Some filmmakers get catapulted into the business by a powerful Hollywood agent, others get spotted by festival judges. Martin Doblmeier, a longtime producer of public television documentaries, got his big break from an unlikelier source: Mother Teresa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1980, the future saint was on her first trip to the United States, staying at the Missionaries of Charity convent in New York City. The sisters tried to keep the visit low-key, but Mother Teresa was already a celebrated figure\u2014she\u2019d won the Nobel Peace Prize a year earlier. Word got out: worshipers gathered in the streets, the press covered her visits to soup kitchens and mass. But Mother Teresa granted only one interview\u2014not to the New York Times<\/em> or Washington Post<\/em>, but to Doblmeier (\u201980), then a rookie producer and fresh out of graduate school. He landed the career-defining scoop after building a rapport with the sisters while scouting stories for a new magazine-style show on religion and society he was developing, Real to Reel<\/em>. Soon after, one of them called him up and offered the extraordinary exclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was way of out of my league,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I spent two days with Mother Teresa and made a little film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He titled the 20-minute Real to Reel<\/em> piece after a quote from their interview\u2014a sentiment Mother Teresa often drew on\u2014Works of love are works of peace<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During their time together, they talked about her care for the poor and the Nobel prize, but Doblmeier also asked Mother Teresa for some advice about his own life and career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI said, \u2018I want to start doing films on religion, I\u2019m getting kind of serious about this. You travel the world, you hear these great stories, who would you suggest I might want to go and see?\u2019\u201d says Doblmeier. \u201cShe said, \u2018Go see a man by the name of Jean Vanier, he lives in France.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vanier was the Catholic founder of L\u2019Arche International, an organization supporting programs and homes for people with intellectual disabilities. A few years after his meeting with Mother Teresa, Doblmeier had raised enough funds to visit Vanier in France and begin filming his story. The Heart Has Its Reasons<\/em><\/a>, Doblmeier\u2019s Gabriel Award-winning documentary on Vanier and his work, was released in 1984 and broadcast on television on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, Doblmeier has produced more than 30 films\u2014most for public television and with a focus on religion, faith or spirituality\u2014and won dozens of awards, including three regional Emmys. His latest is Spiritual Audacity: The Abraham Joshua Heschel Story<\/em><\/a>, which premiered on public television stations on May 5. Heschel was an influential Jewish theologian who fled the Nazis and became a key figure in the American civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n