There’s one major thing to be said about Sonja de Vries’ penchant for social activism: She comes by it honestly. Born in Louisville, she grew up spending time with both her mother’s Communist family in Holland and on the Prospect farm of her politically progressive father, the recently deceased Henry Wallace. Her grandmother’s apartment was a safe house for Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and that history shaped her worldview — one that includes an innate sense of wanting to right the world’s wrongs. As she puts it, “I grew up with a strong sense of responsibility in terms of doing what you can for justice.”
Her father, too, had a large impact on the 42-year-old’s leftist leanings. She recalls death threats by telephone, bullets in their mailbox and spray-painted hate messages on the barn — none of which fazed her father. “Of course,” she says, “he took precautions, but it never, never made him not march, or speak out, or write that letter to the editor.” After witnessing the dedication of her families an ocean apart, de Vries has dedicated her own life to fighting for the protection of human rights and exposing stories of injustice through film.
Having never attended film school, de Vries made her first film “by accident.” After writing some articles about gay and lesbian rights in Cuba, a country whose people her father championed, she was approached by a Cuban non-governmental organization that wished to work with her on a documentary. The result of their combined effort was Gay Cuba, finished in 1995. Next came OUT: The Making of a Revolutionary, in 2000, a collaboration with leftist Laura Whitehorn, a former U.S. political prisoner. Her most recent work, 2005’s Refuseniks, looks at Israelis who refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza, or the military in any regard. For de Vries, it was inspiring as “something hopeful in the context of a situation that was feeling not hopeful at all.”
Discussing such personal matters forms bonds between de Vries and her subjects, which enriches her life as much as it does those who are able to share their stories. She wants to continue with her filmmaking, and is currently working on projects — next, most likely, is a piece about her father. As she says, “People working for justice — it sounds rhetorical, but it’s very uplifting; it’s exciting; it’s inspiring.”
— Katie Brown
