{"id":214,"date":"2019-03-09T16:12:05","date_gmt":"2019-03-09T16:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/editspecialists.com\/andrewberendsmemorial\/?p=214"},"modified":"2019-03-09T18:49:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-09T18:49:16","slug":"reflections-on-andrew-berends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/editspecialists.com\/andrewberendsmemorial\/2019\/03\/09\/reflections-on-andrew-berends\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Andrew Berends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By James Longley<\/a> From ida article here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Andrew
Andrew Berends working with translator Amjad Hossen in the Rohingya refugee camps, Bangladesh, 2018. Photo: Alastair Lawson-Tancred<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Andrew\n Berends wasn\u2019t interested in becoming a martyr to the documentary film \ncommunity or anyone else. Andy just wanted to be happy, and to be free \nfrom the physical and emotional agony he was feeling. Andy had simple \ndreams. He wanted to kiss that girl again\u2014the one he met, the one who \nghosted. He wanted to go back to the Ngong Hills in southern Kenya, \nwhere there is a tree on a hillside bending in the wind. He missed it so\n bad, he said. Andy wanted to recover from Parkinson\u2019s. He wanted not to\n be lonely. He wanted to have a family, to feel little babies crawling \non him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo:
Photo: Andrew Berends. Courtesy of James Longley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Andy\n wanted those things, but he saw them slipping away into impossibility, \nand himself slipping away with them. He saw a future in which he would \nno longer be able to work, in which all over, his muscles would ache \neach day, in which his memory would fail and his hands would shake and \nnobody would want to look at him. These were the thoughts that made his \nlife unbearable, that he wanted to escape. It was, he said, too soon. He\n was, he said, too young. He felt worn down to nothing, and that was \nthat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his last month, Andy filmed a story for Vice about asylum seekers on the southern border.<\/a> He felt proud of the work. He rode around Berkeley on his motorcycle and watched movies. He recommended They Shall Not Grow Old<\/em>. He watched Mishima<\/em>. He sent me an image of the final shot playing on his TV, the shot right before the writer takes his own life. Andy was also looking for beauty and truth, and it was painful for him to live in a world where those things seem to grow ever scarcer with each passing season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo:
Photo: Andrew Berends. Courtesy of James Longley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\n met Andy in 1991, when we both transferred to Wesleyan University from \ndifferent schools and shared a house. He played the guitar, marveled at \nLed Zeppelin, and was friends with everyone. In our senior year I was \nthe DP on his thesis film, and I could see his determination and \ncommitment to filmmaking taking shape. After college we were off finding\n our parallel paths; I made a film about the Gaza Strip and he made a \nfilm about North Sea fishermen in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\n reconnected in Iraq. I arrived before him; he was looking for advice \nand contacts. He wanted to know how he should dress for the place. Maybe\n grow a beard, I suggested. Andy showed up in Baghdad looking like a \nwerewolf with mange. Lose the beard, I suggested. In his first weeks in \nIraq, Andy was already showing the rest of us what fearlessness looks \nlike. When he was out filming with other journos, a guy brandished an \nRPG at them and took aim. The other journalists scattered. Andy stood \nhis ground and aimed back with his camera. He just wanted to get the \nshot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n was probably in Iraq where Andy both found his calling and lost \nhimself. He lost himself in conveying the stark realities of other \npeople, in becoming their voice, their witness. He understood it was \nSisyphean, but he was Sisyphus. He couldn\u2019t help it. Once he had escaped\n the filters of the privileged, soft world in which most of us live and \ntasted the world as it exists at the margins, he was hooked. Everything \nelse feels trivial, unimportant. The mountains of our first-world \nproblems become molehills next to the calamities we thoughtlessly create\n outside the range of our collective vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iraq,\n Nigeria, Sudan, Senegal, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya\u2014these are the \nplaces where he found his brothers, his human compatriots and his \nmission in life. By the end, he could see it all clearly, and the things\n he saw took their toll. Our only defense is a movie camera, and it can \nbe a very thin shield to hold back the enormity of the world. Andy told \nme of hiding from the Antonov bombers with refugee families in the caves\n of Sudan, how the children snuck out to eat the leaves off of trees, \nand he cried from the helplessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still,\n he could no sooner have stopped making his films than he could have \nstopped the world turning; it took the worsening symptoms of Parkinson\u2019s\n to do that. Just the thought of no longer being able to hold his camera\n steady was too much to accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n his final messages he encouraged me to continue my work as I set off on\n a new film, a new obsession. This time he was the one giving me \nguidance and contacts\u2014where to stay, whom to work with. Andy had \nprepared the ground for me to walk. He told me he was proud of me, that I\n would succeed. He must already have known he wouldn\u2019t be around to see \nthe next film. Andy was my friend, he was my brother, he was as strong a\n person as I\u2019ll likely ever know, and I will hold his determination, \nhumor, honesty and strength inside my heart, as I know he would have \nwanted. Rest in peace, Andy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Longley is the director of award-winning documentary films including <\/em>Iraq in Fragments<\/a> and <\/em>Sari’s Mother<\/a>. James\u2019 new film about Afghanistan, <\/em>Angels Are Made of Light, opens theatrically this summer.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By James Longley From ida article here Andrew Berends wasn\u2019t interested in becoming a martyr to the documentary film community or anyone else. Andy just wanted to be happy, and to be free from the physical and emotional agony he was feeling. Andy had simple dreams. He wanted to kiss that girl again\u2014the one he … <\/p>\n

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