A recent film school graduate from the University of Texas, Klain has recently co-founded Trickster Films with two partners in Austin, currently in production with a 30-minute short called Relocation, about three generations of a Navajo family reunited in an urban setting. But Klain didn’t instantly leap into film production. He has twice had films shown at Sundance, and recently we spoke primarily about his first film, The Return of Navajo Boy, which premiered at Sundance 2000.

John Nesbit: How did you become involved with film?

Bennie Klain: On KTNN I was doing a feature story on the radio, and this documentary came across my desk, so I tracked the director down. I did an interview with him. At the time I was doing both an English newscast and a Navajo newscast, so one of the participants in the documentary (Elsie) was with him, so I thought why not do an interview with her for the Navajo newscast. So I did an interview with her and produced both stories, and they aired.

So the director, Jeff Spitz, from Chicago was done shooting some footage. And the way he did his interview with Elsie was he would ask her questions and have her answer in English, then in Navajo, and then in English. He had all this footage in Navajo and he remembered that I had done an interview in Navajo with her, and he needed someone to translate. So he contacted the manager at KTNN, and he tracked me down. And this is two years after I did the initial interview.

By that time I had quit KTNN because I still hadn’t graduated from college. That was something that had fallen by the wayside, but it was something I still wanted to do.

So he (Jeff) tracked me down, and I could certainly use the money because I wasn’t working at all—just living off financial aid, so I began transcribing some of the interview footage for him.

I got to know the material so well just from transcribing and talking with him that I slowly just got more and more involved in the project.

He was trying to look for finishing funds for his documentary [total budget was approximately $200,000], but there was always that hint of colonial paternalism that came across. A lot of the organizations that he was applying to said, “why is it important that you tell the story?” That was something that he was trying to deal with.

JN: A Navajo should be telling the story?

BK: Yeah. Some of it was apparent in some of the stuff he was doing. As I got more and more involved, I noticed a lot of the footage he had where Elsie and the other participants were talking in English. I suggested “why not replace it with the Navajo stuff because that offers a little more insight into the way they think about their situation and themselves. And the material there is just so much richer than basically have them recited the same thing they said in Navajo again in English.

JN: Seemed that the Navajos warmed up quickly?

BK: I think it was awkward for him at first. But he already had a lot of footage, and fortunately to Jeff’s credit he had the foresight to have them say it in English and repeat it in Navajo, so we were able to salvage a lot of it by sticking in some of the stuff they had in Navajo. We came up with a rough cut and decided these were some of the scenes we needed, so we went back and shot some more to flesh out the story and the characters.

I started working with him extensively, and one day he finally came to his senses and said, “You know what—you should be my co-producer. Because you know the material well and you’re willing to put in the work.” So my role increased that way, which was a big risk on his part because I had never worked in film before. He went with his gut instinct. That’s how we ended up working together.

That’s when I decided that this is what I wanted to do—to do films. While I was working on that documentary, I applied to get into the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of Texas, and I got in. By that time we were stuck in a three-year lull where we were looking for money, and we were getting turned down left and right by all these organizations.

So during my first semester at the University (Fall 1999), our finishing funds came through, so the race was on to meet the deadline to make it into Sundance.

The finishing funds came from Bill Kennedy. It took a long time to convince him that we were trying to do a good thing, but we finally did convince him and he gave us the money to finish the film. The funding came from within the project. It didn’t come from any outside source.

That first semester was literally my hardest semester because I would take a month off from school and go out to Monument Valley to collect more shots, and I spent another month in Chicago in postproduction. Fortunately, the professors at film school understood that this was an opportunity for me and I was able to work with a lot of my professors long distance through email and through phone. I spent a lot of time juggling many things. It was worth it because we debuted at Sundance that following January.

It’s overwhelming. I’ve been there twice, but it’s overwhelming because at any given moment there’s at least fifty things going on, and the mentality there is I have to keep being on that movie because I don’t want to miss anything. Unfortunately you get tired really fast and by the time you leave there, you’re just drained.

JN: What was your role at Sundance—promoting your film, touching base with other filmmakers?

BK: Mostly trying to promote the film and get it into as many reputable publications as possible, and we were also there to look for a distributor. Through my work in radio and going to public radio conferences I knew something about the importance of networking and getting out there to talk to other people. So it was divided up between those four tasks. It sounds like a whirlwind, fun filled activity, but the first couple of days I found out it was actually work!

JN: You obtained a distributor?

BK: Native American Public Telecommunications. When we went to Sundance, the version we had was 40 minutes long, but we had to get it up to broadcast length, which was 56 minutes and 40 seconds. Native American Public Telecommunications after seeing it at Sundance got interested, then they gave us money for the broadcast rights and gave us money to go back into post production and tack on more minutes.

JN: What types of items did you add?

BK: They’re just little things here and there. We didn’t add any one whole large segment. We just threw a segment in here and a segment in there. The scene where Elsie goes and gets her water was already in there, so we just added the two little girls trying to siphon the water out. So we found nice little moments like that that we just peppered throughout the piece. Looking at the larger picture, the narrative structure remained the same.

It was shown on PBS. They were starting a new series called Independent Lens. Of course they showed it the following November (2000) because of Native American Heritage month. Once in a great while, I’ll be flipping through public television channels and come across it. I remember one time I was in Phoenix they were airing it. PBS has the license for six years, so stations that want it can air it any time given that six-year period. I believe we sold it to Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Canada, and it’s also screened at many film festivals since we premiered it. We always get a good reaction.

JN: At first I was concerned that the uranium story was veering the documentary into another direction, but that led to the John Wayne Cly story.

BK: It’s incredible. He saw the article with the uranium rally. One thing at every stage of the production we were adamant that it wasn’t us making the decision about what they were going to talk about in the film. With every rough-cut we would take it back to the families and get their feedback. And Bernie (Elsie’s brother) kept insisting "I haven’t been compensated (for the radiation damage), and I want this to be in the film." That was a constant decision that we made that we were going to address the uranium problem and Bernie not being compensated. And we just got lucky that it happened to mesh with the John Wayne Cly sidebar.

John told us in one of the interviews that he actually did drive out to Monument Valley once because he knew that the family was from Monument Valley, but it must have been overwhelming for him. He made it to a gas station but just got intimidated and turned around. This was about seven years before that he did this.

There’s one school of thought in documentaries for social change in order to effect some positive change, but then there’s the other school of thought that you shouldn’t interfere. That’s a more science-based approach. The idea of getting into people’s faces—a lot of people get uncomfortable with the reunion scene. It captures the moment. The camera goes around to the other side and then it goes in for a close-up. There are people that get uncomfortable with that and ask “how did they feel with you guys being in their faces” with this emotional thing? There was a lot of discussion about it.

I think John was a little bit nervous about it, but now when he talks about it in hindsight, he’s thankful that he has this record that he can pass on to his kids and grandkids. At the time he was kind of apprehensive.

JN: The Return of Navajo Boy achieves a great deal of intimacy, much like Abbas Kiarostami films, except this is real.

BK: Yeah, for more information you can go to the Navajo Boy website. The catalyst was Bill Kennedy, who contacted Jeff. They both lived in Chicago, and he wanted to find peace with his father. That’s what set things in motion.