Our Someone 2 Know this week is a filmmaker and associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Kari Barber told us after a heartbreaking personal tragedy several years ago, she wasn't sure she would ever make films again. After some time, she worked to bring the painful experience and her profession together in a short, animated movie. It had its world premiere a few weeks ago and is appearing in film festivals around the globe.
We caught up with Barber on campus while she was teaching “Narrative: The Art of Storytelling” at the Reynolds School of Journalism. This is a typical day of teaching the for associate professor of electronic media.
Today's lesson involves how to tell a story about someone who has passed away. “A lot of kinda ethically questionable things happen after people die,” Barber addresses the class.
Barber got a master's degree in documentary film and now devotes herself to that format in teaching and her filmmaking career. "I've done several short documentaries and worked on other people's documentaries, features and shorts."
Kari Barber got her start in broadcast news.
"I actually covered some interesting stories including some of the stories surrounding Hurricane Katrina."
When international news got her attention, Barber took her journalism skills abroad. "Southeast Asia and West Africa as a television producer, as a camera man and journalist, a video journalist." It was there she met her husband, Nico, who is also a journalist and filmmaker. "So people ask me if it's weird to be - to work with my husband, I say it's actually weird to be married to my work partner,” Kari laughs, “Because it sort of started that way."
The couple has worked together for years, created a family together - and sadly, weathered the unimaginable together.
"His name was Zinedine, we called him Zizou."
About five years ago the couple's sweet, bright eyed, five-year-old died suddenly and unexpectedly. "His heart just stopped, he just - his heart stopped and he fell to the ground in front of me in the living room of our house."
Kari says Zizou had never even been sick. Eventually, the family learned that young Zinedine probably died of a rare heart condition where often the first symptom is sudden death.
Barber says she created the animated film “Death and Magic Castles”, as a way of understanding and externalizing her grief. In it, she tells the story of what happened and part of the grief journey. Kari admits that the very personal five-minute script took months to write.
The pain is still palpable, yet Kari perseveres. Her family has grown - there are now three sons, two careers, very busy days - and a solid working plan. "I try to bring everything together as much as possible so that they support each other and it doesn't feel like I'm going in a million different directions."
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Kari Barber's animated short film “Death and Magic Castles” recently premiered in Greece and is making rounds internationally as well as here in the U.S.
Links to the trailer and more of Kari's work can be found here –
https://vimeo.com/karibarber?embedded=true&source=owner_name&owner=5895968
