The Rainbow Gathering has become an annual rite that brings a small group back to the earth and away from the hustle, bustle and technology of the outside world referred to as “Babylon.” Having such views of the planet, ignoring the laws on such activities and looking like hippies has gained the Gatherers few fans in the areas of forest service law enforcement and public opinion. But, despite resistance the events have taken place every year since 1972 at one of the United States national parks.
Documentary filmmaker Jonathan Kalafer along with Academy-award nominated producer Steve Kalafer chronicled the 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes. In the film, We Love You, they not only find participants willing to shed some light on its history and intentions but expose a tense confrontation between them and authorities.
Kalafer acknowledges he has an affinity for the Gathering’s utopian idealism and he hopes that his films and his work as a teacher evoke some degree of positive change in the world
We Love You has screened in three festivals — L.A. International Short Film Festival (Premiere), New Jersey Film Festival, and Asheville Film Festival — and received awards for “Best Documentary” in L.A. and “Best Short Documentary” in N.J.
“We are gearing up for the festival season and also planning a set of university screenings,” said Kalafer, adding that he is leaning towards also streaming the film online as well as shooting more footage at the 2010 Rainbow Gathering.
I spoke with Kalafer shortly after he finished teaching his high school class.
JPG: So where do you teach and what do you teach?
JK: I teach at Dickinson High School in Jersey City, New Jersey. We’re right across the river from New York, have a great view of Manhattan from our campus. That’s my calling, teaching. It’s something I love to do. I’m doubly blessed because the other thing I love to do is making films, and digital media, in general, is what I teach. The days are doubly great. I started as an English teacher and I designed an after school program teaching kids the basics and giving them a space to use media production software like music production software, video production software. It started as an after school program and I wrote up a curriculum with a committee and asked the administration if I could make it an elective. They were really pleased with the level of the work the kids did and how engaged the kids were, so they went for it. That’s all I teach. And they hired another teacher to teach the same thing only. It’s great. They can take it instead of art or music.
JPG: Are they making short films or videos or is it just an intro?
JK: It’s definitely an intro level course, and they do different projects. They work on making music using music production software we use SL Studio. So, they make like a rudimentary beat, melody. Actually, they just presented those today. The level of work was good. They do short video projects. They’ve done short films. They’ve done short documentaries. They’ve done public service announcements and other little projects, too. Generally, they work with partners on the music. They each put one earbud in their ear and work together on the computer and then we work as an entire class on the video project because there are so many different roles to play in the video projection
JPG: The Granola Funk Express video on the We Love You DVD, is that an example from the class?
JK: That is something I did. My students didn’t do that one. I did that just when I was trying to…I was excited for the project the winter before 2008. But we couldn’t do anything because the Rainbow Gathering happens the first week of July. So, I’m waiting to do it. I was getting some clearance to do some archival footage, from some brothers that have footage from ’72 and ’79. GFE is really a strange band. Are you familiar with Granola Funk Express at all?
JPG: No
JK: They’re on the border of the jamband world, but they’re hip-hop. They’ve been together forever, and they have a really small cult following. That song they did is a favorite of mine and that’s why I’m putting on the DVD even with that ghetto edited piece. It wasn’t an example of their best work, which is part of the reason I didn’t end up using it for the credit roll, which is what I originally intended. But mostly, their lyrics are really good. Their lyrics are very dense; tend to be very long and fast. They’re still together, they’re playing. If you go to GranolaFunk.com I think you can hear some of their music.
JPG: Now the name, Granola Funk, isn’t that the theatre area at the Rainbow Gathering?
JK: Yes. This is so typical Rainbow, right? Everything is kind of connected. Granola Funk got their start at the Rainbow Gathering. I think they met in Ocala in 1991. One of them never went to a Rainbow Gathering. That guy is from my home state of New Jersey. I’m not sure how he hooked up with them, to be honest, but they’re all good rhymers and good MCs, so I guess they stuck it out together. But the rest of them all knew each other from Rainbow Gathering. And they knew each other because, while at the Gathering, they all would spend most of their time at the Granola Funk Theatre. They don’t go to Gatherings anymore.
JPG: As for as the Rainbow Gathering, before going to the one you filmed in 2008, did you attend a Gathering prior to that?
JK: I’ve been to one annual Gathering before that, the one in 1998. That year it was in Pennsylvania. It was pretty close to me, so I could go. I wanted to go more, but they’re always far away. It’s a big time commitment, so I wasn’t able to. I’ve been to a bunch of other local pot luck from local New York and Philadelphia, kind of like Rainbows in the area. Like once a month, we’ll have drum circle, local pot luck, stuff like that. So, I’ve been to a lot of that stuff, but they’re nothing like the annual Rainbow Gathering. That’s totally different! The one in Wyoming, where we shot, that was my second Gathering. I went back last year, in 2009. It was in New Mexico and got more footage.
JPG: Because of what transpired at the 2008 event, I wondered if you bothered to shoot more footage at another one. An interesting side note, I mentioned to a friend of mine who went to a Gathering. I think it was the same one you were attended. She said it was in Pennsylvania but sure of the exact location.
JK: Yea, probably. It was in western PA, 1998, I think, maybe 1999, actually.
JPG: Let me go through the list of each Gathering I found on Wikipedia. Now, if the info is correct…1999 Allegheny National Forest. She enjoyed certain aspects of it, but also recalled idiotic things such as someone who cut the line for the fresh water filtration system and some other incidents. Are those aspects of it that you choose to overlook, viewing the sum of the parts for what it equals at the very end?
JK: I’ve heard a lot of stories of the Gathering and people having bad experiences, and I could see how it happens. We didn’t have any bad experiences when we were in Wyoming like that, but the thing about the Rainbow Gathering is that everybody is welcome there. Not only is everybody welcome there, but it’s a place that people call home and the food is free and good and everybody’s telling you that they love you. So, it’s an incredibly appealing place to people like runaway kids and street people because it’s kind of like everything that, probably, they didn’t have which helped them get to the horrible place they’re in.
So, there are people there that are homeless, that are crazy, and that are not very nice. To me, they’re mostly centered in the parking lot area, which is why we didn’t run into too many of them. They have an area called A Camp, which tends to be that place. We didn’t spend any time in A Camp actually. We spent the time at the Gathering. We didn’t really see that. The Rainbows definitely have a bad reputation amongst a lot of people. I was surprised to find that, because, like I said, we didn’t have those experiences as a film crew. I was expecting them, based on all the stories. People are very nice. We had a couple that went a little crazy, but I didn’t feel threatened or anything.
JPG: As a documentarian, not showing that aspect of it or not interviewing government officials or law enforcement people — the other side of it – aren’t you showing too much of a utopian vision of Rainbow rather than the whole picture? Was your intent to just show the utopian side?
JK: Well, I do like to focus on things that are valuable, that people can be inspired by, and that people can take away from watching the film, and, hopefully, use to make the world a better place. Making the world a better place is why I love teaching. It’s definitely a part of my filmmaking now, and what I like to do.
When I went there I heard a lot of stories about people making fun of the Rainbows, but I definitely went there intending primarily to focus on the things that I thought were inspiring and noteworthy. Homeless people, I’ve had them every day on my way to work. They’re not so noteworthy to me. The really interesting part of the Rainbow is this stuff, like the fact that this happened through cooperative work and the fact that it’s non-commercial, the fact that people are generally kind to each other, creating this incredible infrastructure.
Also, with the law enforcement, we didn’t plan for that, but that’s the way the Rainbow Gathering that we were there to document happened. (Officials of the U.S. Forest Service’s National Incident Management Team (NIMT), claimed that they were threatened after making an arrest and shot tear gas at those at the Gathering.) First of all, I asked to speak to them and instead of speaking to me, and I’m a very respectful person, and I had press credentials, instead of even helping me find the right person to speak to, they searched through our stuff and intimidated us. Still, I wouldn’t necessarily want to vilify them but then what happened in Kid Village happened. They worked themselves into the role of the antagonist and the Rainbows worked themselves into the role of protagonist. It’s a short documentary, that’s the format we set out to do. I didn’t really have time to stray away from that narrative arc of the protagonist and the conflict and the antagonist. With a feature length that will probably happen.
JPG: It’s a 40-minute documentary right now. It’s being shown at festivals. You won the LA Shorts Fest, congratulations by the way, but is this one and you’re going to expand it?
JK: I’m not sure what’s going to happen right now. I’m going with what feels right. We intended to do a short film. Part of that, to be honest, is that I didn’t think I’d have access for a feature length, but that’s also what we’ve always done. But if you have a good short film, the obvious next step is turning it into a good feature length film. That’s regularly done. My intention is, I went back last year, shot a ton more footage. I plan on going back and cover the whole process this year. It’s going to be on the east coast, so it will be more practical and shoot the whole process from scouting to the Gathering itself all the way through clean up. We didn’t have the resources to do that last year. If we get a lot of good stuff, we’re going to try to put it together into a feature length. I don’t know if it will be entirely different, or we’ll use some of the footage from 2008. We’ll have to see what we get in the can.
JPG: That brings up this. In 2008 there was the conflict of what happened in Kid Village. You’ve been doing documentaries for a while now, when you look at the subject itself at the very beginning, what elements have to be there for you to go to all the trouble to get the cameras and the crew and what are looking for? You mentioned that you want inspiring stories, but what has to be there that you feel is worth putting the time, money and effort in it?
JK: Two things for me and if they’re both there, then I’m probably going to go for it. There either has to be a good story there or there has to be a potential for a good story and I want my work to contribute in some way towards transforming the world.
JPG: Now you said good story or potential for one. As you’re going in do you have a fixed focus — you have to have some kind of plan of attack — or how malleable is that? Did you have to have one vision of things and it panned out in the editing room or do you just shoot tons of interesting stuff and when you get to the editing room, you put the pieces of the puzzle together?
JK: I like to plan. I feel better, especially before a big undertaking. So I have 20-something pages of notes going into the shoot. And I have things, shot lists, and things that I thought were interesting and work them into questions for people. But, thankfully, I don’t get too upset when the plan doesn’t work out. And what ended up happening is it ended up being half of the film I thought I was going to make, and half dictated by the events that happened. When something presents itself, it’s a gift. You have to go with it. You gotta go with what seems like the story is at that time.
JPG: In the case of the Rainbow Gathering, how did you get the trust and were you able to get it before you even arrived or did you work on it the whole time you were there?
JK: The trust was tough, and it was something I started, basically, a year before the shoot. There was this big regional gathering back in Allegheny and I went to that and just started seeing if it was how I remembered it, and talking to people about filming and listening to what they had to say about it. I kept going to local events, like local pot lucks throughout the year, talking to anybody who would talk to me. And I would just listen to what their concerns were, tried to get as good of an idea of what I would expect. I was mostly expecting to have people surround me and give me hugs and tell me they love me, but they’re not going to let me film them and this and that. I really expected to get no footage, except of people saying, ‘Put the camera away. I love you bro.’ But, people got to know me. They checked me out ahead of time. People that I knew knew them so they said, ‘Okay, he’s this guy. They know him. He’s not some agent provocateur or something like that.’ And then it was just a matter of being patient at the Gathering and not trying to bust in all gang busters. We didn’t get nearly as much footage as I would have liked to for the 10 days we were there, but it was better than not getting any at all.
JPG: I’ve seen many people at shows and on tour among the jamband who easily look like those you filmed. Dealing with the attendees that are there, do you think that a big part of the criticisms and hassles is a matter that they’re not clean-cut looking folks that are there who would be driving an SUV and wearing khakis and golf shirts…
JK: Yea. One of the things that Rainbows always say is they’re trying to create this temporary alternate world. They call the outside world ‘Babylon’ and they always say Babylon is always there and it’s affecting people’s decisions at the Gathering and it’s affecting the Gathering. I think that’s it.
People on tour probably most of them, are probably middle class, at least, because when you go to see a band like Phish or you go to any of the big music festivals, tickets sometimes cost a couple hundred bucks, not to mention going there and everything. At the Rainbow Gathering, there is no ticket to get in, so I think that makes it more popular with working class people or totally on the fringes. So, it makes it popular with those people and to some degree people are prejudice against people if they don’t have money or if they’re poor or they’re choosing to live this very alternate lifestyle, that they rather eat garbage than eat an animal.
JPG: Now, you had already attended one but filming it, nearly 10 years later, were there aspects that surprised you in a positive or negative way?
JK: No. That’s a good question. I was most surprised that even with a camera there, people still treated me like I was there at the Gathering and I should have the Gathering experience. That was the most surprising thing that people were so nice to us and took the time to trust us. It was a little inspiring, especially based on some of the expectations that I had. There are no rules at the Rainbow Gathering according to Rainbows because there is nothing official about it. It’s supposed to be this anarchic thing. There are certain things that are tradition, supposedly had consensus at some point or another, because those are the only things that most people agree are rules. But even some people would be like, ‘I don’t believe in consensus, I wasn’t there.’ The camera thing was a long standing one, but it was changing a lot already because everyone’s got a camera, everything is a camera, your cell phone’s a camera, everybody’s on Facebook and they need to have a cool picture of themselves doing something cool, so they can put it on Facebook. So, everybody’s been pushing the limit.
Plus, people are really starting to see, having video, press and cameras, being like an ally for them because they’ve been feeling like they’ve been oppressed by the incoming command team and they felt like this was a way to help fight back against that. And the fact that we were there, doing this big production, and it just so happened to be the same year that the worst example of that abuse happened. In the Rainbow mythology it’s kind of meant to be. So, I agree with that, that it was meant to be.
JPG: Speaking of that incident at the Kid Village, was that you who got yelled at by the forest service official of the National Incident Management Team (NIMT) to leave the area?
JK: Yeah, weird thing. It’s a weird story and I think it’s kind of like the demonstrative of the whole Rainbow weird experience, too. I was there for the whole incident, from the beginning to end. I happened to be getting water in Kid Village and from the very beginning when they came into Kid Village I noticed them and was watching them. The film crew was a mile away, had wrapped for the day. It was like a really long day, many people hadn’t eaten. So, I’m standing there watching the whole thing, the sides started to form and they started shooting, and I was one of the first people that realized that it was pepper balls because people thought they were rubber bullets. It’s weird because there’s video of the whole thing, so I know exactly what I was doing. I was yelling, ‘Get the kids away! It’s pepper gas!’ They had aiming lasers on their guns. At one point, I’m standing there, and I looked down at my shirt and there’s like three or four aiming lasers on my shirt; a weird, very cinematic experience.
Now, in true Rainbow fashion, there is a job that needs to be done, and some Rainbow will step up and do the job, and, luckily, hopefully, more than one Rainbow steps up and does the job. And that’s what happened. A couple people had cameras, one of them, in particular, was able to hold it steady throughout the whole thing and make sure that they got most of it. And she was really nice about getting me the footage; actually had to mail it twice because the file was corrupted the first time. Didn’t want any money or anything. Was just happy to help out. That’s what we had. Interestingly, that wasn’t me who had the taser pointed at his face, but I also had a taser pointed at my face. It’s weird. At one point, a little bit more than halfway through this whole weird confrontation, the backup started to arrive. And the backup had R-15s. They all had real guns, like their sidearms, but then people starting coming in with these assault rifles and I got really scared. I remembered that I didn’t have a camera, I had a press ID and so I held it up. Honestly, I guess it was like self preservation. Consciously, I also thought, ‘Okay, maybe they’ll be less likely to kill everyone here if they see that somebody from the press is here.’ One of the guys came up to me, I was not saying anything, I wasn’t like moving anybody or being threatening, came up to me, pointed his taser right in my face, like right at my face, not even a couple feet away and said, ‘I don’t give a fuck about your press ID. Get down the hill or I’m going to tase you!’ I didn’t say, ‘Don’t tase me bro’ or anything. I got down the hill.
JPG: I guess it’s nice to know that no incidents happened in 2009 that sound remotely like that.
JK: I didn’t see any really bad stuff. I saw the typical car searches and stuff. Overall, people said that there weren’t too many incidences. Early on, apparently, there was some bad stuff where they were coming in with their guns out, just like rolling up on camps, but there was also US Marshals there to watch the incident command team. I guess they were being monitored.
JPG: As a documentary filmmaker, do you have plans for your next subject or are you seeing where this takes you?
JK: You know, that’s a good question, we’re going to continue to screen it and pursue doing the feature length. There’s two other projects that I’m really feeling strongly called to right now. I’m in a pre-production on one, just got the idea for the other one from yesterday, still mulling it over.
My wife and I were both in the twin towers on September 11 before the plane hit, not like at the top floor running down… A strange story, I was feeling strongly called to do a short animated documentary about me and my wife’s experience on September 11. I just think we had a unique perspective on it. I think it’s part of the healing process for a lot of us now. It’s time to start thinking about it again.
