Emily Branham is a filmmaker captivated by artists, performance, and identity. She directs short documentaries for art and corporate organizations including Lincoln Center, AT&T, and JP Morgan, as well as produces visual effects for commercial, music video, and broadcast clients. Branham’s short film, “Legend: A film about Greg Garing” won the Grand Jury Prize of the International Doc Challenge and screened at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Rooftop Films, and on the Documentary Channel. “Being Bebe” is her first feature documentary.

“Being BeBe: The BeBe Zahara Benet Documentary” is screening at the 2021 edition of NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, which is taking place October 15-26.

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

EB: “Being BeBe” is a feature documentary about the first winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” BeBe Zahara Benet, aka Nea Marshall Kudi Ngwa, who is an immigrant to the U.S. from Cameroon, a country where homosexuality is illegal, mob justice is common, and gender norms are incredibly stringent. I’ve been filming with BeBe since 2006.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

EB: My sister was dancing backup for BeBe for a local drag pageant in Minneapolis. As soon as she told me about him, I thought it sounded like an amazing short film— a promising amateur drag performer on his way to his first national drag pageant. The first time I saw BeBe perform, I was blown away — so charismatic, so unique, so much presence and confidence as an artist. When the pageant was over, I just felt like there was more there, so fortunately he was open to me continuing to follow him around and see where it might go.

Then BeBe went on the first season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in 2009 and won. The show became such a cult phenomenon immediately and things sort of jumped to a different level in terms of people’s ears perking up when I’d pitch it. I knew the film would have an audience of some sort whenever it was finished, which made it even more important to me to get it right.

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

EB: People from all walks of life have gone out of their way after seeing the film to tell me they personally identified with and saw themselves in BeBe. I think there are aspects of BeBe’s life that people discover through this film that they weren’t expecting, and I would love for audiences to walk away questioning assumptions and unconscious biases they might be carrying. I would be thrilled if hearts and minds could be opened through watching this film and if folx working on the front lines of LGBTQ+ human rights around the world could make the film a useful tool in their work.

I also think one of the greatest services art and movies can offer is inspiration. I want others — particularly queer, immigrant, and BIPOC individuals — to vicariously experience BeBe’s journey, feel inspired and empowered to follow their own urges to create and hang in there with pursuing the dreams that give them purpose in their lives.

The heart of the film, to me, is BeBe’s family, and I hope that the family’s contributions to the film can serve as a model of love and acceptance that audiences will remember and emulate.

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

EB: Time and patience. It took a while for enough story to play out in real time to create a satisfying arc that would do justice to BeBe’s story. Money of course was also an issue throughout, but I don’t think it’s the kind of film where throwing money at it would have resulted in a wildly better product. Might have made it a lot easier, but not necessarily better.

I made a big push to finish the film after BeBe won “Drag Race” in 2009, but as soon as I saw an assembly edit strung out, I knew that it wasn’t strong enough yet. Watching somebody bask in the glory of their peak is not especially interesting, relatable, or satisfying to me, but what happens after things start to bottom out certainly is.

Organically weaving the Cameroonian picture into the story was also a challenge. His Cameroonian heritage is obviously a key part of who he is and why he is the way he is, but when I went to Cameroon and was not able to film with BeBe and his family, I honestly wasn’t 100 percent sure how the material we filmed was going to integrate with the rest of the film. But now it’s one of the aspects of the film I am proudest of, and which audiences respond to most emphatically.

The film also greatly benefitted from the deeper relationships and trust that BeBe, BeBe’s family, and I authentically built over time. I take that trust very seriously and strive to be the most responsible steward of that trust that I can be.

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

EB: This was a super bootstrapped, extremely independent film. It started with a borrowed camera and the help of a couple of dear friends, Joey Reid and Kevin Richey, who thought — as did I — we were making a short film about a drag pageant in Dallas. But I felt pretty confident that more was set to play out and I felt compelled to keep following breadcrumbs to see where it could go.

Over time, I shored up the support of a terrific producing team and advisory board who believed in the project and offered tons of strategic advice, feedback, and encouragement. We applied for dozens and dozens of grants over the years and ended up getting four — three of which came in once 85 percent of the film was in place.

When BeBe was headed back onto television for “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars 3,” we knew a bunch of eyes were about to be back on BeBe, so we seized the moment and launched a Kickstarter campaign that took years off of my life. That campaign raised $35K from 650+ unique backers. It was amazing to connect with so many people through that campaign and also a ton of work.

While getting the word out about the project through the Kickstarter campaign, we were approached by a Canadian broadcaster, OUTtv, who came on board early with a pre-sale to a handful of territories including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa. We knew that pre-selling individual territories would cut off the potential for a bigger global deal upon completion — the ultimate dream payday for many documentaries — but we had negative dollars in the bank and needed funding to keep the film moving forward, so it was a deal we decided to take. “Going where we’re loved” has been a mantra throughout the process.

Then we strategically used the grants, pre-sale, and Kickstarter money to hire editors to polish up what I had roughly laid down, as well as cinematographers for key shoots that I knew were too important to enter into on my own, like Cameroon, some of BeBe’s shows, the acting classes, and the Minneapolis 2020 interview, which I directed remotely via Zoom from my apartment in NYC.

And the most important way that I’ve kept this pushing forward over 15 years was by having a “day job” as a freelance producer of visual effects and motion design for high-end TV commercials. I have been lucky to work with a whole bunch of terrific creative people in a corner of our business that couldn’t be much more different from documentaries. I’d take gigs lasting a few months at a time, and then buy myself some time — and plane tickets/hard drives. I tried hard to keep my overhead as low as possible, and did other odd things for money over the years, including a sleeping pill trial in Switzerland.

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

EB: I grew up as a child actor in Minneapolis, but after a couple of terms in college as a theater major, it no longer felt right to me. I didn’t like the audition process (who does?), being judged for things I couldn’t control, and waiting to be “chosen.” I really loved making things and having a finished product — writing, websites, art, all of it.

It was around the year 2000 and a ton of really inventive films were coming out — “Amélie,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Matrix,” “Being John Malkovich.” I took a couple of film classes and thought making music videos sounded like the best job in the world, so I moved to NYC with my best friend and started coordinating at a music video production company, while moonlighting on directing music videos myself for singer-songwriters I loved, like Jonatha Brooke and Eleni Mandell.

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

EB: Best: From a fortune cookie, taped to my laptop for most of my 30s: “Be prepared to modify the plan.” Also, almost anything author Elizabeth Gilbert says. Her demystification of the creative process is incredibly helpful when your brain tells you negative stories while you work, and I must have listened to every podcast interview she’s ever given while editing this film.

Worst: “Sleep when you’re dead.” Nope. I’m a very hard worker, but rest is critical and should be an inviolable human right.

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

EB: Just start. Don’t ask or wait for permission, or for the timing to be perfect, or for someone else to recognize your merit. Find a way to be in community with other filmmakers. In NYC, we’re everywhere, and there are a ton of great organizations for bringing filmmakers out of isolation. I discovered that most documentary filmmakers are really smart, humble people who are super generous in sharing what they know. I started to approach making this film as my DIY grad school, and took advantage of workshops and programs hosted by organizations like Women Make Movies, Filmshop, Stranger than Fiction at IFC, UnionDocs, and so many more. Along the way I’ve also met some of the most wonderful friends!

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

EB: Is it too obvious to say “Paris Is Burning,” directed by Jennie Livingston? It’s gotta be the film directed by a woman that I’ve re-watched more times than any other. The protagonists, the editing, the cinematography, the humor, as well as the big-picture cultural and societal relevance, plus the fashion — it’s just gorgeous and brilliant.

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

EB: I was extremely lucky in that the pandemic probably served as a creative incubator of sorts. I’m such an introverted indoor-cat by nature that I’m definitely feeling some resistance to inching back into “real” life.

The COVID standstill gave us an opportunity to pause and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the late 2019/early 2020 cut of the film, as well as to re-imagine a new framework and structure that ultimately made it more current, hopeful, and funny.

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 Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

EB: This is complicated, and I don’t pretend to be smart enough to know how to fix it. I do think we’re experiencing a sea change — especially in documentary — of awareness and interest among funders, distributors, and audiences who want to see more inspiring, inclusive, and empowering stories made by and about BIPOC and Queer individuals. As part of that, we know we need to elevate and empower more BIPOC filmmakers, funding decision-makers, and distributors.

Also the white people, my people, within our industry need to make it our priority on a daily basis to hold ourselves accountable within our immediate arenas in as many ways as we can think of: to consider an inclusive pool of candidates for every hire and vendor when we have the budgets to do so, to challenge ourselves on whether we’re the right person to be telling anyone else’s story, to make sure that we never exploit or “other” our protagonists whose identities and backgrounds are different from our own, instead invite their authorship into the storytelling process (“never about us without us”), to be worthy stewards of our protagonists’ well-being when we are so generously entrusted with that responsibility, and to never stop listening and striving to do more.

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is that independent film and documentary — and the broader Hollywood industry, per the important @ia_stories accounts being shared now and the IATSE strike authorization — is a broken and unsustainable business model, at least from where I see it. It requires a mountain of privilege to make an independent film, since so much of the work, especially on the directing and producing sides, is often essentially volunteer work done on spec. You’re investing time and money because you believe wholeheartedly that it matters and because you love doing it, even when everything is terrible, with the hopes that there will be a sale on the backend so you can pay off your debts, or that the film will serve as a “calling card” to win you better paid work in the future.

Everyone in the game needs to find their own combination of “unfair advantages” to get that first film finished — whether that includes the privilege of a day job that affords you enough flexibility to keep your creative work moving forward, a famous friend, partner privilege, good old-fashioned family money, etc. No part of it is easy, and I can count on one hand the number of indie feature filmmakers I know personally who have made back the cash budgets outlaid on their films — let alone the “in kind” labor that also went into them. And yet more “content” is being made than ever before. Not to be negative, but there’s something that doesn’t fully add up about encouraging anyone to go into movie-making as a career in this particular moment.

It’s abundantly clear that we all have a lot of work to do to dismantle and rectify generations of systemic racism and inequities across all industries. I’m hoping that we don’t just quickly brush past the important reckonings that are bubbling up now about what labor, fair wages, and inclusion should look like in the 21st century. I think a very major reimagining is required and possible.