Guy Walks Into a Theatre ...
Sean Lyness '11 poses in front of the Carlisle Theatre, the place where his passion for moviemaking was ignited. Photo by Carl Socolow '77.
Sean Lyness '11 recalls the movie that sparked a budding cinematic career
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
One evening in the fall of 2010, Sean Lyness walked into a movie theatre to see an acclaimed documentary. He emerged, 93 minutes later, as a moviemaker-activist who today helps create razor-edge documentaries that cut to the core of cultural and social-justice issues.
Lyness is a production assistant at Motto Pictures, an independent-film company in New Yorkthat has sent four films to major festivals this year, including the Sundance-Official-Selection God Loves Uganda and the Tribeca Festival-winning Kill Team. In April Lyness visited campus to speak with current students about his budding cinematic career and shared his thoughts about the movie that inspired it all.
Setting the bar
Growing up in New York in the wake of 9/11, Lyness was keenly aware of global politics and cultures. He majored in Middle East studies at Dickinson and interned as a media specialist in a defense-logistics firm in Jordan, his sights set on a diplomatic or international-journalism career. He also was a film buff and film-studies minor, and in the summer of his junior year, Lyness traveled to Uganda to shoot, direct and edit short promotional videos for the Bicycles Against Poverty program. He began to think about ways that film could be used to spark social change.
The following semester, the Carlisle Theatre screened Restrepo, an Academy Award-nominated full-length documentary chronicling an Army platoon’s 14-month tour of duty in a highly dangerous outpost in Afghanistan. Lyness had been meaning to visit the theatre for some time, and he decided to check it out. What he saw on that silver screen blew him away.
“That movie was so emotionally raw, so intentional, so dangerous, and I became completely obsessed with it,” he said. “I couldn’t believe how much access the filmmakers had—what they were able to capture, and what they were able to convey. It set the bar for me. I wanted to do that, too.”
Lyness went on to write, produce and direct an 18-minute feature for his senior project. Several documentary projects followed, including rough-cut editing of Raspo Warriors, a documentary by Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Patricia Moonsammy on Trinidadian and Tobagoan musical culture. After Commencement the budding documentarian worked as first-assistant director for an independent feature film. Lyness was hired by Motto Pictures last spring.
On the hunt
Lyness’s first assignment was God Loves Uganda, a powerful, full-length documentary about the culture wars that erupted when a group of missionaries traveled to Uganda to convert natives to evangelical Christianity. The film encapsulates 200-300 hours of interviews on two contents, representing the points of view of the church leaders who sponsored the mission, the young missionaries and the Ugandans they encountered.
Lyness was still an undergraduate when the interviews were shot. Once on board, he supplied B-roll of the mega-church movement—a task that required him to scour the archives of outlets such as CNN, PBS and the BBC. “Basically, I was a hunter of footage,” he said with a laugh. “The great part was discussing the narrative and seeing the story take shape over time.”
The film premiered at Sundance last January and has garnered awards at festivals around the world. It was recently selected for the AFI Docs film festival, along with two other Motto Pictures, Gideon’s Army, slated to air on HBO this summer, and The Kill Team. Another Motto film, Manhunt, is currently in production and will be aired on CNN.
Full-circle moments
Asked what it was like to rub elbows with indie-film royalty at Sundance, Lyness couldn’t suppress a smile. “It was probably the coolest vacation you can imagine,” he said. “I ran into a writer/director that I’m a diehard fan of at a premiere party and I was totally star-struck.”
He even had a chance for an in-depth talk with one of the interviewers who worked on the film Restrepo. “It was incredible to be able to hear his perspective on a movie that was so important in my life,” he said. “It was one of those full-circle moments.”
Still, he insisted, daily life as a production assistant is not especially glamorous. But the work is intensely satisfying. “It is amazing to be able to work with such talented people on projects that can make an impact,” he said. “I feel incredibly lucky.”
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Published April 15, 2013