High Profile: MARGARET FORD ROGERS

Whatever you do, don't ask Margaret Ford Rogers to sit still.

Most often, Rogers is a blur of motion, always involved or engaged, as befits a woman who toils as a psychiatric nurse, photographer, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker, among other pursuits.

"There is a part of me that is really very restless and gets bored easily, needing to be on the edge a little bit," says the James Island resident. "When I was younger, this didn't thrill my parents at all. But it is a part of who I am. If somebody called me tomorrow to go to Zimbabwe to do a story on people who've disappeared there, I'd start packing."

The impetus?

"New experiences, regardless of what, or where, they are. Or simply seeing things in a new way. Anything, anywhere. I feed on change."

As accustomed to the Second and Third worlds as she is the First, Rogers doesn't spook easily. As a filmmaker, she has ventured to Cuba more than a dozen times, on each occasion with clearance from the U.S. Treasury Department, which governs travel licenses to the island. Among the films that have emerged from these tours are her documentaries, "Santeria," on the Afro-Cuban religion, and "A Common Cause," a look back at the Cuban revolution.

"We found surviving veterans who had particularly powerful experiences during the revolution and interviewed them about their stories. It was not ideologically driven. It was just personal recollections of how they got involved and what it meant to their families. This sort of film had not even been done in Cuba."

One of Rogers' most memorable forays there was in 1998, in the company of Minneapolis-based still photographer, filmmaker and friend Mickie Turk. The trip was equal parts magazine assignment and exploration.

"To do stories on the Cuban film industry and women's changing roles in Cuban society, we traveled 2,000 miles in 16 days, from Havana to Pinar del Rio and as far away as Nuevitas, which is about three hours farther away," says Rogers. "The Cuban intelligence services were suspicious. We were detained and interrogated several times. Some days we were wined and dined by ambassadors. Some days we slept on floors. But the countryside is incredible, and the people were so warm and friendly and kind. Many of my preconceptions about the country were blown away."

Not that she suddenly viewed the nation with rose-tinted glasses. "It's a hard life for people there, but a fascinating place. It's magic to me, which is why I keep going back."

One year later, Rogers the journalist was in Buenos Aires to do a story on the Mothers of Playa de Mayo, an association of Argentine mothers whose children "disappeared" during the Dirty War (1976-83).

Storyteller

What has Rogers' motor purring at the moment, apart from planning another trip to Mexico, is the prospect of a possible film of "The Carolina Storyteller," a screenplay penned with writing partner Marsha Rhea of Charleston. Sydell Albert Productions of Los Angeles recently optioned the script, but Rogers, who acted in some of the early movies of avant garde filmmaker and fellow Baltimore native John Waters (musician Nils Lofgren was another chum), is a realist about the movie business.

"It may come to pass, it may not. But we are still proud of this screenplay, which we originally wrote in 2001. It's still winning awards. On average, the process usually takes 10 years from an option to a film. And things have been tight in Hollywood for a while now."

Set in a South Carolina mill town in the 1930s, "The Carolina Storyteller" already has earned script-writing awards from the Austin Film Festival, Dolphin Bay Films and Fade In magazine's screenwriting competitions.

Previously, Rogers was one-half of the United Noodles Unincorporated partnership with screenwriter Dane Krogman, a former College of Charleston theater professor now teaching at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Their screenplay, "Marvel Rose," won a Bronze Award at the 1995 WorldFest-Charleston International Film Festival and a Gold Award for "Light and Death" at the 1996 WorldFest-Houston Film Festival.

"Marsha and I are just pages away from completing our new screenplay, 'The Carolina Greyman,' or simply 'Greyman,' a story Marsha has wanted to do for eight years. I was always involved in all this other stuff until three months ago, when I said yes. Now I think it's the best thing I've written. The basic idea evokes the legendary Greyman of Pawleys Island, who guards the houses there. But the focus is on identity, about a woman who once fled the island with her young children and later is forced to flee back."

Career roulette

Rogers says she went into nursing in part because she had such a chaotic coming-of-age period.

"I also worked for a film production company, toured with the Steve Miller Band and (in 1975) was a Playboy Bunny. All the while, there were the voices of my mom and dad in my head, telling me to find work 'you can fall back on.' "

Rogers attended the University of Maryland in the late 1960s, intending to major in journalism.

"I wanted to be a foreign correspondent like Martha Gellhorn, going into the world's hot spots," says Rogers, whose still photographs are on display at the local restaurants El Bohio and Zia Taqueria. "But after one semester, I said, 'No, this is not real life.' I became a hippie, or maybe a bohemian. I didn't go back to college until my late 20s, to get the nursing degree. By then, I was married to my first husband, who was in the Navy. That's how we came here. In 1980, I started nursing, which I still do part time at St. Francis Xavier Hospital.

"Then my daughter was born. Then I got a divorce. I chose to stay, which is when I really started getting involved in creative things becoming a member of the ensemble at the Dock Street Theatre in 1989. I was also in the first ensemble group mounted by Julian Wiles."

Rogers says she still loves nursing, but is troubled by the direction of health care in the 21st century.

"I think health care is changing radically right now. The problem is that the business is a business. I'm concerned with the future of medicine and of nursing. But I love my nurse-managed unit, and I think ours is special, one of few on the East Coast that is a medical psych unit."

Since 2002, Rogers has been married to Dr. David Rogers, a physician in Easley. So far it's been a long-distance marriage.

"I didn't want to move up there, and he loves Charleston, so he's planning to move here after a few years. But he's in a really good practice. So we're commuting for now."

Her daughter, Lauren, 26, a contract specialist with the University of Maryland, was wed earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Rogers has begun research for a new film on the first American settlement in Cuba.

"After the Spanish-American War, the U.S. government wanted to colonize Cuba with American citizens and run the country. It was in cahoots with some Cubans to buy up huge tracts of land for almost nothing and sell to American pioneers. The first of these settlements was La Gloria. When people got there, it was swamp. I think it's an amazing story."

And right up her alley.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.