Background

In June, 1961, I was the second volunteer to report for the very first Peace Corps group, Colombia I. Because we were the first group, and since we were to be rural “community organizers”, rather than having a defined skill as a teacher or technician, there was no profile of the ideal volunteer - except that we are all men. We come from extremely diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds, with a wide range of ideologies - literally from John Bircher to Maoist. Besides being male, what we had - and still have - in common is our experience in living out the idea of the Peace Corps.

It is hard to recall, now, the enthusiasm of the first few months of JFK’s term - of the millions of people around the world who welcomed what we thought was to be a new direction in American foreign policy. The US was going to change the world, not through force of arms, but by empowering people to take control of their own destinies - and the Peace Corps was the symbol of this new vision of America’s role in the world.

We volunteers would live with the people we were to help, at or close to their standard of living. Rather than imposing our values on them, we would learn as much as we would teach, and take our experience back to the US to help other Americans understand, through our experiences, the problems of the developing world.

Of course, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. And that is the subject of this film: what happened to this generous vision? How and why did the US move from the “New Frontier” to the “War on Terror”? And how have our lives reflected those changes? What has stayed with us over these years? Certainly we all, in one way or another, had a sense of idealism, of being on some kind of “New Frontier”. What remains of that idealism, and how has it changed, if it has? What did we learn that changed us? How - if at all - has our Colombia experience affected our life choices and our outcomes? And what happened to Colombia?

Since our return, our common experience has kept us in touch, even as our lives have taken us in different directions. Quite a few stayed on in the Peace Corps bureaucracy, or moved on to other government service: the Dept. of State, the Dept. of Education, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Foundation, and the UN Development Program. Others worked with CARE and other social service organizations. Many others chose academia - primarily the social sciences and humanities. One became a tobacco company executive, several founded small businesses, another helped illegal migrants on the Mexican border, another is the director of NM Legal Aid. One is an artist living on an island off Vancouver, another lives in the south of France, another in Panama. Politically, we range from far-right Republicans to far-left Democrats. Some are born-again evangelicals, others atheists or agnostics. Some have died: of the original 61, 52 survive. We have a mailing list, periodic reunions, and a permanent invitation to stay in each others’ homes when our paths cross.

As a member of the group, I have full access to all the others. To maintain the intimacy this allows, i am shooting camera and sound myself - “Ross McElwee style” - except for a trip to Colombia, when I will hire a crew.

Of course I can’t do in-depth portraits of all 52, so I have arranged to meet individually at their homes with twelve members of the group, chosen for their diversity as well as their articulateness. I will stay with each for several days, and film a mini-biography of each, along with our conversations on the questions above. Of these twelve, i expect no more than six or seven to be major presences in the film. Since several of the twelve live within a day’s drive of Washington, DC, I plan to film a house party at the summer home of one member on Chesapeake Bay. (I have already shot individual visits with four of the twelve, plus a mini-reunion in Las Cruces with16 of the group, for a total of ten hours so far.) The mini-biographies also place our individual lives in the context of events in the US in the last 40 years. Thus, in the sample, one of the group visits the 9/11 site and talks about his reactions to the “War on Terror” in relation to the ideals of the Peace Corps.

Because we were the first group, there is a significant amount of archival footage about us specifically, in addition to the Peace Corps and the Kennedy era in general. I will also include stills and film shot by group members. I will use this material to define the period in which we served and to accompany our individual stories. In addition, I plan to shoot an interview with Bill Moyers or another early Peace Corps official, and to travel to one village in Colombia as an example of what has happened (not good!) since we left.

The message of the film is that the US desperately needs to learn what we learned in the Peace Corps: that if we are to be effective in our relations with the rest of the world we must understand and empathize with other cultures and societies. We cannot assume that our values and beliefs are the only “right” ones. We have at least as much to learn as to give.

Finally, this is also a story in which I cannot hide behind the camera. But I am leaving myself for last, to fill in any holes or weak spots in the material. So in a sense I will narrate the film, insofar as a narrator is needed.

I don’t make scripted documentaries: the story unfolds in the shooting and editing, as it did in “The Black Tulip”, the completed sample accompanying this proposal. But as in the sample, I base my edit on the three act play model with rising dramatic tension reaching a climax at or just before the end of the film. Overall, the film will be arranged historically, so that the events and discussions build from the 60's to the present, increasingly incorporating more current events like 9/11 and the new US (military) involvement in Colombia towards the end of the film.

a.) introduce and define the early days of the Peace Corps, focusing on two or three mini-bios in the context of the early days of the Kennedy administration, with interviews, stills, and stock footage, and leading into
b.) the reunion (already shot), focused on our experiences in Colombia, including a discussion of work at the model site revisited at the end of the film.
c.) mini-bios of one or two of the individuals at the reunion, at least two of whom will also be at
d.) the house party, focused on how our subsequent careers reflect our Peace Corps experience and how we view the changes in the US;
e.) min-bios of one or two of the individuals at the house party, leading to
d.) a visit to what was once a model site in Colombia, and is now a battleground; and
e.) some kind of final wrap-up - for example, like the one in the sample.

Obviously, material from the mini-bios, photos, and stock footage will be intercut throughout this basic structure. While there will inevitably be many voices, I will try to limit the major characters to three or four (possibly including myself), at least one of whom will travel to Colombia with me.

Anticipated Audience:

There are now several hundred thousand ex-PCVs and, so far as I know, no film, like the one I am proposing, that looks at their experience. Of course, this is also a program about “senior citizens” reflecting on the course of their lives, but it may also inspire younger viewers to seek opportunities to seek lives of service, as most of us have done. There are also quite a few colombianos around. But the target audience is much bigger: all those who are concerned about where the US is headed in the world.

Appropriateness for public television:

After the Peace Corps, I went to Viet Nam in 1965, and came away convinced that whether or not the war was “justified”, we were going about it entirely wrong. Later, by a set of curious chances, I made two films on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and came away convinced that our support of Islamic militants would be disastrous. I also spent three months filming in Cuba with a largely Cuban crew, and came away convinced that the US policy towards Cuba was against our own best interests. And while I did not oppose the Bush interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, my fears that we would repeat our earlier mistakes in Viet Nam, Cuba, and Afghanistan have been fully realized.

My experience in the Peace Corps had a lot to do with these conclusions:

We keep making the same mistakes, over and over, in our relations with others, because we do not take the trouble to understand them. This is not a message that penetrates anywhere in mainstream media, not even on PBS.

Finally, that is what this film is about.