Seemingly endless applause graced student filmmakers Daniil Kim and Sara Christensen when the projection screen turned black. Their documentary, presented in a class showcase, brought to light the reality of international student employment on St. Lawrence University campus. Using artistic elements and creative camera angles, the duo gave voice to a campus issue that, before this, was never discussed beyond the international community.

The inspiration, according to Christensen, came from seeing a poster. “The documentary happened right after Pub workers hung up a poster saying, ‘McDonald workers get paid 15 dollars, Walmart workers 15, while SLU workers get paid around 11 dollars,’” she said. “That act inspired me to have conversations with workers I knew when I worked at the Pub, and with my international peers about how we’re trapped in a system in which earning between 8 to 10 dollars is very much unfair yet normalized.”

As an international student who works multiple 8-dollar jobs on campus, when gotten the chance to sit down to chat with Kim and Christensen, thanking them was the first thing on my agenda. In a half-hour interview filled with laughter and introspection, the two shared the meaning behind the film, the importance of documentary filmmaking, and what it means to be grateful as an international student. Below are the edited excerpts from that conversation.

Thao Nguyen (TN): Tell us something about yourself and some updates on your “abroad” semester in NYC!

Sara Christensen (SC): I’m a junior from Denmark majoring in Global Studies and minoring in Public Health and Gender & Sexuality Studies.

Daniil Kim (DK): I’m a senior from Russia. I’m majoring in English and my minor is Film Studies. To answer the second part of your question, New York City is crazy! It’s no exaggeration when they say, anything you can find in the world, you can find in NYC. It’s a lot to process sometimes, though I really like the excitement of waking up every day to find something new and different.

SC: I agree. I think we broke a little bit away from the bubble that international students can’t really get out of unless they have a car ride (and most of us don’t). For me, one of the main rea- sons I applied for this program was to regain the freedom of mobility and a level of independence, which I haven’t had for two and a half years.

I’m still getting used to the complexities of the program in general since finance and profession- al sphere-oriented aren’t always my thing. How- ever, like Daniil said, being here is like discover- ing a new world, and this new world is very cool.

As mentioned before, I really appreciate the chance to see the documentary film that you two put together. For those who weren’t there for the showcase, can you summarize the film and share the inspiration behind it?

SC: After we saw the posters around campus,
we wanted to address the normalized reality of working for $8-$10/hour that student workers face. I reached out to Thelmo, Thelmo pointed us to some other people, but overall, there was a resistance to having the conversation or addressing it as an issue.

Sometimes, when you keep speaking yet no one hears you, you take matters into your own hand. That’s what we did with this documentary.

I’m not going to lie, this film was just for a class, but it felt therapeutic. Daniil and I, through it, tackle the stressful assignments and turn them into something important to our private lives; that goes to show that the school part and the life part cannot be separated. We also addressed this in the film. A lot of us work 15 hours on the side of school, so being able to merge those worlds, even for a little, was healing and powerful. It created solidarity between the two of us and a lot of the people we had conversations with.

DK: Absolutely. Sara inspired me and is the reason why we started this film. During my time at SLU, I have a sense that the values of integrity and inclusion, the ones that we advocate for as an institution, we don’t really do well with.

So, seeing and addressing the student wages and the socio-economic layer of university life is not just an opportunity to make a documentary film, but also a chance to speak out finally. This visual medium allows us to let other people know and understand the struggles that a lot of domestic students, local workers in Canton, and interna- tional students go through.

I also want to say that this issue we’re addressing is debatable. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be any conversation. In fact, we should try to listen to both sides. The thing is, we didn’t re- ceive the support and the cooperation needed to make any conversation, either public or private, happen. That, the fact that we weren’t given a chance, disappointed and saddened me.

SC: I would have to disagree with Daniil and say that it’s not debatable or a matter of discussion on whether or not people should be paid prop- erly. I think that’s just something that we’ve sort of normalized and systemized. Paying employees properly should be an inherent part of any orga- nization.

We are, however, not on equal footing with Thelmo or the administration. Not only are we students, but we’re also internationals. When I posted on my Instagram story about campus wages (which is how the whole thing spiraled and started), I remember my conversation with some of the Thelmo people where they said, “we can promise you that this is not going to affect your future employment at SLU, or your future opportunities.” I said, but you can’t.

You can’t make me this promise. You can’t tell me that it’s not going to sit in the heads of the

administration that Sara was the person that started speaking about some of these things.

I think that’s what makes it also complicated for the film or even for the administration. These
are not conversations they have had before. But for us, and the many generations of international students that preceded us, we’ve been having this conversation forever. It’s just scary to start having them outside of our group. One, because it’s hard to get the administration to listen and two, because even when we do sit down and chat, we’re not the ones constructing the solutions. That’s fully up to them.

DK: Conceptually, I agree with Sara. Student wages must be raised, there’s no other way. I just wished we were given the chance to speak and be listened to. We wanted to see the values that we advocate for at play.

Daniil, I know that you have experience with filmmaking and that your prior productions are more fictitious and dramatized. How does the documentary side of the film industry dif- fer? What do you think of the differences?

DK: Alfred Hitchcock once said, in narrative and fictional films, the director is God, and in documentary films, God is the director. The two genres are just two different playgrounds, and I find the documentary genre generally hard. You have to stay objective. You take your camera, and you show what you see, no matter how bad, how good. You can’t play with it the way you do a fictitious piece. Of course, part of it is still fictional. Any film, performing as a medium to tell stories, is to some extent fictional. But with this genre, the heart of it is to be able to show others what you see in its rawness, make them believe in it, understand it. For me, it’s just harder.

TN: Sara, any thoughts on documentary film- making as a genre?

SC: I differ from Daniil on the idea of seeking objectivity because I think, no matter how hard you try to stay objective, everything has a perspective and agenda. Whether or not it’s considered neutral, it must come from something. The fact that we have certain wages comes from something. The fact that I want another type of wage also comes from something. So, I don’t think there’s an objective truth, and neither did I seek to tell an objective truth when I was shooting this documentary. I wanted to tell a specific story that amplifies the voice of international students who are not heard at this institution.

What you said reminds me a lot of Weave News and its message that you can’t really be an objective writer because your background and biases shape you and your voice. I’m not at all surprised then to know that you are involved in the organization and have contributed greatly. So, how does the knowledge in docu- mentary filmmaking add to the field of studies that you’re pursuing, and the future works you will be creating?

SC: For me, speaking to you, speaking at you, speaking with you can’t always convey the full experience or the entire scope of a story. I think what came across in the documentary and people, we have a lot to say, a lot of experiences that cannot be conceptualized by merely talking. It has to be witnessed.

One of the most powerful things, at least for me, is that you take people with you on a documentary journey. In one scene, it was a Sunday morning, 9:00 AM, I was going to work. Daniil woke up at the time to film me, people witnessed me waking up at that time, walking over to the library. The audience understood a part of my experience at SLU based on that scene. I am a talker, talking is what I do, but sometimes it’s not enough. So, I appreciate and seek future opportunities to convey wholeness, fullness with few words.

DK: There’s a synergy that comes with filmmaking and there was a synergy with us working together as a team. She was my encyclopedia – doing research and giving me different viewpoints to consider. She has a way unlike any other international friends I have on campus, and I value it greatly.

Now let’s talk about the international student life at SLU. I remember in the documentary, Amanda talked about the need for internation- al students to be “grateful” – to be appreciative of all the opportunities that we are given and have access to. What do you think? Do you feel the same need, having to always be grateful, during your time at SLU?

SC: I am a straightforward person – I think I got it from my mom! So, to be honest, there is a cloud over me at SLU. Sometimes, that cloud is the toxic positivity or toxic generosity that I have to feel all the time because I’ve been awarded this opportunity. That, to me, is incredibly dangerous because if we acknowledge the fact that we don’t live in an equal world and that accommodations or scholarships are needed because we grow up in an unequal world, the power imbalance wouldn’t be there.

That’s something I critique a lot in my head, though it’s really hard to perpetually remind myself of. SLU, for three years, has been my reference point. And when it’s my only reference point, then it can reshape my reality. I think it has been reshaping my reality because for so long, I was constantly worried about producing great work in school, working for money, and making sure that I didn’t offend the institution by saying the wrong thing.

And at some point, I lost myself. This documentary, then, was a part of getting myself back and standing by what I truly believe in.

I also want to stress that there’s so much beauty in our community because we have so many dif- ferent backgrounds, perspectives, and so many ways of approaching reality. All my best friends are international students, but I do think it can be scary sometimes when we get lumped into this state of intense gratefulness all the time.

DK: I agree with a lot of what Sara said. We are giving in to this concept of gratitude and being grateful for all the things we are given. And we are grateful, very much so. I am grateful for all the people that I’ve met at SLU. We in the international community have such a sweet and tight knitted family – I love it. We share the universal struggles, and the universal happiness. But gratefulness doesn’t mean that I can’t criticize the socioeconomic layer, the issues, and the struggle that we face when we’re at SLU.

SC: Our group dynamic, I think, is conditional and dependent. As an international student, my being a Laurentian is dependent on me making changes in specific ways or criticizing something in specific ways. And when we are in a liminal space, a place that’s called home but not really home, it becomes difficult to speak out. Espe- cially when so many futures depend on what this institution thinks about us.

As you said, I’m also grateful for the family I’ve made here, but I find the separation after graduation hard to come to terms with. Will I see you again in the future? Or will life keep us moving in separate circles? My mind recently has been bound with uncertainties like that.

DK: Thao, the world is huge, but it’s actually so tiny. So, of course we will graduate, we will move away from one another, but I’m optimistic. The revolving world is so small that I, unfortunately, ended up in the same abroad program with Sara (laughs)! I think if we’re your people, even if we don’t talk every day, you find your way back to us in some shape or form. Or we will find our way back to you. We’ll always be a part of each other’s lives, it’s non-negotiable.

For my final question, I want to ask for your advice. Now that you’ve done and experienced so much of life at SLU, what would you like to say to your future international Laurentians?

SC: Don’t feel like you have to go the route that the institution said you have to. You’re your own person. Just because you live on campus doesn’t mean that they get to control your life. Fuck some shit up! Start a revolution!

DK: You got it in you. You have it.