John Monte's BLOG

February 23, 2009
Aaron’s epic adventure on the long road to rich, real, and lasting media.

Three and half years ago Aaron returned from an epic three and half months in Afghanistan with gold in hand. Gold I could not see at the time.

Aaron returned from producing seven films for USAID (documenting the US’s reconstruction efforts) contracted by the internationally infamous freelance cameraman of Kabul, Jake Sutton. For the last month of Aaron’s adventure his boss Jake was staying at my apartment in DC (cooking me dinner every night) while Aaron pushed through another month alone in Kabul. By that point Aaron had passed through the six-week danger zone – where too much time in Kabul tears at your inner and outer edges rendering one into a grizzled misaligned aura of an “International War Correspondent,” which Jake Sutton, sleeping on my front room futon, epitomized. Yet Aaron returned relatively normal with over ten hours of his own story in videotape.

I, on the other hand was worn out from the constant work for hire, and endless fullmonte projects. A week after Aaron’s return to DC I took off for Peru on another thefullmonte.com adventure (story in the works).

Two years later the ten hours of footage made its world premiere at the internationally renowned Santa Barbara International Film Festival, titled, “The Fixer, behind the scenes in Afghanistan.” Only now it occurs to me that Aaron ingeniously expanded the theme we had begun in “Vacationing In Afghanistan” – documenting what the media overlooks – and created a work that should be seen by every student studying media. How is media constructed in a hostile environment? Watch “The Fixer". I hope Aaron explores educational media distribution. Want to get your kids attention; after filming, the two main characters were taken hostage for three months by Taliban cohorts in Waziristan, the epicenter of the War on Terror.

My second class in documentary film production at UMBC (where one of Google’s founders got his Bachelors) Professor Exsul Van Halen asked, “Who here thinks documentary films are objective?” What he was saying was please leave my class know if you are so ignorant and full of driveling media illusions that you think we are making objective works. Exsul has a PhD in sociology, and though gentle, was an academic heavy weight simply echoing Einstein’s mantra “It's all relative.” And Aaron, like any good scientist, artist, or intelligence officer, took the evidence he witnessed, intuited, and shaped it into a document. Objectivity was and is some mystical notion towards which all great media makers venture. Like the vanishing point, objectivity is a direction, not a destination.

Since its debut in Santa Barbara “The Fixer,” has played at the Newport International film Festival, the Utopian Film Festival, the Sheffield Documentary Festival, and The UN Film Festival, where and when CNN turned to Aaron for his expertise.

Aaron has always said thefullmonte.com is just a platform. In my words “A platform for experimentation and exploration. A process documenting a journey, like the vanishing point a direction we are reaching towards. We are honored that Aaron has led the way in many ways.

Transcript of the interview >>
View clips from "The Fixer" >>

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