‘The Territory’ director on making a documentary in the Amazon rainforest

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Documentarian Alex Pritz didn’t have a background in film. He studied environmental science in college and was certain he wanted to be a scientist to “work on these big problems plaguing our planet,” he says. But at the end of his time at university, he realized that film was a better way to engage with big issues. “I have always been interested in participatory video working with communities that are experiencing conflicts and challenges to help them use film as a method of advocacy and also self expression,” he remarks. With that approach in mind, he went to the western part of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest to direct “The Territory.” The filmmaker discusses how he was introduced to the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, a small indigenous community that is fighting to protect their land, the challenges and accessibility issues he faced to make the documentary. But first Kim Masters and Matt Belloni look into the competition between Amazon and HBO for more viewers. Which series will win: ‘The Rings of Power’ or ‘House of the Dragon?’

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.
0:05.4	The child of two public school teachers, director Alex Pritz, didn't grow up with entertainment industry connections.
0:11.9	But when he was making the territory, his documentary about an indigenous tribe's fight to save the Amazon,
0:17.7	he managed to find a pretty good partner and coach in filmmaker Darren Aronofsky.
0:22.5	Darren comes from the independent film world and pushed us to hold on to as many rights as we could,
0:28.3	you know, all rights really. So I was super scrappy. We applied for hundreds of grants and were able to
0:34.0	make the entire film totally independently. I kept final cut of the film all the way through.
0:39.5	Documentary filmmaker Alex Pritz talks about making his debut film, his way.
0:44.2	But first, we banter.
0:45.4	Stick around. It's the business from KCRW.
0:49.1	I am joined by my partner in banter.
0:51.6	Hello, Matt.
0:52.3	Welcome back.
0:53.6	Thank you. I have been out of range, Matt. Welcome back. Thank you.
0:54.4	I have been out of range, but I am back and catching up.
0:57.9	I have not watched House of the Dragon,
1:00.6	and I have not yet watched Lord of the Rings,
1:03.0	the Rings of Power.
1:04.0	So one of them is HBO's prequel to Game of Thrones,
1:08.1	very expensive, very risky, launched well, as far as we know, very well,
1:13.1	the numbers seem to indicate. Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power, is even more expensive.
1:19.2	A huge risk for Amazon, but the early reviews have been pretty good. I will note that you have
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