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Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt
Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, a 2006 NBR student grant awardee, never dreamed of being a filmmaker. Instead, his thoughts were of medicine and international public health; he chose a premed course along with English literature at Brown University. In his final year of college, during a discussion of screenplays he had written, his professor suggested that he apply to film school. It was the first time he had given any thought to making movies. So, on his professor's advice, he applied to the Columbia and New York University film programs, never thinking he would be accepted. Actually, in February 2002, bags packed, he left to work at a hospital in the Congo, still believing he was going to be a doctor.
But that changed when he learned he had been accepted by both Columbia and NYU while already working at the hospital. He made a fateful decision to attend Columbia’s MFA film program and started in the fall of 2002. As luck would have it, during the first few weeks documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Startup.com and Control Room) was looking for an assistant. “I wanted to do something with documentaries, and there wasn’t much of a documentary curriculum. So I decided to look for an internship at a documentary company.”
In 2002 he started working as an intern for Ms. Noujaim; this was before the War in Iraqi and before the idea for Control Room evolved. In March 2003 they started shooting Control Room, and by the summer–after traveling to Egypt to edit the film–BJ’s title changed to associate producer and editor. By the time the film premiered at Sundance in 2004, he was a co-producer. For BJ, it was a great experience to be making a film and attending film school at the same time. “Everything that I was learning in my classes I was able to apply immediately with Control Room, and in particular my producing classes where I was learning these abstract concepts.”
His next project married his passion for medicine and his love of film. After completing the first two years at Columbia, he and a couple of colleagues went to Africa to produce an informational video about the Congo hospital where BJ had worked. A doctor at the hospital had asked them to film a medical procedure performed specifically for rape survivors to help train other doctors to perform the procedure. Each day they would record five procedures, which meant that five women had been raped. “We had never heard of rape on such a massive scale. So we started doing more research, and we realized that rape was epidemic there and was being used as a weapon of war. So we decided to make a documentary about the experience of these women.” It also showed him that he was capable of making personal, character-driven films that were also socially conscious and politically relevant.
The many hours of footage were whittled down to a 27-minute version in order to meet the Columbia University Film Festival requirements for running time. The film, titled Lumo, was about a young Congolese woman recovering at the hospital for rape survivors. Receiving the NBR grant for Lumo was influential in creating a longer version of the film that was eventually sold to PBS. “It was very helpful because at that point we were totally broke and begging our editor to stay for a couple more weeks without pay. I’ll never forget getting that grant and just giving it to her, which allowed her to continue for the next couple of weeks. It was really instrumental in finishing the final piece.” Longer versions of the film went on to win a 2007 Student Academy Award for Best Documentary and the President’s Award at the 2007 Full Frame Film Festival. Lumo also had a national PBS premiere September 18, 2007, on P.O.V.
A few of BJ's other accomplishments include directing, editing, shooting and/or producing short films for such organizations as UNIFEM, the U.S. Department of Education, the Global Leadership Campaign, and the Lincoln Center Film Society. Last year, he taught an undergraduate course on documentary filmmaking at Columbia and worked with WITNESS as a film instructor for a local human rights group in northern Uganda. He’s currently a correspondent at UNICEF and has just produced three short films on child soldiers in the Congo. He’s also the associate editor of a feature-length documentary about fashion designer Valentino. His latest short film, Les Vulnerables, was recently selected as the closing-night short of the 2007 New York Film Festival.
For BJ, winning the NBR grant and being a screening member has been a great learning experience. “I am so happy to be a member of the NBR. It’s like film school all over again. Last year going to all the screenings really allowed me to keep up with the current films, and not only that, I love the dialogue that goes on between the members and the directors and filmmakers. I think it’s been really beneficial to my career to have this breadth of films I am able to see.”
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