From the Camera to the Classroom
Why I went from documentary filmmaking to law school in middle age, and what the two disciplines share.
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Preserving Testimony: Notes on a Holocaust Archive
On the practice of recording long-form Holocaust survivor testimony for a private archive held in trust with the families.
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Riding the C&O Canal: Lawrence Justin Mills on Cycling, History, and the Stories Roads Leave Behind
The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal runs 184.5 miles from Washington D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland — a nineteenth-century engineering project that became one of the most historically layered trails in the country. For Lawrence Justin Mills, a filmmaker and cyclist based in Silver Spring, Maryland, the C&O Canal is both a local landmark and a way
Justin Mills on Ikaria: What a Greek Island Taught a Maryland Filmmaker About Storytelling
Justin Mills, a filmmaker based in Silver Spring, Maryland, has long been drawn to places where daily life carries the weight of something larger. Ikaria — a small Greek island in the Aegean — is one of those places. Ikaria is known internationally as one of the world’s Blue Zones, where people routinely live past
The Path of the Shadows: Lawrence Justin Mills on Documenting Holocaust Survivor Stories
Some stories demand to be told. For Lawrence Justin Mills, a filmmaker based in Silver Spring, Maryland, that story came in the form of Holocaust survivors whose testimonies had never been captured on film. The documentary, The Path of the Shadows, follows Justin Mills and his collaborator Carlos Mauricio as they travel to interview survivors
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Witnessing Carlos Mauricio
On filming Carlos Mauricio — a Salvadoran civil war survivor — and what long-form documentary witness actually requires.
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Filming the 2009 FMLN Election Victory Celebration in Maryland
In March 2009, the FMLN won the Salvadoran presidential election for the first time in the party’s history. Mauricio Funes became El Salvador’s first left-wing president after nearly two decades of ARENA government following the end of the civil war. For the Salvadoran diaspora community in Maryland — one of the largest Salvadoran communities in
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Behind the Extended Trailer for El Camino de la Sombra
The extended trailer for El Camino de la Sombra — The Path of the Shadows — was the first public-facing piece of the documentary I released. At nearly four minutes, it was longer than most trailers, but the story we were telling needed room to breathe. This trailer has been viewed over 4,600 times, and
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Filming Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy Live in Washington, D.C.
In 2013, I had the opportunity to film a full live performance by Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy in Washington, D.C. The concert ran for nearly an hour and twenty minutes, and I captured the entire thing. For anyone who knows Nicaraguan music and Latin American folk tradition, filming Mejía Godoy perform live is not a
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How I Made The Path of the Shadows — A Documentary on the Salvadoran Civil War
Maryland filmmaker Lawrence Justin Mills describes making The Path of the Shadows, a documentary featuring survivor Carlos Mauricio, who was persecuted by Salvadoran government death squads during the Civil War.
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