Film's Director and Star Attend Packed-House Screening

Don Hahn wowed us with Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He made us fall in love with Beauty and the Beast. And he captured our imagination with the highest grossing hand-drawn animated film of all time, The Lion King.

But for the Academy Award-nominated Disney producer’s latest project, he didn’t need a fantastical plot, expert storyboard artists, cutesy sidekick characters or a hit score by Randy Newman to inspire audiences. Hahn simply focused his lens on Mike Carroll, a flesh-and-blood photojournalist from Massachusetts, and the thousands of Romanian orphans Carroll first learned about in 1989.

The result is Hand Held, a moving new documentary film that made its Chicago area debut last Saturday at St. Xavier University, with Hahn and Carroll in attendance. Judging by the packed theater and standing ovation the pair received concluding the screening, it’s safe to conclude that Hand Held is an eye-opener and a crowd pleaser.

The subject matter, however, isn’t easy to swallow. It’s about the plight of some 400,000 sick and neglected children who were abandoned following the fall of the communist regime and the assassination of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania over 21 years ago. Carroll, assigned to photograph this period of upheaval in the country, quickly made a horrifying discovery: the orphanages were loaded with dead and dying victims of a pediatric AIDS epidemic. His startling photographs of the children and the conditions where they lived and died quickly got the attention of the western world, and Carroll’s work earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

Carroll and his wife Joan embarked on a 20-year odyssey to help the children and draw more international attention to the crisis. He brought doctors and volunteers to the orphanages and formed Romanian Children’s Relief (RCR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to aiding these children in need. Thanks to his efforts and others, thousands of these children have been adopted and placed in foster homes, and the vast majority of Dickensian orphanages he witnessed two decades ago are now closed. Today, Carroll continues to travel to Romania a few times a year to help orphaned and special needs children.

This history and Carroll’s good Samaritan endeavors are chronologically captured in Hahn’s documentary, which is being screened on various college campuses and in film festivals across the country prior to the fall, when Hahn believes the movie will be available on home video and Netflix.

“I feel like there is a lack of heroes and role models in our culture other than Charlie Sheen and the Kardashians. But there’s another kind of citizen out there doing something interesting, and it’s important to put those stories out there,” said Hahn, who was born in Chicago. “I thought Mike’s story was really compelling and very relevant to today. I thought, here’s a guy who’s doing something with fundraising activities fairly quietly—let’s make it not so quiet and let’s tell it to a larger audience.”

Hahn said that, while Romania is a naturally beautifully country, the locale wasn’t as important as the protagonist and his cause.

“It was almost secondary that it was Romania. Mike could’ve done the same thing in Africa or in Baltimore. The idea is looking for the greater good and looking for how to help organize and inspire people around social issues,” Hahn said. “That’s not a story that is ever going to go out of style. Why do people philosophically in their lives believe that it’s important to go out and help their communities? Mike’s personal story was a really compelling way to frame that issue.”

What’s really important about the film and Romanian Children’s Relief, “is to get the community to be part of the solution,” said Carroll. “We have a staff of 28. We can’t hire 10,000 Romanians, we don’t have that kind of budget, but what we can do is to help other people develop these programs. We’re trying to create sustainable programs in the country that are sustained by the country.”

Hahn and Carroll hope Hand Held inspires charitable deeds as well as aspiring shutterbugs and filmmakers.

“It’s never been a better time for documentaries. The equipment is inexpensive and accessible,” said Hahn, who’s currently producing for Disney a stop-motion animated feature-length remake of a short film by Tim Burton called Frankenweenie, slated for a Halloween 2012 release. “The biggest obstacle is starting—you sit around waiting for the perfect project or topic and think, when all the planets are in alignment, I’ll start. You know what? The planets are never in alignment. The best and boldest thing to do if you’re thinking about making a documentary is to pick your best bet for a topic and dive in and the movie will reveal itself as you make it.”

If photojournalism is your passion, Carroll recommends perseverance.

“Stick with it. This is one of the most difficult times for freelance photographers because of the lack of outlets,” said Carroll, who, in addition to RCR does work for Disney and Children’s Hospital in Boston. “You have to imagine what the next world will be. It’s like music—you have to find another outlet for your imaging.”