ORLANDO VON EINSIEDEL
“I get knocked back all the time. It’s just part of it and you just have to keep picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and putting yourself out there, and that’s the constant hustle you need.”
Orlando Von Einsiedel
Founder of Grain Media
Orlando von Einsiedel is a filmmaker from London who has focused his efforts on films about important social issues and then using his films to drive forward social change. He and his company Grain Media won the first Oscar for Netflix a couple of years ago for their moving film, The White Helmets, which follows the daily operations of a group of volunteer rescue workers of the Syria Civil Defense. Orlando also made Virunga, the incredible true story of a group of brave people risking their lives to build a better future in a part of Africa the world has forgotten. One of his more recent works was Evelyn, a highly personal story where the premise revolves around Orlando’s own family dealing with the effects of his brothers suicide.
Orlando is an innovator, someone who can clearly see the road ahead and is helping shape the society we live in through his thought provoking, challenging work. In this fragmented world we live in, Orlando has found a way of communicating stories that are resonating across the world. If you love film, understanding how people think and how to tell stories, there are few better people to learn from than Orlando.
Jonathan: So how should I introduce you, Oscar winning film maker?
Orlando: I would say filmmaker. I have been very lucky with the films I’ve made, and been blessed that they have been recognized with awards. But that was just a happy coincidence, never the aim.
Did you study film?
So, I studied social anthropology, I guess at its most simple form it’s the study of our societies and cultures and ways of life. It expanded my mind about how people in other parts of the world lived and forced me to think about their different ways of life non-judgmentally.
So, you didn’t even study film?
No. I got really lucky, you know, there’s that point. I think in most people’s lives where there’s a few different paths you could go down. I was about 16 and I was with a crowd of people drinking and smoking and getting into trouble. I got involved in a very bad fight and ended
up having my back slashed in a couple of places. It got all stitched up but meant that I knew I needed something new to do to get me out of that circle.
Prior to this, I had discovered skateboarding. And then I discovered snowboarding. Snowboarding was on a plastic ski slope in East London, and it was on a Friday night. That was the only night you could snowboard. After the fight incident I started to get more and more into snowboarding, and what it actually did is it took me away from Friday nights going out doing all sorts of naughty stuff. I suppose it focused me on something that was much more positive. I didn’t really put it together at the time but it actually, it really took me out of that environment. Suddenly I channeled all my energy into that, and it became the thing that I wanted to do more than anything else. That’s what led me to allow it to take over my life for the next eight or nine years. Sport is like that, it’s so positive, it’s creative and it’s obviously good for you both mentally and physically.
I remember when we would travel together, you would organize trips to make films and then you very much went off down your own path. I don’t think at the time any of us kind of appreciated the passion and drive that you had within that space. You learned all that just from picking up a camera, trying and piecing it together?
Well, I have to credit Ben Hall, who directed (w)intermission, the first film I worked on, enormously. He showed me the craft of what you have to do to make a film. That massively inspired me and suddenly that became more fun in some ways than the snowboarding itself. The next film we did I directed it myself and I enjoyed it more than the snowboarding.
How did you go from action sports, a world that you knew well, to the realm of social issue film making?
Well studying anthropology switched me on much more politically. Once I had learned how to make a film, I always wanted to try and use those skills for making films about issues that I really cared about. If you look at those first snowboard films, whilst clunky, there’s always some sort of political message. We started Grain Media after I met a guy called Jon Drever, who was doing what I was doing with snowboarding but in the skateboard world, so we decided to join forces. He lived around the corner in London as well.
What was that moment where you thought, holy shit this is what I do?
There’s two actually. One that was almost ten years ago was actually a real light bulb moment that went off in my head about filmmaking. At the time a lot of films I was making were very difficult and gritty, journalistic-investigative films about bad things happening all around the world. There was very little redemption in these. But while making those films, I’d often come across people making positive change in their respective countries. I always thought their stories were truly inspiring and the kind of films I would really like to be making. In the UK I rarely heard good news stories from places like the Middle East or Sub-Saharan Africa. As if by chance one day I picked up a newspaper with a story about a skateboard school in Afghanistan called Skateistan.
So, I’m thinking, ‘oh my god this is a positive story from a country that I only hear negative stories from. It’s about skateboarding, which is sort of my roots and a sport I love.’ So, I went out to Kabul with a friend. We shot a short film about this school and the street children who attend it and then we just put it online on Vimeo. It was called Skatesitan: To Live and Skate Kabul. It went viral within about three days. For me a light bulb went off in my head. I thought I’m not the only one who wants to hear, or learn, or understand positive stories from parts of the world that are frequently demonized. That shaped the next ten years of my life, to try and tell stories that are inspiring and about heroes trying to change the world around them. That’s been the driving force of a lot of the projects I focus on.
The other moment, well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say this, but winning an Oscar was a complete mind-blowing moment. It’s really interesting. You could get very caught up in the guests, the glitz and the glamour. However, the films we make are very much about social issues we deeply believe in. We try and use those moments of award nominations, or at award ceremonies to shine a spotlight on the issues that our films are about, because suddenly you briefly have the world’s attention.
It means you can be up on that stage and you’re able to deliver a message of hope, or a message from the protagonists of our films to an audience of something like a billion people. It’s an extraordinary moment.
What would you tell your teenage self ?
You know, I would have something to tell myself. I didn’t appreciate education at all at that age. I think I definitely took it all for granted. Knowing what I know now, it makes me look at it differently. I spend a lot of my life in places where education is not a right. It’s a privilege and so, you know, I would say if I could go back to myself; appreciate the moment. Appreciate what you have right now. It’s an incredible privilege that you’ve got to be educated, to learn, to gain all of that knowledge.
Anything that you would suggest for people who want to do what you do?
Certainly, if you want to make documentary films, in some ways it’s better to study a subject that’s got nothing to do with filmmaking, that actually teaches you about the world and the way the world works. That’s going to serve you so much better because documentaries are about trying to understand the way humans operate. Having a basic grasp of politics, sociology and economics is really helpful if you want to make documentaries. My general advice would be to study something that teaches you about how the world works, and you can always go to film school later.
The other thing I would say, is just go do it, you should just go and make films. Yes, there are massive structural and socio-economic barriers to entry in the film industry. Structural from things like your background and your economic status, but the actual act of filmmaking is more democratized today than it’s ever been. Because of things like IPhones.
You know, or any camera phone frankly is a way more sophisticated piece of kit than the cameras we had even 10 years ago. Use it.
The final thing is that this is an industry where there’s so many hungry people that want to be involved in it, who are probably smarter than you. You just have to have tenacity. You will be knocked down all the time in the filmmaking world, but that’s normal, I still get knocked back all the time. It’s just part of it and you just have to keep picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and putting yourself out there, and that’s the constant hustle you need.
*Thank you to Mark Bauch and Nathan Gallagher for their gracious donations of imagery for the book.