Bill Guttentag is a teacher. The world might know him better as the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind such documentaries as Twin Towers or Nanking, but Guttentag’s interest in educating is obvious in his movies.

The writer/director/producer has a new documentary in Soundtrack For A Revolution, a film about the civil-rights movement in America in the ’50s and ’60s. Baby boomers may know some of the footage from watching TV news as children, but a lot of the material — let’s summarize it as white people beating the hell out of black people in various southern states — is unknown to younger generations.

“The history isn’t that well known by kids,” Guttentag says. “I’ve shown the movie everywhere from elementary school to some of America’s finest colleges, and people don’t know the story. They just haven’t been taught, and they find the story truly astonishing.”

Soundtrack For A Revolution is a music film, in that it traces some of the songs sung in solidarity by the freedom fighters of the civil rights’ movement. Guttentag got such artists as Joss Stone, the Roots, John Legend and Wyclef Jean to perform in special segments of the movie, something he calls the ‘spoonful of sugar’ approach to putting across tougher truths.

“We have music that I think will appeal to a younger crowd, and I think people may come for the music, but the story truly moves them. These were enormous events that changed the face of the United States.”

Guttentag grew up in Philadelphia, studied history at the University of Pennsylvania and then attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.

In 1989 he made a documentary about a boy with cancer called You Don’t Have To Die (with co-director Malcolm Clarke); the film won an Oscar. His other win was for the movie Twin Towers, but Guttentag has also had Academy Award nominations for the documentary features Death on the Job and Crack USA: Country Under Siege, as well as for the short doc, Blues Highway.

Gutentag and co-director Dan Sturman have already received a lot of recognition for Soundtrack For A Revolution, which was short-listed for an Oscar this year and nominated for a Writer’s Guild of America award.

In addition to filmmaking, Guttentag teaches a course at Stanford University and has written a novel, Boulevard, which will be in bookstores in the next few weeks. That’s some work ethic.

“I went to Quaker school, and I think there was a strong element there that was all about social justice,” Guttentag says of his early influences. “I had film class, which was unusual back in the ’70s, and the person teaching it was making films about protest marches. These days, people would rather watch than read, and I try to make films with first-hand accounts from people who were there — the first-tier version of history. I look for films that have compelling social messages to them.”

Getting into film, Guttentag says, began when he was young. “I became interested early, and I really pursued it — like anyone who’s into film,” he says, and he laughs. “You start watching obscure movies at a young age, and I had the benefit of seeing Truffaut and Bergman and many others who influenced what I did. I’d go and see their movies over and over again.”

As for that educational thread in his films, it’s not too surprising to discover that Guttentag’s father is a college professor and his brother and sister-in-law are both teaching physicians. “I’ve always been fascinated by, ‘How do you teach?’ Because I think it’s an honorable profession. And I teach at Stanford, where I’m surrounded by other people who think it’s an honourable profession. And whereas some people teach with power points and white boards, which is fine, I try to do it in film, which is different. And harder to fund!”

Soundtrack For A Revolution opens Friday in Toronto theatres. You can meet Bill Guttentag today, Feb. 17, when he attends special screenings of Soundtrack For A Revolution at the Bloor Cinema. The film will be shown at 6:30 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. as part of the Doc Soup! monthly film series. There will be a Q&A with the filmmaker after each screening.

liz.braun@sunmedia.ca

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