Amerikan Passport

by George Wing | Published June 30, 1999

Amerikan Passport (16mm color, 82 mins) is the riveting and thoughtful chronicle of three years of shoestring travel by Seattle native Reed Paget. Along the way, he visited 12 war zones, dodged missiles, tanks and bullets-and made a great documentary.

At the age of 23, Paget set off with a used CP-16 camera and a plan: to visit the seven wonders of the world and record his travels on film. He started in China, where he worked in Canton as an English teacher. It was there that he heard the first inklings of a student uprising. Paget's original plan fell by the wayside as his worldwide adventure began to unfold on its own terms.

He quit his job and traveled to Beijing, where he witnessed the rising tensions of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. After several days, he took an overnight trip to the Great Wall. As luck would have it, that was the day the Chinese Army overran Tiananmen, massacring hundreds of students. A piece of disastrous timing from a documentary maker's point of view? It might have saved his life, and the footage Paget captured while fighting his way back to Tiananmen through Beijing the next day is electrifying-he runs a gauntlet of tanks and army snipers, then is led by student protestors to the bodies of their slaughtered comrades. Paget recalls standing in puddles of blood while filming them.

Paget managed to smuggle his footage out to Hong Kong, then traveled via Thailand to Vietnam, where he explored that country's turbulent history of war with the U.S.

In Cambodia, he and several other young journalists embarked on an illegal foray across mined dirt roads to the ancient temples of Angkor Watt. They were arrested for espionage, but once the army decided they were too young and inept to be spies, they were released and invited to a military party.

Flat broke, Paget left Asia for the U.S. While home he raised more money, bought more film, and flew to Central America.

In Nicaragua, he scammed press credentials and braved run-ins with rioting Sandinistas. In El Salvador he witnessed martial law and civil strife. In Costa Rica Paget met a young American, Stephanie DuPont (yes, of those DuPonts), who wanted to help with his project. She learned sound recording, and Paget's crew of one became a crew of two for a while. She accompanied him to South America, Africa and Europe before they parted company in Moscow.

In Panama, they infiltrated the wedding of the president, and questioned the U.S. Ambassador about the recent invasion.

At the Festival of the Sun in Peru, Paget was shot at by guards. There he filmed the ritual sacrifice of a llama, whose still-beating heart was raised as an offering, a modern substitute for human sacrifice.

Further travels through South America, then on to South Africa. He waded his way through more civil strife, and captured footage of security forces gunning down a crowd of protesters in a black township.

Next stop was Germany, in time for unification ceremonies with accompanying riots. Then to the Soviet Union (he was repeatedly denied visas, so he signed up for a tour and walked away; later he would find that getting out of Russia was almost as hard as getting in). While in Moscow, he joined a military parade where, between the tanks, he was able to infiltrate the Red Army and film Gorbachev up close.

When he learned of the Gulf War he went to Cairo to get a Saudi Visa, gave up on a plan to sneak across the border by camel and took a bus to Israel instead. How did his mother feel about all this? "Get the fuck out of there!" was her maternal advice on the phone to him as he donned a gas mask and dodged scuds.

"It's funny," says Paget, "but I can remember how I felt running down the hall and jamming my gas mask onto my face and ducking into a room with a bunch of terrified Israelis and waiting for the missiles to hit. Danger really perks your adrenaline. I've never felt more alive than when contemplating death, and I've tried to address that on a personal level."

Just as the viewer starts to wonder if this guy isn't just some kind of international voyeur of violence, Paget's voice-over narration tackles that issue squarely, and Amerikan Passport rises above travelogue (albeit exciting travelogue) to the level of affecting personal documentary. It recognizes that no filmmaker can be subjective, and that a film is most effective when its makers question their own motives.

Paget struggled for several years to raise finishing funds and make sense of his footage in the editing room. A series of simple but effective animations between country segments provided the final unifying touch.

Amerikan Passport won Best Documentary at Slamdance this year and is attracting distributors and playing at other festivals. Paget now lives in New York City and works as a news cameraman for New York One.

George Wing (GW): Your theme seems to be man's predisposition to violence.

Reed Paget (RP): Yes. What leaves me uneasy is that, in spite of my feelings against it, I found myself transfixed by it.

GW: I like the way you tie in the fact that so many of the wonders of the ancient world you visit are sites for ritual human sacrifice, like Angkor Watt and the Roman Coliseum, and that it's part of cultures throughout the world.

RP: Not to mention the central image of Christianity. Think about it.

It's been suggested that there's a side of us that overcomes our own fear of death by killing another. To take pleasure in killing is disturbingly universal. Otto Rank said something like "The death-fear of the ego is eased by the killing of another-no wonder we are addicted to war."

GW: You describe watching a scene of escalating tension between South African police and Zulu protestors, and how a photographer screamed at you to get out of the way because she was from Newsweek and had been there for five hours. You wondered if she was hoping that someone would be shot so she could get it on film. Did you ever feel that yourself?

RP: Not exactly. I didn't want anyone to get shot. But I did put myself where I needed to be to get good footage.

GW: Are you addicted to violence? Do you experience that in your current job?

RP: If there's a public demonstration and some people are fighting and others are standing in the corner, my bosses want me to show the conflict. But no, I'm not addicted to scenes of violence.

GW: Why did you take the job?

RP: I was broke from making the film-I'm still broke, in fact-and I wanted to live in New York.

GW: Will your next film explore different themes?

RP: Yes, I want to make a documentary on environmental issues, with a very broad scope. That should take several years. And I have a narrative project I'm developing. It's hard to describe, but it deals with physics and gravity, which have always fascinated me. I think it'll work best as fiction.

GW: How did you manage to travel solo with a complete 16mm production kit on your back?

RP: I had a metal-frame backpack. When it was fully loaded it was so heavy I had to hoist it to one knee before I could put it on my shoulders. I walked like a turtle. I carried an old CP-16 that I bought for $500, plus a Sony Pro Walkman with crystal sync-I'd use a DAT now-which also cost $500. So my equipment cost $1,000.

GW: What does the CP-16 weigh?

RP: About 23 pounds, empty.

GW: How much film stock did you bring with you?

RP: When I left for Asia, 15 cans of 400-foot loads. On my next departure I brought 30 cans. That's 66 pounds of film.

GW: How did you have room for anything else?

RP: I couldn't take much clothing. That's a drawback when you're in some embassy applying for a visa or a press pass and you look all scrawny in clothes you've wrung out a million times and don't smell so good.

GW: How did you get your equipment across all those borders?

RP: Sometimes I couldn't. I was denied visas. With the film, I brought a changing bag and had Customs open my film cans inside it so they could feel there was nothing but stock.

GW: Did you send film home to be developed as you went along?

RP: No. I carried it. But I should say that, as hard as it was to get around, feed myself, deal with language, and get great footage, that was only half the battle. The other half was figuring out how to make it cohesive. How to discover a central theme to tie it all together.

GW: What theme did you have in mind when you first started filming?

RP: Exploring this question: Was America's foreign policy a legitimate attempt to promote democracy or a covert campaign to ensure a steady supply of cheap resources and cheap labor, and to fight a social movement that was trying to rectify that, namely Communism.

GW: Many documentary makers are switching to compact, lightweight digital video cameras. How do you feel about using DV?

RP: I'm not thrilled by it yet. It's not durable. I use video cameras in my job, and they fog up a lot when we step indoors. And the resolution of video still isn't there yet. It's fine for a certain type of documentary, but if you want a gorgeous image, you shoot film.

GW: Would you encourage someone inspired by your story to attempt a trip like this themselves?

RP: Absolutely.

Because she is present in Amerikan Passport as the voice of reason, we spoke briefly with Reed's mother, Seattle sculptor Julie Speidel:

GW: Did you support Reed's decision to take these risks for the sake of a personal documentary?

Julie Speidel (JS): It's a scary world. As an artist I have to honor that quest. But sometimes I get the feeling we're taking that Joseph Campbell "follow your bliss" thing a bit too far.

GW When did you find yourself most concerned about Reed?

JS: Israel was bad, but the truly horrible time was during Tiananmen. We knew he was there, but then we didn t know for days if he was alive. We finally started calling Representatives and Senators and our connections in network television, hoping someone could learn something. What we were finally told is 'Not only is Reed okay, he's having the time of his life." MM

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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by EJames Lieberman on 11/01/07 at 6:57 am

Glad to see the reference to Otto Rank, I would add that the antidote to death fear is the focus on the other who wants to kill me. By killing that other I symbolically kill death. It does illustrate the power of having an enemy.  Ernest Becker takes up the theme in Denial of Death (1974, Pulitzer Prize).

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