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Rebecca Landsberry-Baker is a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program grantee, Ford Foundation SimplyFilms grantee, and a 2022 NBC Original Voices Fellow. She is a 2022 Gotham Documentary Feature Lab Fellow and was chosen to the Harvard Shorenstein News Leaders Fall 2022 cohort. She is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee Nation and the manager director of the Native American Journalists Association, a nonprofit group advocating for correct protection and illustration of Indigenous folks in media. Landsberry-Baker is a 2018 recipient of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s Native American 40 Under 40 award.
“Bad Press” is screening on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, which runs from January 19-29. The movie is co-directed by Joe Peeler.
W&H: Describe the movie for us in your personal phrases.
RLB: “Bad Press” paperwork the combat at no cost press within the Muscogee Nation and follows tenacious reporter Angel Ellis and a hilarious crew of fellow Indigenous journalists as they journey a tribal politics rollercoaster.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
RLB: In my former life as a print editor at Mvskoke Media, I skilled censorship within the newsroom alongside our movie’s contributors, lots of whom are fellow Muscogee residents and journalists. Tribal media face distinctive challenges in protecting their very own communities, together with sometimes “slaying heroes,” as journalist Angel Ellis places it, so this story may be very private to me.
During my time as a member, and ultimately as government director of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), I’ve witnessed tribal journalists being censored for unfavorable protection, so I needed to inform the Muscogee journalists’ story of the battle at no cost press in Indian Country. I’m so grateful they’ve trusted me to share it with the world.
W&H: What would you like folks to consider after they watch the movie?
RLB: For each my fellow residents and a broader viewers, It was vital for me to spotlight how an unbiased media can strengthen tribal sovereignty as a result of it offers accountability, transparency, and finally empowers knowledgeable decision-making amongst the folks.
W&H: What was the largest problem in making the movie?
RLB: Filming over the course of three full years from 2019-2021 with a crew that had different full-time jobs — together with me — whereas we adopted this story was notably difficult, particularly throughout the top of the pandemic. We additionally had three infants born between the 5 producers, together with my daughter, Rosie, to my husband and producer Garrett Baker and me, over the course of manufacturing. Juggling childcare with directing and my full-time job with NAJA continues to be a every day problem!
W&H: How did you get your movie funded? Share some insights into how you bought the movie made.
RLB: Our crew has acquired grants from Ford Foundation, the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, 2022 NBC News Original Voices Fellowship, and funding by way of fairness investments.
W&H: What impressed you to change into a filmmaker?
RLB: With my background in journalism and connection to this story and our contributors, documenting the combat at no cost press actually grew to become my duty as a member of this neighborhood. Now that I’ve skilled how highly effective and impactful this type of storytelling could be, I need to encourage different Indigenous journalists to discover documentary filmmaking as a strategy to share the pressing, nuanced, and entertaining tales which are already right here in our Indigenous communities.
W&H: What’s the most effective and worst recommendation you’ve acquired?
RLB: Any time I used to be discouraged from pursuing one thing vital to me — whether or not that was a narrative I needed to put in writing in The Muscogee Nation News in my early profession or now to “airing the tribe’s dirty laundry” in a function documentary — I’ve at all times additionally been motivated by being underestimated. I adore it when somebody tells me I can’t do one thing as a result of I’m too younger — don’t hear that one a lot anymore, haha — or too inexperienced.
Indigenous persons are scrappy AF and we’ll discover a strategy to succeed!
W&H: What recommendation do you’ve gotten for different ladies administrators?
RLB: As a first-time or early-career filmmaker, don’t let your inexperience maintain you again from telling the tales which are most vital to you. Your views are important to the variety of the media panorama and to storytelling that’s consultant of the distinctive female expertise. We want you!
W&H: Name your favourite woman-directed movie and why.
RLB: I’ll use this area to amplify fellow Indigenous director Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga Nation) who may even be premiering her function movie “Fancy Dance” on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. I’d love to satisfy her!
W&H: What, if any, tasks do you assume storytellers must confront the tumult on the planet, from the pandemic to the lack of abortion rights and systemic violence?
RLB: Storytellers are important to the understanding of crucial societal points as a result of they contextualize info and doc key moments in our residing historical past. As journalists and documentarians, we completely have a duty to point out the human impression of coverage and decision-making by the elected leaders who’re entrusted to guard our greatest pursuits.
W&H: The movie trade has a protracted historical past of underrepresenting folks of coloration onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — unfavourable stereotypes. What actions do you assume must be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world extra inclusive?
RLB: Incentivize hiring and supporting BIPOC above- and below-the-line expertise by way of new and expanded funding alternatives, mentorships, and culturally related packages that intention to foster private growth in storytelling broadly, not simply in filmmaking — creatively, financially, virtually, and spiritually. Provide psychological well being and childcare assist and stipends for these with households!
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