By Jim Mitchell & Annette Basile
South African-born, Australian-based documentary maker Cathy Henkel is intensely passionate about the subjects she captures on film, and is determined to delve into the controversial, confrontational and deeply personal issues of the world in which we live. “I’ve always been an activist,” Henkel told FilmInk way back in 2003. “I’ve always overtly seen the role of documentary as a part of social activism that can bring about change.”
It’s a mantra Henkel has lived and breathed. Her first documentary, 1991’s Heroes Of Our Time, chronicled a direct action campaign by Greenpeace, while 1999’s Walking Through A Minefield explored the generation of nuclear fuel in Australia framed by an explosive standoff between protesters and a mining company. Henkel’s third documentary, 2003’s The Man Who Stole My Mother’s Face, unquestionably remains her most confronting and personal work. The documentary begins in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1989, where Henkel returns to her homeland to find her mother broken and ravaged after a horrific sexual assault. Henkel filmed the aftermath and twelve years later put herself in frame and in danger, documenting her journey back to Johannesburg in an attempt to have her mother’s case reopened and to confront the alleged attacker. “I didn’t know if I was going to be able to find the guy. If I did find him, what was I going to do? I’m not some kind of gun wielding crusader,” Henkel told FilmInk. “I’ve always done things in a very considered way. This was a very risky thing to do.”
That the focus of the film widened from an intimate, personal journey for justice to an exploration of entrenched sexual violence in South Africa, was no accident. “I realised that if I was going to make this film about my mother, I’d have to make it a universal story. I see things that are really glaringly wrong in society. By exposing the stories that reveal these issues we can actually bring about change. If I could find a way to help my mother, maybe I could find a way that other women could find help. Everybody who creates any art form has an agenda of some kind; there is an element of something you want to convey. I have no qualms or pretension about conveying certain issues that I feel passionate about.”
Now an unsung veteran of the industry, Henkel was ballsy, uncompromising and confrontational even back in 2003 on just her third film. “Something you learn in documentary filmmaking is never to take no for an answer. One thing that’s been a feature of my films is finding a problem and finding what we can do about it, really aggressively seeking some kind of solution. That’s the goal: to find the light in the dark places.”
Henkel’s next documentary represented something of a change of pace for the director. 2005’s I Told You I Was Ill: The Life & Legacy of Spike Milligan examines the comedy legend’s public moments of lunacy and his private pain through the recollections of family and rare archival footage. “It’s an intimate portrait of an extraordinary man who trod the fine line between genius and depression,” Henkel told FilmInk. “It all began with my wanting to find out more about Spike’s connection with Australia. I met his family and fell in love with them all. They have this very alternate view of the world.”
After her surprise star portrait, Henkel returned to more familiar territory with her next film. “There are two contentious points in the film,” the director told FilmInk of her 2008 green doco The Burning Season. The first, she explained, is carbon trading, which “some people think is a cop out.” The second involves Dorjee Sun, the young Australian entrepreneur whose story provides the narrative backbone to this film about Indonesian deforestation and the fate of the orangutan. The Burning Season follows Sun’s fight to save those forests, but his intention to make a small profit from his mission “raises some hackles in the far left”, offered Henkel, who views Sun’s scheme as “quite brilliant.”
Sun is the film’s central real-life character. The others are Achmadi, an Indonesian farmer; Lone Droscher-Nielsen, who runs a sanctuary for Borneo’s orangutans, and the orangutans themselves, whom deforestation has put on the edge of extinction. “Once they’re gone from Borneo and Sumatra, they’ll be gone from the planet,” Henkel told FilmInk of the orangutans back in 2008. “I was very careful not to put too much of the horrific footage that I do have, unfortunately, of them being burnt, injured and being in great distress. People do need to be disturbed by their plight to a degree – we wanted to let the audience know that it’s serious, without traumatising them. One of my favourite ones, Kesi, who appears in the film, had her hand chopped off by a machete. I’ve got horrible footage of that, but I didn’t want to use it because Kesi’s now in care and she’s thriving. She’s learning to climb trees… I try to focus on the positives and the images that would give people hope.”
Like all of Henkel’s films, The Burning Season indeed digs deep to find the positivity in a very dark, difficult subject. “There is a fatigue around climate change films that tell us how bad everything is; the whole doom and gloom thing,” Henkel told FilmInk. “What is different with The Burning Season is that it is in fact a film about hope. We have a very positive, uplifting story around a person who humanises the debate.”
For her next film, Henkel once again took the star portrait route, this time providing a fascinating insight into the life of legendary Australian cinematographer Don McAlpine (Don’s Party and Breaker Morant, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet, Predator and many more). “People know of Don McAlpine’s work, but they don’t know about him,” Henkel told FilmInk of her five-years-in-the-making 2012 documentary, Show Me The Magic. “I hope the film helps make Don better known to Australian audiences. He’s 78-years-old and still working. I wanted to explore what gives people such longevity in this industry. What emerges is Don’s understanding of human nature, and his ability to really grasp the vision that the directors have, and what they’re after emotionally. Directors love him for that. It’s so much more than technical ability. But I was also fascinated by Don’s personal journey from a small town to the heights of Hollywood. What were the decisions that got him there? And what keeps him balanced and sane? A significant part of that is his relationship with his wife, Jeanette, and I immediately realised that theirs was a combined story. She has been a big part of his success. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a female filmmaker, but I really wanted to bring that out. It’s a very intimate portrait, and Don warmed to the idea, but it’s certainly not something he felt particularly at ease with”
It was Henkel’s 2008 film The Burning Season that led to her next film, 2014’s Rise Of The Eco-Warriors. Microsoft Partners In Learning saw The Burning Season, which had screened across the country in high schools, and contacted the filmmaker with the idea for Rise Of The Eco-Warriors, which involved sending fifteen young people from around the globe to Borneo for 100 days. There, they’d work with a leading scientist in exploring solutions relating to the problems of deforestation and endangered orangutans, while Henkel captured it all on camera. “I loved the idea of documenting young people taking action,” Henkel told FilmInk in 2014. “We became very close, as you’d expect when you’re living in a remote village for 100 days, documenting their every move. One of the boys nearly drowned, which really brought us together, as did the times that they got sick or troubled by the enormity of what they were doing. We see these young people get knocked down, pick themselves up, and keep going. I hope that inspires others, because that’s the reality of this struggle to save our natural world. We’re all going to have to be warriors.”
After reconfiguring Rise Of The Eco-Warriors for the small screen in 2015, Henkel made her most deeply personal film since 2003’s The Man Who Stole My Mother’s Face with 2020’s profoundly moving Laura’s Choice. In this poetic extraordinarily sensitive work, Henkel documents the efforts of her ninety-year-old mother Laura Henkel to die on her own terms. Teaming with her own daughter Sam, Cathy Henkel follows her feisty, funny mum as she heads to Switzerland to end her own life with assistance while also planning a major “farewell party.” Not surprisingly, Laura’s Choice prompted much debate about a person’s right to die, and the involvement of family in such a decision. “My choice was to support her or let her do this alone,” Henkel told The Guardian. “I decided to support her. And I know I made the right choice.”
A fiercely powerful documentary filmmaker, Cathy Henkel has an extraordinary ability to move between deeply personal projects, and stories that affect the wider world, while also managing to often tie the two together beautifully. “People really want to see true stories,” Henkel told FilmInk. “The reality that we’re living through now is so unbelievable, and we need to keep showing that. We need documentary makers now more than ever.”
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
