My name is Tom Shepard and I co-directed and co-produced the film KNOCKING. When I first started working on KNOCKING, I received a number of raised eyebrows. Colleagues and friends seemed shocked that I would spend three years of my life researching and making a film that casts a conservative fundamentalist group in a largely positive light. After all, I had recently finished a film that was extremely critical of religious ideology - the kind that justifies discrimination against women or gay people or other religious groups. I was raised in a family of agnostics who neither encouraged nor discouraged me from exploring any religious group. My parents were full-time teachers and often hired a baby-sitter to watch me after school. Her name was Shirley and she was a Jehovah's Witness. I spent many hours with her: playing games, making food, watching television and taking walks around the block. We never discussed theology. Yet, I knew Shirley belonged to a religious organization and that it was very important to her. There were certain nights she couldn't babysit because she was meeting with her congregation. There were certain times on the weekend she joined her large family to go knocking on doors. Her life outside our home was a mystery to me and has a remained a curiosity throughout my life. My connection to her as a young child, though, continues to bring back warm and caring memories. As a filmmaker, I've always been interested in what enable alliances between people with different backgrounds and beliefs. From a very early age, many of us learn to associate with those like us. Often, we are raised among similar socio-economic, racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Rarely are we encouraged to reach beyond our own comfort zones. Rarely do we take opportunities to reach out to those who look different, act differently, speak differently, and worship differently. Despite how ubiquitous buzzwords like "diversity" and "multiculturalism" have become in our parlance, rarely do I see those concepts in play across all lines. In my view, alliances between people with very different backgrounds come unexpectedly: the coalition of neighbors in the aftermath of natural disasters, the forced incarceration of different groups in the Holocaust, the facilitated visits between victims of violent crime and their perpetrators, the common ground found on sports teams. But sometimes it happens more simply. Usually, there is an emotional component - a shared experience or circumstance that humanizes the "other." Rather than dismissing someone as a stereotype or a caricature, a bond of mutual respect emerges. In my own life, I have found this experience hugely gratifying as I watch my own prejudices erode while new friendships develop. Once an alliance has been created, I often want to know more - gather more information about this person or group I previously ignored or made fun of. I hope KNOCKING and the accompanying study material will act as a catalyst to create new and unlikely alliances. As I recall now the beautiful connection with Shirley, my childhood babysitter, I want her to know how much I appreciate all the things I've learned about Jehovah's Witnesses: how Witnesses, through their extensive civil liberties case law, have indirectly helped protect my own civil rights, how their flagrant refusal to cooperate with Hitler gives me courage to stand up against inflexible and totalitarian power, how their steadfast refusal to cooperate with doctors has emboldened me to question medical authority and paternalism. Mostly, I revel in the new friendships with Witnesses around the world who have shared their stories with me and who have listened to my own stories. Tom Shepard, San Francisco April, 2007