Scout’s Honor
Venezuelan-American filmmaker Dianela Urdaneta is mining history for her upcoming documentary, Scouts Forever. She’ll reveal the untold story of a group of young Polish scouts who became spies, couriers and nurses for the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II.
By Ricardo Sandoval-Palos
In Scouts Forever, an hour-long documentary now in post-production, veteran filmmaker Dianela Urdaneta pieces together the dramatic story of a group of young scouts in Poland who became members of a resistance that fought the Nazis in World War II.
It’s a story unfamiliar to people outside of Poland. The historical documentary has become an obsession for Urdaneta, the kind of professional obsession most reporters can only dream about.
“I was blown away when I realized that children as young as eleven years old were involved in the Polish resistance against the Nazis during WWII,” Urdaneta said of the squad of young spies and nurses in the Polish underground. “The fact that they were alive, meeting regularly and eager to tell their story was a pull I couldn’t resist.”
Scouts Forever is the most ambitious, and challenging, assignment in her 25 years as a professional journalist. You can see the trailer here.
Urdaneta’s description of the film reads like spy thriller:
“In 1939, just before the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, The Polish Scouting Organization decided to go underground. It had to prepare the scouts to be the soldiers of the future. From underground schools and among the altar boys, the teachers and priests would select the children who were brave and able to keep secrets to form units of four or five children. They would spend many hours spying on German troops to gather information for the Home Army, the Polish resistance during the occupation. They would conduct sabotages: changing street names from German back to Polish; stealing German flags and writing graffiti on the walls. They would dig for weapons previously hidden in cemeteries. They would be the couriers and messengers and they would distribute newspapers made by members of the resistance.”
Urdaneta has produced news and commercial broadcasts for outlets like Reuters TV, Voice of America TV, CNN Spanish, CBS Telenoticias, and the Inter-American Development Bank. She’s a broadcast film graduate of Zulia University in Venezuela and American University in Washington, D.C.
She took time out recently to talk about her signature project:
palabra. – What moved you to take on this story? What has this work meant for your career?
Urdaneta – I learned about the story of the scouts from Kasia Timmer Lubaczewska, a Polish friend who became my translator and co-producer. Kasia attended the same school as the scouts showcased in the documentary.
It’s a dream come true to be able to tell a story in which I have complete editorial control, and to be able to hopefully educate many people about an aspect of history almost unknown to non-Polish audiences … The Warsaw Uprising was a tragedy. Close to 200,000 civilians and 20,000 soldiers were killed. Eighty percent of the city was destroyed.
palabra -- What are the challenges you’ve had to overcome in telling this story? You are not Polish, after all, and this is about a time and place you were not natively familiar with.
Urdaneta – Actually the major challenge is fundraising. I have been an independent content producer for many years, but I had never fundraised before. That has been difficult, but also a great learning experience. We managed to get enough money to travel to Poland four times and interview nine scouts and a historian.But yes, language was a challenge. Not speaking Polish means I have to depend on a translator. You do loose some of the personal connection that you want to have when telling a story. And, this is my first time working on a subject completely foreign to me. Telling a story that involves historical facts and controversial issues requires you to be extra careful with research. You need to work with the right historical experts to make sure you are getting it right.
I must also confess to a barrier many of us will find familiar: more than once I had to battle that nagging “impostor syndrome.” Am I the right person to tell this story? The answer was always a strong “Yes!” Thankfully, members of the Polish diaspora around the world have been very supportive and are looking forward to the release of the film.
I think Latino journalists often feel pressured to having to tell only the stories about our own communities. It is understandable, since there is lack of Latino representation in media. But at the same time there should be nothing that stops us from working on the good stories, regardless of where we find them. That’s what journalists do.
palabra. -- What advice do you have for young filmmakers and journalists looking to tell similar stories, to reveal untold chapters of history?
Urdaneta – You just need to do it well. Make sure you assemble a good team from the beginning and have someone on your team that knows about fundraising. That is an imperative.
And don’t hesitate to ask for help. There are great organizations in many states supporting emerging filmmakers. Women in Film and Video and Docs in Progress, in the Washington, D.C. area, have been of great help to me and I am grateful for that.
I see a lot of possibilities in collaborations among journalists and filmmakers. That is a growing area and the one I will pursue in future films.
There are so many stories to tell.