Betsy West is the Academy Award-nominated director and producer of “RBG” along with Julie Cohen. She is a 21-time Emmy Award winner for her work as an ABC News producer and executive producer of the documentary series “Turning Point.” As vice president at CBS News from 1998 to 2005, she oversaw “60 Minutes” and “48 Hours.” She was executive producer of the “Makers” documentary and digital series, the short doc “The 4%: Film’s Gender Problem,” and the feature documentary “The Lavender Scare.”

Julie Cohen is the Academy Award-nominated director and producer of “RBG” along with Betsy West. Previous films she’s directed include “The Sturgeon Queens” and “Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing.” Before she started making documentaries, Cohen was a staff producer for NBC News and the creator and producer of “Supreme Court Watch” on Court TV.

“My Name is Pauli Murray” is screening at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which is taking place online and in person via Satellite Screens January 28-February 3.

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

BW&JC: This is the story of someone who should be in every American history textbook and on every list of 20th century civil rights and women’s rights pioneers. Pauli Murray was an activist, a lawyer, a poet, and an episcopal priest whose actions intersected with a multitude of significant events and movements. This Black, gender non-conforming trailblazer didn’t get near enough recognition in life, but left behind a rich archive of letters, diaries, photos, audio, and videotapes that allow us to tell this astounding, inspiring story largely in Murray’s own words.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

BW&JC: We first learned about Murray from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As a women’s rights lawyer in the 1970s, RBG put the name Pauli Murray on the cover of her first brief before the Supreme Court to recognize Murray’s groundbreaking legal essays about how to win equal rights for women under the law. As RBG said, “Pauli was a person way ahead of the times.”

When we did further research on this feminist groundbreaker, we were thunderstruck by Murray’s other accomplishments and extraordinary life story.

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

BW&JC: We are really excited by the prospect of people who know nothing or very little about Pauli Murray having their minds blown by this sometimes painful but deeply inspiring story. Of course there are also some who are Murray fans, and we hope they share in our joy at connecting others to this amazing American character.

We also want audiences to walk away from the film thinking about how narrow our conception of American history can be and aspiring to broaden it.

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

BW&JC: Bringing to life the story of someone who is no longer living is always a challenge for a documentary, but we found a lot to work with at the Pauli Murray archive at Harvard: about 150 boxes that included books, diaries, letters, and photos. After our producer Talleah Bridges McMahon began to sift through the many audio interviews, it was thrilling to hear Murray’s voice come through loud and clear. And when we stumbled upon an astonishing video interview that had never been digitized, we knew people would truly feel Murray’s vitality and determination.

To augment the archive, we asked artist Diana Ejaita to create a series of paintings that capture turning points in Murray’s life, the times when Murray was way ahead of many others in taking on racial and gender discrimination. Visually, our editor Cinque Northern did a masterful job weaving together this created and found material.

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

BW&JC: We were hugely fortunate that Participant Media, who was our distributor for “RBG,” jumped in enthusiastically at the early stages of this project. And our fortune continued when Drexler Films, which has been a driving force behind films on the ACLU and Dr. Ruth, decided to partner with us.

Funding a biographical doc about someone most Americans have never heard of was a major leap of faith on their part and we’ll be forever grateful.

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

BW: I had two obsessions in college: working for the school newspaper and going to movies. When I saw the evocative surfing documentary “The Endless Summer,” it gave me an idea how I could combine factual reporting with visual storytelling.

JC: I started telling short nonfiction stories as a radio news reporter and worked on longer stories as a TV news writer and producer. The more I told nonfiction stories, the deeper I wanted to go and the more time I wanted to spend with subjects I was exploring. Documentary film was the natural progression.

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

BW: Best advice: Take a deep breath. Sometimes a setback that seems pretty horrible at the time can turn out to be the best thing that ever happened. This applies to both big and little setbacks. You never know where an unexpected challenge will lead.

Worst advice: Get a perm.

JC: Best advice: Plunge in. When there are dozens of characters you could start interviewing, start talking to them and making some choices. When you have hundreds of hours of footage that could be part of your story, choose a point of orientation and start roughing out some segments. You can always revise later, but you need to start somewhere.

Worst advice: Straighten your hair with chemicals.

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

BW&JC: Practice optimism — cautious optimism. In the course of making a movie there can be literally hundreds of times when it seems like your whole endeavor is going to go down in flames. The people who get movies made are the ones who learn to push past those moments of anxiety.

It takes a certain level of confidence, chutzpah — dare we say balls — to push past doubt. That’s a skill that women often find particularly hard to develop, but it’s worth developing.

Meanwhile, though, it’s also a good idea to be a bit paranoid. Think about what might go wrong, and always have a backup plan.

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

BW: “Whale Rider,” Niki Caro’s astonishing story of a Maori girl’s dream to become leader of her tribe. Her thrilling ride on the back of a whale is a beautiful metaphor for female empowerment and one of the most magical and breathtaking scenes I’ve ever seen in a film.

JC: There’s a lot to choose from, but I’ll go with “Monster” by the amazing Patty Jenkins. The scene when Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci roller skate to “Don’t Stop Believing” is my favorite movie love scene ever. I only saw it once, but specific shots — and the feeling they provoked — stick with me.

Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman” was awesome in a whole different way. The fact that there were 14 years between those two features says a lot about the way Hollywood has undervalued female talent.

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

BW&JC: We were lucky on two fronts: none of us became seriously ill, and we had done enough shooting that we were able to structure and edit remotely. Our team, all relocated to makeshift home offices by mid-March, began each workday with a Zoom meeting and spent many hours on cloud-based digital platforms to collaborate on successive scripts and cuts. For us, work was a lot of fun and a wonderful distraction.

There were creative challenges galore, beyond the usual challenges you face when making a documentary. At the end of the process, we had to figure out ways to safely shoot three final interviews, how to get high resolution assets from archive houses operating with skeleton staff, and how to manage the online without exposing ourselves or others to danger.

We are so grateful to all the team members and collaborators who came through so magnificently to make “My Name is Pauli Murray” a reality during this crazy, pandemic year.

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?

BW&JC: We appreciate that the industry has a long way to go on inclusivity on and off screen and on full, rich representation of people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and other underrepresented groups. We as individual filmmakers have a ways to go too, to be honest. We can’t pretend we know how to solve these sweeping systemic inequities. Having the intention to do better on this issue and then putting one’s energy and money behind that intention seems to us like a key first step.