Michèle Phoenix: Translation Troubles

Documentary First, Episode 101 · with Michèle Phoenix, translator for The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and co-hosts Josh Lindsay and Jason Rugg · 49 minutes · February 11, 2021

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How do you interview people who speak another language for a documentary?

In Episode 101 of Documentary First, co-host Josh Lindsay, director Christian Taylor and Jason Rugg talk with Michèle Phoenix, the translator for The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Michèle was born and raised in France, has citizenship in three countries, taught for 20 years in Germany, works in missions and writes novels. She first wrote to Christian after hearing about the film on The Holy Post, offering to translate a document if she ever needed one. They turned out to live about 10 minutes apart.

Christian explains the problem she ran into in France in 2017: when a French interviewee talked with a French translator, the eye contact and the expressions went to the translator, not to her. Michèle suggested simultaneous translation from a hidden spot, and the team built a system with tiny wireless earpieces and a transmitter that Christian says cost maybe 30 bucks. Michèle describes switching between two buttons to talk to Christian or the interviewee, translating ideas rather than words, and the first official interview, with Henri-Jean, when the system wasn’t working yet and she whispered from right behind Christian.

Michèle also tells the stories that moved her during two and a half weeks in Normandy: a young German soldier remembered at Brécourt Manor, an elderly Frenchman holding hands with veteran Willie Kellerman, a 93-year-old man named Albert weeping as reenactors marched into Carentan, and a veteran’s answer to a schoolchild. Those faces led to her novel Fragments of Light. The episode opens with a film update, including distribution through Factory Film Studio and festival awards, plus news from Josh’s podcast The Movie Proposal and Jason’s screenwriting.

In this episode, you’ll learn

  • Why Christian wanted French interviewees to bond with her, not with an on-camera translator
  • How the team rigged simultaneous translation with wireless earpieces and a transmitter for maybe 30 bucks
  • What a live documentary translator needs: technical skill, speed in both languages, and translating ideas instead of words
  • What happened when the system wasn’t ready for the first official interview, and how Michèle whispered from behind Christian
  • How translating emotional stories affected Michèle, and why Christian came to see her own emotion in interviews as a strength
  • How a school in a former Lebensborn manor led to Michèle’s novel Tangled Ashes, and how Normandy veterans inspired Fragments of Light
  • Where The Girl Who Wore Freedom stood in February 2021: Factory Film Studio, deliverables, closed captions, festivals and challenge coins

Questions and answers

How do you translate a documentary interview in real time?

For The Girl Who Wore Freedom, translator Michèle Phoenix sat hidden near the interview while Christian Taylor and the French interviewee each wore a small wireless earpiece. Michèle translated Christian’s question into the interviewee’s ear as she asked it, then translated the answer back to Christian about two or three seconds behind, using two buttons on her transmitter to switch between them. Christian credits Terry John, Corey Lillard and Jason Hoban with working out a system she says cost maybe 30 bucks.

Why hide the translator during a documentary interview?

Christian Taylor noticed that when a French interviewee spoke with a French translator, the eye contact and the interesting facial expressions went to the translator, not to her. Michèle Phoenix explained that an interviewee bonds with the person they are speaking with, and that a director who doesn’t understand a traumatic story can’t give the facial feedback that encourages someone to relive it. With the translator hidden, the interviewee bonds only with the director.

What makes a good translator for a documentary?

Christian Taylor says the person is key: they have to be technically proficient enough to make the system work and very proficient in both languages, both in their head and out loud. French often uses more words than English to tell a story, so Michèle Phoenix translated ideas rather than word for word, making quick decisions on the fly. Christian calls Michèle uniquely qualified because she can switch between the two languages very quickly.

What book did Michèle Phoenix write after working on The Girl Who Wore Freedom?

Michèle Phoenix wrote the novel Fragments of Light, her fifth book, after two and a half weeks translating in Normandy. Meeting veterans such as Tom Rice, who jumped on D-Day and landed in the fields outside Carentan, shaped its World War II story, which honors the internal conflict many veterans lived with after the war. The modern-day story follows a veteran’s daughter, now 70-something, who needs to know what happened that changed the course of her father’s history and her own.

What is Michèle Phoenix’s novel Tangled Ashes about?

Tangled Ashes, Michèle Phoenix’s earlier World War II novel, covers a Lebensborn “baby factory” in the past part of the story; in the present part, people refurbishing the mansion find hints of what happened there. Michèle grew up in France and went to a school housed in a manor the Nazis had turned into a Lebensborn, or “spring of life.” She only discovered that history while researching what she thinks was her second novel, because nobody in town ever spoke of it.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Welcome, and a beard trimmer mishap
  • 2:13 Film update: distribution, deliverables and festivals
  • 7:35 Josh on The Movie Proposal podcast
  • 13:02 Jason’s spec scripts and a fellowship
  • 15:44 Meet Michèle Phoenix, translator for The Girl Who Wore Freedom
  • 18:17 A school in a former Lebensborn manor
  • 20:40 Building a hidden translation system
  • 27:09 The first interview: no system, just whispering
  • 29:56 Tangled Ashes, and a young German soldier at Brécourt Manor
  • 33:06 Willie Kellerman, Albert and the march to Carentan
  • 37:36 Managing emotion as translator and interviewer
  • 39:00 Schoolchildren and soldiers at the Normandy American Cemetery
  • 41:25 Fragments of Light and Grueling Glory
  • 45:28 Jean-Marie’s kitchen, and where to find Michèle’s books

About the guest

Michèle Phoenix was born and raised in France and has citizenship in three different countries. After college in the United States she moved to Germany, where she taught for 20 years. She works in missions and writes split-time novels with a modern-day and a historical story, including Tangled Ashes and Fragments of Light, her fifth book. She was the translator for The Girl Who Wore Freedom, spending two and a half weeks in Normandy with the crew, and her photos and blog posts appear on the film’s website. One of her blog posts became the short Grueling Glory: The March to Carentan. Her books are listed on her website.

About the film

The Girl Who Wore Freedom is Christian Taylor’s dual-language documentary about D-Day and Normandy, filmed in France with French interviewees and American veterans. When this episode was recorded in February 2021, the film had distribution through Factory Film Studio, which was preparing to sell it to broadcast outlets, and the plan was to release it around D-Day that year. It had won the best woman filmmaker award at the Chandler International Film Fest and the best documentary feature and audience awards at a festival in Polson, Montana, and had been accepted into the Thin Line Film Fest in Texas and the Port Townsend Women and Film festival in Washington.

About Documentary First

For people who make documentaries and people who love them. Discover how documentaries actually get made, paid for and seen with filmmaker Christian Taylor. Plus DocuView Deja View, where every guest recommends a documentary worth watching. One week, a long-form conversation about a guest's journey, projects and lessons; the next, The Deep Dive, Christian's short solo reflection on one idea from that conversation. Guests have included Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy. Christian directed the award-winning documentary The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Nearly 300 conversations. Listen Notes top 5% worldwide. 4.8 on Apple Podcasts. New episodes every week. Follow the show · About the podcast · Support the show on Patreon

Resources mentioned

Full transcript

Welcome, and a beard trimmer mishap

Josh Lindsay: Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at a first-time filmmaker’s journey. I’m your host, Josh Lindsay, from The Movie Proposal podcast, and with us is our first-time filmmaker, Christian Taylor.

Christian Taylor: Hello there. Happy to be here. Hello.

Josh: Christian Taylor, wearing your Girl Who Wore Freedom T-shirt.

Christian: Yes, you can get that on [unclear] freedom.com shop.

Josh: All right. And also with us is the guy we could not do this without, Jason Rugg.

Jason Rugg: Hey there, man.

Christian: You look clean-shaven.

Jason: Yeah, I got a beard trimmer, and I thought that the three setting was, well, I thought it was, you know, it leaves a little bit. Turns out it was an M for “no more beard.” So I just kind of, yeah. Whoops. All right.

Josh: I have nightmares about accidentally shaving giant pieces off of my goatee or whatever. I’m like, oh, now I have to shave the whole thing off. And then I wake up and go, oh, it’s still there.

Christian: Josh, I can’t fathom what you would look like. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you without your goatee.

Josh: It’s only been five years.

Christian: Yeah, but I can’t even remember what you were like before.

Jason: That’s crazy. Yeah, I’ve only known you with the goatee.

Josh: Oh, really?

Christian: Speaking of which, Jason, Josh found, we’re gonna have to put this up on our website or something, on social media. Josh found a picture of me, him and Hunter in front of a microphone doing some sort of radio thing. And it was like in, what did we decide, it was like 2002 or something?

Josh: I don’t know about the year, but definitely, I think it came with an age for Hunter. Like, wasn’t he 10?

Christian: Yeah, 10 or 11. So, and that was, Josh texted it to me, in like our very first podcast experience. And I was like, oh my gosh, that’s so funny.

Jason: There’s no goatee then.

Josh: No goatee then, that’s true.

Jason: I’ll have to go back and remember what you look like.

Josh: Well, I should. Yeah, you need to update us. Update us on the film.

Film update: distribution, deliverables and festivals

Christian: Yeah, I will do that. But I do want to tell you one thing. I got an email, you guys, from a listener, thank you, Jim, who really said one of the things that we needed to do is get you guys to share a little bit more about yourselves. So I’ll give you a film update, but I’m gonna just plug that little idea into your head so that after my film update, you can share a little bit about what’s going on in your own projects. Sound good?

Josh: Sounds good.

Christian: All right. So things are moving along with the film in a really positive way. We announced last time that we have distribution through Factory Film Studio, so we are really excited about that. We hope that pretty soon they will make a public announcement about, you know, representing us or distributing us. And then the next thing is we’re gonna now start uploading all these distribution deliverables. I have a much better idea of all the different things that they need, and we should definitely do a podcast that’s dedicated just to that.

And then we’ll be waiting to hear what deals they make with different outlets. So the plan is to release our film around D-Day this year, and their job is to go forward and try to first sell it to broadcast outlets like the History Channel, you know, ones in North America and ones in Canada. And so that’s sort of the next news we’ll be waiting for: what kind of deals are they going to make? So that’s exciting.

Josh: Yeah, that’s super exciting.

Christian: And then, since we talked last, we have been to Montana. We were at the Chandler International Film Fest, where we got the best woman filmmaker award, and then we came home for like three days, I think, and got back on a plane and flew to Polson, Montana, which is in the northwest corner of Montana. It’s a beautiful place where I fully understood why they call it the Big Sky State, because every time I take a picture of anything in Montana, all you see is this huge, giant sky, and then these little mountains and things. So it was a fascinating time.

The film festival is run by David and Jessica King. They’re a sweet couple who just really love independent film. He used to work at Disney, he’s been a screenwriter, they’ve had films of their own, and they just really love good-quality films. And so there were 12 filmmakers actually that were there, which was the most film festival participation we’ve seen from filmmakers. A lot of really good movies. I actually have asked some of those filmmakers to come on our show and talk to us about their films, so that was great.

And we were just thrilled to win the best documentary feature award as well as the audience award, which I’m super proud of, because the films were very great, and yet we won the audience award across the board, and that’s shorts and narrative features and doc features. So that was incredible.

And then while we were there, we found out that we were accepted into the Thin Line Film Fest, which is in Texas, and I think that’s going to be happening in March. And we were also accepted into the Port Townsend, Washington, Women and Film film festival, and that one’s going to be in April. And then we heard that we are still a finalist in the Ferrera [unclear] Film Festival, and it’s going to be in person in May. So that was new news that we got this week.

And one big project we’ve been working on is thanks to Sam King in our video department. He’s working on the closed caption files. We had to pay to have the closed captions done, but then we have had to edit them and tweak them to make sure they’re correct. So that’s been taking us some time. That’s one of our deliverables. So that’s what’s been happening on our end.

Hunter has been busy working on a super cool donation idea. He is developing these challenge coins that we’re gonna give people at different levels, and we’re really, really close. So we’re about to order the very first coins, and then we’re gonna put together a video to explain the history of the coins and what it means for our donors and things like that. So we’re still desperately in need of funding to keep us going month to month. We don’t have any funding for March, so we’ve got to come up with some ideas. So that’s all the update from here.

Josh: Plenty of time. It’s the beginning of February. It’s like you have so much time for March. It’s like a year away.

Christian: So, I don’t know. Feels a little intense, if you ask me. So anyway, that’s what’s happening with me.

Josh on The Movie Proposal podcast

Josh, you know, what’s been happening on The Movie Proposal podcast? What did you do last week, or what do you have coming up this week?

Josh: Well, the biggest thing, I’m not sure if we announced it last time, is we’re about to do our 100th episode.

Christian: Oh, you are?

Josh: Yeah, yes. We only do maybe two podcasts a month. It’s not weekly, it’s maybe two a month. So we’ve been going longer than Documentary First, but at a slower pace than Documentary First, so we’re hitting our 100th episode about the same time, which is fun. We don’t have any ideas. I keep suggesting ideas to Jason and Skye, and they just ignore me. And we did get one person suggest, because we have this weird wedding theme.

Christian: Yeah, why don’t you just remind people of that?

Josh: Well, so it’s a segment every episode you listen to. There’s basically four segments: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. If you’re not familiar with that, that’s a wedding thing where I think the bride wears something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Christian: That’s correct.

Josh: Skye was at a wedding the week before we discussed this podcast, and he’s like, “Let’s do this.” I’m like, sure, why not. And it stuck. But it’s actually a great format. So we talk about an old movie, a new movie, we usually bring in a person or an article that we quote, “borrow,” related to something new, and then something blue, which is not blue the color, but blue, our minds [unclear], or blue chunks: something we saw recently that we recommend you watch or recommend you stay away from. It’s been a lot of fun for me, anyway. I love to talk about movies, and ever since college, all my movie-talking buddies are scattered to the wind, and I really don’t have anyone to do that with. Skye and Jason have been phenomenal movie discussion partners, and apparently a few people like to listen to us rant about it, which has been fun.

Christian: Yeah, it’s been super fun. It was especially eye-opening when I went to Washington, D.C., last fall, and they heard that I was there, but I knew you, and they really wanted to talk to you because they were fans of The Movie Proposal. So that was super exciting. So tell me what last episode covered, if you will.

Josh: This is when we go to Jason. What did we do last time?

Jason: Oh, a Wonder Woman.

Josh: I can’t hear you for some reason, Jason. I don’t know. Can you hear Jason, Christian?

Christian: Nope.

Josh: Nope. Okay. Well, we did Wonder Woman 1984, which none of us liked, so it was a lot of fun to talk about.

Christian: And is that the older part? You talked about the new Wonder Woman, then you talked about the old Wonder Woman?

Josh: No, no, no. Wonder Woman 84, that’s what it’s called.

Christian: Oh, that’s the new one.

Josh: Yeah, because, here, this is the sequel. And often they’ll come up with little acronyms, if you will, like T2 for Terminator 2, right? Wonder Woman 2 would be WW2, so it would look like World War II, which wouldn’t make any sense, right? And they decided to make this film in 1984, so it’s WW84. Anyway, but it’s the sequel to the first Wonder Woman, so it just came out a month or two ago.

Christian: Okay. And so what was your old one?

Josh: Skye said Superman II. Oh, I said Terms of Endearment. [Laughter]

Christian: So you both could come with an old movie that’s not the same.

Josh: Oh, yeah. Everyone more or less comes with their own opinions and movies they want to talk about and share, and we just do a lot of reminiscing, a lot of sharing fond memories of films or bashing films. But also, I think what I appreciate about this is it isn’t just a critique of films, why it was good, why it was bad. It’s also speaking to, like, as a father, things will stand out to me, and so I might speak about how this particular Marvel film reminded me of what it means to be a father, and so we’ll talk about fatherhood or something. So it’s fun in that way, because it’s not just “the directing was terrible,” because we’re not that well versed in filmmaking to be film critics. We just like to talk about movies.

Christian: Well, what I do think is great about that, honestly, though, especially in the borrowed part, you’ll bring borrowed things that I haven’t heard of or that I haven’t seen before from the past. Not borrowed, the old. And yeah, so I just highly recommend people listen to that. You can find it on any of your podcast streaming platforms. And I noticed also you have a segment of the website at The Holy Post, so holypost.com, there’s a Movie Proposal tab, and you can get some more information. So, Jason, are you back online? Can we hear you?

Jason’s spec scripts and a fellowship

Jason: Can you? Yes. Hey. Okay, I just had to reset my mic. I don’t know why. I was unmuted, but you can hear me.

Christian: Welcome back. So you’ve got some projects in the pipeline we’ve talked about before, and our audience would really like to hear a little bit more about what’s going on with you creatively.

Jason: Yeah, so we’ve got a couple different things that we’re working on. Right now we’ve decided to try to apply to get into the Warner Brothers television screenwriting fellowship, I think is what it’s called. I don’t know, it’s got a whole long name, and they recently changed it, and I don’t remember exactly what it is. So we’re working on spec scripts. A spec script is a fascinating little term, because it means a different thing if it’s made for a movie and it means a different thing if it’s made for a TV show. So we’re writing a spec script for a television show, which is: you take an existing show and you write an episode of it as if you were working on that show.

So we’re going to write an episode of Ted Lasso. That’s what we’ve decided to do. So we’ve been working on an outline, and we’ve been watching all the episodes and making notes about, okay, so this is what we know about this character, that’s what we know about that character. I have a whole huge, long note about just different things that are little mentions here and there, and you’re trying to build a mythology of a character and try to weave those in. So that’s what we’ve been working on this last month a lot.

But we’ve also been writing our own script, which is called Max Shepard, which is a pretty fun little project. We’re excited about that. We just finished up what we’re calling version two of that and sent that off to some friends in the industry to see what they think of it, and see if they want to pass it to anyone. Because that’s a big thing as a writer: what you try and do is write something, pass it off to someone who is in the industry, and then if they like it, they’ll pass it on to some of their agents and managers. That happened with our last project. People passed off our teaser that we’d made for this little show, and all the agents and managers it went to were like, “Nah, not for me.” Which is, yeah, that’s fine. That’s part of the process: just getting in front of people and then rejecting you. That’s just a huge part of it. So that’s where we are right now.

Josh: It’s sort of the situation [unclear] has no idea what you’re talking about. Sort of the story of my life.

Christian: Yeah. Well, Jason, we’re going to continue to follow your adventures. When do you submit your thing to that program, that fellowship?

Jason: We’ve got until, I think it’s June. We’ve got quite a ways. We’re actually gonna try and write two scripts, so this is the first one we’re trying to write, and we’re trying to decide what the second one is going to be.

Christian: So cool. Well, we’ll keep following that progress. That’s awesome.

Meet Michèle Phoenix, translator for The Girl Who Wore Freedom

Well, you guys, we have something exciting today. We have a guest. We haven’t even talked about that yet, but she’s been hiding off camera, and I’m gonna let you introduce her, Josh.

Josh: I want to make sure. Oh, there she is. Michèle Phoenix, welcome to Documentary First. The reason Michèle is here is she is the translator for The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Quickly, what I think makes her qualified to be a translator is that she was born and raised in France, but she has citizenship in three different countries, which we learned is a thing, so congratulations on that. And I guess you work, I don’t know if it’s full-time, but you work in missions, which is pretty cool, and you are an author. So welcome to the podcast, Michèle.

Michèle Phoenix: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Christian: Yeah, we’re thrilled to have you. We really haven’t investigated much this translation piece of The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and it’s a super complicated little piece. So I feel like we do need to unpack it, and how you got involved and what it entails. So people that have been involved know that we’re a dual-language project, and that’s complicated things a lot. But it really began when I went in 2017 to France, and I had not thought through the translation process at all until I was trying to talk with a French person on camera and realized that this process is not as easy as I thought.

And I really knew I needed to make a decision. There were some of them that spoke English. Should I have them speak in English? Should I have them speak in French? Do we have them say something and someone translate on camera? Like, how does this work? And so I did record some initial footage, and in the footage we have usually Flo Bouchary or Michel Coupe, who are co-producers. We had them translating whatever was being said, and I would just ask the questions. Well, that doesn’t make for such great TV. And one day I received a message in the mail which said, “I am a follower of The Holy Post, and I’m familiar with your documentary. If I can ever help, let me know.” And that was you, right?

Michèle: It was. And I was just thinking, if you have an article or a document that you need translated, just shoot me a PDF and I’ll take care of that.

Christian: And so what happened? What is the rest of the story? And then what happened?

A school in a former Lebensborn manor

Michèle: Well, it turns out that we live about 10 minutes down the road from each other, so that made things a lot easier from there. I was, as you said, listening to The Holy Post a lot. I’m a devoted fan. And hearing you talking about this World War II project. And I was born and raised in France. In fact, the school that I attended when I was little, they had a special program going. It was actually a Red Cross rehab center for children with some kind of physical ailments, and they had asked children from the village to join them.

And that school was housed in an old manor house that the Nazis had taken over in World War II and transformed into a baby factory, transformed into something they call Lebensborn, a spring of life. So they would bring women who had been impregnated, voluntarily in this case, in the rest of Europe it was not this way, but it was SS soldiers who were trying to propagate the race. And they would bring the women to this beautiful manor that was now a Red Cross center. It had been a chocolatier’s estate before the war. And these babies would be born and then farmed out to high-ranking Third Reich families around France and around Europe.

And as I was growing up in this situation, in this town that had been occupied by the German forces for several years, I never knew the story of what had happened in this manor house. And it was only when I was researching, I think, my second novel, that actually is the story of the spring of life, that I discovered all of this history that nobody in town ever spoke of, even though many of them had been alive at the time, for obvious reasons.

So you start talking about a World War II project, and that kind of gets my interest piqued, especially because after leaving France and going to college in the States, I moved back to Germany and taught for 20 years in Germany. So I had a foot in each of these countries that are represented in a big way in the part of the war that The Girl Who Wore Freedom covers. So I wrote you. You said, “Well, why don’t you come over to my house?” So I came over to your house, and you started showing me this footage that you had done, I think on an iPhone. Was it just kind of simpler footage?

Christian: Yeah, we had someone on an iPhone, and we had shot some on a Canon live, and it was really just to see if these characters were compelling. Were they comfortable on camera? I was never really intending to use any of it, but...

Building a hidden translation system

Michèle: Right. So I’m watching this, and I’m hearing you asking the question of the French person, and then somebody translates it into French for you, and then the French person, in a very French way, gives you this long-winded, beautiful answer. And I’m imagining your face, because at that time you didn’t speak as much French as you do now, your face probably looking very blank and pleasant, but not giving them immediate feedback for the details that they were giving you. And then when they were done speaking, 10 minutes of translation, and then you could ask your next question.

So as we sat there and looked at your laptop that day, I wondered out loud if it would be possible to have a simultaneous system set up, so that one person who speaks both languages can simultaneously translate your question, then flip and translate the French response into English into your ear, and then go back and forth that way. And you put it to your team, and they created a system that would...

Christian: Well, yeah. What I think I did first was say, oh my gosh, you’re completely right about that. And one of the ways you convinced me was you explained to me that an interviewee will, in a sense, bond with the people that they’re speaking with. And so what I was noticing is that when a French person was speaking with a French person there, and they were having eye contact, that interaction, really the interesting facial expressions and the interesting stuff, was going on between the French person, and not so much with me.

Michèle: Right.

Christian: And so you began saying, you know, would it be possible to do what they do at the UN and have somebody simultaneously translating in your ear from an undisclosed location, from a hidden location, so the interviewee only bonds with you? And I was like, oh my gosh, you’re right. You’re coming with us to Normandy.

Michèle: Well, it’s not only that. It’s also that if they’re telling you a story of this traumatic event that they witnessed, and you’re not understanding them, you’re smiling pleasantly at them, but you’re not encouraging them to really relive it, because you’re not giving them that facial feedback of, oh, I’m with you, I’m feeling you, I’m compassionate. So yeah, so you said, “Can you go to France?” And I said, “Well, let me look at my calendar.” And sure enough, I had two and a half weeks free that I could take off and go on the trip of a lifetime.

Christian: Yeah. Well, the other thing that I think was fascinating that I learned over the course of time: I then went to research what kind of equipment we would need to make this possible, and it was way too expensive, like out of our range as an independent film production. And so we began thinking outside of the box of how could we do this with you and do it in an inexpensive fashion. And I give all the credit to Terry John and Corey Lillard and Jason Hoban, who all kind of worked together to figure this out. And I think we came up with a system that maybe cost 30 bucks.

Michèle: Yeah.

Christian: It was these tiny little earpieces that were wireless, and we used a microphone that was wireless, and we used like a wireless mic, little tran-, I don’t know, what are they called? It’s like a transmission. Do you know, Jason, what I’m talking about?

Jason: Just a transmitter.

Christian: Yeah, a transmitter. That’s it. A transmitter. You make it sound so easy, Jason. And so we would hide Michèle somewhere close by, because the wireless stuff all had to work. We would give the interviewee an earpiece, and I would have an earpiece, and I would ask the question, and Michèle would translate it into the earpiece of the French person while I was asking it. And then as the French person would answer me, she would then translate to me, probably only two or three seconds behind.

Michèle: And the trick was, on my little transmitter I had two buttons: one button I clicked to talk to Christian, and one button I clicked to talk to the interviewee. And I had to keep those buttons flying back and forth during these interviews as well. It was a challenge for my brain that I loved. It was exhilarating at the same time, because I had to keep the technology straight and be thinking at the speed French people speak, which is really rapidly, and translating in a way that you would be able to respond immediately to what they were saying.

Christian: Well, and there’s another level, too, that people don’t think about, because words don’t line up exactly, particularly where French and English are concerned. The French have more words to convey an idea or a story than we would use. So in Michèle’s brain, she had to not translate word for word; she had to translate ideas into my language. So she’s making quick decisions on the fly. And the thing that was so interesting to me about Michèle: I’d had another translator, and even during principal photography, Michèle would switch off with another translator. Michèle is uniquely qualified, in my opinion, because her brain works really fast, and she’s able to, in a second, translate things very, very quickly and switch back and forth between the two languages.

And if you have someone that’s not as fluent as Michèle, it is much more difficult to do that kind of switching. So for first-time filmmakers, I think that’s really important for you to understand. The person is key. They have to be technically proficient to make a system like this work. They have to be very proficient in both languages, and that not only has to happen mentally, in your brain, where you’re making those translations, but out your mouth as well. You were a quick speaker, and so you made that very seamless.

Michèle: And I don’t think I realized that fully until we went back in 2019 and we had dinner with Jean-Marie and Dany, do you remember, on a Sunday lunch, and Bill Ebel came with us. And I was just doing my thing, sitting at the table, translating this ping-pong of a conversation that was just racing around the table. And I looked at Bill, and his eyes were huge, and he was just staring, like, is this really happening in real time? And for me it was just calisthenics, just having more linguistic fun with the situation.

Christian: Yeah. Bill had yet to ever go over, and so that was like a baptism by fire for him, I think.

The first interview: no system, just whispering

You know, I’d love for you to talk about the very first time that we put this technology in practice in real life, because we had it all worked out in America, but it’s a wholly different thing: you travel across the country and you’re trying to set up quickly. What happened at that first interview with Henri-Jean?

Michèle: No, are you, it’s...

Christian: Yeah, you’re thinking of...

Michèle: Yes. Well, that goes down as my quirkiest memory from our translating. We got there, we set up. This is my first time on a documentary crew, so I was amazed by everything that went into it, the lighting and everything. And we got ready to start the interview and realized that our system wasn’t up and running yet, that it hadn’t been all put together on that side of the ocean. So here we are doing our first official interview. You’re sitting. This man is the former mayor of Sainte-Mère-Église, right? Is that correct?

Christian: His father was the mayor of Sainte-Mère-Église, and he and his brother have sort of been carrying on their tradition. Just very, very powerful, and, you know, your inspiration [unclear]. Yeah, you’re on a time deadline, too. It’s not like you can pussyfoot around here. You’ve got things scheduled and lined up all day, and our equipment didn’t work. And so this is what Ken Burns says all the time: when you’re making a film, you have to solve a million problems, and solve them quickly. And that’s what we had to do in that moment. So Michèle is like...

Michèle: Well, and be flexible, always, which was the theme of my former job. So you sat down in your chair, and I sat down, I mean, my face was in your hair, right behind you, and I’m whispering as quietly as I can this beautiful interview about this man who has not only memories of the war, but then all the veterans that he’s hosted over all these decades since then. And I don’t know, did you have to edit out some of my sounds when you did...

Christian: I mean, we had to edit out...

Michèle: Me completely.

Christian: So, I mean, that’s right. That worked. Now, in retrospect, you know, the most important thing is that you were hidden, and they weren’t connecting with you, and they weren’t hearing you, because you weren’t engaging with me. It only worked for Henri-Jean because he spoke English.

Michèle: Yes.

Christian: Because he then understood my questions, and you weren’t having to translate for him really. There were times where he had a few questions, and you could just speak up and explain. But yeah, we had to be flexible, and in the end it did work. But a lot of it was quick thinking on your part, and I give you a lot of kudos for that.

Michèle: It was fun. It was a challenge.

Christian: So, Josh and Jason, what are you thinking? I mean, do you have any other questions to ask her regarding those things before we keep going?

Tangled Ashes, and a young German soldier at Brécourt Manor

Josh: I’m still stuck on the baby factories. That was quite a start.

Michèle: Yeah.

Josh: It wasn’t [unclear]. Pick up Tangled Ashes on Amazon.com. That’s your book? It’s called Tangled Ashes?

Michèle: That’s the previous one on World War II.

Josh: Yeah. Okay, that covers the baby factory.

Michèle: Yes, yes. Actually, I need to amend that. It covers the baby factory in the past part of the novel. In the present part of the novel, they’re refurbishing the mansion and the castle, and they’re finding hints as to what happened in the past. So it doesn’t just dwell in the baby factory.

Josh: Gotcha. You mentioned, you’re talking about just stories and so forth, and you mentioned your quirkiest one. You mentioned you had kind of an emotional one. I wonder if you could share that story.

Michèle: Yeah. We were with Charles de Vale [unclear]. He owns Brécourt Manor, where famously Band of Brothers had their first really big combat, trying to take over an artillery battery there of pretty big machine guns. And he had walked our film crew out into the fields where this happened. And I was, as Christian said, quite a bit back, so that he was connecting with her and not with me, the translator. And he was telling the story about the memories of his father, who was shot during the war.

And you had Jake with you, Christian. Jake must have been right up next to you at that point. And at one point Charles starts talking about a young German soldier that the family had connected to a little bit, because he was more scared, and they caught him crying sometimes. I think he was maybe 17 years old, as I remember. And he’s talking about the soldier, and I’m translating and just trying to remain intellectual about this, and then I hear you say something about, Jake is in tears. And so I, in my translation, start to cry as well. So I’m kind of blubbering the translation into your ear, and then I could hear your voice cracking.

And there’s something about hearing a historic moment in a human context, in a feet-on-the-ground, in-the-grass, among-the-trees context, that really brought it to life in such a heartbreaking way. And I love that this first moment of real emotion for me was about the young German man, about the 17-year-old man who was forced into the army, probably was combating in lands that were not familiar to him, that were not home to him, who probably just wanted to leave, and he was caught up in this battle that took so many lives.

Christian: Well, that’s why it’s so beautiful for me that they bring the Germans back every year for D-Day, as well as the other nations.

Michèle: Yeah. And that was so tragic, because he was killed.

Christian: He was, yeah. And you know, they had seen his vulnerability and his youth, and I think that was what was so interesting to me: the grayness of the relationship between the Germans and the French in Normandy. Because, as they would say, the Germans were correct. They didn’t want to be there either. They were either the young soldiers or the old men or the wounded. They all wanted to be back home, and they didn’t have a choice. They were caught up in this war.

Willie Kellerman, Albert and the march to Carentan

And that was not the only moving moment you had. Another one that I remember witnessing was when we were at the soldier dinner, at the town hall, when they were going to divide up all the soldiers to go home with the French and have dinner. You saw an old Frenchman trying to communicate with Willie Kellerman, one of our veterans. Tell us a little bit about that story.

Michèle: That was our first event, our very first event. It was in [unclear]. The mayor had spoken. These gentlemen, these veterans, were going to be sent out to various families. And at the end, when people were just gathering around, I saw this very elderly old man, I found out he was 88, I think, at the time, drop a chair next to Willie Kellerman, who speaks not a word of French, and start talking to him. And there were tears on his face, and he had no teeth, and so he was trying to make himself understood in a language the other man didn’t understand, without being able to correctly pronounce things anyway. And Willie just was so sweet and was holding his hand and patting his hand. And I thought, I’ve got to help this communication happen. So I got down on my knees in front of them and translated back and forth.

And this French gentleman was telling the story of D-Day, when he saw two paratroopers land in his small village, [unclear], you know where that is. And the paratroopers were under such heavy fire that they found refuge in this man’s home when he was a child. And then Willie started telling his story of landing. Was it Utah Beach? I can’t remember where it was that he landed.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

Michèle: And then he was taken by the Germans, and he managed to escape during a march. And these two men, who have never met each other before, sat there holding hands and looking into each other’s faces with tears, and just telling disconnected stories, but so viscerally connected to each other because it had all happened at the same time in their lives. And I remember, at the end of that, that’s the first time that I went up to you. I had no idea what I was getting into when I said yes to this, and I remember going up to you in the lobby afterwards with tears in my eyes and going, “Thank you so much. Thank you for allowing me to be here for this.”

Christian: Yeah, it was such a, you were in the right place at the right time, and you were able to give a gift, and I saw that happen over and over again. The other one I’m thinking about is when we were filming the exodus [unclear] and the march that sort of went over, oh, what’s that, the [unclear]. Yeah, we were filming that, and they then marched into the town of Carentan. You saw yet another very old man sitting on the side, just weeping. Tell us about that old Frenchman.

Michèle: I think that’s the most impactful encounter of my time there, and it was not planned. We were watching, I think it’s about 400 reenactors march from Utah Beach through the fields to the town of Carentan, and then they have this big procession through the town center with the jeeps leading them. And your part of the crew was off on another assignment that day, and I was encountering [unclear] with my camera, just taking pictures. I took pictures of everything during this time. And I was waiting for them to march up the street, and I looked down, and somebody had pulled up a folding chair and helped this 80s, 93-year-old gentleman into the chair.

And because I’m always taking pictures, I turned around and tried to take a picture of him, and he looked at me and he said, “You’re taking a picture of me?” And he kind of seemed angry. So I got down again next to him, and I said, “You know, I would love to know more about you.” And his name is Albert. And as these French and German and Dutch and all-nationalities men dressed as American soldiers are marching up the street in front of him, he is weeping. I have video of it, actually. And his hands are shaking, and he’s telling me his life story: of when he remembers being liberated, and of what life was like during the occupation, of carrying green bags of grain on his shoulders that weighed as much as he did, because the Germans told him that he had to get them from point A to point B for no apparent reason, just to make this young, I think he was in his early teens or late teens at the time of the war.

So again, this unscripted, unplanned thing, to get to kneel at the feet of this man, who passed away three months ago now, I’m sad to say, and to hear his story. There’s something with him and with the veterans, there’s something about looking into their faces while they’re uttering these sentences that are unthinkable to those of us who are living today in America, and to see the emotions that kind of wash over their faces, and to see their eyes reliving it. It’s an incomparable experience. And Albert was one of those for me. He brought home the fact that the French had so suffered until the liberation.

Managing emotion as translator and interviewer

Christian: Yeah. And I think what makes this such a challenge for a translator like yourself is that if you’re at the UN and you’re translating back and forth, it’s just factual information. But here you are seeing people’s faces, and you are having to manage doing a job, but there is no way you cannot feel that emotion. And so you’re having to manage that emotion. And I think for you it’s even more powerful because of your own history and how much you bring to the project.

The one thing that I found: I used to think, when I first started interviewing and doing this film, that I was such a horrible interviewer, because I would get so invested emotionally in the story, and I would cry or get emotional, and I used to see that as a weakness. And what I now know, looking back at the footage, is that actually that worked in our favor, because I was free with my emotion, they gave emotion back to me, and that translated on camera.

Michèle: Absolutely.

Christian: But it’s a lot of stuff to manage when you’re in the moment, and it’s kind of intense.

Schoolchildren and soldiers at the Normandy American Cemetery

So is there anything else you learned while you were there that you would do differently, or that you wish you had, or that you wish you would have known?

Michèle: Not really, actually. I think it took us a little while to get into our rhythms, but within two or three days we had figured out the sound system and everything else. And no, it was such a magical two and a half weeks for me on so many different levels, and there’s just so much that is engraved in my memory that will never go anywhere. And I came back and I had to put a couple of photo books together with all the stories that I had heard, even the anecdotal ones, when you’re just passing somebody at the Colleville [unclear] cemetery, which is the Normandy American Cemetery, and translating for the schoolchildren who are there.

So this is something we didn’t expect either. The schoolchildren come to meet veterans, not on D-Day, a few days before D-Day, because these schoolchildren have helped to finance their trips overseas. So this is kind of their meet-and-greet with these veterans, and they’re all instructed to ask questions. Well, the veterans don’t speak French, they don’t speak English. So I got to be in the center of these circles, with a couple of veterans on one side and these French school kids on the other, and to translate back and forth for this generation that is French today because of those veterans, for this generation to be able to hear their words from them.

And one of the kids at the very end asked, I think it might have been Willie, asked him, “What did you learn? What have you learned through the war?” And Willie answered, “We learned how to die over here, but we never learned how to live.” And that is something that just took the breath out of my lungs for a minute.

And the other memorable moment at Colleville for me was seeing a bunch of active-duty soldiers that were sitting on a wall, young women and men who were visiting that day. And I went up to them, and I’m very bold in Normandy. I’m not usually this bold, but it feels like I have this moment. So I went up to them and I asked them, “What does it feel like for you to be watching these veterans and these French children gathering together?” And I think it’s the woman in the group who said, “It’s telling these men who really saved the world, it’s telling them that we’ve got the watch. We’ve got the watch.” And again, those are the words that anchor deep.

Fragments of Light and Grueling Glory

Christian: Yeah, it certainly was powerful. And I think, like you said, you came back and you made this a precious book for me that I will always cherish, just of the pictures and the stories. But then you went further than that. There were some things that inspired you. Why don’t you tell us what else happened after you got back?

Michèle: So I was working on book number five before the invitation came to go to Normandy. I knew I wanted it to be World War II again, because I love that era. It’s always split-time novels that I write, so there’s a modern-day component and a historical component, and I really didn’t know where the historical piece was going to go or where it was going to start. And in the marshlands outside the town of Carentan one day, I came across a gentleman by the name of Tom Rice, who is also in the documentary, who jumped out of a plane on D-Day and landed in those fields. And I wanted to write something about somebody like Tom.

And so as I met all of these veterans, and again, as I got to look into their faces, one of the ones that is most impactful to me is Russell Moulison. He’s got a good French name. And there’s just something about his face. I wanted to do honor not only to the courage of these young men, boys, some of them, at the time, but also to the conflict, the internal conflict that many of them lived with in the years following the war, after they came back to the States. So that World War II piece of the novel came out of looking into those faces and hearing some of their stories, and wanting to honor the complexity of surviving fighting in a war like World War II.

And so the modern-day story connects with this veteran’s daughter, who is now 70-something years old, who never saw her father after he returned from overseas, who needs to know what happened that changed the course of his history and her history as well. So from there, the World War II piece just kind of flowed out of me when we got home.

Christian: And what’s the name of that book?

Michèle: It’s called Fragments of Light. It’s everywhere you buy books: your bookstores, your libraries, online. And I love the book because it’s connected to so many real people that I was able to meet because of The Girl Who Wore Freedom.

Christian: Yeah. So, guys, you’ve been listening to the story. Do you have any questions in terms of the actual translation piece, or just questions for what her experiences were like?

Josh: You asked all the questions I had.

Jason: Actually, really good at that. You’d think she was an interviewer or something, wouldn’t you?

Josh: I literally have a list of questions as we’re going, oh, cross that off. No, it’s been great. And I think for me, anyway, I’ll just say this: I appreciate having you on here, Michèle, because you would think having a translator would be much more simple, just a technical thing you’ve got to check off the list. I didn’t realize how involved it was. And what a neat story for you, and where you’ve gotten from it. So yeah, so glad you could be on here.

Christian: Yeah, it was incredible. Yeah, and another interesting thing that came out of it: I asked Michèle to write a few things. I asked her if she could take some of the, we’ve used some of her photos on our website and in our blog. She’s written for us, so you can find some of those things there. And once she did write one of the blogs, I really felt like we could turn it into a video. And so we’ve now done that. We’ve turned this into a video. It’s called Grueling Glory: The March to Carentan, and we have turned it into a short. And so my hope is the next thing that we will enter into film festivals is this little short. And it features Tom Rice, right?

Michèle: Who I met in those fields, and who became the military advisor for the novel in the weeks and months that followed. Yeah, it was amazing.

Jean-Marie’s kitchen, and where to find Michèle’s books

Can I tell you my favorite translating moment, just before we go? I know that we’re out of time. If anybody has seen the documentary, you’ve met Jean-Marie, and his wife, Dany, is kind of the figurehead of the documentary. And we were translating in their home one afternoon, and I was off in the kitchen, and you were translating in the dining room, over in the living room. And Jean-Marie was preparing lunch for everybody that day, for whenever we were finished translating.

So I’m doing the usual clicking back and forth and translating, and every three seconds Jean-Marie is in the kitchen with me, keeping his eye on the food. I’ve got a little plate of nuts in front of me, I’ve got some good hard French cider in front of me, I’ve got some red wine that turns up in front of me. I was the most well-fed person by the time we were finished with that interview. But it was his, you know, honoring the guest. And he would giggle. He’s one of the many people who are so unique and so endearing that to meet them, even through the screen of your TVs or a big screen in a theater, you just can’t forget them afterwards.

Christian: Yeah, I would love to do a whole documentary just on Jean-Marie. I mean, he’s such an unsung hero in our film. He carries such a, you know, light and a funny and a touching memory about the colonel that he lost.

Michèle: Yes.

Christian: But he was inspired by the very first paratrooper that he met. He met him, and that paratrooper gave him gum. He went home and said he was going to become a paratrooper, and his mother laughed it off. But he became a paratrooper, and then his son became a paratrooper. And you realize, just one interaction and a piece of gum changed the course of the family’s life. And then beyond that, he went into work for, you know, the secret service of France, which we won’t go into.

Michèle: Which we’re not supposed to talk, right.

Christian: But yeah, I mean, that interaction when he was seven changed the course of his life. And so I’d love to do a story about that sometime. But thank you for coming on with us. Where can people find your books? Do you have a website?

Michèle: I have a website, michelephoenix.com. Michèle with one L, Phoenix, dot com. But the book is available anywhere, even in your local library. It should be there. It got a [unclear] review with the Library Journal, so most libraries probably picked it up. And online.

Christian: Yeah. And you guys can read her blogs on our website under the blog tab, and there are several videos that she’s helped us with under our video section on YouTube. So check those out. And we certainly enjoyed having you today. Thank you for teaching [unclear] so much fun translation.

Michèle: And thank you. Thank you for giving stories to tell by inviting me on the project.

Christian: You are so welcome. It’s been our pleasure. We’ve loved having you a part of it. So thank you so much for coming. All right, Josh, well, I think that’s all the time we have today. Why don’t you take us out of here?

Josh: Okay. Well, again, Michèle with one L, thanks for being here, and thanks to you for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everyone has a story to tell, and you could be the one to tell it.

Christian: Yes, you can. Bye, everybody.

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