Elgin grad gets Spielberg support for 1982 political massacre documentary
Spielberg backs Elgin grad's disturbing doc
Not many former Barlett residents and Elgin High School grads can say Steven Spielberg served as the executive producer on their movies. Ryan Suffern can.
His new documentary "Finding Oscar," opening Friday, May 5, at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, details the search for a little boy, Oscar Ramirez, who survived the massacre of his village by the Guatemalan military in 1982.
Soldiers dumped the bodies of 162 adults and 67 children into the village well. Some of them, babies and children, were thrown in alive.
Spielberg signed on as executive producer on the film, chronicling the U.S.-backed military coup that resulted in a civil war that killed an estimated 200,000 Guatemalan citizens, many of them officially classified as "disappeared."
Suffern will be present at the 8:15 p.m. screening May 5. Go to siskelfilmcenter.org/findingoscar. You can read our From Suburbs to Showbiz profile on Suffern at dailyherald.com/article/20111122/news/711229935/. Meanwhile, here are excerpts from our interview earlier this week:
Q. Was there any part of the testimony or video so graphic that you had to edit it out?
A. Yes. We have several firsthand witnesses to different aspects of the massacre. At a certain point, it's just too much to take. We have a real balancing act. How do we let the audience know about this atrocity and understand this horror, but not so much so that you can't take it any more?
The fact that there's all of this mystery surrounding what happened at this massacre, we tried to tell the story through a somewhat true crime detective narrative in order to hopefully engage the audience into wanting to know the truth of what happened at Dos Erres.
Q. Also disturbing was how our American president praised military leader General Efrain Ríos Montt as a man of "great personal integrity," days before Montt ordered the massacre at Oscar's village, Dos Erres. Then, Montt was held up as a democracy champion even though the Guatemalan democracy had been crushed to give him power.
A. This wasn't unique to the Reagan administration. This goes all the way back to Eisenhower in 1954 when the CIA conducted one of the first coups it ever undertook and displaced a democratically elected president.
Q. I got a sense near the end of "Finding Oscar" that the scales of justice had been righted just a little bit. Am I wrong?
A. If there were a redemptive arc within this story, I think the United States has a level of redemption in starting on the wrong side of history in the early '80s. We were supporting a genocidal dictator. It has come full circle. The United States is engaged in trying to do right by holding these perpetrators accountable.
Q. Why go after the Oscar story?
A. There's an attraction for me to be able to tell an intimate, personal story of this one survivor of a massacre. In doing so, we get to touch upon much larger issues, such as U.S. foreign policy, immigration and genocide. Hopefully, we've put a human face on those issues. Decisions in Washington, D.C., can have a profound effect around the world.
Q. How important was being a photojournalist at the University of Illinois' Daily Illini newspaper for your eventual career?
A. Incredibly important. When I look back, I see the roots of my documentary filmmaking when I was learning how to be a photographer, not just in how to use a camera, but in my early appetite to go out and find stories. I didn't know that was in me until I started working at the DI. I didn't know what I wanted to be, and that experience morphed into me becoming a filmmaker.
Q. How did you meet your wife, Kim Garr?
A. We were both English majors at the University of Illinois. We hit it off in a Hemingway course. Her folks live in Elk Grove Village.
Q. The last time we talked, you had a baby on the way. Any additions?
A. I have two daughters, Pearl, who's 5, and Iris, 20 months. My children are such clear and present reminders of what happened to the children in this particular massacre. It afforded me a perspective I certainly wouldn't have had before being a parent.
'Lonely Place' one of 'Movies About Movies'
Nicholas Ray's blistering 1950 film noiry tale "In a Lonely Place" tells the story of a talented but volatile Hollywood screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart) brought in for questioning after he's the last person to see a hatcheck girl alive. It's part of the Park Ridge Public Library's "Movies About Movies" film festival. Free admission! No registration required! 7 p.m., Thursday, May 11, Park Ridge Public Library, 20 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge. Go to parkridgelibrary.org.
Oscar nom 'Red Turtle' visits After Hours fest
A nominee for the 2016 Best Animated Feature Academy Award, "The Red Turtle" - a collaboration between Japan's legendary Studio Ghibli and Dutch-born, London-based animator Dudok de Wit - will be presented by the After Hours Film Society at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 8, at the Ogden 6 Theaters, 1227 E. Ogden Ave, Naperville. (Note: this is not AHFS's usual Downers Grove venue.) General admission $10. Go to afterhoursfilmsociety.com.
Kid stars celebrated by Dann & Raymond
Dann & Raymond's Movie Club closes out its ninth season at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library with "The Great Child Stars," at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, May 11, at 500 N. Dunton Ave., Arlington Heights. Clips will showcase classic kid performers such as Elizabeth Taylor, Haley Mills, Freddy Bartholomew, Judy Garland, and, of course, Shirley Temple. Free admission! Free popcorn! ahml.info or (847) 392-0100.
• Dann Gire's column Dann in Reel Life runs Fridays in Time out!