Washington City Paper on Jamie Moffett

In this post from the Washington City Paper Arts Desk, Ryan Little chats with filmmaker Jamie Moffett about his new film Return to El Salvador. The film screened at the Gala Hispanic Theater on July 8th. An excerpt:

“Most Americans pay little attention to relatively tiny El Salvador, but the film Return To El Salvador posits the fate of that Central American nation is directly tied to the actions of ours. Through a fierce examination of recent Salvadorean history, director Jamie Moffett explores international politics and ponders the profound human impact of America’s foreign policy. The film tackles more than a few issues, and Arts Desk took a moment to chat with Moffett about them before its screening tonight at GALA Hispanic Theatre.

What inspired you to do this film?

I was finishing my first feature film, Ordinary Radicals, which followed on faith and politics during the 2008 election. One of my advisers on that film, professor and Emmy-winning director Betsy Morgan, kept using her time directing a documentary about El Salvador as a reference point. It intrigued me, so I kept asking questions. The more questions I asked, the more less-than-great answers I got. I found myself, as an American, really unaware of what my country had been doing on my behalf for decades. I feel there are more people like me that would be disturbed by this but would want to know what they could do about it.

When did you visit El Salvador?

There were two visits for the film. Our first visit was on March 15, 2009 ,when the candidate Mauricio Funes won. The second was in July of 2009, which was when we did most of our principal photography.

Is there a particular reason for examining El Salvador more than another country?

The more I learned, the more it seemed El Salvador was a needlepoint-specific example of how the U.S. interacts with its neighbors. It was also a good example of how often we create our own problems. The fact is that there are 2.5 million Salvadoreans in the U.S. today, which is nearly one percent of the population; the reason that they’re here is largely because of our guns and our money. We often talk about those people taking our jobs in our country, but we destabilized a nation; we funded and provided the guns which killed 75 thousand people and displaced 2.5 million of them, many of which are with us. The story is that we’re a big country and we were, according to the government at the time, fighting communism, but what we did is destabilized a country even further and forced folks to have to leave their Central American country—creating one of the largest diasporas in the Americas…”

Click here to read the complete post.

For more details on the film, check out its website here.

Image in the post is of Moffett at work, from his website