A conversation with filmmaker Jonathan Olshefski
"You just have to let things unfold and sometimes it all works out."
Jonathan Olshefski’s new documentary, Without Arrows, follows Delwin Fiddler Jr., a renowned Lakota grass dancer living in Philadelphia, as he returns to his family on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota.
Without Arrows — co-directed by Elizabeth Day — is a kind of sister film to Olshefski’s feature debut, 2017’s Quest, which similarly documents the day-to-day lives of a North Philly family over a long period of time. Quest took ten years to complete, Without Arrows took 13, and for several years Olshefski was working on both at once.
An observational filmmaker, Olshefski’s work is characterized by intimacy and patience: He likes to sit back and watch life unfold. There are no forced narratives or belabored messages. Small, mundane moments — captivating in their own right — are occasionally interrupted by bigger events: an accident, an election, a new baby, a death.
Olshefski, who moved to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh in 2000, met Fiddler in the late aughts. Partnered with PBS’s Independent Lens, Olshefski hosted a series of independent film screenings in North Philly. For a screening of Reel Injun (2009), a film about Native representation in media, he invited Fiddler and Vaughnda Hilton of the West Philly-based Native dance troupe, Native Nations Dance Theater to do a community talk-back.
“Months later I get a phone call from a number I don’t recognize, and the person on the other end didn’t introduce himself or anything, he just says ‘Jon, when are we going to make our movie?’ Like, ‘Wait, who are you?’
“So we get to talking and I realize, ‘Oh you’re the guy from the screening.’ Fiddler’s vision was to go back to the reservation with a camera in order to document his family history, via interviews with his parents.
Olshefski, who likes to keep his work close to home, imagined a portrait of a man who’s made a life in Philly while trying to maintain ties to a distant home. In 2011 he and Fiddler bought tickets to South Dakota and stayed there for a week, the longest Fiddler had been home in 11 years.
“It was just so cool to see him there for a whole week, watching him reconnect with the land, and he’s riding a horse again, he’s talking to his mom and dad and clearly they missed each other. So it was really special.”
After that, Fiddler couldn’t shake the feeling that he needed to go back permanently, to help protect and carry forward his ancestral legacy. He bought a one-way ticket, “completely uprooted his life to move back to the reservation and just be there.” Olshefski says. At that point I realize, something’s changed and there’s a deeper story here.”
This is my second time interviewing Olshefski about his work. The first was when we were teenagers, and he had released a series of feature-length skate videos under the production name Loathly Lady Skate Co. (I actually appeared in one as the “Skate Fairy Godmother.”) In those days, he says, it wasn’t about artistry, it was about capturing the moment. But even then, filmmaking was a means of creating intimacy.
“In high school it was like, ‘let’s just do something together, we’re hanging out and making something. I think there’s something really beautiful about that. Having this record of time that you spent with your friends.
“Even if it’s just, like, covering yourself in fake blood and jumping into stuff. Those bonds are deep.”
Olshefski says he’s still motivated by a desire to connect to people from different backgrounds and experiences, "people that are maybe different from me, in communities where society says, oh there’s a barrier here. And wanting to do it in a way that’s mutually beneficial.
“I don’t want to be the documentary filmmaker that goes into a community and takes a story and runs with it, but as a way of making connections,” But, he adds, “That gets complicated.”
Without Arrows is available to stream here and via the PBS app.
I’m so struck by the sense of patience in your work, and your willingness to, like, wait and see what the bigger picture is. You end up with this really broad view of time, you’re making connections across years. Where does that patience come from?
Hmm, that’s a good question. If you want to make a tele verité film you have to be patient. If you get anxious and you want to start molding things then you potentially get into reality-TV world where you start to manipulate, and it gets weird. You can feel it. Sometimes as a director, or when I’m filming I’m like, “Oh man the light is so good, if they would just move three feet to the right.” I’m like, willing them to move to get this beautiful shot. But I know, because I’ve tried it, as soon as you start to direct like a fiction director you ruin it. Basically the rest of the day is ruined, because there’s now an awareness of like, '“Oh wait, I’m in a movie and Jon’s got these options,” and everything feels fake. They’re living life but with bad acting, or something.
You just have to let things unfold and sometimes it all works out. The moment, the light, where I’m positioned, it all works out and [I’m] able to get a really natural beautiful scene, sometimes way better than anything I would have scripted and blocked if I was doing a fictional film. But that also means you have to miss a lot of stuff.
But also, when you miss things life does repeat. And people are who they are. So maybe you miss it one time but then next time around you’re like “Oh, this is familiar, and I know I was in the wrong place last time, let me go over here,” and you can kind of capture the moment.
And there are definitely times where things that are only going to happen once in a lifetime, either you get it or you don’t. When you get it it's incredible and when you don’t it’s devastating. Those are moments when I’m so fully in flow because you just know it's never going to come around again, so you’re just trying to position yourself. And gathering that material and giving yourself options in the edit, you’re trying to get wide shots and close shots, and all of that. So I think patience for this kind of filmmaking is part of the process.
It also takes patience to develop the trust of your subjects.
Oh, totally. In both of my films the intimacy you build as years go by, it increases dramatically. And you can tell in both films we’re getting more comfortable. We’re doing a dance, we’re doing a filmmaker/protagonist kind of dance. And over the years that changes. But also, like, how someone walks when someone is walking next to them with a camera. That’s something that develops over time. It becomes natural but it's a weird kind of natural. This is who Delwin Fiddler Jr. is when he's hanging out with Jon with a camera. It's his true authentic self, but he's probably a little bit different when he's by himself, or when he's with somebody else or when the camera's down.
I mean we can get into a long conversation about documentary truth and all this. But you pick up a camera and everything is different.
I was thinking exactly that, especially in the scenes where Delwin and his brother Derek are out doing stuff in the field and joking with each other, but there's a little bit of a sense of the performance for the camera, performing brotherly bond. It's not not real, but there's a little bit of side-eyeing the camera.
The thing is, sometimes I'm part of it. In the edit I'm [going to leave out] me laughing at a joke or whatever. In some ways I want the viewer to replace me and feel like they've been invited into the family. And kind of hold the spot that I was occupying.
That scene [you mentioned] is where they're building the sweat lodge. I probably met Derek a day or two before, so he's definitely more aware of the camera. He's probably not speaking to a mass audience but he's definitely making a joke knowing that I'm in ear shot. He's communicating with me through some of that. And as time goes on that dynamic changes, but it's always present.
But there's other things too, with verité. There are certain things in life which demand all of your attention. And those are the moments where you're just not able to pay attention to the camera because you've got stuff to do. Those are the moments that are, I think, the most realistic and the most natural. So when someone’s got something really big happening, the camera is the last thing they're thinking about. And when the camera isn't new, when they're used to it, it's even easier for it to disappear. I've had that in both of my films, but when the families are doing things that are particularly intense or taxing the camera feels less apparent in those moments.
I'm interested in your relationship with images. Because you got into filmmaking through photography right? Or wait....
Well, there was Loathly Lady Skate Co. I was not thinking about framing at all with that. It was like, is the crazy thing in the shot? Great.
Right, right. Yeah, stylistically your early work doesn't necessarily point to your current work. But in these more recent films you use a lot of images that look like family portraits or snapshots, like groupings of people; there's a lot of stillness in your images.
I loved filming in South Dakota. The land is so beautiful and people live a lot of their lives outside. So there's so many beautiful shots. That was the hard thing about editing, there was so much beautiful material that is not in the film because it didn't serve the story. And there are other things that aren't particularly beautiful but they're super important to the story.
Coming from a still photo background, the mediums are so different. The still photo is about the single shot, so that single shot has to do everything. And it's really about the person looking at it, it doesn't really have as much power to change your mind. It sort of draws out where you're already at.
Whereas when you have motion and sound you can start to bring people into a world that's not their own a little bit more.
I'm always trying to frame beautiful images and beautiful people. And just trying to capture that and reflect that beauty. And sometimes the light cooperates and sometimes it doesn't, and when it does it's really amazing.
One thing about Without Arrows is that I was just there. It's not like I was in Philly and I can go home if I get tired or whatever. I’d just be there for seven days, ten days. And sometimes nothing is happening, sometimes everyone is just watching a movie, or sleeping, and so I’d just go out around their land and just get shots. Landscape shots. I shot so much of that. Sometimes I would go and do a circuit of shots, and then an hour later the sky was completely different and I'd be like Oh let me get it again, it's even better now! Or, Let me get this at night! So that was kind of fun. It's almost like going back to the still photo kind of thing, getting these landscape shots. Or the horses, I’d hang out with the horse, or the dogs that were running around.
There are so many beautiful shots of horses.
Yeah, it’s a stereotype of Native films to have a lot of horses so we were trying to balance it, but this is who they are. Delwin Sr. breaks horses, that's what he does.
But yeah, there’s something meditative about sitting in a field and filming horses.
You really take so much and distill it into a very disciplined runtime. But even so, as a viewer, you feel that quiet, you feel that stretch of meditative time passing. That comes through.
There were also a couple images that really stuck with me, One was the dad, Delwin Sr., eating the popsicle, and then the scene of [Delwin Jr.’s daughter] Kassi nodding off in her dad’s arms at a pow wow. These shots that feel like they’re the product of so much time and awareness.
People love the ice pop. I just loved filming with him, he was so great and in many ways quiet and joking but there’s also this depth. He’s just a beautiful human. And Kassi, with Pow Wow Days we were just shooting all day, and it's really overwhelming to take six, seven hours of footage and then figure out, ok, what are the moments there. But in some ways too, Kassi falling asleep after a long day it's like, yeah, me too.
Those little moments express a lot about the larger situation.
Yeah, there’s so much subtext. There’s a lot in this film that we leave unexplained, and that’s sort of on purpose. There’s contextual stuff that we intentionally didn’t include because my Native collaborators are like, look, every one of our films doesn’t have to include, you know, boarding schools. Or this aspect of history, or this cultural thing. We don’t need to spend our run time making these explanations for people that don’t know.
The hope is that if someone is coming to see the film without any context and is like, “Oh i wasn’t sure what was happening there…” Well, the information’s out there. You can educate yourself. We really wanted to make it for a Native audience first and foremost, so they already know all this. They know the history, they know the cultural context. So focusing on these quiet moments, these family moments. Which are universal, too, so if you’re coming to it without context, you can latch on to the relational dynamics, because we all have parents, and relationships that are complicated, and this film reflects that complexity.
In that vein, there’s an interesting moment when Delwin is talking to some people in Philly about the Removal Act, and he says something like, “William Penn …history … it’s all good.”
[Laughs] Yeah, it's the most understated thing! When we show that, especially when we screen with Native audiences, they laugh. Because of course.
That’s kind of Delwin’s thing, this history is brutal but Delwin is trying to reach an olive branch out and make a connection.
He’s an ambassador.
He is, I think he definitely sees himself as a cultural ambassador. And he’s trying to facilitate cultural exchange. But that history is really important too. You see in the film, history has an impact on the present. Generations later you’re seeing that, you’re seeing a people who, a family that is overcoming significant challenges because of who they are, where they were born and what this government has done to these people. It’s wild. Don’t trust the United States Government! They broke every single treaty when it became inconvenient for them.
That’s a really brutal history, and present, and here we are and what are we going to do about it? And I think the film is like, let’s at least connect to each other as humans, and become invested in each other’s lives, and become invested supporting each other’s hope and dreams, in addition to pure survival. Because sometimes just survival is under threat, especially on folks living on reservations in terms of access to healthcare and things like that.
Obviously I've been a fan of your work for a long time. Going back that far, what were you into that got you into making films
Going all the way back to high school. I loved the movie The Crow. [Laughs] The typical stuff. Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs. But also skate videos. The hijinks that they captured. And it wasn’t about the artistry, it was about capturing a moment. And people making films with their friends. That’s what I ended up doing.
Honestly, I like the process of filming and there are definitely films that have moved me, but I just like the process of filming and connecting and trying to get nice shots and being there when interesting things are happening.
I gotta figure out a hack so I can just be out with a camera and not have to worry about … I don’t even feel like I have to be a director, if someone else wants to. But, you know, once you spend time on something you do start to have opinions. So if I could just find someone who directs in the right way, and gets it right according to my standard, but I don't have to do that work, I don’t need the role or the label or the huge responsibility. [Laughs] I’d be fine to spend my days getting cool shots and passing them on.
It does seem with this film you’ve taken a step back. Not that you’ve ever been a big shot or whatever, but having your co-director and bringing other people into it, It seems like you’re disappearing a bit more into the background.
Elizabeth and I have a really cool co-directing relationship. And the film is different from if I was a solo director, or if she was a solo director. There are lots of conversations and discussions that lead to this thing. This film is the product of two people working together and our fingerprints are all over it. In addition to our editing team and our composer, and all that. That's the thing about film, it is a collaborative endeavor. I think for Without Arrows it was just appropriate and necessary to have Native folks taking a lead and having agency and power to say this goes or this doesn’t, and isn’t just rubber-stamping decisions that I already made.
Elizabeth, she’s Native through and through, it's in her bones. And yes I’ve spent a lot of time with the Fiddlers, I know the Fiddlers better than Elizabeth does because of the time spent. But I don’t know what it’s like to be a Native person, I know what it’s like to be around them. And her perspective has been incredibly valuable, because the goal is to make a film that speaks to that audience and that community. And she knows how to do that, because she just has to look within herself.
One thing, we did make this for a Native audience but first and foremost we made it for the Fiddlers. Delwin wanted to capture his family. He’s proud of his mom and dad, and he wanted people to know them. And so, in September Delwin and I went back to South Dakota and did this thing called the Fiddler Family Reunion Tour, and brought the film in this scrappy way and showed it to a variety of family members and friends, some of which were in the film. And watching the film with them, and seeing themselves from, in some cases, ten years earlier, was just really powerful, and watching them reconnect with their loved ones through a screen. And one family member was so moved she watched the whole thing twice back to back. And it was like, this is who we made the film for. This is having a deep impact. And there’s something incredibly satisfying about that.
Critics have their ideas about the film, and so do festival programmers, and all that. But seeing the extended Fiddler family connect is really incredible. It’s about legacy. And in some ways this is part of the Fiddler legacy, and the generation that isn’t even here yet can see this and they can understand who their Uncle Delwin is, and who Grandma Shirley is, and Grandpa Delwin Sr. and I think that's really special thing. I’m excited and honored to be a part of that journey.