Twenty-two year old Corporal Jonathan Santos had documented his 37 days of military service in Iraq in a personal dairy before a roadside bomb took his life and the lives of several of his friends and servicemen on October 15, 2004. Jonathan’s mother, Doris, wasn’t aware that her son had kept a diary until his Tuff Box™ – a soldier’s chest filled with their most valuable items – was sent to her after his death. Upon opening the box, she discovered his “little green book” and a stack of videocassettes on which he had recorded daily life in Iraq.

Now available on DVD.

The International Documentary Challenge is a timed filmmaking competition where filmmakers have 5 days to make a short non-fiction film (4-7 minutes.) All of the registered participants make their films during the same time period (early March) and are required to ship the movie by the deadline. In addition to being restricted on time, the filmmakers must choose between 2 assigned documentary genres (such as Biography, Music, 1st Person, etc.) and are assigned a specific theme (such as “Freedom”) that will dictate the content and direction of their film. The top 12 films (determined by a panel of judges) premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto where the Winners are announced. After the premiere, there are additional theatrical screenings in major cities, possible television exposure and a DVD release of the best films.

The mission of The International Documentary Challenge is to encourage documentary filmmakers to create and to give those filmmakers an international platform to showcase their talents. The feedback we’ve received is that the “challenge” is an exhilarating experience for
the students that helps them focus in a new and effective way. Initially it seems like a ridiculous notion to think of completing a film in such a short time, but that, in essence, is the point of this competition – to encourage filmmakers to work straight from their gut, make quick decisions and finish a creative project under pressure. When making a film in a few days, one learns a lot about what is and isn’t important in filmmaking – lessons that will never be forgotten.

Download the International Documentary Challenge Classroom Guide. The Classroom Screening Guide is intended for use by educators in Middle School, High School and College. If you have purchased the DVD, this PDF is included as a DVD-Rom feature.

If you have not already done so, in order to obtain the rights to use the Doc Challenge in your classroom, please purchase an educational copy of the Best of the Doc Challenge DVD from us. Contact us here. To register your class or group for the Doc Challenge visit the IDC online.

Quotes from participants:

“I did not give my students enough credit for the amount of hard work they were willing to put into a project. I feel really bad about that because I assumed that maybe it would be too intense, too much of a time commitment, that it would be too much trouble, essentially. And for what reward? I wasn’t sure if they would see the benefits. You know what? They did! They grabbed the experience and just totally dove in and really made it something that was valuable to them. And I’m really proud.”
–Courtney Hermann, Digital Filmmaking Instructor, Art Institute of Portland

“The Doc Challenge was a life-altering experience for me because prior to the Doc Challenge I thought I was just all about narrative fiction. I had never given documentary filmmaking even a glance. After Doc Challenge I realized just how great documentary filmmaking is. Great because not only are you making a story out of real people and real life experiences, but you have the opportunity to really change the way people see the world. I now focus on non-fiction as opposed to fiction.”
–Karlyn Gibson, Student

“I learned so much by doing this challenge that I know I am going to use in my future filmmaking projects. You do the best that you can with what you’ve got in the time that you have and you make whatever situation you’re given work!”
–Liz Vice, Student

Get ready for the challenge, watch the trailer for the IDC. This trailer is also included as an extra on the DVD.

The Mission
The mission of The International Documentary Challenge is to encourage documentary filmmakers to create and to give those filmmakers an international platform to showcase their talents.

The Motive
Within the last few years, documentaries have entered into a renaissance period. Filmmaking tools are now so affordable that anyone willing to invest the time and energy to tell a story can do so. Audiences have finally realized that some of the most compelling stories come from the truest form of drama-documentary films.  It has become obvious that there is no shortage of engaging stories, aspiring artists wanting to tell them, places to screen them, and people to view them.

With this in mind, Doug Whyte of KDHX Community Media developed the International Documentary Challenge. The idea of a timed competition gives filmmakers not only a hard deadline, but also a specific period of time during which they are allowed to work on the film. Through Whyte’s experience with the 48 Hour Film Project, National Film Challenge and International Documentary Challenge, he has learned that this is a significant blessing in disguise for the artist. Approximately 80% of participating filmmakers actually turn in a finished film by the deadline in these challenges. This incredible rate of participation can directly be traced to the limited time period–it is much easier for filmmakers to set aside 5 days to fully concentrate on a film as opposed to months or years for longer projects. With such a small time commitment, it is also easier for filmmakers to get help and participation from crew members and film subjects.  These circumstances have often helped filmmakers to create their best work!

Secondly, the feedback we receive is that the “challenge” is an exhilarating experience for the filmmakers that help them focus in a new and effective way. Initially it seems like a ridiculous notion to think of completing a film in such a short time, but that, in essence, is the point of this competition-to encourage filmmakers to work straight from their gut, make quick decisions and finish a creative project under pressure.  When making a film in a few days, one learns a lot about what is and isn’t important in filmmaking-lessons that will never be forgotten.

Thirdly, the Doc Challenge is an event that appeals to both novice and professional filmmakers alike. Novice filmmakers have the opportunity to go through the whole filmmaking process in less than a week, learning the art of film production in a trial by fire situation, and professionals have the opportunity to work on a creative, personal project without having to commit months or years of their life

Finally, beyond a great experience for the filmmakers, the Doc Challenge creates an intriguing program for audiences to view. Since all of the submitted films are created about the same theme at the same point in time, from all over the world, there is a synergy that connects them. Additionally, it is interesting for the audience to watch how the individual filmmakers approach the assigned theme and genre in their own unique way.

For more information on the Doc Challenge click here.

The Typecast Pictures release, The Corporal’s Diary, recently received national attention and was featured on Thanksgiving morning during ABC’s Good Morning America.  The television show ran an in-depth segment on the reunion of mothers involved in the documentary and an overview of soldier Jonathan Santos and mother Doris Kent’s story depicted in the film directed by Patricia Boiko.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA – 38 Days: One Soldier’s Story [video]
By IMAEYEN IBANGA and KELLY HAGAN

All Doris Santos had of her son, Cpl. Jonathan Santos, was the last letter he sent home before he died in October 2004.  A mother’s loss turned into a soul-saving kinship with other military moms.

“This is Jon’s last letter home, received two days after he was killed. ‘Dear mom,’” Doris began reading. “‘Everything is going good here. I just wanted to say hi and I am doing OK, tell everyone I am sending greetings from Iraq.’”

The letter served as the final words from her 22-year-old son, who died in Karabilah, Iraq, a mere 38 days after he arrived and with only seven months left to serve in the military.

But, as Doris would soon discover, the Bellingham, Wash., native had so much more to say about his life and deployment.

Unexpected Arrival

She learned that when she received her son’s trunk. The surprise delivery arrived at her home and was filled with his boots, an assortment of home movies and a little green diary at the bottom. The soldier had documented so much of his life abroad.

The first 37 days of his diary reflected the harsh realities of serving in Iraq.

“Things got ugly. An Iraqi man was killed,” he wrote on day 26.

He also had five videos filled with candid moments from his deployments in Haiti and Iraq. It was the story of his last 38 days.

“I really miss home. I really miss you guys. I’m bald — you can see that. It sure is hot here,” Jonathan said in one tape.

He didn’t just film himself. He also took images of friends, including Sgt. Michael Owen, a 12-year Army veteran; Pvt. Matthew Drake, a sports nut who played soccer and dreamed of becoming a physical therapist; and Marine Cpl. William Salazar, a combat photographer with an artistic bent, who played the trumpet and recorded a CD.

Final Days

As time passed, according to the diary, the men’s friendship grew closer and Jonathan dreamed of life beyond the war’s daily grind.

“I make this vow — this time next year, I will be living in Los Angeles and be truly, completely, and totally happy,” he wrote in his diary.

On Sept. 23 he turned 22 and marked that, too, in his diary.

Each page is filled daily until Oct. 15, 2004. That page is blank because on that day an insurgent vehicle loaded with explosives crashed into Jonathan’s humvee, killing him, Salazar and Owen.

Drake was the lone survivor, but suffered a massive head wound.

A Mother’s Memoir

As a grieving mother, Doris wanted to know the whole story of her son’s final hours and mission. She reached out to Drake and his mother, Lisa Schuester.

“Matthew is still here but he is not exactly the man he was,” Schuester said.

Doris also wanted to get to know the mothers of the two other young men killed alongside her son, and persuaded the mothers of the four friends to meet.

“There is no difference in our grief. It’s absolutely painful,” Doris said. “There is nothing in the world that is going to bring our boys back, but we have each other.”

The women did meet and Doris gave Owen’s mother one final memento — the sergeant’s combat boots, which had been packed with Jonathan’s things.

“It was probably the best gift I could have had,” said Owen’s mother, Kay Hutchinson.

A one-hour documentary called “The Corporal’s Diary” tells Jonathan’s story.

With the home-video DVD release of The Corporal’s Diary approaching on October 28th, the film has also had a limited theatrical run and several festival appearances in the Seattle area over the last month.  Today’s date marks the anniversary of the death of soldier Jonathan Santos, and a special screening in his hometown of Bellingham, Washington tonight.

Seattle television stations KOMO (ABC) and KING (NBC) recently ran features on the film, the upcoming Bellingham screening, and the meeting of family members related to and featured in the documentary.  The Seattle Channel’s ‘Art Zone’ also covered the film under critic Robert Horton’s film review segment.

KOMO – ‘Fallen Soldier has Story Told in Documentary’

KING – ‘The Corporal’s Diary: 38 Days in Iraq’

The Seattle Channel – Art Zone film review

Willamette Week
Reviewed by: Alistair Rockoff

Those who marveled at the epic desert spectacles on display in this summer’s The Fall would do well to check out this poetic little movie from the Tunisian writer-director Nacer Khemir. Like The Fall, Khemir’s film is driven by a precocious moppet’s appetite for stories. Little Ishtar joins her grandfather Bab’Aziz, a blind Sufi mystic, on his religious pilgrimage across the sands. During their journey, he tells her the tale of “the prince who contemplated his soul.” Before he can finish, more fellow travelers drop by and offer their own personal histories of obsession, which weave together into a kind of reverent Arabian version of The Canterbury Tales. Having said he hopes to rehabilitate Islam’s image, the director has captured an ecstasy of devotion—spiritual, familial, erotic. The film moves hypnotically back and forth, from the beauty of a psalmist’s voice to the beauty of silence, from the infinity of the desert to the infinity of the ceiling in a mosque, spinning endlessly in the eyes of a whirling dervish. Occasionally, a bus, motorcycle or airplane intrudes to remind us that we are in modern times, that even now we may find a purity of desire.

‘The Corporal’s Diary is a poignant look at the Iraq War’

The Seattle Times
Reviewed by: Tom Keogh

This locally produced documentary is a moving portrait of Bellingham native Jonathan Santos, a U.S. Army corporal killed in Iraq 38 days after his deployment.

Produced in Seattle, “The Corporal’s Diary” is a moving documentary about a young Bellingham native, U.S. Army Cpl. Jonathan Santos, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq 38 days after his deployment.

Co-directed by local filmmakers Patricia Boiko and Laurel Spellman Smith, “The Corporal’s Diary” has a genuinely charismatic subject in Santos, who died at 22. Wry, focused, professional but honest about his emotions in the war-torn nation (he was in Iraq in 2004), Santos kept both a written and video diary of his experiences.

The content of each journal is so entertaining and compelling that, if one didn’t know better, a viewer might assume “The Corporal’s Diary” was yet another faux documentary about the war told from the perspective of a fictional serviceman.

Santos had already been in the service several years, including a stint in Haiti, before going to Iraq. It’s no wonder his voice — captured on video and reflected in written excerpts read aloud by his brother Jared — is so mature. He was also quite literate and a voracious reader. Yet his self-deprecating humor cuts against self-seriousness.

Santos’ mother, Doris Kent, is a gentle and healing presence who reaches out to the mother of Santos’ friend Matthew Drake, a brain-damaged survivor of the blast that killed Santos. The bridge between the two families is shot with sensitivity and gives the film a sense of profound hopefulness.

The Everett Herald
Reviewed by: Robert Horton

When Army Cpl. Jonathan Santos was sent to Iraq in the fall of 2004, he took his diary and a video camera with him. You can hear in his words that he did not intend his diary-keeping to be an epitaph; he had plans and ambitions, which he was going to tackle just as soon as he got back.

Only 38 days after arriving, he was killed in a roadside attack. The diary and the videotapes were returned to his mother, Doris, who was surprised to discover her son kept a record of his life.

Those records form the basis of the locally produced “The Corporal’s Diary,” a powerful documentary in Jonathan Santos’ words. It’s only 60 minutes long, which makes an awkward length for a movie, but every minute counts.

Jonathan and his brothers and mother were living in Bellingham at the time he shipped out. As the film explains, the men in his family had a history of military service, and Jonathan — whose first tour of duty was in Haiti — was happy to join that tradition.

There is nothing especially remarkable about his videos of life in Iraq, which might be the reason they are so sad to watch. It’s just simple stuff, made poignant by its unlikely location and the death of the man holding the camera.

Some of the people in Jonathan’s videos didn’t make it either. The sole survivor of the attack, Matthew Drake, gets his own section in the film.

We see Drake as a cocky, lively guy in Jonathan’s videos, but he sustained a head wound in the attack and is seen stateside as a different person. The process of rehab, as he learns to talk and walk and perform basic functions again, could form a documentary on its own.

Jonathan’s diary entries are read aloud by his brother, an understandably difficult task but a fitting touch. Mother Doris, in her clear, thought-out response to all this, comes across as the movie’s rock — but when she finally breaks down, her message is devastating.

Directors Patricia Boiko and Laurel Spellman-Smith leave out commentary. They don’t need it. Jonathan Santos recorded the titles of the books he read in Iraq, which included “The Da Vinci Code” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan.” In one diary entry he talks about writing a novel and maybe getting a job as a professor someday. That sort of detail, and the sense of lost promise, doesn’t need any editorializing.

We at Typecast Films feel honored and grateful to have received the 2008 Small Business Award from Mayor Greg Nickels and the city of Seattle.  This year’s ten award-winning businesses were selected on “the basis of excellence in management, entrepreneurial spirit, customer service, and community involvement” by a panel of previous Small Business Award winners and representatives of Seattle community development organizations.

 In addition, a special video segment about Typecast Films was created by the Seattle Channel and will soon be available for viewing on their website.  We are pleased that our efforts to help thought-provoking cinema reach a local and national audience have been recognized by the city, and we offer our sincere thanks and appreciation to all of you in the Seattle community who have been so generous with your support over the years.

Best wishes,
All of us at AFD/Typecast Films