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Interview with Director Oren Jacoby
HBO
Can you talk a little about how the film came about?
OREN JACOBY
Well, I was very, very fortunate. You know, often as a filmmaker you have a theme, and you want to find a
story that fits the theme or you have a character or an idea and you have to go out and find people who believe in
the story and want to help you develop it as a film.
This film was the reverse case, where Sister Rose was such an astonishing woman, and she had such a
remarkable story, her work was important enough to the community where she's lived for the last thirty years that
she's developed a group of people in that community who believe in her and wanted her work to be remembered and
for people to understand the cause that she's still fighting for.
And one person in particular, Risa Goldstein, had the idea that she would make a great subject for a
documentary. And she knew there was a film producer, Steve Kalafer, in their community who financed and produced
several prize-winning documentaries before. She went to him with the subject. And he said, well, let's look for
a filmmaker who can do the film. So he came to me through his colleague, (producer) Peter LeDonne.
When they asked me if I'd like to make the film, I have to admit, at first description, 'how would you
like to do a film about an eighty-four year old nun who has been fighting anti-Semitism?' My first two questions
are: What is she doing now? What can we film? 'How do we make a film?' To do a documentary today you often
need some present day footage at least to show some action so it's not all just stock footage and talking heads.
I wondered, how could we bring this story to life so it's not just reminiscences? And is there even stock
footage of her fight? Because it was a very lonely, uncelebrated battle. And secondly, 'is there an audience --
do people care about the issue of anti-Semitism in 2003', which iswhen they came to me with the idea.
I was able to meet Sister Rose soon after that. And that sort of dismissed a bunch of my questions cause
she was such a dramatic, dynamic character that I felt, there's a film here. We just have to somehow find the way
to do it. I wasn't sure that there was going to be a big audience. But I couldn't resist the idea of doing her
story.
HBO
She has such an amazing spirit.
OREN JACOBY
And toughness. You know people use the word courage lightly. But that's real courage when you stand up,
alone, the way she did.
HBO
What kinds of challenges did you have making the film?
OREN JACOBY
Well, one major problem was her health difficulties, unfortunately - that she's not a well woman. And
certainly when it came to getting stock footage, it wasn't easy -- we didn't get a lot of co-operation, I'd say,
from the hierarchy, the church hierarchy. We were trying to find footage of certain very traditional church
scenes, and thought there must be some kind of a church archival department. And it was very difficult to find
any footage like that.
HBO
What was the church's reaction to all of this?
OREN JACOBY
I think the church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which we allude to in the film, has been
ambiguous in their reaction to The Passion of the Christ, which we discuss in our film... first coming out with
the report that we cover in the film that condemned the screenplay. At first the church seemed to say The Passion
of the Christ violates all these rules. They went on later to endorse the film as one of the top films of the
year.
But that same office was very helpful and cooperative to us, and the current head of their Department of
Jewish/Christian Relations was a great admirer of Sister Rose's and somebody who actually did the follow-up study
to her study of teaching materials and showed how much progress had been made, based on her report.
This film in my mind is really a story of empowerment, of an unlikely hero. It's about a woman who seemed
to have no power, who shows that if you believe in something and work hard enough and fight you can effect change.
HBO
How does a film for you evolve? Do you have a shape in mind in advance, or does the shape come out of the
footage and the material you gather?
OREN JACOBY
Well, in this case, we were dealing with someone who was elderly and I felt the first job was just to get
her story on film. And while I'm not a great lover of talking head documentaries, I felt we had to just sit her
down and have her tell her story.
And once we had the story, her personal story, it presented a lot of questions: what's the inner story?
What's the key dramatic thread that we're going to pursue through the film? And what's the world? What's the
context in which we're going to tell the story?
Then, luckily, I met James Carroll, the author of Constantine's Sword, and several other people in the
world of Jewish Christian relations, the community that Rose had been part of for much of her life. These were
people in the Catholic Church who were really troubled by questions of the ways Jews had been treated,
particularly this question of demonizing Jews for the death of Jesus.
So they helped me understand how this whole question had been perpetuated, and was still a lively issue
and had people who had spent their careers and lives fighting about it or fighting to change it, I knew I had a
good supporting cast, as it were, to help tell the story.
HBO
What are you're hoping the audience will take away when they see the film?
OREN JACOBY
Well, I have a ten-year old daughter and she loved the film and responded to Sister Rose. She's just this
year getting her first exposure in school to the histories of the major western religions, of Judaism and
Christianity and Islam. Quite apart from that, which sort of helped give her what she needed to understand the
background of the story, she just responded to Sister Rose as a role model of someone who was tough and not afraid
to stick her neck out for what she believed in. Someone who was willing to do the hard work, the kind of nitty
gritty, the homework, and who had a historic sense of what she was doing.
My experience in screening this at film festivals around the country and then in the run up to the Academy
Awards, was that people just respond to her as a human being. I think that's maybe the most important thing.
She's somebody who people think, oh, well, I thought I knew about anti-Semitism, or I thought I understood
this story. And then they hear it from her and they say, 'My God, the way she tells it, I didn't really know... it
happened like that?'
And she was so great in the way she stood up for what she believed in. And I think that anybody can
respond to that, whether you're an old person who sees, here's somebody who still is active and vital because she
has something that she cares about and fights for every day. And that keeps her alive and keeps her going.
Or whether you're a young person who thinks, well, can I make a difference in the world? Is what I do
really going to matter? And then they've got the example of this woman who had an impact on the whole world.
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