The subject of our new issue’s Hot Property (May/June 2013) is Let the Fire Burn, a riveting documentary centered on the deadly 1985 clash over the radical Philadelphia group MOVE. Director Jason Osder conducted several interviews on and off camera but opted to use found footage exclusively. That was shortly before another acclaimed found-footage-based work, The Black Power Mixtape, appeared at Sundance in 2011. FILM COMMENT spoke with Osder during the Tribeca Film Festival about his feature-length debut, and the challenges (and rewards) of resurrecting forgotten history.

Let the Fire Burn Jason Osder

Let the Fire Burn

How did you choose this material?

I had just finished film school and moved to D.C. the same year as a film school buddy, John Aldrich, who is associate producer on the film. We were talking documentary ideas, and I said, this thing from my childhood always bothered me and maybe has potential for a film. I read Michael Boyette’s book “Let It Burn!” (the quotation marks are part of the title) very early on, and then it was a matter of figuring out if there’s material, the things you need for a film.

That was a long time ago, and being able to use the archival material held us up. I shot interviews and did other research and treatments and applied for grants. It wasn’t till I joined the faculty in 2007 at George Washington University, and I had these new legs under me: a letterhead, a legal team, money, and access to equipment and time to do creative work, and a creative community. It’s what a university is really designed for. It’s something that really needed institutional support.

There’s a range of footage: news stories, the city hearings, the deposition of the child from MOVE. What were the rights issues exactly?

It is such a complicated one. I don’t even know how to get into it. Part of where it gets crazy is that the material was part of a [city] commission. Who owned it? What’s the commission? Well, they’re a thing a city made. Who do you talk to? It was the university that was the key to unlocking the door—the combination of a letterhead and a lawyer. I recently saw a panel basically saying that really complicated issues scare off a lot of filmmakers—and they should not be afraid of it. They don’t have to be and they’re often not. But this one was never going to be easy.

The line I like is “the past in the present tense.” I credit the editor with a lot of the decision to do it this way. Creative things happen when you change one aspect. The radical thing is just to use the archival footage, and anything short of that is not that. Once you’re doing it, you just have to follow the rules.

Let the Fire Burn

How did you begin organizing the material?

There are a lot of documentaries that need story. This is not one of them. We started by making scenes. You know there’s going to be a bomb-drop scene [when the Philadelphia police drop a bomb on the MOVE headquarters with a helicopter]. So we started cutting that scene. The first part of the film was harder, but… Someone asked at a panel at Tribeca about the stress of not knowing what’s going to happen—I said that’s why you make historical documentaries! You know what’s going to happen. It’s a story that’s been with me for 10 years.

Having now made the film, what did you take away from the story?

I think what the story poses most compellingly, in the film that we made, is the question, how did the unthinkable come to happen? That’s just unthinkable: the police could drop a bomb, and let the fire burn, and there were children in the house. The film does present a partial answer, which is that when we look upon fellow human beings, and instead of seeing a person you see a sign in front of their eyes—you see a category, race—that’s how it starts. MOVE would say what they did to them was an attempt at genocide, and I think they have a point. That’s what makes it so interesting—they’re unique. What did Christians look like at day one?

You’ve said you remember the events from when you were a kid growing up in Philadelphia. What was your reaction, or your parents?

I was scared—I wasn’t like, Police brutality! It was, Ahhhh! Kids dying, burning to death! I don’t remember [my parents’ reaction], I remember more talking about it with my friends at the time. I remember when Reagan got shot—I remember playacting that. It made sense… there’s a cogency to some of what they’re saying, it’s a real thing.

Let the Fire Burn

Whom did you interview, when the film was still going to have interviews?

On camera we shot about five interviews total. I never wanted to do a mosaic. I never wanted to talk to everyone who might have something to say. For a long time, my model was One Day in September. I interviewed Michael Ward [aka Birdie Africa, a child survivor of the MOVE clash] as an adult, and thought, that’s the exclusive, that makes the film. We talked to a lot of people off camera, people on the commission.

Part of what’s fascinating is that all of this happened relatively recently.

People would see the teasers, or maybe I just pitched it to them, and they saw the images of the fire and thought, that was back in the Sixties, right? Honest to God, they seemed most surprised that 1985 was nearly 30 years ago. This trajectory—that 1985 was 30 years ago—that’s what really knocked people out of their shoes. Like, I just woke up.

I don’t know how much of it is in the film, but I always thought partly for me it was about how current events become history—or not, or fail to. I’m comfortable, I’m on the side of complexity, I do think people should know, I think it’s part of American history. Or, it’s not part of American history and it ought to be. The kids I teach [at George Washington] were born in the Nineties. They pretty much know what Waco was, they had no idea about this, and why?

Waco is maybe the closest of this kind of event that people might know.

Waco and Ruby Ridge was federal government. That’s out in the boonies—this is Philadelphia, how can people not know about it? I think it was a very strange time, mediawise. There are very few examples of news going live and staying live like this. Nowadays, Lindsay Lohan is at court and it’s live. OJ was the big moment like that. That’s part of what makes this so interesting. People have the context for the news, but it’s just a news report until [the TV news reporters] start ducking bullets. And then it’s nothing you’ve seen in your life. You realize the commentator is scared or shocked.

The found footage of the hearings is just as dramatic in a different way—people speaking their mind.

I give a lot of credit to Nels [Bangerter, the editor]. She recognized the dramatic potential in that material. Everything you want to do with talking heads—you want to move the story forward or provide context—you can do it all. But no one ever goes unquestioned. Instead of letting all the air go out, you build tension another way. It’s very tightly packed. I love docs, but more shit happens in my documentary than many other documentaries.

How have audiences responded to the film?

I’m really happy with the audiences. In a lot of ways it’s getting the response that I wanted, but the tone is markedly different. I thought people would want to argue with each other. They just kind of want to talk—they’re more contemplative. People seem very sensitized and maybe a bit traumatized from seeing the film. Toward the end of a screening, someone got onto their soapbox. “I see the oppressed and the oppressors…” And he didn’t get shouted down, he just trickled off. There was no energy in the room for him.

One of the best reactions I’ve gotten was two drunk college-age girls who came up after a screening. One of them poked me in the chest and—I’m paraphrasing here—she said: “I saw your film, I can’t fucking believe that happened, and no one fucking knows that happened, and I called my mother to tell her.” It actually works, it’s gratifying.