Kate Taverna on Exploring the Aftermath of the Agent Orange Catastrophe in “The People vs. Agent Orange”

Kate Taverna has edited more than 50 films over her career, including “Asylum” and “Killing in the Name,” which were Academy Award nominees in the Best Short Documentary category. “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” and “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” are also among her editing credits. The former won the Best Documentary award at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and the latter won the Audience award at the 2014 Boston Independent Film Festival. Taverna’s broadcast editing work has been seen on CBS, IFC, BBC, and PBS, among others.

“The People vs. Agent Orange” is now in virtual cinemas. Alan Adelson co-directed the film.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

KT: The Agent Orange catastrophe didn’t end with the Vietnam War. This is not an old story. One of the chemicals in Agent Orange, 2,4-D, continues to be used in herbicides to this day.

Two courageous women are trying to hold the chemical companies accountable in the U.S. and in France. Carol Van Strum has collected hundreds of thousands of incriminating documents over decades of activism and uploaded them to The Poison Papers and Toxic Docs websites. Tran To Nga is suing the American chemical manufacturers in France for poisoning her, killing her firstborn child, and affecting her children and grandchildren.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

KT: My co-director, Alan Adelson, was shown photos of disabled children by a woman who had volunteered at an Agent Orange victims’ clinic in Vietnam. He was appalled and questioned how this could have happened and still be going on four generations after the war.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

KT: This is a story with significant contemporary ramifications about how we wage war, abuse science, disregard the environment, and shirk responsibility for catastrophic mistakes and misdeeds.

As activist and author Carol Van Strum says in “The People vs. Agent Orange,” “We have the right to protect ourselves from being poisoned.” Aerial spraying of toxic herbicides is not just happening in Oregon and we name many places in the U.S. and throughout the world to educate viewers so they may advocate for their own health and the health of their families. Hopefully it will have a rippling effect to benefit others.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

KT: Since I also edited the film, I’d say the biggest challenge was focus. It’s a story that’s been going on for 60 years. We filmed on three continents, and have many timelines and stories and investigative details that did not make it into the film. Keeping Carol and Nga’s stories woven in an organic way through the past and the present was a challenge.

I introduced a third weave with interstitial moments of undercover phone cam footage from Darryl Ivy working with a helicopter spray crew in Oregon. He gets sprayed while filming, then eventually suffers the consequences, which confirmed the anecdotal evidence from Carol and Nga and played out in real time.

And time itself was a factor to play with. I love the challenge of solving puzzles and riddles, but this one beat all.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made. 

KT: Our film was championed by women from the very beginning and continues to be even now! Early seed money came from friends and colleagues I had worked with on other films before: Gini Reticker, and Abigail Disney at Fork Films, which made it possible for us to get to France and start filming with Tran To Nga. That was in 2015.

A small grant from the late painter Emily Mason made it possible for a shoot in Vietnam later that same year. I cut about 25 versions of various length samplers that reaped small foundation grants for us to continue.

At first, we were very much off the radar for our own security. This was an investigative film as well and we were going in deep with Freedom of Information actions, gaining trust with some of our other characters, and finding camera people who could work with us remotely in Vietnam and France. This took time.

We were selected to go public at a GoodPitch session in NY in 2016, where Beadie Finzi and Jess Search, and later, Maxyne Franklin and the women of Doc Society, embraced our project with conviction and shepherded us through training for those early pitch sessions, and continued to introduce us to international broadcasters at the prestigious pitch forum at IDFA in Amsterdam in 2017. Our producer, Veronique Bernard, came to us at a most opportune time, offering support and facilitating our connections to France, which continues until today.

I must say, it was the efforts of all of these women and the foundations that nurtured this project in its nascent stages and helped us, encouraged us when we didn’t have a lot of production support. Major funding finally came through with co-production grants from ITVS and ARTE France and Germany in 2018. Lois Vossen found us at IDFA and expressed interest in broadcasting it on PBS’ “Independent Lens.” This was the kind of boost we needed to finish the film in three versions, ARTE’s one hour, ITVS’ 84 minutes, and a theatrical cut.

Now that the film is done, Susan Hammond of the War Legacies Project has jumped aboard to get the film out to as many environmental, peace, veterans, and Agent Orange victims organizations as possible for impact and outreach and Jessica Rosner, our theatrical booker, is conscientiously pursuing nationwide theaters for additional venues.

It’s interesting in retrospect that this is the pattern we saw with our previous film, “In Bed With Ulysses,” when James Joyce thought his manuscript for Ulysses would “die in darkness” until seven different women stepped up one by one to support the author and his family; two went to jail for serializing his manuscript in their magazine in N.Y.; one gave him the bulk of her inheritance; and another ultimately published his book in Paris, which was censored in England and the U.S. That was in 1920 against tremendous pushback! So it seems women have been teaming together to move the arts forward for many decades, powerfully nurturing creativity wherever they see it. I continue to marvel at that.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

KT: I graduated with a BFA in Sculpture. Looking for some money to build a sculptural project, I took what I thought would be a summer job after college at a documentary unit at CBS News as a very inept receptionist. I watched archival footage for the first time in a film they made about the year 1945, exposing the horrors of the Holocaust. That marked me.

Larry Silk, the eminent editor, was working on another film there, and he called me in to see a clip he had cut as another pair of eyes to get my reaction. When I told him what I thought, he said I should think about being an editor. That was a revelation that changed the course of my life! I had had only one film appreciation course in college. I remember vividly even now when famous films would be stopped on a frame and we would discuss the lighting and composition. Just a taste of things to come, though I had no idea at the time that I would steer into this career.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

KT: I was asked once by a director to just string out a slew of his selects and we’d show it to a potential broadcaster. I objected, pridefully, saying we should put our best foot forward, even though there wasn’t a lot of time to produce something. Less is more. Make a small section look great. They bought it. I’ve been told to slow down, and also to speed up. Pace is such an extremely crucial element in filmmaking, in dramatic moments and building suspense. It’s so subjective, and one needs to rely on the reactions of others to get a sense of what is working and what is not.

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?

KT: Pay attention to how you feel when you watch your work. If you’re bored, your audience will be too. Don’t take no for an answer when you hit a wall, either in pre-production, shooting, or post-production. Don’t give up or think the film is finished just because you’re tired and want to move on. Take a week off and do something different. Bring another set of eyes in to vindicate your deeper feelings and make the extra effort.

Sound is such a big part of film, maybe bigger than picture, and shouldn’t be literal. Try turning off picture and just listening. You’ll see what I mean. When I worked in 16mm way back when, I often let the audio go out of synch with picture. Out of synch accidents lent themselves to innovation and rethinking the literal. With digital editing, keeping multiple copies of the same sequence gives you the freedom to take the structure apart and put it together differently, freely, like pages of a story scattered in the wind. I know it sounds radical, but it often is very satisfying because things happen that are not planned and may work better. Everything takes time and the best films take all you can give them.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

KT: I’ve enjoyed the work of many different women directors in documentaries, features, and animation. Being a visual person, I like it when a good story can be heightened by great visuals and strong, unexpected, and surprising storytelling structure. The late Jane Aaron was a wonderfully inventive and original animator. I recently re-experienced her “Set In Motion.”

Early on, the films of Jane Campion, Gillian Armstrong , and Lina Wertmüller opened up the female perspective to me with “The Piano,” “My Brilliant Career,” and “Seven Beauties.” I will see anything Julie Taymor creates for her feats of theatrical spectacle on stage like in ”Juan Darien” and “The Lion King,” as well as visual magic in film, such as “Frida.” My friend Kirsten Johnson, whose work I’ve edited in the past, has totally surprised me with “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” stretching the documentary form in all sorts of surprising directions.

Starting with “Salaam Bombay!” I’ll watch any Mira Nair film for her visual style and for bridging Asian and Western cultural clashes into very engaging films — and also for supporting young screenwriters and directors in East Africa and India, which is commendable!

I have a long list of favorite directors I watch whenever possible and could go on and on. There is no dearth of fabulously talented women of any race and culture.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

KT: I do have to work against the torpor that can fog the mind as days blend into one another and the future feels like a black hole. But we are fortunate to have a place outside of the city with a lot of light, continuous snow fall, and close to nature where we can watch wild turkeys while at our desks and planetary appearances at night.

If struggling to solve the riddles of technology can be considered a creative act, then the process of launching the film in a nationwide virtual theatrical roll out has impelled me into learning how to make and maintain a website for the film and how to work on the Eventive platform for 33+ cinema venues.

Zoom has made drawing sessions with a model possible as well as tai chi sessions to keep my mental focus and I’m in the throes of a microphone problem for piano playing via Zoom. The platform has truly changed our lives and made it possible to cope with life under what I call “pandemania.”

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

KT: I feel like I’m witnessing a moment in history where the gates are opening and the trickle of diversity has become a bit more like a wave of new visions and talent coming through like a gust of fresh air. Finally. I hope it continues to grow, and becomes more like a flood that’s been held back for way too long. To the mainstream! I personally cannot wait to see more. It’s actually keeping me from reading books.