Helen Whitney understands the importance of forgiveness, but that didn’t make encapsulating it into a movie any easier.

“Getting forgiveness into a movie was very difficult,” Whitney said. “I almost turned the offer to make the movie down.”

Whitney, an award-winning filmmaker, had a conversation with Gustav Niebuhr, director of the Carnegie Religion and Media Program, about her recent Public Broadcasting Service documentary, “Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate,” which talks about forgiveness as experienced by individuals and nations.

The talk took place in front of a packed audience in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at 3:45 p.m. Monday.

Whitney talked about the process of forgiveness and the making of her film.

People do not know exactly what forgiveness is, Whitney said, and the film is supposed to give people a better sense of the process of forgiveness.

This documentary is one of the most important films of her career, Whitney said.

“This would matter more than anything else I’ve ever done,” she said.

Getting people to talk to her about their path to forgiveness was one of the hardest things to do, Whitney said. Asking the right questions and coming prepared to interviews was vital, she said.

“People can smell decency,” Whitney said. “Trust and smartness is very important.”

And Whitney said she believes not one interview was wasted.

“All of the guests that I interview can communicate, no matter who they are or what they do,” Whitney said.

During the talk, part of her documentary was shown. The portion focused on the story of Katherine Power, an ex-convict who, 23 years later, admitted to her involvement in a bank robbery during anti-Vietnam War protests in which a Boston police officer was killed.

Whitney pointed to the fact that forgiveness takes time and that family members of the victim are fully entitled to feel anger. Anger is the expected emotion in these types of situations, and forgiving so quickly goes against the body’s natural reaction, she said.

“I cannot help but feel so much anger toward her story,” said Scott Ugell, a Syracuse University alumnus and documentary lover who attended the talk. “I’ve worked with law enforcement for a long time and forgiveness takes time. It is certainly not natural.”

Ugell, along with other members of the audience, wondered if Whitney’s view of forgiveness changed after making the film. When asked by an audience member, Whitney said the film made her realize the difficulty of forgiveness.

“It is so important to go through the steps of forgiveness one by one,” she said.

In every one of the interviews Whitney did for the documentary, she said she felt forgiveness for the people involved.

Many SU students were very impressed with what Whitney did in her film.

Sam Koenig, a sophomore television, radio and film major, said after watching some of Whitney’s other films that also focused on forgiveness in her TRF class, that she feels forgiveness can come naturally, depending on the situation.

She also said she believes that Whitney has taken a very broad and tough subject, and has put it into a movie that people can use to start to understand forgiveness.

These are the kinds of stories that journalists ought to be writing, Whitney said.

“I believe this is the most important issue for journalists,” Whitney said. “Forgiveness is the existential ache of our being.”

Published on September 11, 2012 at 1:10 am

Contact Nick: nrcardon@syr.edu