Banker White: Filmmaker, Artist & Activist
Banker White is the co-director and producer of the multi-international award-winning documentary Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. The film was nominated by the International Documentary Association for best feature in 2006 and was broadcast in North America on PBS and internationally in Latin America, Japan and Korea.
His WeOwnTV project is a 2008 Creative Capital grantee and was a 2008 Bay Area Video Coalition Media Maker Award recipient. Banker is a multi-disciplinary artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the 2009 recipient of a California Council for the Humanities California Documentary Project grant. Recent work includes Director of photography for the music video ‘Epilepsy is Dancing’ 2009 by recording artist Antony and the Johnsons directed by the Wachowski Brothers (of The Matrix fame) and Director/Producer for the music video, ‘ The Oldest Trick’ for Canadian recording artist Chris Velan.
The Interview
The Daily Norm: My readers and I would like to make sure you are, in fact, human- it levels the ‘normalcy’ playing field. So do you eat, go to the bathroom, bleed and cry? We’re happy to hear some proof if you want to supply it…
Banker White: Wow, eating, bleeding and crying, if that makes me human, I am most definitely human. I love to eat, don’t even consider it a flaw. All flavors, shapes and sizes, too. Also very prone to accidents. I get excited about things and forget my body is human (and not as young as it used to be). It’s almost a daily event to find small bruises and scrapes that I can’t trace back to the incident that caused them. I have a titanium wrist that I got after a bad skateboarding fall. Body definitely not as young as it used to be, but at least still trying, right? Tears flow in movies, always have, but recently went through an embarrassing spell of tearing up during commercials.
TDN: What’s your daily schedule on a normal day?
BW: I get up around 8. I check iPhone/email way too early, sometimes shuffling into the bathroom. Wish it weren’t true, but it is. You east coasters get a three hour start on me. Damn thing is a blessing and a curse. Shower, stretch, coffee, commute to my office/studio in the Mission (San Francisco). If I’m lucky, that’s when the normalcy ends. Office time can be very creative. Watching, thinking, writing, editing – but that damn iPhone/email interrupts me there sometimes, too.
And then there are production trips – which I love the most. Usually nothing normal about it. Each trip is different, each day is different. I love being out in the world, engaging with people, talking about things I’m passsionate about – learning, seeing, capturing beautiful images. That’s when I know I really love what I do for work.
TDN: Name one thing that you have to do on a regular basis that you despise. What lengths would you actually go to, in order to delete it from your schedule?
BW: I want to say paying bills, but that would be too easy. It’s emailing. My addictive personality and distractable nature does not mesh well 24 connectivity. Hard to stay focused. Wait, are potential freelance clients going to read this? Am I being too honest?
I need my quiet time to work. I cherish it. My cell hardly works in my new office. I kind of like it. I don’t open web browsers or email programs when I’m editing.
TDN: What would you change about your work, industry, profession or self if you could change anything?
BW: It’s a really interesting time to be a ‘media maker’. That term means so many different things right now, and it should. It should should reflect the billions of perspectives and experiences out there in the world. Social media and the web are leveling the playing field for independents to have an impact, but I don’t know…. I like to be aware of distribution channels that exist, remember to stay creative and not waste too much time worrying. I want to try and recognize what my strengths are, and stay passionately engaged in what I am doing at any given moment. This is what I’m working on now.
TDN: Is there any life stage or event you would have skipped (like geometry) on the way to where you are now? Would it have been missed?
BW: Not really. I am a day dreamer so I probably did skip those events in a way, looking out the window, doodling in a notepad or off in some magical thinking adventure as the school day/work day/medical/dental procedure passed me by.
TDN: What was your main stepping stone to getting to where you are today? (Person, place, thing, luck, pluck, virtue?)
BW: Wow! That is a hard question to answer. I think I have had lots of stones. I’ve always identified as an artist. This came from my Mana – my mom’s mom. I always identified as an individual, but was surrounded by loving friends and family.
TDN: What word or phrase do you say most often?
BW: Wow!
TDN: What is your single biggest accomplishment?
BW: The Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars film. It has been the most difficult and rewarding project of my career and it has had a profound effect on my creative process. I feel very emotionally connected to that project and the people and subjects in it. I made the film with a group of my best friends from college, so it had a special feeling from the start. More than anything else it was opening up to the process of deep collaboration. I was more of a ‘Fine Arts’ artist before this project and always worked alone in my studio. Letting myself feel a deep sense of responsibility to my co-workers and the subjects of the film is what affected me the most.
Optional ad on??? I am so grateful to all the members of the All Stars band and to their families for being so open with us, and for having the bravery to share openly so many painful details of their lives with us and with the world. I learned that their openness had to be matched by our own – and that our own emotional commitment grew as they shared more and more with us.
TDN: Is there anything that you can’t live without? (besides food, water and oxygen)
BW: Music. I have no desire to be involved with music professionally, but I need it as a part of my daily life. Like a spiritual practice. It is so immediate and full of emotions and ideas. I need to listen to it, to play it, to dance to it.
..oh and my family too.
TDN: What’s the best part of your life?
BW: Why are the easiest ones always the hardest ones? I think it is being creative. Those times when I feel truly engaged in a creative act. And it can be anywhere; on a canvas, playing music, on the computer, writing, talking.
TDN: And have you figured out how to get more of it?
BW: By continuing to search for it…
TDN: What is your ultimate motivation tool?
BW: Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. The bring excitement, responsibility and fear. Not sure in which order.
TDN: If someone wanted to be you or do what you do, what would you say to them?
BW: There’s a tiny door in my office on Floor 7½ of the Mertin Flemmer Building in New York City. It’s a portal and it takes you inside my mind. You see the world through my eyes… and then after about 15 minutes, you’re spit out… into a ditch on the side of the Mass Turnpike. 
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