For Jonathan Kalafer, life is one big classroom.

Eclectic films and the artists who make them enjoy a home at Rutgers.  Read the story

"Teaching is the ultimate creative outlet,” said the digital media teacher, “because you’re working with the human mind.”

So when Kalafer, who graduated from Rutgers in 1998, directed his first film, We Love You, he saw the experience as another opportunity to pursue his calling. The film will be shown at the New Jersey Film Festival on the university’s New Brunswick Campus October 9, at 7 p.m., in Scott Hall.

“It’s not such a huge leap to see documentary filmmaking as similar to being an educator,” said the 34-year-old, who will be on hand at the screenings to speak with the audience. “You’re putting something out there and, hopefully, you’re doing that thing that I love to do.”

The 40-minute film is about a counter-cultural event known as a Rainbow Gathering, which occurs in a different national forest each summer as tens of thousands of people create a temporary city in the wilderness, live harmoniously, and pray for peace.

Kalafer hopes the film will encourage audiences to reflect on the ideals of the Rainbow Family, which include nonviolence, egalitarianism, and inclusiveness: All Rainbow Gatherings are held with an open invitation to people from all walks of life and of all beliefs.

In particular, the filmmaker wants people to witness a 2008 conflict between the group and the U.S. Forest Service, which patrols Rainbow Gatherings, and to appreciate the way the Rainbow Family rebounded from the near-riot that occurred then.

One day, Kalafer said, federal officers were shooting pepper ball pellets in the Rainbow Family’s daycare area as they removed an adult they thought had marijuana. The next day, group members were holding their annual July 4 prayer for world peace.

Given Kalafer’s background, it’s not surprising that he told that story through film. The medium has always been a part of his life.

His father, Steve Kalafer – who owns car dealerships and the Somerset Patriots baseball team – coproduced The Night Train to Kathmandu in 1988, and later produced a number of documentaries. The elder Kalafer has been nominated three times for an Academy Award.

“Growing up, I had an appreciation of film from a business perspective, but it was at Rutgers that I really learned about the creative side of filmmaking,” Kalafer said. “It was the first time I really saw a lot of great films, and with my professors, we got deep into them.”

Kalafer was pulled into the family business when his father was producing The Diary of Immaculee, about a woman hidden away as genocide raged in Rwanda. Kalafer stepped in as a producer at his busy dad’s request.

When the work was done, Kalafer wanted more, but sought a less harrowing topic. He’d visited a Rainbow Gathering during his Rutgers days and thought the largely unknown phenomenon, which started in 1972, would fit the bill.

His father, who produced We Love You, agreed.

“He’s not the kind of guy you’re probably going to find at a Rainbow Gathering,” Kalafer said of his dad, “but as a documentary filmmaker, he thinks it’s a great subject.”

Pursuing the project wasn’t easy, Kalafer said. Parking was an hour’s hike away from the 2008 gathering in Wyoming, and that’s where Kalafer and his five-person crew had to leave the trailer they slept and worked in for 10 days.

“It was challenging, because Rainbows have a longstanding distrust of anybody with a camera,” Kalafer added.

Yet it was a member of the Rainbow Family who supplied footage when Kalafer’s camera operators – who had wrapped for the day – missed the action between the Forest Service and the gatherers.

The man’s footage “was more low-resolution,” Kalafer said, “but from a filmmaking perspective, that almost adds to it. I’m happy that part of the film happened that way, with everyone pitching in to do the job.”

The screening of We Love You at Rutgers will be the second after the film was named best documentary over the summer at the LA Shorts Fest in California, the largest short film festival in the world.

Kalafer hopes his film will also be shown at other festivals, with the goal of winning it exposure on cable TV, DVD distribution – and, possibly, that elusive Academy Award.

If it happens, Kalafer said, his high school students will be partly responsible. They helped him pick his camera staff and advised him as he edited the film, and they got a credit, collectively, at the end of the movie.