Lara Stolman has produced news and documentaries that have aired on NBC, MSNBC, TLC, AMC, VH-1, and The New York Times’ website. Her film “Portraits of Survival,” which explored coming to terms with the tragedy of 9/11 through art, was selected for the Hamptons International Film Festival, aired on MSNBC, and was awarded the Cine Golden Eagle.
“Swim Team” will premiere at the 2016 DOC NYC film festival on November 17.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
LS: “Swim Team” chronicles the extraordinary rise of the Jersey Hammerheads, a competitive swim team made up of diverse autistic teenagers. As they vie for state and national championships, we follow three of the team’s star athletes in and out of the water, capturing their quest for inclusion, independence, and a life that feels winning.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
LS: I was looking for swimming lessons for my own children when I stumbled upon the Jersey Hammerheads team as they were just coming together at the Perth Amboy YMCA. As a mother, I was very taken by the sheer will of the families who were founding the team and were determined to make it succeed for their children.
These people were being told “no” in so many ways from the time their children had been diagnosed as toddlers” No, their kids couldn’t be in the regular class, no they couldn’t keep up in Little League, no, their sons would not go to college. And yet in creating this team for their kids, they were saying “yes” and I found it very inspiring.
I was also very interested in the fact that the community is largely Latino and the team shaped up to be about half Asian and half Latino, minorities that are underserved in autism intervention and underrepresented in media. The YMCA which hosted the team provided the pool and coaches for free, which was crucial for a number of the families on the team. They couldn’t have afforded to participate otherwise. I was really excited at the prospect of sharing these families’ stories.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when leaving the theater?
LS: I hope that viewers already connected to autism leave feeling hopeful and those unconnected leave with a greater understanding of how people with autism have gifts to give that aren’t immediately apparent.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
LS: I think my biggest challenge with this film was figuring out whose stories on the team to focus on. There are 17 kids on the team and I actually followed seven of them quite closely and went home with them and to their schools. But I knew I couldn’t go deep in a feature film with seven main characters. Narrowing it down was brutal because all the kids were compelling and lovable.
What I ultimately decided upon was to focus on the older boys who were going through turning points in their lives — aging out of school district support, trying to find jobs, and trying to figure out their place in their communities.
It’s a timely conversation: an estimated half a million young adults on the autism spectrum are coming of age in our country in the next decade, and there are insufficient supports and services for them to be fully included in our systems of higher education, employment, and housing. I thought it was important for the film to get into this and I knew the way we could do it most effectively was to focus on the “transition” aged boys.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
LS: “Swim Team” was funded in part by grants and in part by private donations. We received the New York Women in Film and Television Loreen Arbus Disability Awareness grant as well as a grant from the Karma Foundation. We also received donations from individuals. We got a great boost after The New York Times commissioned us to produce a short for their website. That brought more donations. We also received non financial but important support from IFP who selected the film for their 2016 Documentary Completion Lab.
Just in the last few months we have forged a partnership with Easterseals to fuel our outreach and engagement and we are really excited about their support in expanding the film’s reach.
W&H: What does it mean for you to have your film play at DOC NYC?
LS: It’s an honor to be selected for DOC NYC and it’s such a great fit for us because “Swim Team” is a tri-state area story. Our story and cast are based in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, just over the bridge from Staten Island.
We are also a New York-based crew including myself, co-producer/ editor Ann Collins, DP Laela Kilbourn, and composer Mark Suozzo. I met my producer Shanna Belott when we were undergrads at Columbia. And we did all of our post-production in New York City.
We’re also really fortunate that DOC NYC has become a market for film sales. We recently signed with the sales agent Preferred Content and believe DOC NYC is a wonderful opportunity to secure a distributor to bring the film to a wider audience.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
LS: I worked for NBC News and worked my way up to producing long form documentaries. After I became a producer, I was once told by a senior producer that I needed to be more assertive. [That’s the best advice I’ve received.] I was always an assertive person, but I think I had quashed my own assertiveness in that environment.
It’s not easy to navigate the politics of the hierarchical television show or film set and my strategy was to always be amenable. As I began to take on positions of leadership, I needed to learn to project more confidence in my decision making. When I was told this, it was a wake up call and actually led to my finally pitching my own projects.
I once had a boss who told me never to take a job solely for the money. This was very bad advice considering the fact that I had to make a living and as a young person coming up in the nonfiction film and TV world, I didn’t always have a lot of choice as to what job to take. I took some jobs primarily because I needed the work, not because I wanted the work.
In retrospect, I am grateful for every single job, even the PA job when I once had to clean a toilet, because I learned important things on all of my jobs and made friends and contacts, and moved along, eventually to the place where I was in the position to create my own job for myself.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
LS: You have to develop a thick skin and learn to handle rejection well, especially in the world of independent film where there is a ton of rejection. Sometimes hidden within rejection can be important feedback about the viability of your project or the strength of your work, so one needs to be able to discriminate between rejection that is based on subjective judgment of your work or your ability vs. rejection that you can use to pivot or make changes to improve. If you hear the same negative feedback repeatedly, it’s the latter.
Finding allies and other female colleagues to work with and learn from has been invaluable for me. I was lucky to have three wonderful female creative colleagues on “Swim Team”— my co-producer/ editor Ann Collins, producer Shanna Belott, and DP Laela Kilbourn, and we all learned from one another and were able to support one another as well.
So, my advice for others is the advice I tell myself. Harden up but don’t lose perspective: Press on and find allies.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
LS: I am huge lover of movies and don’t discriminate based on a director’s gender. That said, there are films that have been important in my life because I felt as if they reflected women’s lives intimately in ways I hadn’t seen before and they spoke to me. These include: “The Piano,” by Jane Campion, “Boys Don’t Cry” by Kimberly Peirce, “A League of Their Own” by Penny Marshall, and “Walking and Talking” by Nicole Holofcener.
W&H: Have you seen opportunities for women filmmakers increase over the last year due to the increased attention paid to the issue? If someone asked you what you thought needed to be done to get women more opportunities to direct, what would be your answer?
LS: Documentary has afforded opportunities to women due to the lower barrier to entry in terms of budget. But narrative features are another story, and I hope there are more opportunities for women to direct narrative features. I think it would help to have more women in the position to hire them: more women development executives, more women studio chiefs, more women agents, and more women in general in the position to greenlight films.
There also has to be more flexibility regarding the real needs of women’s schedules. This makes a difference for someone like me even being available for a position. Film directing is an all-consuming job that you take home with you, 24/7, and I know I could not have done it on this film if I wasn’t my own boss and setting my own schedule. I have three children, and while I am not their sole caregiver, I am really involved every day in their lives.
Since “Swim Team” was made through my production company, I was able to set the schedule and for most of our shooting and editing, I was only out of the house three days a week — not doing less work, but relegating the quiet, contemplative part of the process to my home office.
My producer Shanna Belott and co-producer/ editor Ann Collins each have two kids and this schedule worked best for all of us. I don’t think this would have been possible if I was hired by a studio, and yet we got the job done on budget and within the normal time frame it takes to make a film like this, and did what we had to do for our families.
