“Sometimes the truth is like a second chance,” U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin tells Sean and Andrea Nix Fine in “The Sixth,” sitting down for an interview that in spite of all the testimony he would elicit about the insurrection that nearly brought down the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6th as part of the select committee assigned to make sense of it still couldn’t have come easily. The Representative from Maryland recounts details that have been aired publicly before about how he made his way to the Capitol shortly after the funeral for his son, bringing his two daughters along to his office for moral support, only to worry that he’s put them in harm’s way when a mob of Trump supporters overwhelmed the Capitol police that were there to protect the building. However, the personal stakes and political stakes have never seemed so aligned as they do in the harrowing documentary from the directing duo behind such films as “Life According to Sam” and “War Dance,” in which the battle for the soul of America comes through as those that experienced firsthand wrestle with their emotions from that day.
Some still grapple with residual physical pain, with Capitol Police Officer Daniel Hodges having had his riot gear ripped off and defenseless against the mob that pummeled him with pepper spray when not with their fists, while others contend with psychological trauma, such as Rep. James Clyburn’s Director of Communications Erica Loewe, who looked forward to the opportunity of bearing witness to the historic nature of certifying the 2020 election results until the long-unquestioned sanctity of the institution suddenly looked uncertain and left her shaken to the core. Yet their testimony in “The Sixth,” coupled with the Fines’ intricate real-time chronicle of January 6th taken from a variety of footage captured that day, allow for an unusually engaging and comprehensive view of the events that unfolded and fragile system of government in which individual human decisions still have major consequences, for better or worse.
While bewildering questions remain such as why the National Guard was never deployed to assist the woefully overmatched police at the scene from the Capitol and the D.C. police, “The Sixth” gets right to the heart of others with multiple perspectives from inside and outside the Capitol, illustrating how exactly such a security breach was possible and with photojournalist Mel D. Cole having made his beat Make America Great Again rallies in the year leading up to January 6th, why this assembly of protestors was different than others he had experienced. Not only the sheer, overwhelming force to break into the Capitol can be felt, but also the will to protect the institution at all costs and while the filmmakers aren’t about to suggest that the system can’t be compromised given what happened on the 6th, the film does offer the hope that there are many out there still willing to stand up for it. With the film now arriving on VOD and digital, Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine generously took the time to talk about creating such a powerful mosaic around the pivotal moment in American history, the difficulty for many of revisiting it and having their own hometown perspective on it.
How did you get interested in this?
Sean Fine: Ironically, we were making a film with A24 about the peaceful transition of power. We were just in the beginning of filming that and we sent a crew down to cover Trump’s speech because it was going to be his last, and we thought this would be interesting day, but we definitely didn’t think this was going to happen. To the credit of our cinematographer, Caz Rubacky, he texted us and was like, “I’m going to follow this where it goes,” and then it was pretty scary. We lost our communication with him for a couple hours and we were sitting here, on Twitter with the DC police, we’re watching and there’s pipe bombs and talk of people being shot. It’s really chaotic and no one knows what’s going on, so we were very nervous, but when he finally came back, we decided to change the topic to January 6th and called A24 immediately and said, “We’re from here, this is our home, and we think it’s important to tell this story the way we tell stories,” and to their credit, they supported us 100% and said, “Yeah, let’s do this 180.” Then we started to unravel the day.
Andrea Nix Fine: You could argue it’s still about the transition of power as a film, but it was obviously a much different film and we had to start from scratch in terms of how we wanted to proceed and how to tell it.
You’ve got your own footage from the ground, but obviously you’re pulling from a number of different places all capturing the same moment from different angles. What was it like creating a real-time, tick-tock experience like this?
Andrea Nix Fine: That was an enormous effort that was shouldered by an incredible team of people that we worked with. We had folks that were diving into the footage and trying to find everything that’s downloaded from Parler and up on the web. We didn’t pay any insurrectionists for their footage. We [employed] Fair Use to go get that, but there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours that had to be scoured through, and the film goes through the day, from 5 a.m. to its closure, and with every single piece of footage, we were trying to have it be from multiple perspectives and angles, so we needed to understand each piece of footage to the minute what time of day it was and what location it’s from, and where did we get it. It was such a huge effort, and we worked really closely with Jeff Consiglio and Chrystie Martinez [Gouz], our editors, about how are we going to construct the day and make sure that [while] you obviously can’t include every minute, that if we are making a jump, that it’s done in a way that is never misrepresenting the time.
Sean Fine: But from a filmmaking standpoint, it’s an incredible thing to have 50 camera angles of the same moment, and the hard part is you know they exist, but you can’t find them and you have this team working endlessly to try and find them. We sat down when we first started and said, “D.C. is a place, and the Capitol is a place, not just a monument, and you have to feel like you’re there.” And verite filmmaking is what we excel at, but how can you make something that you weren’t there 100% of every moment still feel like that? That was the challenge, but it’s what we were really trying to do, so that you could really feel what it felt like for our characters to be there, rather than looking at it from a newscast from far away.
Did you actually have to put that part of it together to some degree before conducting the interviews or were they simultaneous processes?
Andrea Nix Fine: No, we start with the people, and one by one, we were trying to find them, trying to get the right chemistry of people that were inside and people that were outside. The more we looked at the footage, I think people were looking at the guy with the horns and all the people inside running around, but that front of that tunnel to us was a very, very important place to look at. A lot of people weren’t talking about the tunnel, and they still don’t, but that was a very, very violent place, and a very, very difficult place to be a police officer or to be a journalist covering the insurrection at that time. But it really started with the people, trying to get a good mix and also [getting] people that would be willing to talk. That was really hard. It wasn’t like everybody was just open right away.
Sean Fine: We also looked at what were the key moments of that day, and then whose perspective of the people that we’re talking to would speak to that, so you’re able to make sure you’re not really missing any key moments that really were pivotal, but it’s through their personal understanding. Sometimes [that could be], “I just heard a woman was shot. I don’t know why,” and that’s the first of many [perspectives]. [You hear something] coming from the chief of police Robert Contee versus Representative [Jamie] Raskin, who’s inside and he’s hearing something about it because it’s going off on people’s texts and phones that something’s going wrong there, or Mel B. Cole, who is the photographer in the crowd, who then hears the same thing, so it was this idea of jumping through perspective, and we wanted to make sure that when we were choosing people, we had people physically located in different places, and also the reason they’re there, giving a slightly different perspective on what they’re seeing.
You can see how hard it is for some of your subjects to talk about this. How much of a challenge was it to get people involved?
Sean Fine: Difficult. It was really hard to get access to even ask the question sometimes. Then even so, they had to think about it deeply because they had told a lot of people no.
Andrea Nix Fine: It’s a deeply traumatic personal experience for all of these people, and for them to sit down and talk with us and share what they went through and what they were feeling at that time, putting themselves back into that situation was very difficult. They really had to trust us, so it took a long time to talk to them, go through what we were doing, and we had a premiere last week, and I had never heard about how they felt about us interviewing them and being part of it, but that night was great because they were all saying how much they trusted us and felt like they were in good hands even throughout the process. But we filmed some really difficult subject matters across the world and we even had one character not show up for one of the interviews, [which] I’ve never had happen in any of our films, so this was just something that these people carry with them and will for the rest of their lives.
Sean Fine: But when we ask someone to be in a film, there’s a filmmaker promise that you’re giving to them that if you share your story, it will matter, so that’s what we feel like that’s our job now. The only way it matters is if people see it and if people spread that word. We’re activating everybody that this is not about party. This is a very personal human experience of human beings and I want people first and foremost to respond to [the fact] that this was a very, very scary, traumatic day for the people involved, and it matters. Also because we’re D.C.-based, [we know] it changed the life of everyone in the city than we’d say other people who don’t live here, in the same way that if you live in New York, 9/11 felt different.
Andrea Nix Fine: We wake up and see the Capitol and you drive to work, you see the Capitol. It’s part of the fabric of our city, and that was very important to us to put that in there and to feel that.
Sean Fine: It’s a really critical point in our democracy and part of this history of our country. As citizens, we need to be educated and informed and part of the larger community of what it is to be an American. And our hope is that people see [this film] that way. We’re not telling them how to think after they see it, but we do ask them to see it and if they feel like it’s important, then they actually make an effort to share it with others.
Andrea Nix Fine: And I think it’s important for people to [see] if you watch this that day on the news, it’s like a minute or two, but that was a day that started at 5 a.m. for many people and did not end until 11 at night or until three the next morning for some of them, so think about this traumatic event that’s 20 hours for some people. It’s not just something that quickly happened. It kept happening repeatedly all day for hours and hours, and when you asked about that timeline, that’s why it was important to have that because this is really what those people went through all day long and even in the end, it was just so weird how it just ended.
That was something worth bringing up because you reach a satisfying conclusion to the film, but it is abrupt as the day was and yet the experience goes on. Was it difficult to figure out the parameters for?
Sean Fine: It just feels like after all that crazy chaos, all of a sudden it just ends and there were a lot of things we didn’t know until we made the film. I think what comes through is that the police force of this city saved our democracy that day. They saved lives. They saved the leadership of this country [because] they defended the way that they did, because there just weren’t enough Capitol officers, and they’re not trained for anything like that. Frankly, NPD’s not trained for that kind of interaction that went on for hours and hours, but they stepped in when the National Guard was not being deployed, and were the ones that kept that really vicious, violent force that was outside that one area out of the Capitol. I didn’t realize that and that the D.C. police force really did a service for this entire country in a way that I don’t think people will appreciate until they see the film. When you’re actually watching in real time, everybody knows this [attack] is going on, yet the National Guard is not being deployed. It could have brought that back for hours, so I think it brings people into appreciating the event of the day.
What is it like to release the film at this particular moment in time?
Andrea Nix Fine: We think it’s important for people to see this and to remember what that entire day was like. It’s important for people to remember that there were people affected and people that you can relate to. Just because you see Congressman Raskin on this news show talking politics, this was a man who lost his son and was at his memorial the day before, and went to work that day and he’s just a human being going through all these emotions. Yes, he’s a politician. Yes, he serves our country. But these are people that are just there going to work that were handed this and they rose above and continued to serve. And that’s important to see because it’s a reminder of what can happen if we don’t vote, if we don’t get involved, whatever party you’re part of and to remind everyone that there’s still hope. Those people that endured what they endured are still serving and they’re still doing their job, so it gives us personally hope that there are people out there that are going to do the right thing in this country.
Sean Fine: And do not forget that more than 10,000 people descended upon the seat of our democracy, and tried to overthrow the US government. That is something that cannot be misplaced, forgotten, or made into revisionist history as to what it is and we can’t forget and should not forget when people are now looking at back. When January 6 comes up in discussion, you want to know what really happened and what enormous impact it had and the meaning of that going forward, so we want people to walk away [with the understanding] these were human beings and the sheer scale [of the insurrection] and how close we came to losing that and what it looks like when government is not able to protect its own citizens because it gets overwhelmed by extremist forces.
“The Sixth” is now available to rent on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Fandango, and Xbox.