DANIELLE VARGA: Recipient of the Sundance | Amazon MGM Studios Nonfiction Producers Award

By Danielle Varga

This past January, I had the incredible opportunity of attending the Sundance Film Festival with SEEDS, directed by Brittany Shyne, which had its world premiere in the U.S. Documentary Competition section. The film is a portrait of Black farmers in the American South, and it is at once powerful and political, as it is delicate and patient, and deeply committed to the craft of documentary filmmaking. During the festival, I also had the great honor of receiving the Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Nonfiction Producers Award. Just a few days later, SEEDS won the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize.

It was all very monumental and profound and I'm still taking it in. As an independent producer who’s been doing this work for many many years, I’m someone who has encountered equal parts successes and failures. I’ve been both energized by the rewarding parts of producing and exhausted by the thankless parts. Accolades are clearly bright spots in this work, and offer reasons to keep on going that can otherwise be too few and far between. But, they do not convey the entire story.

My speech below, which I gave at the festival’s Producers Celebration during the award presentation, was my best attempt to articulate the reality of my experience, before and beyond Park City. While it is written for and reflective of a particular moment, it’s something I will return to, and something that I wanted to share with others, perhaps as a north star when the high of Sundance wears off.

Danielle Varga, Photo by Breanna Downs, courtesy of Sundance Institute

Thank you all so much. I really don’t have words for how much this award means to me, what it symbolizes and offers in this moment of time, I’m so moved. This is my fourth Sundance, and my fourth producer’s brunch. I’ve always been excited for this event, and to be surrounded by so many like minded people who see each other, without knowing each other, and who have all chosen this very wild life of producing.

For those of you who don’t know me, or don’t know me well, my name is Danielle Varga and I’m a documentary film producer. I was born and raised in Queens, New York. My sun is in Libra, my moon in Aquarius and I’m a rising Aquarius - which makes me a triple air sign. So perhaps it's not surprising that I tend to produce films that are nonlinear, artistically motivated, process oriented, and typically hard to pitch. I came into documentary film almost twenty years ago the way people do. I graduated from college, got an internship at a small production company off of a craigslist ad, which led to many other jobs: a production assistant, an office manager, researcher, field producer, archival producer, and associate producer, co-producer and here I am.

I really don’t have a concise way to articulate what first drew me to documentary film, other than a simple desire to be connected to the present and closer to the world we live in, even in all of its contradictions.

I’ve now been producing independent films for eight years, and I can say there are a couple of things that keep me going and grounded in the work. The first is a great respect and interest in the process. What begins with a question a director has, in which they don’t know the answer to. A deep curiosity, which I can then hold.

And then what it means to build an entire experience out of a question. To build a team. To connect with people, places, ideas, you otherwise would never know. To build an approach with a director, imagining a production schedule, creating a budget, embarking on the edit. To face challenges, and build an approach to handle those. And yes, to eventually translate a question and the process of answering it into a ninety minute (or in SEEDS’ case a one-hundred and twenty-three minute) film, for hopefully many, many people to share — all the while knowing that our films can never hold our full experience. The three, five, or ten years of making it. And in a field that is so incredibly tenuous and unpredictable, sometimes I think the only thing we can control, I mean, a little bit, is process. Processes, which can be messy, and hard, and beautiful, and giving, may be the truest part of filmmaking we hold onto, years after we finish a film, and QC our DCPs, and attend our premieres.

And process is nothing without the people. I’ve been able to do this work, for as long as I have been, by working with good people. People who are interesting and curious and smart, but maybe most importantly, kind, humble, and grounded. I’ve been incredibly lucky, and pretty intentional. This work is not for the faint of heart, and neither frankly, is the world we live in. For me, in the middle of chaos, it is good people - the directors, the editors, fellow producers, crew, colleagues - that get me through. The people I work with, keep me going, and help me survive the work. And as cliche as it might sound, they also give the work meaning.

The last piece that’s driven me, and maybe sits closest to home at this moment, is the idea of risk. When I started my production company, Walking Productions in 2017, on the heels of CAMERAPERSON, I was most interested in and moved by the idea of creative risk. Risk, like an unclaimed object on the sidewalk, that moves you, that’s compelling, that’s one for you - for me - to just take, and carry forward. I loved the notion that I could produce films that were inventive, bold, and strange. It offered me a kind of freedom.

Eight years later, five documentary features later, a whole lot of life later, and an industry that has completely changed, I’ve come to realize that I had it wrong. That risk isn’t something a person takes, but it’s something one is afforded. I’ve learned, the hard way, that the ability of taking creative risk, and the ability of taking financial risk, are entirely interconnected. And as someone who has always embraced the former, and quite frankly cannot afford the latter, as someone who does not come from privilege, the hardships and challenges for people like me, even in the weeks and months leading up to Sundance, even during a very celebratory time, have been extremely palpable.

I am so proud to be here today, and to celebrate SEEDS and what it offers this moment, artistically, culturally, and politically. Producing the film has given me so much insight and understanding of our world, and appreciation of the craft. And yet, if I’m being honest, I’m standing here, frustrated. Maybe disheartened. The burden of it all, for me and for so many at this festival - those who struggle to afford the costs of being an independent filmmaker in this industry at this time - it all weighs heavily. I can’t help but think about which producers aren’t here today. Who hasn't lasted. What films are we missing because they were never produced. I have a lot of questions for myself, and for all of us, and very few answers.

And yet at this moment, I still can’t help but wonder and want, and think about what else might be possible. One of the greatest offerings of SEEDS to me, personally, is the reminder that even as we focus on the greatest inequities - and we must - we also have a duty to be present in all of the joy and triumph and possibilities that exist now, or that have yet to be.

On that last note, in thinking about the future, I’ll end where I find myself - maybe the way most of my favorite films end - slightly unresolved. Sitting with some basic contradictions. I am truly grateful for this award, and so honored and proud to have had a part in making a handful of very special films. It’s been hard, and challenging, and wonderful and so meaningful - and nonsensical - in all of the worst and all of the best ways. Thank you.