Meet Rob Gardner

Director, Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain

 

 

In what way do you believe that the production of this documentary will change lives?

 

The real power of television is that it touches millions and millions of people, and good television makes those people think.  There is almost nothing more important, in the world we now live in, than for people to understand that cultures different from their own have legitimacy and value—and that to ignore this is to invite trouble.  I think this is the central lesson of the film we are trying to make.

 

Has the production of this documentary changed you in any way?

 

Any documentary becomes a process of discovery and the story of Islamic Spain has been a great discovery for me.  The story is vivid and the lessons are very important to us today.
 
What do you hope to accomplish by producing and directing this documentary?

 

I hope we will show how history teaches us that people who embrace complexity and diversity in human life—however imperfectly—will prosper, while those who embrace bigotry, fundamentalism and exclusion will almost certainly come to grief.
 
Has this documentary helped you to understand yourself better?

 

We are all born into our own set of misunderstandings and stereotypes about other people, some of these dating back to the Crusades.  This is true of me too and I think that learning the amazing story of the ascendancy and eventual fall of Islamic Spain was a real eye-opener.  Of course, I was aware of the overall history of Islamic civilization as a result of my work on Islam Empire of Faith, but the rise and fall of Islamic Spain really underlines the risks we face today, when forces are at work to divide people and promote ideas of absolutism.  These were the forces that eventually brought down a real golden age during the middle ages, as our story shows, and it has made me re-examine my own feelings about our global world and both the hazards and hope  that the future holds for us.
 
What are the foreseen challenges in making this documentary?

 

This is a big, complex and epic story.  The challenges include the functional ones, like doing the story justice in terms of the scope of our production, and intellectual ones, like making this important and complex story clear and accessible to a large television audience, one that I hope will be an international audience.
 
What is your impression of the individuals you have met during the production of this documentary and can anyone exceptional stand out?

 

It’s a little early in the production to single anyone out (we have not shot the scholar’s interviews yet) but for me it is always the scholars—the men and women who have spent 20 or 30 years of their lives studying some part of history—that really bring the story alive for me.  David Nirenberg, a scholar of medieval Jewish life who has written on the human costs of bigotry and violence, (author of “Communities of Violence”) has impressed me quite a bit, but we are talking to some of the best minds working on this complex subject.
 
What is your impression of the research and facts that you have come across throughout this documentary and can anything significant stand out?

 

The thing that comes back to me again and again is how relevant this subject is for our world today.  I love history and I love when history shows us patterns of human behavior in religion , politics and ordinary life that seem to be universal.  Islamic Spain shows a rise and fall of a very rich culture, a complex culture that struggled with many of the things that face us today—diverse populations, nationalism, fundamentalism, power and war.  When complexity and diversity was embraced, the culture flourished.  When fundamentalism and absolutism became dominant, the culture became toxic and failed.

 In regards to the previous documentary, “Islam: Empire of Faith, you said, “This Islam thing is the biggest thing I ever did, and it’s the hardest thing I ever did," Do you believe that this movie may be the hardest one yet to come or will Islam; Empire of Faith remain on the top of the list as the hardest documentary you have ever made?

 

The two projects are very different, each with different challenges.  In a way, Islam, Empire of Faith, which covered a thousand years of history, largely unknown to most Americans was a broad overview of a history which took place all over the world.  This film is a more focused story, though it also covers a large sweep of time.  I feel a real responsibility about this new project because I think the ideas in it are very, very important and I think making these ideas engaging in a television context and accessible to a large audience will be the biggest challenge.

Have you received any criticism for choosing to participate in the documentary, Islamic Spain: Three Faiths in One Land?
 

No, though some people have been surprised at my working on the story because it’s importance was not clear to them.  Part of my job will be to make sure people understand why this history is important.

 

How has this documentary enlightened you?

I think a lot of us feel kind of hopeless about the upheavals going on in the world today, and the mistakes that are being made in dealing with them.  What is enlightening about this film is that it shows that people of different faiths and value systems not only can live together, but that they have lived together, with great cultural benefit to everyone.  But it is also a cautionary tale, in that diverse cultures must be nurtured or the forces of absolutism and fundamentalism—from all sides—will destroy them.
 
What is the most amazing thing about the production of this documentary?

Well, we are combining very large scale, feature-film style re-enactments with documentary footage of the great Islamic architecture and the beautiful landscapes of Spain.  I think this will give us a wonderful visual and emotional platform with which to examine the important ideas that are at the center of the story, ideas that will be illuminated by some of the most important scholars on the subject
 
In the documentary, Lost Empire of Tiawanaku, you unclipped your camera and jumped right into the scene.  Will you play an active role much similar to this one in the documentary, Spain: Three Faiths in One Land?

 

I’m a pretty active director and I seem to spend a lot of time jumping up from the monitor or running into the set to move people or things around or to act out the action I want to take place.   Sometimes, when working with the stunt men for a battle scene, for instance, we get pretty physical trying to figure out the best way to make the scene work.  But I have always enjoyed working this way.
 
How have the cultural treasures of Spain influenced your perception of a world that is now plagued with bloodshed, corruption and disharmony that exists between people?

 

One cannot fail to be deeply moved by the interior space of the Al Hambra, in Grenada, to see the extraordinary richness and beauty of this great Islamic palace, and to understand that it is only a shadow, a ghost of what once was.  All of its beauty, its tremendous sophistication, could not save the culture that created it.  The forces that eventually brought Islamic Spain to its sad end are with us today and they are no less dangerous.  Violent bigotry, absolutism, simple ignorance and disrespect, fundamentalism—all of these dark facets of the human heart—are at work today in extreme margins of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish world communities—or any other faith community, for that matter.  We must learn to understand what a terrible cost these dark forces can bring and how we can guard against them.
 
What is your perception of the Islamic Spain that once existed?

 

It was a wonderful and complex time and place.  It was not without flaws, not without violence and problems, but at its best, at its richest, it was truly a bright light in what was largely a dark and ignorant medieval landscape.  Its loss is one of the great tragedies in history.

 

Over a career that spans thirty years, documentary film producer, director and writer Robert Gardner has been nominated for an Academy Award, won three National Emmy Awards, four regional Emmys, a duPont Columbia award for excellence in broadcast journalism.

 

Gardner’s most recently broadcast films include The Barbarians and Islam, Empire of Faith.