Dan Sturman '89 (Writer, Producer, & Director, SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION, NANKING)
By Dianne L. Brooks HLS '89
Harvard College grad Dan Sturman '89 is an accomplished documentary filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles. Recent projects include “Soundtrack for a Revolution” (2009) and “Nanking” (2007). It all began when he wandered into what he describes as the “amazing” VES 50 class at Harvard taught by Rob Moss, an “absolute inspiration” as a teacher. A key component of the course is a filmmaking project done in teams. Sturman and his team of classmates followed frontrunner Gary Hart’s ill-fated 1988 Presidential campaign. Hart had left the race, after some suggestive photographs surfaced showing him with a pharmaceutical rep named Donna Rice on a boat called Monkey Business, but later reversed course and re-entered the race for the New Hampshire primary. Sturman says the disintegration of the campaign was heartbreaking, yet he found himself thrilled by the actual filmmaking process. From then on he was hooked...well sort of. It took a viewing of “Roger and Me” the summer after he graduated to finally push him into what he describes as “this ridiculously poorly paid and unpredictable profession.”
After graduation, Sturman went to work with Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, who made films on political subjects such as “Nine from Little Rock” and “Robert F. Kennedy Remembered.” He later worked for ABC news, shooting and producing news as well as magazine shows like “20/20.” The pinnacle of that part of his career was his work for VH1’s much loved “Behind the Music” biography series where he worked on an episode on the 1980s girl band, The Go-Gos.
Currently, Sturman and his partner, Bill Guttentag, are at the Oakwood Apartments in Burbank shooting a documentary about the community of parents and children who take up residence during pilot season in hopes of becoming the next Miley Cyrus or Dakota Fanning and parents thereof. There are 1,000 apartments in the complex and between 100-200 families who meet with coaches, managers, and lawyers and attend seminars on-site to aid in the efforts to break into the entertainment business. Some of the kids have agents from other cities that bring them out, some come from talent events, and some have no experience whatsoever. The documentary is a smaller budgeted endeavor, compared to some of his other projects. He and his partner are doing all the shooting, using HVX-200s, and will rough edit everything themselves before handing the material off to a more experienced editor.
Sturman’s recently completed project, “Soundtrack For a Revolution,” about the music of the civil rights movement, is currently on the festival circuit. He said shooting interviews and finding archival footage was pretty straightforward given the number of times these events have been documented. What he didn’t fully anticipate, however, was the difficulty of getting music rights and dealing with the music industry in general.
For the award winning “Nanking,” however, a documentary about the Japanese invasion of Nanking, China during WWII, the experience was his smoothest to date thanks to funding from AOL executive, Ted Leonsis. That kind of financial support enabled Sturman and his partner to spend 8 months researching the project before they began shooting, and to travel to China as well, gathering almost every scrap of footage shot around that time. There were a handful of westerners in Nanking at the time of the invasion and the story is about how they created a safety zone for thousands of Chinese citizens. Survivors left behind diaries and letters, and some Chinese and Japanese who were there were interviewed as well. Sturman called this a “fantasy project” in that he got to make a history film with a big budget, far apart from what he calls some of the more boring “take your medicine” History Channel fare.
As for inspiration, Sturman says he’s inspired by people who make a living creating high quality documentary work, not an easy feat given the lack of demand for the genre. He says a lot of the best documentarians, like Albert and David Maysles (“Grey Gardens”) were in the right place at the right time for breaking stories. As with anything else in life, it takes a mysterious combination of skill and a little bit of luck. It seems as if Dan Sturman continues to crack the mystery by identifying fascinating subjects and shining a light on them for all of us to see.