."

I feel that if you really have something that you believe strongly in, you find a way. You find people who can help and support you. The money, that's a small part of it. You can raise the money, that's doable. The hard part is getting people to believe in whatever that vision is; to come along with you for the ride. And once you have that, really any door, any avenue is open.

Especially with the camera equipment that's available. Ever shoot in digital? You can really be creative and inventive and shoot a low-budget film, a well-made film, a well-crafted film, if that's what you really want to do. So, I would say take in all the advice, but if you find that the advice is overwhelming, discouraging, saying it's impossible…[then discard it]. That's my belief. But at the same time you'll also hear some good things that will help you, so you take it all in and use what you can.

I feel like [we're] storytellers, I mean, that's what filmmakers are, they're storytellers, whether they're making documentary or features. I feel that storytellers have always had an important role in, but in most indigenous societies, storytellers man, that's where a lot of it comes together. That's where things are passed on, knowledge, ethics,

Today I feel what governs the industry…[as] someone told me, "This is the entertainment business, small e, capital B." A lot of young filmmakers feel like they have to make a certain kind of film if they're going to make it. I really encourage Native filmmakers, or all filmmakers, to answer to and follow their personal vision. If it's something that's really from the heart and sincere, it's going to appeal to people.

And I feel that's what we need today—we need an infusion of new blood, new vision…a lot of the material out there, I don't find that exciting, or original. I love all films, but [in] different eras of cinema, like the 70's or the 60's in France, or like the 50's in India, or even right now in Mexico—there's just really exciting things that happen in film during those times. I feel that happened because people were thinking outside of the box.

I went to this film bookstore and there are all these how-to-make-film books and how-to-write-screenplay books—there's like this formula that you plug into. A lot of traditional Native story telling, it definitely doesn't fit into the model, like the Western paradigm, the linear structure and times. It's good to borrow from everything, but I really think it's important today to think outside of the box. I think we need it.

Image credits: Peter Bratt - courtesy of Speak Out; Poster for Follow Me Home - courtesy of Speak Out; Peter Bratt at the College of Wooster - courtesy of Speak Out; Peter Bratt at a screening of Follow Me Home - photograph by Roy Kaltschmidt; Peter Bratt & Benjamin Bratt on the set of Follow Me Home - courtesy of Speak Out; Peter Bratt and Benjamin Bratt - courtesy of Speak Out; Peter Bratt during Q&A after a screening of Follow Me Home at NMAI