News

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

The Southwest Kansas region and many other parts of the U.S. were shocked back in 2016 when news spread about a trio of men who were arrested for conspiring to blow up a mostly Muslim apartment complex in Garden City.

The three men – Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Stein – would ultimately be convicted on all charges they faced back in 2019.

This story, among many others, is one that will be shared in an upcoming docuseries called “Liberal, Kansas” from filmmakers Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini.

“We’ve been making films for a really long time, and I think between the two of us, we’ve made nearly 45 films – or somewhere around that number – before this ‘Liberal, Kansas’ project,” Robertson said. “It was around the time of Donald Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 when we began to look for a story that would help us understand how so many in the country were so surprised by what had just happened and why many other people were happy at the result. We wanted to do something about why the country was divided like it was at that time and make a film that would be interesting to people on the coasts and people who were pro-Trump and anti-Trump. That was the origin of the idea.”

“But the kinds of films we make, they sort of have an ethnographic lean, so for us, they’re no good if they don’t ring true to everyone possible. We had a big ambition and a big task to make a film that showed both sides of the debate, and we were looking for a story that could be useful toward that,” Camerini added. “We didn’t want it to be necessarily about politics, because let’s face it, everyone was fed up with politics by that point. Then came the case of the three men who were convicted on domestic terrorism charges for a conspiracy to bomb a majority-Muslim apartment complex in Garden City, and that seemed like a good through-line. But we didn’t want the film to necessarily be a true-crime project, but there was definitely a connection between their lives and the lives of everyone else who were affected. These men weren’t impaired or anything like that, they were just normal men who wandered past the edge. We ended up filming more than 80 interviews with a wide variety of people throughout the community, the FBI investigators, and the suspects’ families, among many others, so we were really thorough in that regard. We really wanted to capture the essence of Liberal for people.”

Robertson and Camerini agreed the project kept them quite busy.

“We also filmed at the high school for several weeks and shot some football games and other events like the Liberal AirFair and some Liberal Bee Jays games and other community events that draw people in,” Robertson said. “We really wanted to create what it’s like to live in Liberal, because for a lot of people in other parts of the U.S., they can’t imagine what life is like in this part of the country – and not necessarily in a bad way, but because it’s simply something they haven’t experienced for themselves. We’ve made many films in many parts of the world and in many different situations. We never start a film with a script, we work more along the lines of ‘Here’s an interesting situation, let’s come to understand it.’ We shoot a large amount of footage that ultimately never makes it into the final product, which is pretty typical – we actually shot more than 300 hours of material and spent a lot of time working to understand things when we weren’t actually filming.”

“And what we want to end up with, at least to start, is a limited series, because it’s a documentary series that’s split into four parts, with each part being 90 minutes,” Camerini added. “We know that might seem a bit odd to some people, but that’s the format that truly best fits this story. Those are all pretty much done, and we’re now in post-production, which means we’re polishing everything up and adding music and extra graphics and things like that. There’s a lot of work that gets done to turn raw footage into a full-on movie, and that’s what we’re doing now. And we expect to start doing some promotion after the beginning of the new year. We plan on submitting this to some film festivals and then possibly talk to more major screeners and broadcasters. And if we can, we’ll even do a premiere in Liberal of some sort.”

The duo agreed they are proud with how the project came out.

“We’re both pretty proud of what we’ve put together with this project. I made my first film when I was 19 years old, so I’ve been at this for a while. We’ve made films in India and Central America and some other parts of the world, but I would say this was definitely a tough project because there wasn’t really a solid foundation of trust when we started working on this movie, but that definitely improved as time went on,” Camerini said. “We finished shooting, and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the editing process ended up being slower than we expected, but we really think we’ve got something special put together.”

“And like we said earlier, we want our films to be appealing to everyone, but we know a project like this would be particularly appealing to the people affected by what happened and everyone we ended up talking to,” Robertson added. “We did some preliminary screenings for some people, and we think this project will appeal to people in the rural U.S. and on the coasts. One of the themes that runs through the entire series is the long backstory/development of this conspiracy ... And something we found really interesting is how there were actually quite a few people who either didn’t know anything about this story or had only heard bits and pieces here and there, there were very few people who had a full scope of everything that was going on. I felt like we were doing a puzzle and figuring out how to put everything together for people to understand.”

Like other film projects, Robertson and Camerini said there were some challenges faced while getting everything together.

“What we dealt with was pretty on par with what filmmakers typically come across during a project. We had all those interviews to go through and had to put all the different pieces together into a cohesive story. And among all of that, we had to decide what we would end up using/not using,” Camerini said. “And among all of that, the challenge is to make a film where it’s going to be true whether you’re talking about it at the local VFW bar or a more upscale setting. Those were the particular challenges we dealt with, and the world will be the judge of whether we succeeded or not in that endeavor.”

“And the hardest part is deciding what not to use, because all of the interviews turned out wonderfully in terms of the quality of the filming and all of that, but there were just so, so many stories and viewpoints shared, and you have to narrow down what will fit best,” Robertson added. “You’re always trying to be true to the people who were kind enough to let you film them, and you’re trying to make a communication that works and will get through to people. I like to think of ourselves almost akin to translators because we know someone in New York will watch this movie in a different way than someone from there in Kansas. After being out in Liberal for a year, we know what the overall vibe among everyone is. When we first set up out there, a lot of people were concerned a pair of filmmakers from New York would only want to make everyone look bad, which was absolutely NOT what we were setting out to do, and it took a bit of time for people to relax around us and realize what we were wanting to do. I remember on our last day out there, we were saying goodbye to the Leader & Times publisher, and he told us ‘You know, people around here think you work for the CIA.’”

The docuseries is currently in post-production, and the duo said they are excited for it to officially be screened on a wider basis.

“We’re really excited our composer is starting to produce work that sounds authentic. We’ve worked with this gentleman on multiple other projects of ours, but this is a whole new thing, so we’re happy to see how he’s coming along,” Camerini said. “There’s a lot of those trivial loose ends to tie up to make the project as polished as possible, and we’re making a big push for that for the next few weeks.”

“And it’s great talking to people about what we’re doing because we make the movie and we see multiple cuts, but it’s fresh for the audience every time, and you never know what the reaction will be,” Robertson added. “We love doing the Q&A sessions and hearing people’s thoughts and all of that. Documentaries can definitely spread the word message, but a lot of that also has to do with the people who actually watch it, because that word of mouth is also a big thing. In the spring, we’ll start asking for some financial support, because there is some money that needs raised as far as festival entry fees and music and graphics and things like that. But right now, we’re ready to start showing this project and start getting people interested before the official release. Overall, we’re just really happy and excited about how this has turned out, and we had a great time while we were in Liberal.”