Margo Guernsey is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Watertown, Massachusetts. Previously, she was a union organizer and a nonprofit development executive. But her work still has an emphasis on social impact. From Episcopalian priests to election workers, Guernsey’s stories spotlight folks whose labor too often goes unseen, underpaid, and underappreciated––words that could just as well describe indie filmmakers’ work.
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Guernsey’s 2022 film No Time to Fail follows Rhode Island election officials as they work to secure the ballot in the 2020 election in the early days of COVID-19. She’s now in production on an untitled short about election officials; it’s a follow-up on No Time to Fail, but specifically geared toward impact. Her feature film The Philadelphia Eleven, which tells the story of the first women ordained as Episcopalian priests, won the Best Documentary Prize at The Boston Globe’s 2023 GlobeDocs Film Festival.
The life of an independent filmmaker is a life of multitasking: Guernsey is working on a screenings tour for The Philadelphia Eleven, all while in production on her short. In this interview, Guernsey discusses the fundraising-to-impact pipeline, working on multiple projects at once, and the slow burn of audience-building. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Claire Ogden: Is there a fundraising-to-impact pipeline for you? So do members of your donor circle automatically become screening partners?
Margo Guernsey: Yes, it was definitely intentional that the donors would become screening partners. We had to do so much crowdfunding for this film over the years. And in 2023, we didn’t have enough money to finish. The finishing funds and the archival are just incredibly expensive.
So we decided to run a campaign that would include basically a pre-sale. So we said to donors that you’d get a gift of a public performance license if you donate $500 or more. And so we got a lot of donations of $500.
We had our first online screening on Friday night. It capped at a thousand people, and it sold out completely. And people were furious, because some people didn't know they had to get their tickets ahead of time. So this woman invited 10 people over to her house to host a watch party, and then on the night of the screening, it was sold out. She couldn't get any tickets.
But that doesn’t just happen. That happened because we've been building for all these years. So there's lots of people who've been waiting to see it.
CO: You’re in the middle of a screening tour for The Philadelphia Eleven right now. How does that work with the feature film being in the impact stage, and your untitled short film still being in production?
MG: There's always a lot happening. That's just the reality of being an independent filmmaker.
As an independent filmmaker, it’s only sustainable to have multiple projects going. Some projects are bringing money in at some point in time. But then there's always multiple points of time when they're not. So the ebb and flow of cash doesn't match the ebb and flow of needing to pay bills. I don't know a filmmaker who doesn't either consult or teach or have some other gig on the side. I mean, it's just not dependable income.
So yes, I have multiple projects right now. And I can usually manage 2 bigger projects, and then there might be some other smaller things we're tying up on the side. Right now, that’s The Philadelphia Eleven, which is actively on a screening tour.
I don't have to be everywhere on every shoot, in every place, right? So there's ways to manage things. I'm not in the field every day; we've built teams in each of the states that we’re in for [the short]. So this morning, we had a team in Wisconsin filming a press conference. I was texting with them, and they're gonna send me the footage.
And Sara [Archambault] and I co-collaborate. She's doing a lot of the pitching for fundraising. We divide and conquer our tasks and our roles. It's a lot of work, but it's manageable when you have a team and when you strategize.
CO: Other than community screenings, how is the search for distribution going for The Philadelphia Eleven?
MG: Yes, we're working on securing distribution.
It's not a big secret that distribution for independent films right now in 2024 is horrible. Really, it's just sex, lies, and videotape. You know, it's pretty much biopics of famous people and true crime. That’s all that any of the well-known streamers want. And most Americans and most people in the world look for content from well-known streamers.
And so that is a huge problem. This has been a very popular film––I've never had a film go viral like this––and yet there's just no distribution interest.
[Luckily] Good Docs is going to do the educational distribution, and they’re starting as soon as I can get them. And so we are slowly picking up some other distribution avenues. Our screening tour will go through this year, and we're hoping to pick up other distribution, but it's just slow going.
CO: Absolutely. So in 2020, you filmed No Time to Fail, and in many ways this new election official short is an offshoot of that. In terms of filming for the election official short, how is it different compared to what the situation was in 2020?
MG: When we made this short in 2020, it was the height of COVID, and we couldn't send teams in because it wasn't safe for the crew, and it wasn't safe for the film participants. So Sarah and I shot it ourselves. It was also earlier in my career and in Sara's career, when we had less traction with funders. So we had put our own money into it, and our own labor when we started shooting that film. There was just nothing else. And so it was a very different dynamic.
When we started making that film, we were very interested in making a film about Main Street versus Wall Street. So revealing the real work that real people are doing that is invisible. So what is the work that regular people are doing? Pull back the curtain, and let's watch the administration of elections. That's what the film was gonna be.
You know, the environment has changed very much, because many election officials want to be invisible. They like to just do their jobs and do it well, and not be on the front page of the newspaper. Yet the opposite has happened, because they've been thrown into the limelight after being attacked for doing their work, right? So now they're very much on the front lines. And this film's about that.
This new short is about what it's like to have your integrity questioned and to be thrust on the front lines in a way that you never sought, and yet to believe so passionately in democracy and in our right to elect our officials that you are all in.
CO: I know you’re very much still in production for the untitled short film, but what are you hoping for or planning in terms of distribution?
MG: Yeah, so the goal is that it goes straight to streaming in September, so it can be a part of the conversation this fall [election cycle].
CO: Is there anything else about the production or distribution process that you want to share?
MG: Support independent filmmakers. I've done a lot of education of the viewers of The Philadelphia Eleven, because they sometimes don't understand: Why do we still need to be raising money when we finish the film? Well, that’s because we have no marketing budget. All the big films, their marketing budgets are twice the size of their production budgets, millions of dollars. Just to make sure that viewers know it exists.
On our end, if we want to tell the story, we need to find a way to make sure the viewer knows it exists, and what we have right now is grassroots. What we have right now is people telling people.
I think viewers don't realize to the extent that the industry has become very, very hierarchical and corporatized. So they [the streamers] have a lot of control over what we see and what we don't see by just not providing us what we might want. And as viewers, we don’t have a lot of ability to tell the streamers what we want, because we're not buying tickets to individual shows. We're just plugging into a monthly subscription.
So we can't just withhold our ticket money by saying, ‘I don't want to go see this.’ We would have to just cancel the subscription, but that's not even communicating to them what we wish we were seeing, right? So the market itself is broken in that way, and it makes it hard to access really good independent films.
CO: I know there's only so much you can share right now about the election official short, because it's still in production, but are there any stories that you would like to give a little preview of? Or anything we should be excited about, any characters you really like?
MG: I mean, we are choosing to film with people who are very much on the front lines, and they've been under attack, and so we don't want to do anything that will put them in a position that's not safe for them. But I can still answer that question broadly. Which is to say that I think you're in for a treat to really get to know some of the folks who dedicate their lives to being public servants, and care passionately about our country in a way that I don't think we realize.
Most of us walk around, not realizing how much of a call it really is for some folks to dedicate their lives to the infrastructure that holds our country together. And we're gonna get to know them up close and personal. And it's gonna be an emotional journey, which I think is somewhat unexpected if you're talking about voting.
CO: Who are your biggest influences as a documentary filmmaker? Or what are your favorite documentaries, and how does that play into your filmmaking practice?
MG: If you asked me this question a while ago I would have told you some big-name people, but honestly, my biggest influences are the people I get to work with. That is the actual truth. Filmmaking is such a collaborative creative art. So it’s in the tensions within the disagreements about what we're doing, as well as the collaborations and the building on each other's strengths that the beauty of the film comes from. But the way that my collaborators engage with the creative process very much becomes part of the storytelling.
CO: How would you like to see these films be used in the classroom or other educational settings? What would you hope for that to look like?
MG: In general, these films are all films about stories about regular people who are doing fantastic work and who are largely invisible. And so, you know, in general, I would want students to take away, seeing that around them more and more. Specifically, The Philadelphia Eleven has themes about what it means to be who you are fully called to be despite what institutions tell you that you can and can't do. And to be your full self, and to find a way to do that in solidarity with others, and what true, meaningful solidarity looks like. Because sometimes we forget. I get so many emails from folks who've seen the film about this. So I think it resonates in that way.
And for the election officials film, [I think] there's not enough civic education in our schools. So this short film about election officials, I hope, helps bolster civic education curriculums around the country. And it will be better for that than No Time To Fail, simply because it'll be shorter. And I think that helps teachers. It'll be 30 minutes as opposed to 90.
CO: [laughs] Yeah, it's hard to sell a 90-minute film in a classroom––to the students and to the teacher. What do you think that documentary films can bring to the classroom that traditional curricular materials can’t?
MG: You know the thing that a good documentary does well, is it brings you on an emotional journey.
Personally, I actually read more than I watch documentaries. And books simply do not get you the emotional journey the way a good documentary can. It also cannot bring you into a space and behind the scenes in the same way.
We're also so much more aware of different learning styles now. And I think what documentaries can do to enhance education is to bring it into the classroom for that purpose, so that students really get a sense outside of themselves of what other people's experiences are like. I'm hoping the election official short does that first. Civics curriculum can feel drier than other curriculum, right? But if you are on an emotional journey with some of these election officials, then you're in the thick of it with them. And all of a sudden that curriculum can come alive.