Not every filmmaker is a big shot Hollywood mogul, or a radical independent. In fact, many filmmakers don’t even work in Hollywood. One of the filmmakers behind the recent documentary Paper Clips, Elliot Berlin, for example, is a WJ alum. “I went to school at Walter Johnson really in the heyday of the ‘60s,” recalled Berlin. “I finished in ’71 so my time there spanned Woodstock… it was a very different time, one could smoke on campus back then.” Additionally, that area of office buildings that lies between WJ and the mall didn’t exist. “I went to high school when Montgomery Mall was just built or was just being built, and there was a field between what’s Walter Johnson and Montgomery Mall and cows grazed there.”

After high school Berlin attended college where he majored in comparative religious studies. It was not until the age of 30 that he first began his career in the entertainment industry, taking graduate classes at American University which lead to an internship in the business. Berlin now works with a production company called The Johnson Group which made Paper Clips. The film has won over 15 various film awards, and was named one of the five best documentaries of 2005 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

Paper Clips chronicles the efforts of a middle school in Whitwell Tennessee to educate its students about the impact of the Holocaust by collecting 6 million paper clips to represent the Jews who perished. Berlin and his associates began work on the film in 2001 after an article about the school’s project appeared in The Washington Post. After some initial production made while spending some time in Whitwell, Berlin said, “we started to get a feeling there really was a great story there.”

Berlin and his crew traveled to Tennessee many times over the next few years collecting footage for the film. “We spent a lot of time down there, we got to know the people really well and in every conceivable way it was great experience” Berlin said, who opted to drive the 10 hours to Tennessee instead of flying, as it was shortly after 9/11.

The school’s project was originally intended to educate its students about diversity. Whitwell, where the film takes place, is a small rural town which has been in an economic depression since the collapse of the coal mining industry. With few minorities the town lacks diversity, and the teachers that developed the project wanted to show their students the danger of prejudice.

“Different people have different takeaways when they see the film. Some people think of it as a story about education. Some people think about it as a story about getting off your duff and doing something,” explained Berlin. “To me, the main theme of it really has more to do with recognizing your own prejudices and trying to overcome them.”

One of the film’s most powerful moments comes when a group of holocaust survivors comes to talk to the students about their experiences. “It was really interesting seeing how they interacted with the kids,” said Berlin. “So many of the kids really, really wanted to talk to them and see first hand what they had to say and had to talk about.”

Currently, Berlin is working on a project about people who invent musical instruments, and said that it is some of the most fun he has ever had. As for the business of filmmaking itself: “It’s a fun business to be in, it has its tedious work-a-day aspects of it as well. It brings you to different places and introduces you to different people and that is all very interesting.”