The volatile slum is a hotbed of drugs, violence, and sexual abuse. Most vulnerable of all are the children of Klong Toey. Human trafficking is rife, and 30 percent of the victims are aged between 12 and 18. Of those that escape, 50 to 90 percent have contracted HIV.
It is here, in one of the most unforgiving places on the planet, that documentarian James Lingwood found God. Not God per se, but one of his instruments: Irish American Catholic priest Father Joseph H. Maier.
Maier has been in Bangkok since 1972, set on a singular mission: to bring God to the people of Klong Toey. His half of a century of servitude has seen Maier establish The Human Development Foundation and its related Mercy Center. The foundation has grown to include a network of more than 30 schools that have taught more than 30,000 children; a home for abandoned mothers and children; and an AIDS hospice that evolved into a home care system.
James Lingwood and Father Joeseph H. Maier
James Lingwood had a chance encounter with Maier in 2007, and his life was irrevocably changed. Inspired by Father Joe and the plight of his people, Lingwood offered to help in any way that he could. This offer would see the two work side-by-side for the next fifteen years, with Lingwood’s camera always at the ready.
At 83, Father Joe’s ability to serve the people of Klong Toey is coming to an end, but Lingwood has figured out an ingenious way to extend his legacy. The pair have turned 15 years of footage into a feature documentary, A Light in the Slaughterhouse.
The documentary has been a labour of love for Lingwood, and FilmInk sat down to talk with him about this important project, his relationship with Maier, and his hopes for the future of the people of Klong Toey.
How did you first hear about Father Joe Maier, and when did you first meet?
I was in Bangkok in 2007, talking to some people about finance for one of our movie projects. One of these meetings was arranged with investors in a hotel, and I was preparing to pitch one of my projects. When I arrived, there were a couple of people on their mobile phones walking around a vestibule off the lobby. After a few minutes, we were all ushered into another smaller room where there were around ten people. I started to panic, as I wasn’t aware that I was going to pitch to this many people. If I had known, I would certainly have prepared a proper PowerPoint presentation.
It turns out this meeting wasn’t about me, it was about the man behind me. He walked into the room straight after me and started to tell a story. Five minutes later, this man left the room. I looked around and everyone had tears rolling down their cheeks. I later found out that this was Father Joseph Maier, an Irish American Catholic priest working in the slums of Bangkok.
This meeting was about organising a Golf Tournament Day to raise some money for the Mercy Centre, which Father Joe founded in the early ’70s. It has now grown into an amazing centre for abandoned children, several schools, a hospital and a place in the Klong Toey slums, which is both a refuge and a home.
Father Maier has been working in the slums of Thailand for over 50 years. Did you first want to make a documentary on the slums of Klong Toey, on Father Maier, or both?
Initially, I was strongly impacted by this chance meeting. I found Maier to be extraordinary. I wanted to help, and I offered to produce a couple of television commercials for the Mercy Centre. I felt that they needed to have something that could be used for several weeks rather than just the one-day Golf Tournament.
I filmed the commercials under the ever-watchful eye of Father Joe. He was initially suspicious of my intentions. He has been betrayed over the years by people with cameras coming into the slums and exploiting this special and secret world. His constant presence when I was filming indicated that he had concerns: what does this person want? Why is he doing this? What is his motivation?
It took quite a few years for me to earn his trust. I remember him saying right from the beginning ‘Just tell the fucking truth!’ Those words have stayed with me. I have tried to not only tell the truth but to find and uncover the truth.
In the beginning, there was no real thought of making a documentary on Father Joe or the Klong Toey slums. My early involvement was based solely on a desire to help the Mercy Centre.
Over the forthcoming years, I spent time creating visual content for various media outlets to promote the cause. Through these early years, trust slowly formed, and our relationship turned into a trusted friendship. This friendship was the birth of the documentary.
This project started as a short film – Through the Eyes of Children. Was your plan to always expand this into a feature?
The genesis of the project began with the television commercials. As time went on, I began to realise that there was a much bigger story. I knew I should start developing a structure and storyline.
After I finished the commercials, Father Joe asked if I would like to walk through the slums and film them. It was a stinking hot day, and this was his way of testing me. It was a baptism by fire. It lasted for around four hours, and by the end, I was soaked in sweat. He kept turning around to see if I was keeping up. It was one of the most incredible days of my life. Here I was, in this secret world, filming extraordinary vignettes of children, old men, and mangy dogs. It was a world that few have been able to enter, let alone film. It was a real privilege and it inspired me to want to do more.
The real challenge with the feature is how to condense 50 years of Father Joe’s life into 90 minutes. How do we make sense of the 70 hours which had been shot over a decade? We decided to use a 24-hour-clock narrative device. We also use a magical clock device where we move backwards, forwards and sideways in time. This enables us to tell the story in a non-linear style. The various time shifts also make the story more entertaining and compelling.
The Through the Eyes of Children project was a short 13-minute documentary about the largest slum in Bangkok, which was commissioned by Little Dot Studios, UK. We have had over 130,000 views and won awards. We used that film as a proof-of-concept for our 90 minute feature documentary.
James Lingwood
Maier has dedicated his life to this region. Your documentary has been filmed for over a decade. Did you foresee this being such a big part of your life?
Not for one moment. I could never have guessed that I would meet this amazing man, see this incredible domain, and end up making a feature on it. Especially for such an extended period of time.
I never thought about a timeline, but whenever I was near Thailand on other projects, I would make sure that I flew over to Bangkok to shoot more footage. The story started to evolve and take shape. In 2012, I began to write a treatment/script, and I started to look at what I already had in terms of footage and what else I needed to film. I soon realised that I was making a 90-minute feature documentary. I felt, not only a sense of responsibility in realising my vision, but in chronicling Father Joe’s journey.
We were in Sydney around this time filming one of his fundraising events and he turned around to me and said “You know when you finish the film, I am going to miss these times. You have become, not only a part of my life, but you’ve also created a reflection of it – a living visual diary.”
Father Maier has gained the trust of the locals over the years. How did you get them to trust your film crew?
Father Joe has often said that you have to be humble. You should look down and never look anyone in the eye, and never think that you are better in any way. Always be polite and grateful too. It took Father Joe many years to gain the trust of the locals. He was a white man, a complete outsider, who suddenly appeared one day and is now a vital part of the community.
In this world, there is no textbook on how to behave, how to act, or how to integrate with the local people. For him, it was a matter of trial and error, and very often it came close to completely falling apart. Gradually, the people accepted him and welcomed him into their homes and hearts.
In much the same way, this also happened to me. I was a white filmmaker with a camera, I could see that they thought ‘what is he doing? What does he want?’ I walked slowly, and took Father Joe’s advice. By smiling and being humble, it was only a matter of time before I was accepted.
I was usually a one-man film crew due to the constraints around this secretive environment. I would stand on a street corner and just film the people going about their everyday business. Eventually, I became invisible. It was this invisibility that allowed me to capture spontaneity, naturalness, and authenticity in my images.
Every element of human suffering exists in the slums. How did you cope with what you witnessed?
At first, it did affect me on many levels. Over the years I’ve seen it all: I once saw a young man literally dying right in front of me from sniffing glue and rotting his brain. It raised a question for me: how ethical is it to film someone who is in pain and who is dying?
Another time, I was filming a blind girl who had been abandoned. She had been run over by her parents, and they left her for dead in the street. She had a miraculous recovery. One day I was filming her collecting her AIDS medicine. And because I knew her whole story, when I watched her little face taking her medicine, I just totally lost it, I had tears streaming down my cheeks.
Father Joe has told me other stories over the years that are hard to even believe. He put them in a book he wrote Welcome to the Slaughterhouse. We wanted to include these stories in the documentary, but they are too hard to film or recreate, so we are animating a few of them. This is a very powerful way to tell these tragic and devastating stories, both metaphorically and symbolically.
Did you ever feel compelled to break from being an observer and interfere with what was happening to a subject?
A couple of times I felt as if I needed to break out from behind the camera. There was once this Dutch photographer who had illegally entered the slaughterhouse where the pigs are killed. He bought a slab of beer and then proceeded to take photos of the workers sticking knives into the pigs, got them drunk and was laughing about it all. He then put the photos up for sale on the internet.
Father Joe found out about it. He asked an old acquaintance of his, a tough ex-IRA guy, to ring the photographer and tell him to bring the photos in the next day, otherwise, there would be consequences.
The photographer turned up the next day and was arrogant. He didn’t see what all the fuss was about, and he tried to get my camera off me while I was filming. Father Joe went absolutely berserk, he threatened the guy’s life, and said he’d get him thrown in jail. He got carted off to the police station and I filmed it. I wanted to smack him in the face. His arrogance, sleaziness, and disregard for the sanctity of the slaughterhouse was beyond belief.
Your lead subject is a natural storyteller. What benefits and hindrances did this bring to your documentary narrative?
Father Joe is the ultimate storyteller. And he is exactly the same off-camera. He says it like it is. He is a complex and highly compelling subject.
Over the years, I have asked him a lot of questions: about the slums, the people, the violence, drugs, and child abuse. He has always answered with absolute honesty and forthrightness. He sometimes bangs the table to make a point, he’s that passionate about this world of Klong Toey.
He is the father, the protector, the one person that the children and people of Klong Toey can rely on. I once asked him whether he was winning the war on drugs and violence in the slums. Maybe he was having a bad day, or maybe he was just getting grumpier in his old age, but he banged the table and started to aggressively berate me for asking such a negative question. As I sat there, I could feel the blood rising in my throat, and my natural reaction was to defend my position. I managed to compose myself and I then asked him what was his greatest achievement… “Now that’s a better question,” he said, and the interview was thankfully back on track.
You have had a long professional and personal relationship with Joe Maier. What are your key commonalities and differences?
It has been very challenging from time to time. He has gone from first being suspicious of me to eventually calling me his brother. We are both white outsiders in a foreign country. We have both been tested and confronted by the Klong Toey people and their environment.
I think that Father Joe and I have more in common than not. We both lost our fathers at a very young age and were brought up by very religious Catholic mothers. We both live in different countries from where we grew up. We are both stubborn, determined, and sometimes, scarily honest. We are both storytellers and have a way of bringing emotion and dramatic effect to our stories.
I think that you have to have very thick skin, a resilient mind, and a sympathetic heart to do what Father Joe has done and achieved over the past 50 years. In many ways, those attributes are also what you also need as a filmmaker. Father Joe has given me inspiration. It is an inspiration that can’t be defined or explained, but it is something that fills me with great joy. It compels me to be a better person.
What effect do you think A Light in the Slaughterhouse will have on audiences?
I am hoping that in this fast-lane, disposable, electronic age, people will stop for just a moment. I want them to reflect on what has been achieved by one human being in a lifetime; a lifetime dedicated selflessly to the well-being of others.
Mostly, I am hoping that this film will encourage more open discussion about what can be done to stop child abuse, violence, and poverty. I’m hoping that we can all become a bit more like Father Joe and speak out bravely and without compromise. I want people to know that one person can make a difference.
How can people support your film and the children of the Mercy Centre?
It would be great if people were able to donate to the post-production of this film. I’ve been fortunate to receive the goodwill of many industry professionals who are passionate about social justice, particularly producers Bobbi-Lea Dionysius and Penny Wall.
The film will act as a legacy to Father Joe, a lifetime of dedication from a foreign rebellious priest who showed them care and respect. He has helped so many by providing education and support to the deprived children of the Klong Toey slums.
By making donations to the Australia Documentary Foundation, the film will be completed. All donations are 100 percent tax refundable.
The completed project will provide awareness and much-needed ongoing support for the Mercy Centre and its children.
‘A Light in the Slaughterhouse’ is registered with the Documentary Australia Foundation.
For further enquiries please contact:
Bobbi-Lea Dionysius [email protected]
James Lingwood [email protected]
Watch Through the Eyes of the Children here:
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