Sara Terry is a documentary filmmaker. Her first documentary “Fambul Tok,” about an unprecedented grassroots forgiveness program in Sierra Leone, was supported by Sundance and Chicken and Egg Pictures, and won several awards at more than a hundred festivals worldwide. Terry’s second documentary, “FOLK,” followed three singer-songwriters through the sub-culture of American folk music. The film screened at DOC NYC, Nashville Film Festival, and Bonnaroo Music Festival, among other fests.

“A Decent Home” starts screening at the 2021 DOC NYC Film Festival on November 16. The fest runs from November 10-28. 

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

ST: “A Decent Home” is the David vs. Goliath story of mobile home park residents who are fighting to survive as private equity firms are buying up parks and jacking up lot rents — the rent mobile home park residents [pay] for the land their homes are on.

When housing that’s on the lowest rung of the American Dream is being devoured by the wealthiest of the wealthy, whose dream are we serving? The film asks this question and addresses urgent issues of class and economic (im)mobility through the lives of mobile home park residents who can’t afford housing anywhere else. They are fighting for their dreams — and their lives — as private equity firms and wealthy investors buy up parks, making sky-high returns on their investments while squeezing every last penny out of the mobile home owners who must pay rent for the land they live on.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

ST: I think the wealth gap — and the unbelievable inequity created by that concentration of so much wealth in the hands of a few — is the biggest problem we have in the world today. I’ve thought that for years. That kind of imbalance, and greed, is what’s behind every challenge we face — from climate change to systemic racism. Start there if you want to fix everything else.

I read an article in 2015 about Frank Rolfe, who teaches investors how to buy and sell parks in the most ruthless terms, and found out about the billionaires involved in parks, and I knew it was the story I wanted to do. I almost lost my house in the toxic mortgage meltdown of 2008, not long after I divorced. For several years, until only recently, I spent more than half of my income on housing, which is what experts think of as a crisis.

My situation doesn’t compare to people who are losing the mobile — manufactured — homes, but I understand housing instability. I know the fear. And I’m fed up with the commoditization of housing — it’s a basic human right.

“A Decent Home — Everyone deserves one” is the motto of our outreach campaign.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

ST: Petra Bennet, one of the residents fighting to prevent the closure of Denver Meadows mobile home park, asks the question that haunts me as I make this film, “When are the rich rich enough?”

We have much to learn about how much is enough from residents of mobile home parks, I believe. Time and again, as I filmed in these parks, I met compassionate, eloquent people who cherish values of community and generosity — values that seem to have been lost in an aggressively materialistic, me-first society.

They speak about community, about neighbors helping neighbors, about the happiness that comes from living a life that they can afford. They volunteer at homeless shelters, they lead Boy Scout troops, they collect cans to help fund worthy causes, they set aside what they can — even five dollars a month, to give to their favorite charities, including the World Wildlife Fund and the local food bank.

We need to hear these people, we need to see these people, we need to value them and everything they represent about the best of who we are as Americans.

And we need to question who on earth are we becoming as Americans when housing that is on the very lowest rung of the American Dream is being bought up by the wealthiest of the wealthy, seeking to make outrageous returns on their investments. When are the rich rich enough? Whose dream are we serving?

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

ST: Raising the money to make it!

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

ST: As with many documentaries, this film began as a labor of love. I started six-and-a-half years ago when, believe it or not, I wrote about “the under-reported affordable housing crisis” in my early grant applications — because nobody was talking about it back then. Someone who has supported my work had given me the money to buy a C300 MKii [Camcorder], and I had some free time so I started filming. And that became the way I worked, as a one-woman crew, which really helped create the intimacy you see in the film as these people welcomed me into their homes.

After the first four years — working with a few small private donations, and a small development grant from Cal Humanities, and lots of my own unpaid time — the news media started to catch on to the story. I was horrified at first, because I thought of this as “my” story — my background is in journalism — but one of my EPs, filmmaker Kirby Dick, told me not to worry, that funders would start to realize it was a good story.

John Oliver did a big piece on private equity firms buying up parks, and licensed three clips from me, and gave me prominent on-screen credit. And that was the tipping point — 10 days later the first big grant came in from a foundation I’d been waiting to hear from for months. And then the grants kept coming — of course I was writing a heck of a lot of proposals and didn’t get a lot of them! And during the pandemic, I qualified for two PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] loans, which was a huge help.

It was a matter of being right in the moment with a story that’s starting to get a lot of news attention. The four years I’d already spent working on the film and becoming really knowledgeable about the subject, of writing strong grant proposals, and, honestly, of having a few donors who have supported my work in the past who stepped up again.

It’s a story that’s specific to this film in terms of who stepped in and what grants I won, but it’s also a universal story of how docs get made, I think.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

ST: I often joke that I’m an accidental filmmaker. I was — and still am — a documentary photographer when I was working on the project that became my first film, “Fambul Tok.” I just wanted to make stills — this was a part of a very long-term photo project that I wound up getting a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography for. I’d never ever wanted to be a director.

After a mid-career transition from print reporting to photography, I just wanted to make images. I actually found somebody else to direct, and they turned out to be disastrous — nobody involved in the film liked them or the way they worked. The crew kept saying, “Look, you know this story better than anyone. You’ve been a journalist. You can do this. You’re the director.” So I stepped in and was fortunate enough along the way in making that film to be supported by the Sundance Doc Institute and Chicken and Egg Pictures.

And I loved the impact that a documentary film can have — the great big, wide audiences you can reach and the conversations you can start. So I’ve stayed with it — but continued with my work as a photographer.

I’m happiest with my eye behind a lens. That’s why I did the cinematography on “A Decent Home.”

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

ST: You know, absolutely nothing comes to mind! Maybe the best advice, in filmmaking, was about getting contracts done right away, and also getting releases from people you interview immediately.

And the worse advice would be, “Don’t worry, we can do this on a handshake.” Or “Don’t worry, you can always get the release later.”

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors? 

ST: When you’re in a meeting with funders, or distributors, or anyone “important” in the film industry, speak like you have a right to be there. Use your “I’ve got a seat at the table voice, and I deserve to be here just as much as you do” voice, which doesn’t mean being strident or demanding. It means being confident in who you are, and knowing the value you bring to that space.

It’s not about being loud. It’s about speaking up when you need to, and speaking clearly. It’s about making space for others to be heard, too. It’s about knowing that you’ve got game.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

ST: I don’t have favorites of anything, except maybe ice cream flavors. There are so many things I love, and so many women I admire. I think that to have “favorites” is kind of like participating in a popularity contest.

I can tell you that my current favorite includes Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” for the sheer beauty of the film — the nuance of the script she wrote, and the subtlety of the performances she evoked from her lead actresses — not to mention the stunning visual canvas of the film.

Among other female directors I admire, in both scripted and doc, each for different reasons, are Debra Granik, Ava DuVernay, Kimberly Peirce, Miranda July, Dee Rees, Laura Poitras, Agnès Varda, and Kirsten Johnson.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

ST: I was so fortunate that I finished principal photography for “A Decent Home” two weeks before the lockdown in March 2020. And I was so fortunate that all during that first pandemic year, funds continued to come in so that I could keep my editor working, and pay modest salaries to myself and my producer. And now the film is finally coming out in the world!

I’ve also started and led the development of a really interesting episodic doc series that is starting to move forward — we created a diverse collaborative of doc filmmakers to be the decision-making and creative body for the project. That’s been an incredibly interesting and inspiring space to work in, both in terms of the subject we’re exploring and the kind of structure we’ve built, and how we’ve built it.

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make it more inclusive?

ST: I think good steps are already being taken; I’ve admired both Justine Nagan, former head of “POV,” and Simon Kilmurry, former head of IDA, and before that, POV, for stepping down from their positions to make way for non-white colleagues to take over the reins of each of those institutions. Others have been doing that, too, at different levels.

If I’m not mistaken, doc films lead the rest of the film industry in terms of the number of filmmakers who are women, or non-binary, or people of color. Those changes have to continue, I think, to become institutionally ingrained — and not just the result of a trend, or a well-intentioned but fleeting response to movements that occur at a point in time.

The filmmaking collaborative I referred to in my answer to the previous question is an example of one way that filmmakers can contribute to this change in fundamental ways. We didn’t want to create a checklist of “types” of people, but in inviting the group to do the brainstorming for this project — all of whom were invited to brainstorm with the understanding that they could be part of the collective if they wanted to be — we included Black, disabled, Persian-American, indigenous, white, queer, Latinx, Asian-American, gay, and straight filmmakers.

It was an extraordinary group of 11 filmmakers who contributed to the creation of the collective — which ultimately became four members from that group because others couldn’t commit the time needed. I think that kind of intentional creation of space to collaborate and intentional invitation of many voices is really important.