Dictators, Filmmaking and Friendship: A Conversation about Stalin Boys with Bianca Giaever

The documentary short follows Malachi, Lyric, Jurem and Cayden, four amateur Stalinists from Marathon, Texas. In this twenty-two minute slice-of-life short, we watch the group write, prepare and perform a play about Stalin’s Great Purges for the Texas State History Fair.

Long time friends and filmmakers Bianca Giaever and Ora DeKornfeld stumbled upon the Stalin Boys through another friend of theirs, Crawford Hunt (Ms. Hunt is in the film), who works at Marathon’s middle school. After seeing a photo of the tweens in their Soviet costumes, the duo was hooked and flew to the tiny Texan town, shooting the boys for a week with the film culminating in Austin at the History Fair.   

One of our interns at MNFF, Natalie Richardson-Wymore, was able to speak to the co-creator of Stalin Boys, Middlebury College alumna Bianca Giaever. Meeting over Zoom, Natalie and Bianca discussed the importance of imagination, the value of friendship, and what you can learn by taking teenagers seriously.  

NRW: First, I want to talk to you about podcasting. You have a lot of experience in that. How did that influence your filmmaking? I felt like I was getting some of that in the edit…can you speak to that? 

BG: I’ve been working in podcasts since I graduated from Middlebury, and going into indie documentary has been a more recent pivot. I’ve always incorporated visuals into my radio stories and made films where an audio interview is running underneath as a voiceover, but this was my first time doing fully synced sound [film]. 

So Ora, my co-director, and I have worked together in different capacities over the years, really successfully. We both used to work at the New York Times, and she was on the video team, and I was on the audio team, and I would help her with writing on some of her projects, and she helped me with editing, and we’ve been friends for around 10 years…and so yeah, we realized we could be a really lean two person crew, and I could run sound, and she could do the camera.

So, my podcasting experience helped me be the sound recordist on this shoot and be really attuned to what kind of sounds we needed and then also preparing the interviews and the interview questions. And I was able to use my storytelling experience from podcasting to help structure the film.

NRW: That’s so awesome. I didn’t know you guys had been friends for so long. That must have been a really fulfilling experience to do this together.

BG: It was great. We didn’t get in any fights.

NRW: I was actually going to ask you about that…during the documentary there’s some frustration between the boys when they’re working together but then there’s also some really sweet moments too, like when they’re talking about what Stalin’s favorite color was. I was wondering, did you see yourselves in that dynamic? 

BG: Well, it was extremely helpful that we were friends with Ms. Hunt because  there was a lot of trust between us and her, and that allowed us to get access to the story really quickly. We only found out about it the week before, and we ended up flying back and deciding at the last minute to just shoot it and see what happens. 

And so it would have been harder to get that kind of access and trust if we didn’t know her. And then I think the students felt that history and friendship between us and their teacher, and that helped them trust us more…I think that helped make everyone really comfortable during the shooting process.

And it was great too because it really helped with the humor. You know, even though Stalin is obviously an incredibly brutal dictator, these are middle school students learning about it for the first time, and middle schoolers are just kids. They are so funny and fun, and so we wanted to capture that energy. And Crawford Hunt is also extremely funny. 

One of our stylistic influences was The Office, and she would just naturally look to camera when there was something that adults would find funny.

 NRW: Speaking of references, I read an interview where Ora mentioned you both saw a photo of the boys in their Soviet costumes and were like, “This is so like Wes Anderson.” What other references did you have?

BG: Another reference was Bombay Beach, which is a really great documentary. The director is named Alma Har’el, and that documentary incorporated a lot of dance sequences. It also takes place in a desert environment and has kids in it and does a really great job with very little plot or story, really capturing what it feels like to be a kid.

Those dance sequences felt like they really added to the story and the characters and it felt like we were entering their dream space. She [Harel] really worked with choreographers and her subjects, but we didn’t have time for that at all. But that was definitely an influence for doing those desert-y dream sequences. 

Malachi told us very early on he was having dreams about Stalin, and you know, he has a huge imagination, as do all the kids. So we wanted to film them in their environment, dressed in their costumes, getting to play around in those roles a little bit. 

NRW: Yeah, I love those parts. You guys really showed the beauty of the environment you were in.

BG: Yeah, yeah. Ora did a great job with the cinematography. She put Vaseline around the edge of the lens.

NRW: I noticed that. I was wondering about that…

BG: I was really nervous about that because you can’t undo that. Obviously, it gets messy and can become really time consuming, especially when you’re working with kids. You have them at twilight hour, they have a very specific time they need to go to bed, and they have homework…It was just very complicated. I was thinking, “Are you sure you want to do this? I don’t think it’s worth it.” But I guess it looks cool.

NRW: I want to talk to you a little bit more about working with the kids.  You’ve said how important it is to take kids and teenagers seriously, and in the filmmaking there’s a clear sense of respect towards the boys that you don’t often see. Is that an attitude you both brought to the film? How did that influence the documentary?

And when I was a kid, I remember I wanted adults to take me seriously and speak to me that way. So that’s just how I went about the shoot.

BG: I think I’ve always kind of talked to kids like they’re adults because I don’t really know how to talk to kids. And when I was a kid, I remember I wanted adults to take me seriously and speak to me that way. So that’s just how I went about the shoot. 

And yeah, I mean the competition was very real to them. They were taking it very seriously, and I remember that feeling of being a kid and being involved in these extracurriculars and it can feel so dramatic, you know, so emotional, like life or death.

They really were invested in it, and I felt invested in it through them. So yeah, I wanted to take all of their thoughts and concerns seriously, and not have the film be like looking down on them, or adults laughing at them. 

Though I am an adult editing it, there are moments that I find funny that they probably wouldn’t recognize. So it’s trying to strike a balance between capturing moments that would remind adults of their own childhood, while still taking them [the Stalin boys] really seriously, never feeling like we’re laughing at them, but capturing the comedy that was naturally occurring.

NRW: Yeah, there’s that Nerf War segment, and at first I was thinking, “This is hilarious,” and then it became, “Wait, I’m really invested in this.”

BG: They’re just taking it so seriously. Their performances were extremely convincing and dramatic, and one of the funniest moments is after they “die” and they laid there for a full two minutes, they were completely committed, and we were just completely still filming them. Like, “when are they gonna break?” 

Ora and I talked about leaving in the full time they were laying there, just raw in the edit, just watching in that moment in real time. 

But yeah, everything they do when they play, that becomes real to them. And the line between reality and imagination for Malachi becomes a little blurred in a way that was really beautiful. I mean, that’s what’s so magical about childhood. In the liminal space between your ideas and learning the reality, there’s room for magic and belief, and then once you kind of figure out how the world works, it’s hard to re-enter that space.

I mean, that’s what’s so magical about childhood. In the liminal space between your ideas and learning the reality, there’s room for magic and belief, and then once you kind of figure out how the world works, it’s hard to re-enter that space.

NRW: Okay, I have one more question for you. I know that you guys worked kind of collaboratively with the boys on the set. So in the spirit of play and imagination, what did it feel like to have them behind the camera with you?

BG: We had done a filmmaking workshop with them the week before, and I think that was more of a way to get them comfortable with the cameras and to also have it be an educational experience for them. Yeah, I mean they weren’t behind the camera too much. We were mostly just following them for a week, following the action, following what happened.

But then, like really quickly, they got used to the cameras, sort of forgot they were there, and even lost interest in them. So at one point, like halfway through the shoot, they were getting annoyed with having to wear the microphones.  So with the footage we had of the boys, we quickly cut a music video together with their favorite song, even though we were exhausted, and that was great because it got them really excited about the project again.

NRW: What was the song?

BG: It was something by Mac Miller. 

Stalin Boys will be playing ahead of Magnus Skatvold’s feature documentary, The Lives of My Father on August  26th at 2:00pm. To find tickets to the screening, visit the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival website or follow this link: https://mnff12.eventive.org/schedule/6a62792f2ae749d67e26eafe