ARTHUR DONG makes documentary films that examine anti-gay attitudes in American culture. His open-ended approach encourages viewers to situate themselves in relation to the issues he investigates, which include homophobia and racism, among others. Coming Out Under Fire, based on Allan Bérubé’s book by that title and completed in 1994, explores the development (and utter stupidity) of the U.S. military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy by focusing on a group of gay and lesbian veterans of World War II. Licensed to Kill, televised by PBS in 1998, is Dong’s riveting look at anti-gay violence. (Dong survived a gay-bashing attack in 1977 by throwing himself against the front of a passing Volkswagen bus.) For this film, he went to prisons around the country to ask killers of gay men, “Why did you do it?” Their answers implicate religious and political leaders who make anti-gay pronouncements. Family Fundamentals, released in 2002, focuses on families in which fundamentalist Christian parents reject a gay son or daughter. These three films are available in a boxed set under the umbrella title, Stories from the War on Homosexuality.
In keeping with his grass-roots philosophy, Dong distributes his own work through DeepFocus Productions, his Los Angeles-based company. Dong was born the son of Chinese immigrants in 1953 in San Francisco, where he came out in 1969 and made his first film in a high school art class in 1970. He went on to study filmmaking at S
an Francisco State University and at the American Film Institute. Sewing Woman, Dong’s 1982 film focusing on his mother’s experience as an immigrant in America, was nominated for an Academy Award. Lotus (1987) is a dramatic short condemning the binding of women’s feet in China. Forbidden City, U.S.A. (1989) spotlights a San Francisco nightclub that featured Asian-American performers and became an international tourist attraction during the 1930’s and 40’s. Another documentary directed by Dong, Out Rage ’69 (1995), was the first of four episodes in the PBS series, The Question of Equality, a history of the gay rights movement. It asked difficult questions, focusing on racism, sexism, and class prejudice within the gay rights movement, as well as homophobia outside of it.
Dong’s work has won numerous honors and awards, including a Peabody Award, three Sundance Film Festival awards, five Emmy nominations, and two GLAAD Media Awards. He is currently developing a documentary looking at Asians and their portrayal in Hollywood feature films.
Greg Varner: Reviewers often cite your work’s seeming impartiality, but as you’ve acknowledged, documentary filmmaking is far from objective. You get your point across in moments like the one in Licensed To Kill when Congressman William Dannemeyer’s quote saying that “we must defeat militant homosexuality” appears on screen over the face of a killer.
Arthur Dong: As a filmmaker, part of what I struggle with and try to do in the editing room is to allow the space for the viewer to participate in the interpretation of what I’m doing. Certainly I have a point of view, but you in the audience can also delve into your own personal experiences and your own interpretation of what is being transmitted on that two-dimensional, flat screen. That’s my goal, really, and I think maybe that’s why I’m often cited as being impartial and fair and ethical, which are all wonderful virtues to have, I think, but I don’t propose that my films are totally impartial. Film is an interpretive art. I relish that difference of personal interpretation and I use that in crafting my films. I need to know what I think and how I feel about the particular topic, but whether or not that translates on the screen, I think, depends on the viewer. I try to allow the filmgoer to make up his or her own mind. I relish the fact that in an audience there may be different interpretations of my films. That tells me that I did my job in allowing people from different backgrounds to come in to the story and make it their own. I don’t trust that my audience will have the same interpretation as me, but that doesn’t matter. My job is to allow the audience to participate so that the story becomes their story as well. That makes it more meaningful, especially with my last films, which are trying to push adjustments in attitudes. You notice I didn’t say change, because I think change is difficult to come by in terms of the issues that I’m concerned with, but if I can encourage adjustments or a wider sphere of thoughts or questioning, then I will feel that I’ve done something.
GV: Did anyone criticize your strategy, in Licensed To Kill, of letting killers talk? After all, they’ve had their say.
AD: I had criticism during the making of the film and during the proposal period and the fundraising period, but once the film got out, I think it quelled those fears. People said, “Why would you give them a forum?” My idea was, we need to learn from them if we’re going to overcome the problem.
GV: That moment in Coming Out Under Fire when a former marine who had entertained others by performing in drag says, “That was why we were marines—to make other marines laugh,” is powerfully ambivalent. There’s pride and also pain in so much of what the veterans say in that movie.
AD: We specifically chose people for the film who had a double edge. There were certainly people who had no clue that there even was a policy [against gays serving]who just had the greatest time of their lives. That’s where the filmmaker puts blinders on the experience. Obviously, we had to focus in, and we zoned in specifically to look at the consequence that this policy created for personal lives. In other words, we didn’t interview people on camera who had the time of their lives. And that’s where a film is subjective. Once you point the camera, you’re blocking out certain images already, and who’s choosing the image to be captured in film? Well, the filmmaker is, and there are already choices from the get-go in terms of subjectivity.
GV: I enjoyed Family Fundamentals. I have a sister who told me she thinks I’m going to hell, so I could relate.
AD: Family Fundamentals is a little tame, but I wanted to reach a certain audience. We need to speak their language; otherwise, they won’t listen, because they don’t want to hear. They don’t want to listen, and they find every excuse not to. We don’t have a common language, and I think the goal of what we like to call the “mainstreaming” of our movement is to develop the language that can get the message across to this strata of citizens.
GV: You were a one-man band on Family Fundamentals. Is this the path you’ll continue to take?
AD: It really depends on the film. One of the notions I had at the very beginning of Family Fundamentals was to give the subjects video cameras so they could do their own personal diaries. But in the course of thinking through that and watching that type of film, I find them tedious because there’s no director behind the camera. I didn’t want that. I’ve always wanted to be a cameraman, anyway. And it was partly an experiment to see what would happen. The camera work in Family Fundamentals isn’t ace camera work. It was OK. But the main goal wasn’t to get a pretty shot; it was to get the moment.
GV: You’ve even been distributing your own work.
AD: Self-distribution is a big part of what I do. I really believe in each film that I put together, and I want to make sure that it does its job out there. I’ve worked with distributors, and some very good ones, and I’ve learned a lot from them. And I’ve learned that sometimes I can do a different kind of job than they do, especially because I’m passionate about the issues that I explore in my work. Getting my work out there is a large part of my work. I’ve been doing it since the early 80’s, when that notion was kind of crazy. Now more and more people are doing it, and it’s become easier with the Internet, which has changed the whole marketing of films for independents. They don’t need to rely so much on the machine.
GV: Looking back over the years at your various projects, could you make a capsule statement about the state of gay people in American society today?
AD: Boy, that’s a big question. I am disappointed, and at the same time, I’m elated at the progress that’s been made. There’s so much progress, and so much cause for celebration. At the same time, I think we are still being very naïve. We’re just not questioning the status quo. I don’t know why our community doesn’t do that, I mean in a real, deep sense. We’re not fighting back. We’re not getting ugly any more. We’re making everything pretty and acceptable. I lament the [passing of the]days of the Gay Liberation Front and act-up, I’ll tell you.
Greg Varner is former arts editor for the Washington Blade.
