Landmark Doc ‘The Hunting Ground’ Hopes To Change The Conversation Around Campus Rape

Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering have worked together — he as director and she as producer — since their 2002 documentary about French philosopher Jacques Derrida. When their breakout 2012 film “The Invisible War” sparked policy change surrounding sexual assault in the military and collected an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, Dick and Ziering decided to shift their lens to college campuses confronting the same issue. In subsequent years, the topic has exploded as a national crisis. The duo captured its developments in real time, and the stirring results premiered to devastated audiences at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The response was so powerful, in fact, that distributor Radius-TWC sped up the release by a month. The movie opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles before expanding to additional cities throughout March and April, eventually airing on CNN. HuffPost Entertainment caught the movie at Sundance, and recently sat down with Dick and Ziering in New York to discuss its challenges.

It’s hard to use a word like “fortuitous” when talking about such a heavy topic, but the conversation surrounding campus rape exploded at the exact moment you were making this film. How did you adjust to that?

Dick: We were starting to make the film when it was not being discussed, or it was being discussed very little. We were actually caught off-guard by how much this issue exploded. I mean, it’s fantastic because there’s an incredible interest in the subject matter, but it does make making a film more challenging when the issue is getting debated more and more prominently, and getting debated so hotly. You have to continue to adjust to the cultural discussion. With many documentaries, it’s sort of half. Many things have settled and you’re looking back, but when you’re in the midst of this happening and you’re documenting it, it’s a challenge. You have a range of audiences — some who know absolutely nothing, and the others who are much more knowledgeable. You have to make a film for both of those audiences.

Because the conversation was evolving as you were filming, what did you decide to omit or emphasize based on what the media had perpetuated?

Dick: It was. We were making a film about so many different institutions, so many different stories. There are so many facets of this. It was an incredible undertaking, in terms of production. But also to make sure that everything was buttoned down, because, again, you’re dealing with institutions that will do everything they can to cover it up. Good luck calling up these institutions and saying, “Can you give me the number of sexual assaults and the number of expulsions?” They won’t even respond to you. This is how much they still cover it up: When they get called by someone — and they know the film is coming out — they say, “Absolutely not, we will not give you that information.” You would think that is information that everybody should know. Imagine if you called up the city of New York and said, “How many people have been charged and how many people have been convicted by the state?” and they said, “No, we’re not giving you that information”? It’s absurd. And a lot of these are state institutions, too. So it makes it even harder.

What do you hope will result after the movie opens?

Ziering: Ideally, we’d love to see something happen that’s somewhat similar to “The Invisible War,” where the military actually saw that — and Kirby did it as a critique, not an attack — and started using it as a training tool, and reformed policy. Having achieved that with one film, we aspire to that with this one. Obviously a transformation of public understanding of this issue and also a transformation of policy responses. Done.

The Huffington Post