You made a sensational debut into the film world by winning a Student Academy Award for your short documentary film, Undesirables (1999)! How did you become an archive researcher?
I went on to producing and directing TV shows and making documentary films – and yes, research. One of my first theatrical features was Davis Guggenheim’s, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and I was head of research on that feature. I was living in Paris, France when that film got its well-deserved Academy Award, and I kept thinking about that TV anchor-boss in Moscow [I used to work for], who told me in the hallway of Moscow TV station years ago [when I told him “I am going to the library], “What
f-ing research! You just sit down and write, you don’t need any research, this is television.” (more…)