Keeping the Faith: 'The Calling' Follows the Journeys of Aspiring Religious Leaders

The Calling, which airs December 20 and 21 on PBS' Independent Lens, is a two-part, four-hour series that follows seven Muslims, Catholics, Evangelical Christians and Jews as they undertake their respective journeys on the road to professional clergy. The series is, in large part, a snapshot on faith in America and the ongoing challenges of reconciling the exigencies of modernity with the teachings and principles of faiths that date back thousands of years.

Chicago-based filmmaker Danny Alpert, the series director and executive producer, enlisted the services of four seasoned vérité filmmakers-Yoni Brook, Alicia Dwyer, Musa Syeed and Maggie Bowman-to find and follow what turned out to be seven very compelling and charismatic subjects, as they go through seminar training and then undertake their first days as clergypeople.

In the lead-up to the national airing, ITVS has an extensive outreach program planned, beginning tomorrow night, December 9, when Independent Lens will be streaming a shorter version of The Calling, as well as a discussion with the subjects from the series, on the Independent Lens Facebook page and Livestream page. In addition, ITVS has scheduled a number of Community Screenings across the country.

We caught up with Alpert via e-mail as he was flying back from a Community Screening in New York to his home base in Chicago.

IDA: How did the idea for this project come about?

Danny Alpert: As a documentary filmmaker, I set off to look at faith in the US with a keen eye-with a critical approach, asking challenging questions--but I also wanted to balance this with a warm heart--with respect and understanding.
I was raised in a suburban Jewish cocoon, attending day school, Jewish camps and youth movements. At 15, my parents moved us to Israel in what they saw as the fulfillment of their Jewish identity. For me, faith was a nurturing and simple truth. I think it would have been surprising if I had not considered becoming a rabbi. I was eight months from beginning a pre-rabbinic program when, late one night, I found myself sitting up in bed before I had opened my eyes from sleep. In that moment, I understood that that the rabbinate was not the direction for me; it was not my calling.
From that moment--through travel, school, living in a region at war, marriage, parenthood --I learned that the ideas, peoples and individuals in this world are never simple, and I moved away from my religious observance. At the same time, the opportunities that documentaries gave me to enter new worlds and study others' faiths helped me to understand that my calling is to ask questions, to bring the keen eye.
Today, I embrace both the keen eye and my faith as my core, but they are constantly pushing against one another. This is the struggle of modernity and faith, the tug of war between conviction and questioning. I believe that most people, to different degrees, feel the pull of both these forces. And this conflict is what drew me to produce The Calling. 

IDA: How did you choose your filmmakers?

DA: The point was not only to find a crew of outstanding professional quality (which I fortunately did), but also to find the right people for this project. Religion is not easy--people have strong feelings and come with their own baggage. I wanted to find people who I know would look critically and ask the hard questions, but who also had respect and understanding of faith and the faithful.
Moreover, I'm not Catholic, Evangelical or Muslim and would need these perspectives. I decided that, in order to avoid learning curves and the "clubbiness" of most religions, the directors would be of the same faiths as the subjects they followed. It was not an easy search, but I was blessed to find a talented and dedicated team in Yoni Brook, Alicia Dwyer, Maggie Bowman and Musa Syeed.

IDA: Talk about the process of working with the filmmakers. Did you task them with finding characters to follow? Given that you worked with four different directors--although Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed have collaborated on previous films--how did you advise them artistically, since The Calling is ultimately one cohesive work, rather than an omnibus project?

DA: I choose these directors for their ability in vérité filmmaking, so the style was clear to us all from the start. They scouted the subjects (and in some cases the schools) and together we finalized whom to follow. They were on the frontline during the production--shooting, charting storyline and creating the relationships and trust with the subjects, which was key to this style of filmmaking. We tried to check in with each other before shoots, mostly to discuss how it fit into the narrative arc, and for me to be able to keep tabs on how their work fit with the work of the other directors. We also convened a number of times in Chicago to finalize characters and check in with each other's progress and storylines. The directors also had the support of a great co-producer, Beth Sternheimer, to take care of all of the logistics and coordination.
I think the hardest part for them was on post-production. I talked to a number of producers who had crafted similar series (in particular, Kartemquin on The New Americans), and we decided, both from a budget perspective and in the interest of creating a cohesive film in story and style, that the series would be edited by Susanne Suffredin, at our offices in Chicago. While we shared assemblies and rough cuts throughout the post-production process and brought each director to Chicago for a few days of editing at a critical point, the directors were not part of the day-to-day. I know this was difficult for directors who are used to shaping their work from start to finish.

IDA: You introduce two of the characters--Steven and Shmuly--in the second half of the series. Talk about the editorial decision in doing this. Did you consider introducing them in the first half?

DA: There were simply too many characters to introduce them all in the first night.  When we tried this it began to feel like a receiving line at a wedding--all the people we met started to blur together. We were concerned with boring the audience; we wanted them to engage more deeply in the stories as quickly as possible. As a result, we choose to go deeper into certain stories in the first half and bring Shmuly and Steven, whose stories brought renewed energy, in the second part.

IDA: Talk about the editorial process and the challenge of weaving seven stories together.

DA: This was a great challenge. First of all, we had almost 1,400 hours of footage to wade through. Second, we needed to tell a lot of stories in 220 minutes, so the balance between stories was the first challenge. In fact, the series was supposed to include one more subject--a really engaging Mexican immigrant Catholic Seminarian. It was a very difficult decision to cut this story, but when faced with deciding between this story or more depth for all of the stories, I think it was justified.
Finally, we were convinced that the conversation created by interweaving the stories and faiths would add to the richness of the film. We must have tried 20 or 30 different structures based on thematic and mood connections between the "acts." In this sort of "puzzle," there is no "right" answer. But I think we landed well, and the structure works.

IDA: This project lends itself to community outreach. Talk about what you, Independent Lens and ITVS have developed in conjunction with The Calling, both on the Web and through community screenings.

DA: I think that what we are doing on community engagement, particularly online, is pretty innovative. While the series focuses on the traditional understanding of "calling," this word is part of our everyday language and means many things. The companion Web campaign for the series, What's Your Calling?, pushes the notion of "calling" to explore all of the stuff that makes us human: our values, our passions, our doubts and hopes-- from both religious and secular perspectives. Through a growing collection of video profiles of people from diverse backgrounds--jazz musicians, tug boat captains, academics, comedians, religious leaders, social workers, environmental activists, toy inventors and many, many more--What's Your Calling? shares what people have been called to do with their lives and how they think it changes the world.  The media prompts users to engage in questions and discussion topics and connect with service opportunities offered by campaign partner organizations. The site is only a hub for this campaign, and we are aggressively distributing the content through social networks and partners.
In the next few weeks we will be opening the production of these profiles up to the filmmaking community, so if you know people who fit the bill, we welcome your stories--and will even have a little to pay for the raw footage. ITVS has been a fantastic partner from the beginning. They are offering a shortened (75 minute) version of the film in their Community Cinema program, which will hold free screenings and panel discussions in over 70 cities nationwide. (For more information about the Community Cinema screenings, click here.)
ITVS will also be streaming a sneak peek of The Calling, which will include the first discussion with all seven subjects from the series. This happens tomorrow night, December 9, at 7:00 p.m. CST on the Independent Lens Facebook page and on its Livestream page. Additional screenings will be offered in partnership with ITVS and Points of Light Foundation around the MLK Days of Service, and we hope to have all or parts of The Calling utilized as part of ITVS' Community Classroom.
We will also be publishing free downloads of educational materials that will facilitate screenings of the film (long and short versions) in schools, interfaith groups, youth and service organizations and houses of worship. Finally, if we can raise the funds, we would like to create online resources for schools and youth groups to use www.whatsyourcalling.org to help young people imagine what their calling might be.

IDA: Having spent seven years on this project, what did you discover or learn about faith in America in the 21st century that surprised you? And how did this project impact your own faith--and your views on faith in general?

DA: I've been working on The Calling for so long that last week I went back to investigate when it was actually started. What I found made me laugh--the first concept development draft was dated December 20, 2002--exactly eight years to the day before the broadcast date. Freaky.
One thing that surprised me is the fluidity of religious life in our country. Three of the seven characters were raised in different faiths than what they lead now and, from the studies I have read, this is borne out in the general public as well. Something I found encouraging was that a big part of this new generation of religious leaders really does want to do things differently. They are steeped in modern life and are not willing to compromise this; they want to have their cake and eat it too, to live modern and religious lives. This is a challenge, but the fact that they are engaged in this struggle is inspiring. 
Personally, I learned so much on so many levels. I learned a tremendous amount about all of the religions profiled and am richer for the friends I have made in these communities. I learned that religious life is so deep a part of our country and culture that to say that it is not relevant is like a 99-year-old man saying the first 98 years of his life were not relevant to who he is--even if he did not like what happened in those years. Finally, I think I grew more committed to and comfortable with seeing my work as a documentary filmmaker as a calling.