Interview with Chelo Álvarez-Stehle

   I was working as a journalist, first in Japan and then in the United States, and I was working on issues of sexual exploitation of women, especially human rights issues in general, but very focused on the issue of women. I started to discuss the issue of trafficking when it was still almost unknown in 1997, in Nepal, the Himalayas ...

  At that time, my reports reached a lot to people and I was living in Los Angeles and they asked me: Hey, why don't you make documentaries? And I answered them: well because it is not that simple. But I am a very self-taught person, I never studied journalism and never studied film, formally, informally yes. Then I realized that I was in the cradle of the audiovisual world and that it was a perfect occasion to be able to bring to the "big screen" the issues so important to me that I was denouncing.

  What happened was that I was offered to work for a documentary based on one of my reports on trafficking: “Tin girls” and I was the interviewer for that documentary, also the assistant director and participated as a consultant since I knew well about the world of trafficking especially in Nepal and India.

And that was the first opportunity I had to work on a documentary, and I remember Miguel Barden telling me all the time: “hey, you have to make your own documentary. Because I was going all the time with my little camera doing a kind of “Making Of” that was not programmed but I did it because of the passion that I had to collect those stories and suddenly I felt a huge passion for the documentary genre, which allows you with an image convey a feeling that reaches much more within the audience than "these thousand words" as the topic says. That was my first foray in 2002.

• 2. Tell us, how would you define your style as a filmmaker and what do your works focus on?

  Well, it was precisely when I was in Nepal working in “Tin Girls”, I really felt something, and I said: “I really have to do this”. This documentary was going to be about trafficking but about three different aspects of trafficking: forced sexual exploitation into prostitution, labor trafficking and then forced marriage where you end up enslaved. I had three characters for it but what happened was that two of those characters (and more), after having interviewed them and having made video montages with them, etc. they backed down, and for me it is very important to practice documentary or humanist journalism, that is, even if someone has signed the authorization documents to tell their story, if they back down, I have no choice but to accept it.

  So, what I did is focus on the figure of Virginia Isaías, who is a Mexican who had been trafficked and forced into prostitution, first kidnapped with a 6-month-old baby, in Chapas in southern Mexico. What happened in the process is that I had been working on this issue for 15 years and I told everyone: “you must tell your story because it is the only way to end this pandemic, with this terrible violation against dignity of the woman”, “break your silence, do not be afraid”.

  But something was echoing inside of me and it was telling me: "There is something inside of you that you don't want to tell, Chelo." And there was a time when something overflowed me, it was like a kind of drop that overflowed the glass and I had to focus and concentrate and face my own silence. Suddenly I realized that for so many years working on this issue there was a reason behind it, and I did not discover the reason until I really had to open the channel and say: “well, there is something inside me that I do not dare to confront”. That silence, the silence of an abuse that I suffered and that I never wanted to bring it to a conscious level, since as it happens to all victims it is painful when we do it, worse at the same time it is the only way to get out of that condition of victim, even if you have it buried like I had it. It was shaping my life, my actions and my work, everything.

  It was a very good thing because thanks to that experience I have been able to face it even though it has been very difficult. I did not want to put it in the film, working in the editing room with my editor, she told me: "you have to put it," to which I answer: "no, no, no ..."

  But when I took the step of breaking my own silence, a whole world opened, and I think the success of this film has been that I was able to undress and open my heart and honest with myself and with the rest of the women of the world. It was enough asking everyone to tell their story when I was not telling mine.

  Since I left Spain, being a woman has not been a problem, quite the opposite, except when I lived in Japan for 4 years when I experienced total patriarchy because it is a very “macho society”, more than the Spanish one if possible.

  Actually, in the documentary world of L.A. there are many women and I felt very supported in that sense, I did not feel discriminated.

  I think I have felt discrimination more in Spain in some way. I realize that the film production here is very dominated by men. As an independent documentary filmmaker in the US, I could function as a producer, director, and screenwriter without any problem, I could get funding… as well as being integrated into the audiovisual world. In Spain, the issue is much more bureaucratic. Subsidies, as everything works, you must have a company if or if legally constituted, that is, you cannot do it as an independent person ...

 What I have realized, and this happens internationally, is that, for example, most film festivals are run by men, and this is a very important part of the production, that is the distribution. The programmers, those who have the last word, that is already a handicap. Afterwards, most international producers are also run by men, so what happens?

 Women are entering the world of cinema, but we do it more creatively. There is a conglomerate special that means that although there are women at a creative level within the cinema, we are not accessing positions of power at the corporate level, which are the ones who ultimately rule, those who govern the money, those who give you the subsidy, etc.

  And that is where I believe that women must be given more facilities to break that ceiling that we have and for that we must welcome women into management positions.

 Here in Spain a very strong movement is starting, led by CIMA, which has done a lot of work with this, it has achieved that the ICAP, for example, in its scoring level when evaluating a project, gives more points to those projects that have women on their team. And that is a very good thing, because it is a way of encouraging productions and producers to include women in their team, because then there will come a time when producers do not have to be encouraged, because those producers will already be women. But there is also another organization called “Dones Visuals” here in Catalonia, which is also doing a very good job, and I am part of both. 

  The first thing I would tell you is do not go into this for money but for passion. Because if you get involved out of passion, you know that you are going to do something very big, very important, that you are going to reach thousands of people and that you are going to have a reward. It has happened to me with "Sands of Silence: Waves of Courage", it is a film that took me 8 years to make and 5 more because I have taken it "under my arm" as an impact producer all over the world, to all contingents. The fruits it has given me are immeasurable.

  I have had to work doing other jobs to be able to support the creative work and the production of the documentary. Many times, I must do translations, write and whatever to be able to foresee this type of work. But in the end, what has happened is a work that touches souls, touches people's hearts.

  The testimonies that I receive are impressive, testimonials that I continue to receive today. Now the film is also on Filmin and on the “Women of Cinema” platform. It has continued to have this impact on victims, on survivors, on people who have not suffered the abuse in the first person but who have been witnesses ... They have opened in a way after seeing the documentary, which I would even say that has changed the lives of young people and students who have come to tell me their stories and then have gone to report.

  The most important thing for me has been, since I made this film for women and victims, it turns out that, what I have discovered is, that there was another target audience, let us say silent or sleeping, that I had no idea that existed and that they have woken up. That target audience has been men, but also men who have been themselves perpetrators of sexual assaults.

  When I was invited to show the film in prisons, these attackers suddenly opened. Something in it has echoed. How did these people open after seeing “Sands of Silence”? Suddenly they have felt empathy, they have made a kind of self-reflection that they do not want to do this again. Some have even asked me to give them a hug after the production and that has been very important for me, when I know that he has also been an author, because suddenly I have found that after having spent my life denouncing those "monsters", it turns out, are also human beings, and we forget that they are.

  I am not talking about us having to go on and forgive them and give them a Christian hug, and nothing has happened here. No, a lot has happened here, and you must continue to repair the damage there. But what I mean is that if we do not see them as human beings, there is no way out of the problem, we think there is no remedy, and if there is no remedy, we will continue to be victims because more and more aggressors will continue to emerge. Since we are feeding a film and video game industry with a lot of sexual violence, naturalized in addition and society also has a responsibility with this.

  A prisoner told me: "you talk about reparation, but I am already in jail, this is enough to repair 8 years in jail" and I replied: "no, not at all." Let us say that society has given you a penalty that you have to comply with, but the true reparation is when you start to reflect on the crime you have committed and try to get out of it wondering what you must do to repair the victims, both yours as well as others. I think we have to start having this conversation, you know?

  www.arenasdesilencio.org