Recently, I had the pleasure of hearing filmmaker Christopher LaMarca speak at the Portland outpost of CreativeMornings.

This was my first CreativeMornings event. Not only was it thought-provoking, but I truly enjoyed the energy. The coffee was perfect and the attendees were refreshingly friendly, witty and just the right level of chatty to put me at ease right away. The fact that our name tag stickers had a blank for our name and one for our favorite documentaries might account for the ease with which the ice was broken, but I quickly met some really cool people at breakfast. As an avid documentary buff I had to ponder many titles before I settled on Liz Garbus’s 2003 “Girlhood.”

I had not heard of CreativeMornings until a few weeks before I attended. In case you aren’t familiar, it’s “a breakfast lecture series for the creative community,” and was started by Tina Roth Eisenberg in New York in 2008. Now, cities across the globe host events. Each month, featured speakers are given a one-word theme/prompt. The month’s theme was “Reality.”

While Christopher LaMarca had a documentary called “Boone” that premiered at SXSW 2016, his talk focused on “The Pearl,” his latest project. Reality and ethics both played strong roles as he went about documenting the lives of his subjects for three years.

In his talk he gave a riveting account of the long journey one of the four transgender women he filmed took to accept reality. When LaMarca began work on “The Pearl” this woman was still known to her family, community, and professionally, as a male. Over the course of filming, she came to terms with her true identity. But as she became increasingly emboldened to introduce herself as a transgender to her family, LaMarca grew uncomfortable with his own role as a witness to a family matter. Ethically, when faced with the reality of the information, LaMarca was concerned about the emotional safety of both her and her family. Despite her willingness to have LaMarca capture her coming out to her family, LaMarca ultimately decided that it would be wrong to film this moment.

He reminded us that he began this project five years ago. This was before Laverne Cox of “Orange Is The New Black” was a household name. It was before Amazon’s “Transparent” debuted. He also noted that originally four women were followed during the course of filming, but LaMarca determined that to reveal the secret life of one of them would be too risky and she does not appear in the film.

I find it interesting, and quite remarkable that LaMarca put his subjects’ dignity and safety ahead of ambition. This could have been headline-grabbing. The possible notoriety was low-hanging fruit, and he resisted the temptation.

Based on the clips shown, and the fascinating ethical questions LaMarca faced, I am looking forward to seeing “The Pearl” in its entirety.

In your reality, do you ever regret not choosing the low-hanging fruit?
You can learn more about Christopher LaMarca and his other work here.

And, you can watch past speakers and locate your nearest CreativeMornings event here.