When It Rains, It Pours

I know I’ve only just written, and I’m sorry to take over your RSS feeds, but I humbly and last-minutely seek your advice… I’ll do my best to keep it concise this time.

Just when I thought things were beginning to wrap up, my subjects started dropping bombshells, Sumit in particular. Over the course of several days, I’ve been filming him repeatedly cheating on the weeklong exam they’ve been taking. (Many of the boys have cheated to some extent, but Sumit has been the only one who’s been open to me filming it.) Then, on Tuesday morning, he got into a fist fight with an older student over an allegedly stolen bag. I missed the fight—the whole thing went down in a split second—but he was unbelievably kind in letting me film his meeting with the principal. I’ve got all the footage I’d ever need if I wanted to paint him as your stereotypical teenage rebel, but here’s the problem: he’s so much more than that. I can see through the thick walls he’s built around himself; we’ve shared tender moments off camera, and I sometimes find him sitting in rooms by himself, staring out of windows and thinking. A two-dimensional portrayal would be an incredible disservice to him. Every time I try to film any indication of these inner workings, though, he’s quick to leave the frame and withdraws from me further, bumping up his “tough guy” image another notch. To echo Elisa’s thoughts, how much can you really ask someone to show a side of himself he wants to keep hidden?

My mantra this summer has been to let things play out on their own, to resist controlling and interfering, but time is running out. With Hindu holiday season is in full swing, I only have six days left to shoot, barring strikes and bus accidents (or another 6 AM solar eclipse… I still can’t believe the government declared a full-day public holiday for that). My search for a conclusion continues, and using the final scene to add something unexpected to the audience’s knowledge of his character could be very productive. I’ve got my big translation sesh with the interpreter tomorrow, which I hope will bear some fruit, and there’s always the hope that subtle moments will reveal themselves in the coming months. Blind hope in exiting footage aside, is there anything I can do in the coming days to bring out another side to Sumit? I’m afraid I already know the answer to this (and not an answer I like), but I’m still hoping your combined wisdom can provide me with some much-needed insight.

Calling for Back Up!

After a 40-min convo with an American prof with extensive research experience in VN, I am now sufficiently worried that my miniDVs might not make their way out of the country. He warned me about the hassles of Vietnamese censorship with the example that a previous collection of his audiotapes (10 hrs of recorded interviews) was totally rejected because a segment of his material included farmers going off on rants abt 'f'ing Americans' in the ol' war days and their effects on cropping methods. Anything tiptoe-ing towards the realm of the political would trigger alarm. He advised that I should make digital file copies of all my footage.

Basically I think he's right. When I leave VN, airport security/immigration will require that I have a certificate of permission fr a local official in order for me to depart with the tapes. I could cross my fingers and hope no one notices the tapes during the scanning. Or I could send off my tapes to be reviewed by the local Foreign Affairs Office to get the right paperwork, risking their disapproval if they deem anything 'sensitive.' I don't think I have anything that would raise eyebrows but who knows. My researcher contact thinks, "better safe than sorry." That means I should make backups but I'm not sure how to proceed. All I have is my camera pack and my MacBook (with no external hard drive, no blank DVDs, etc). I hear that I can take my tapes to a place that does wedding videos and just pay to have them convert the material to digital files and then I can mix the discs in with random entertainment CDs and DVDs, which no one is likely to notice. Will that work? If I somehow lose my original tapes, will I be able to work with the digital files upon return? How does that affect the image/sound quality? I'm basically clueless abt this technical talk.

The other option is to send the tapes back early with my bf, who leaves town in two days. Because he is a 'backpacking' Westerner the airport officials will probably pay less attention. The only problem with that is that I am not done recording (abt 5 more hours to go) and would like to have the footage to review in order to draft my script for the next week and a half left of work here. I'm not sure this is the best option.

Sorry for the long-winded explanation; if anyone has suggestions/clarifications, I'd appreciate it. Also, how come no one else seems to have encountered this bureaucratic mess? Surely I'm not the only one shooting under the watchful eye of a touchy political regime?

A Successful Failure

Given that I was supposed to be arriving at my hostel in Venice around now, this post seems like slightly bitter irony since I had planned not to check email for the remainder of the week. But no, I arrived at the Paris-Orly airport this evening only to be informed that the airline myair.com for all effective purposes, no longer existed (this from a representative of alyzia, as myair has no representative, or counter for that matter) No flights had arrived from Venice to Paris since last Wednesday.

I had decided to leave the camera behind, given a certain ambiguity about my accommodation at "Bangkok House" ( a mixed dorm, I think--They never answered my emails and from our phone conversation, seemed to speak minimal English-- I was worried for Baby's safety.). I was nonetheless stoked to focus my efforts on sound, bringing along my entire bag of goodies. I planned to be wearing headphones throughout my sojourn.

And so I'm online again, debating whether to take this as a sign to stay in Paris, consigning myself to the dungeon of the Mitterand bibliotheque (the "pine trees" in the inaccessible garden are actually chained) or as an opportunity to try yet again another budget airline and different accommodation for a visit in mid-August.

And should I bring Baby along this time round?

GAIN?

Quick question--what is the status on gain? If I am shooting in HD and am in low light and there is nothing I can do to raise it, will 3db or 6db of gain ruin the picture? I've experimented with it and can tell it is a bit grainier but I don't think it ruins it, but if it is on a big screen will it look awful? Thoughts, suggestions? Thanks! I will post more soon, everything is going well, just semi-concerned about the low light thing since I've been shooting some concerts in bars, etc.

Thanks!

Reflections on "Race" and Returning Home

First of all, let me apologize for this lengthy diatribe, but I have a bit more time on my hands now.

Just returned (again) to Cambridge, to the news of the arrest of Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. If you haven’t heard yet, he was arrested in his own home by police who were responding to a 911 call of a break-in. After Gates showed ID proving that he lived there the Cambridge City police arrested him for disorderly conduct and said that he was shouting and resisting them. This story has caused people and the media to re-question the injunction shortly after Obama’s election of the ushering in of a new “post-racial” era, and rightfully so.
At the end of Obama’s press conference a few nights ago he was asked what he thought of this arrest, and stated that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly,” citing the long history in our country of the disproportionate arrests of Blacks and Latinos. The dialogue on blogs, radio, TV, etc has proliferated as people take sides with Skip Gates or the police (who were doing their job??!!).

No need for me to explain my own opinion on this matter as you all know me well enough to guess… but it does raise interesting questions that actually relate to the developments of my project(s) over the last 3 weeks.

“Race” in Kerala
My last night in Kerala, was a stark reminder of the “taking sides-ness” of human nature. Jamie, the Catholic foreman of the fishermen we had been filming with (after a bit too much rum) started lashing out against his Muslim co-fishermen; people who, mind you, he is normally friendly with, works with everyday, and was even holding hands with on the way to the bar. As soon as the Muslim members of his fishing team were out of earshot, he started telling Ben and I that they were bad people, that they kill people, and “all they want is money, money, money.” Needless to say we were a bit surprised by his vehemence, and a bit disappointed that our last night, meant to be a farewell, had turned into a match of hurling insults (primarily one way; from Jamie towards the Muslims). Of course none of this was recorded and so now I struggle with how to address this religious tension in my film. The concept of what we call “race” is intricately bound up with ethnic, religious, and caste issues in Kerala; a complex web that I have yet to even begin to understand.

“Race” in Flint
While in MI over the past two weeks, I spoke to friends and family about the Genesee Land Bank, and heard a variety of responses to it. The Genesee County Land Bank, which is a proposal to shrink the city of Flint and raze several wards. Flint is in the process of electing a new Mayor and the Land Bank issue is hotly debated. However, most people I’ve spoken to about this have said that nothing is happening on the ground and its all just talk at the moment. I am really interested in following this story, but I would prefer to find a good subject “on the ground” to follow and film with over the next several years as things develop there. So far, I’ve found many people to talk to about this, but no one who actually lives in the wards likely to be scheduled for demolition. Not sure how to pursue this at this point?
A good friend of mine who grew up in Flint, but left decades ago said that his childhood friends had quite racist comments to the proposal of razing parts of town. Saying things like: “Good riddens” and “who needs those neighborhoods.” My friend found this shocking and racially motivated but also recalled a violent and troublesome childhood in racially segregated wards.

One thing traveling is always good for is a little perspective. Although I find it (probably too) easy to get worked up over racist or sexist comments/treatment abroad, returning to the States has been a bit of a wake-up call in the sense that what we consider ourselves to be is oftentimes a thin patina for more deeply rooted prejudices. If Skip Gates can get arrested in his own home in one of the countries “most liberal” towns, what’s happening in Flint needs attention as its unemployment rates nears 30% and new politicians vie for controlled change, and what happens in Kerala needs to be balanced by a little well-informed perspective as well.

Growing Pains

While Sarah’s been chasing childhood across Southeast Asia, I’ve been chasing children in the same subcontinent. After a week-long translation fest, I’m beginning to see how all these puzzle pieces will fit together to make a film, which now resembles more of a sandwich than a braid. The first half of the film will focus on the kindergarten worlds of Sarita, Rabinda, and Neha (the former two pictured above); the second half will center on two teenaged friends, Shyam and Sumit. When I started to follow these three little girls, I expected a real life Alice in Wonderland, but I’ve found that beneath their angelic smiles, these girls can be just as cruel as they are kind; even the dynamics of nap time can be surprisingly complex. My goal is to flesh out the friend-triangle, capturing them working and playing with one another, against one another, and under the guidance of a guru. Though there may be one or two scenes that include a teacher (a meditation lesson and an outdoor game resembling “duck duck goose”), this section had been shot primarily Peanuts-style—from the perspective of the five-year olds with the teacher “waaa-waaa-waaa”ing somewhere overhead.

Like Adam, there are so many times, especially during personal interactions, that I wish I had a hidden camera rolling, as so much seems to reveal itself only after the camera’s off. During a recent English lesson, for example, one of the boys asked me the American sign for “S-?-E.” He fingerspelled it over and over, but I insisted that “?” wasn’t part of the Latin alphabet. He whipped out his notebook and wrote something resembling: “S )( E”. Again, I told him I didn’t understand the second letter. He tried again, this time producing a legible “SXE.” I informed the exasperated boy that “sxe” was not an English word. With unfailing tenacity, he slammed his notebook shut and boldly fingerspelled, in front of the entire waiting class, “F-U-C-K”. Well! It had never occurred to me that in the deaf community of suburban Nepal (where arranged marriages are still common and dating is not), these guys are every bit as adolescent as their American counterparts. Though the teenaged boys are more calculated in front of the camera than the first-grade girls, I’ve retrospectively found key scenes rife with allusions to pubescent thoughts of girls, male dominance, and competition. The footage culminates in a 400m race between two close friends, Shyam and Sumit, whose desire to win overwhelms their desire to support each other: Shyam wants to win the heart of a girl by winning the race but doesn’t even cross the finish line, and the more confident, competetive Sumit runs his heart out (literally) to bring home the silver. In my most serendipitious moment (and I’ve been relying heavily on serendipity), linking our two cultures and incorporating an unexpected bit of pop culture, Shyam picks up a Nepali newspaper and calls over a few friends to report the death of Michael Jackson. I, of course, had no clue what they were talking about at the time, and didn’t find out myself for another week!

The golden thread is, very broadly, the “emotionality” of childhood and puberty within this deaf community. The peanut butter gluing together these two halves—the critical tent pole—is the school’s only deaf teacher, Sharmila, who will lead us from an outdoor game in the courtyard (an intentional departure from the first grade classroom) to the fifth grade classroom, after which point, the focus will shift primarily to Shyam. The film will be much more of a conventional documentary than originally planned, but it’s not entirely ethnographic, per se.

I’m open to surprises and expecting the unexpected in my final three weeks. I’m now shooting and reshooting the opening scene (the national anthem, signed on sporadic mornings), spending long days observing the girls, and searching for some way to close the film. (I want to return to the deaf school after the race, but what could possibly serve as a good resolution after the climactic race? And should I stick to the Shyam-Sumit thread or find some way to incorporate the whole school again?)

I’m sending you guys lots of positive energy, and wishing you many serendipitious moments over your finals weeks and days. As always, I’m stoked to read your updates and looking forward to finally matching names with faces in a few short weeks!

chasing childhoods across SE asia

Dearest sensory ethnographers...

Finally, I sit down for a moment. It's been wonderful to follow your posts at various internet cafes across SE asia. I absolutely cannot wait to see the final films, as I'll miss out on seeing the footage and the editing process. But it sounds like you've all been on incredible journeys. Just thought I'd say hello and fill you in on what's been happening in my film world.

I went to Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia to complete filming for a film entitled 'Worlds' that myself and my partner have been working on for 3 years... The film involves returning to the places of our childhoods and filming them as they are today. The film is attempting to capture that devastating feeling of falling in love, and never being able to know the past of your lover, forever grasping at blurry images of the stories they tell you. We've been travelling across Southern Africa and SE asia filming landscapes that have changed so much in our lifetimes - two lives which have had utterly different trajectories through history, Jean having grown up as a person of colour under apartheid, and me having grown up the privileged daughter of a diplomat.

We returned to places where I spent much of my childhood, Indonesia in particular. It was haunting to return to the beach resorts which had been simply jungle when I was a child. In the interveneing 20 years, mile-long resorts were built and have become completely derelict. Now, Indonesian tourists still flock there at weekends, but staying in isolated rooms around which other rooms decay. It was incredible to stand on the beach I played on as a child, watching banana boats and jet-skis whizz past, in front of Krakatoa on the horizon. Jakarta, choking even when I lived there, is now an apocalyptic gothem city of mile after mile of skyscrapers and black, oil-slick rivers. We made a friend who worked as a Salsa teacher at the Ritz, and can only hope he's alright after the recent bombings.

Now I'm back in the UK editing another project, about mothers and daughters (of which you saw a hint in one of my pieces) which is completely draining, but going well. In September I will return to Cape Town to edit 'Worlds' with Jean. Editing is always excruciating, those camera jerks, the missed words and funny angles, but all these perceived errors aside, the 'moment' usually finds its way of shining through. Watching hours of footage in the last two weeks, I've realised it's when I stopped trying to control the situation that the most magic moments followed, yet I was focused enough to follow them.

As for 'Blindness', once I'm in South Africa again I'll be applying for money to make it with the national broadcaster - fingers crossed! Good luck to you all in the last stages of filming, and I hope I make it out to the US for the screenings!

lots of love,
Sarah

concerns on visual (mis)representation

Dear ones,

I beseech your advice and food for thought and will try to leave my post as succinct as possible.

I've gotten some 'typical' anthro footage of the girls: doing washing, cooking, their 'lived experience'. But ultimately it doesn't say anything about these girls: They are orphans, their families were murdered in a genocide, and they have little hope for a successful future because of it. There is no one to talk to about their problems, so they carry on as if nothing has happened.

The tourist reaction to Rwanda is "Wow the country has totally rebuilt itself, Rwanda has really healed from the genocide." It frustrates me so much because it suggests that people have low expectations for the country, as if the progress from mud homes to cement homes is good enough. There is proverb here that loosely translates, 'what is the point of a good house with no food inside?" Ultimately, such attitudes about economic and structural growth don't leave room to consider the ripple effects of genocide.

So when I film the girls, you don't see what is really going on "below the surface", beyond visual representation. I was thinking of contrasting voice over from interviews over the 'lived experience' footage I shot, but the interviews are so difficult for them I can't help but feel guilty asking such intrusive questions that have already caused them to break into tears.

I also tried lending them journals, but claudene, the very sensitive one shown in the above picture, is illiterate. So I'm thinking of asking her to draw some things for me, but I don't think it will get around the fundamental moral and cinematic problems here:

The girls' footage and work is conveying the same things as mine: playing with friends, going to school, doing chores. How much can you ask a person to demonstrate and share things if she wants to leave them unspoken?

Hope the filming is going well, I can't wait to see what y'all have done!

Sincerely yours,
Elisa

Golden Hours

Here's hoping everyone is doing well! I have gotten some great footage recently and I have more on the horizon. In short: I got up at 5am the other day to film the sunrise and then follow one of the local characters into the countryside so that he could pick mulberries to make gelato with. He is a very interesting individual. That evening, Elvira (my Sicilian mom, as I like to call her) took me to see how they separate the wheat from the chaff: by throwing the wheat into the air with pitchforks, and letting the wind carry the chaff away while the wheat falls to the ground. The only problem was, there was no wind. So I filmed the local farmers playing briscola (a card game), and Elvira doing somersaults in the hay. She is turning out to be a really outstanding subject. I also went on an excursion to climb Mt. Etna. I got some really interesting shots... of course I somehow managed to turn on the !@#$%ing gain switch at some point, so some of the shots are a bit grainy. Not entirely ruined, fortunately, since I had the gain on quite low. I have since admonished my HVX and told it never to do that again (or in other words, I set it so that the gain never goes above 0dB, no matter what I do with the switch). The Etna footage probably won't be part of my documentary, but I think it has some excellent possibilities for a lyrical piece. On Sunday I have an appointment to film a guy who makes and repairs zampogne, or Sicilian bagpipes! This evening I will probably film Elvira taking care of her elderly mother-in-law, who has Alzheimer's. Elvira has to be one of the best "nurses" in the world.

I'm running out of room on my hard drives... only about 100GB left. I think I need to go out and buy two more, what with a month left to shoot!

It is 97 degrees here today and I can barely bring myself to type. But I stumbled upon (through Lifehacker, one of my favorite blogs) a steadicam design that I think we could really sink our teeth into when we get back. Check it out here!

two (2) questions and one (1) photo

1.) what are your postal addresses? or rather, the addresses of where you'll be in 3-4 weeks from now. i have a little something (a very little something... or very little something...) i'd like to send you! edit: of course, it never occurred to me that you probably shouldn't post your snail mail addresses to the world wide web. if you wouldn't mind e-mailing me, that would be awesome!

2.) can you recommend any reading/watching/listening material of any kind related to filmmaking/ethnography/documentary/anthropology/etc. available for download/upload/e-mail/copy&paste? essays, stories, novels, videos, guides, assigned reading from last semester, assigned reading from next semester, ANYTHING! totally devoid of technological distractions (including electricity, at times), i'm finding myself with quite a bit of free time, and i'd like to put that time towards thinking and rethinking the project. at this point, i'll take anything i can get (which has included buying every 100 Rs documentary on children or disabilities or southeast asia i can get my hands on)!

3.) a friend recently sent me this photograph. so wonderful!

...

Hi all,
So here is a quick recap of where I'm at.

I arrived back in Beirut on June 16th after a festive graduation for George (my partner) and a trip back to MT to see family and my brother's wedding. Not two days after returning back to Lebanon I went on a research trip with a tourist group to Syria for 5 days – was fruitful. After returning back to Beirut and getting settled in I've been getting into shooting...albeit, slowly.

It is hard being back in a place where I know so many people – and feel like I have another life – and then buckling down to do these shoots within these short 8 weeks. Perhaps this is the blessing and the curse. As far as my project I have started shooting in a few gyms but the footage just isn't that interesting so far. I've done lots of sound recording with the Tascam in cinemas and am starting to capture some city scapes and seeing what will inspire me further.

Technically I've been blessed with George's new camera which he just got for commerial work. It turns out that it can shoot HD footage at a much better quality than the DV tapes I brought. (5616x3744 and 21 mp for those that are technically inclined). The camera looks like a normal 35mm – which is the real blessing. There hasn't been much political turmoil this year but Lebanon is still a sensitive place to capture images. I've already been stopped numerous times with the small camera and many public spaces would be out of the question with the larger camera here. Beyond the stealth qualities of the camera I've been enjoying how it producing excellent controls with depth of field and also its ability to capture in lowlight – (which for some “cinema” shooting might payoff). I also cherish the ability to upload the footage to the computer and see exactly what I have – and more than anything, my mistakes and missteps which are foundational in how I then reapproach the next day's shooting. I will post some stills of shots in afew days when I go through and organize everything. Headed up north to the village for some family obligations right now. Oh yeah, the size of the camera also will allow for easy shooting in Syria too. Headed over next week and will play around -- although I don't want to get taken too off track.

I also must apologize as I have responded to few postings thus far. I've gotten them all and read them but haven't had much time to get back to you. It is crazy to think how quickly time is passing.

j

Chers amis,

I finally arrived! I think I might have been the last to leave, just missing Julia in transit. My mom visited over the weekend, so we suffered through jet lag and hot spell over the weekend. From the first step off the plane, I have been thinking nothing but images--it's dreadful! She encouraged me, though, to lug the camera to Versailles. But kept asking why I didn't just shoot photography if I only going to film the sky (I made her stay up to midnight the second night while I filmed the clouds)

"Cynthia, what about the action?"

The guard finally put a stop to my antics, though--"Interdit, interdit"--so I switched over to sound. I think Mutter's having second thoughts about my ambitions to become "une realisateur", however, when I began to nag her about keeping the proper distance from "Baby."

"Mutter, please stand away from Baby while you eat that orange. Baby hates fruit. Citrus spray upsets Baby."

I left Baby at home yesterday, though, (my back needed a break) and instead did reconnaisaance for Daniel Buren's in situ work at the Picasso Museum. He was at one of Broodthaers's early expositions and in my dreams, would make a good interview. Again, Mutter assisted as I stage directed(I did this at Versailles, but perhaps you need to see the footage to appreciate....).

"No Mutter, turn to your right, perpendicular to the mirror, PERPENDICULAR I say. Now left leg slightly left, closer to the mirroir, closer. There! Now lift up the right leg. Hold....keeping holding, keep holding. Perfect!

But back to the project, as for other interviews, I have numbers for some folks in Brussels but am currently reconsidering whether I will need to try to keep my room in Paris as a base and just go for long weekends (oh dear!). I have quickly learned that Baby makes me much less mobile and very dependent on elevators. Venice had no plans to build escaleteurs last time I checked. Would ruin that historical ambience of decay.

Such are my logistical worries...

Assemblage

I threw together an assemblage of the field burning footage and uploaded it to vimeo. Please let me know what you think! I'm finding myself wondering if it would be better to concentrate on this one family. It seems like the footage I have of them (though currently sparse) is the best and most interesting I have shot. At any rate, here is the video. Just FYI, in order to see it in full resolution you will need to follow the link to the video on Vimeo, but I have embedded it here for convenience's sake.

Castelmola Field Burning Assemblage from Adam Muri-Rosenthal on Vimeo.

Simplify, simplify.

A Hodgepodge of Updates and Questions

First of all, I want to thank Ty for poking me into finally posting! Thanks Ty! There’s so much to tell, but the urgency I felt to post was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. Not to mention the fact that it’s been hard to keep up with you guys! It’s great to see this thing taking off!

Let me begin by telling you that I am doing really well. When I am not shooting, Castelmola can be a pretty lonely place. Although I know a lot of people, they are pretty much always working, since their livelihoods all depend on summer tourism. That said, I have been shooting a lot. Still, I can’t say that I am entirely convinced of the footage I have. I have been feeling like I am still missing the pieces I need to make a really powerful documentary.

I decided it was time for a break.

As luck would have it, a friend from Rome invited me to go with her to the Pesaro Film Festival (in Northern Italy), and I happily accepted. The film festival was interesting. Israeli cinema was one of its themes. One, in particular, was quite moving, and I highly recommend it: Year Zero (Shnat Effes, in Hebrew). I also saw a documentary called Rachel, about an American girl (Rachel Corrie) killed in Palestine while attempting to stop Israeli tanks from demolishing Palestinian houses. It was quite powerful, thorough, and well-done, I thought. They even showed Sweetgrass, though the showing occurred before I had arrived.

But I suppose all of this is neither here nor there. Getting out of Castelmola gave me a really good opportunity to reflect on my film. I realized that so far, the footage I have shot and that I plan to shoot includes primarily three families: the Turrisis (owner of the infamous bar), the Caristis (who I already shot burning weeds in their fields), and the Sterrantinos (the musical family who own the pizzeria in town). I’m also very interested in filming a family of North African immigrants (there are several living in town). If these families become the tentpoles around which I build my film, I will definitely need more footage of each. On the other hand, building my film around this sort of logic strikes me as stifling. I worry that concentrating too heavily on these families will necessitate the exclusion of other characters whose presence could contribute a lot. I would certainly appreciate input on this. How are the rest of you thinking of organizing your films?

My plan thus far has been to do a primarily observational piece, but I have also been considering adding a poetic element to it, a la The Nuer, if anyone has seen that (and assuming I am remembering it correctly). It's an observational film about a tribe in Africa. Towards the end, it breaks from the observational style and goes into a montage of shots set to the music of the tribe. I can see how this could be done poorly, but in The Nuer it is done beautifully. The poetic section is at once a break from and crescendo of the observational style. I'd very much like to do something similar. Music is clearly a fundamental part of Sicilian culture, and there's so much I wish I could include!

The landscape is also an important potential metaphor, and I have been getting a lot of interesting shots of Mt. Etna. Last week I hiked up Monte Venere, a mountain that rises up above Castelmola, and the landscape was incredible striking. It was as if I had landed in purgatory. It is very rugged. There are a number of abandoned houses (probably hundreds of years old). I saw plants blackened from fires, and other plants with purple flowers and enormous, imposing thorns. It is very quiet at the top, but for the light breeze and a few random sounds in the distance: sheeps braying, bells ringing. A truly interesting place. I definitely plan on returning with my camera.



On another note, there is an idea I have been toying with for awhile that I would really like to make happen, although I’m certain it won’t be easy. I was thinking about how to lend more of an air of authenticity to my subtitles (since I do plan on subtitling this film). I came up with one idea that I really like. Once I have finished translating the content, I would like to have each of my subjects handwrite the translations, in such a way that each character’s dialogue will be subtitled in his or her own handwriting. On the technical side of things, I have a pretty good idea about how this will work. It’s the logistical side that I am worried about: sending the translations to the people involved and getting them to send them back to me with enough time to put them in the finished piece. Any ideas?

Sometimes I find myself wishing I had some sort of bionic camera installed in my head, so I didn’t miss some of the more interesting interactions I have, or some that would be impossible without the camera. I am loving my new place. I have told a few people who I am renting from, and have quickly learned that my eighty-something-year-old landlord has quite a reputation as the town pain-in-the-ass. Thankfully, he has been nothing but nice to me so far.

Last week, a few minutes into my hike up Monte Venere, a woman came out of her house and offered me a glass of lemonade. I gladly accepted. She also gave me one of the freshest, juiciest oranges I have ever eaten. I made a bit of small talk, told her I was American, what I was doing in town, and so on. She asked me if I wanted a bottle of homemade wine. Sure! She brought out the bottle of wine, and it was at this point that the conversation changed. Ten euros for the bottle, she said. Suddenly suspicious, I asked her to let me try it. I did. It was terrible (to say nothing of the fact that it was in a recycled two-liter water bottle). I told her I wasn’t interested in the bottle, that I didn’t want to carry it up the mountain with me. She told me I could buy it then and pick it up on the way back. Stalling, I decided I would introduce myself, and told her my name and shook her hand. Strangely, she did not respond in kind, so after another minute of small talk, I asked her her name.
She shrugged.
- You don’t want to tell me your name, Signora?
- It’s not important.
- Why don’t you want to tell me your name?
- It doesn’t really matter...
I waited.
- Ok, my name is Anna.
At this point I was more than ready to extricate myself from the situation, but decided to make more small talk. So I told “Anna” that I was renting a place in Castelmola and would be here for a couple more months (hoping she would stop giving me the tourist treatment). She asked where I was renting, and I told her the name of my landlord.
- You’re renting from him?
- Yes.
She made a face. - Well, maybe you shouldn’t mention to him that you met me.
- Oh really?
- Yes, please don’t say anything.
- Well, I don’t really talk to him that much. At any rate, Signora, I need to get going so I can hike up the mountain before it gets dark.
- Take the bottle of wine.
- No thanks, I don’t need it.
- It’s good wine.
- No thanks. But I’d be happy to offer you something for the delicious lemonade and the orange. How much would you like?
She shrugged.
- Ok, how about one euro?
She paused, thinking. - Two euros.
- Ok, fine.

Of course as soon as I got a chance, I told my landlord about the whole thing (I didn’t feel I owed anything to a woman who was clearly trying to rip me off). He was quite amused by the whole story. He said her name was Angela, not Anna, and that she pulls that act with just about everyone who walks up the mountain. I have since told the story to a few people, and they’ve all said the same.

It’s unusual for people here to be anything but generous, so this was certainly an exception, not the rule. But God, how I wish I had the whole thing on camera somehow!

The Sensory Ethno Mixed Tape v.1.0

Would it be really lame if I made a mixed tape for our class? Yes? Oops! The connections to your projects aren't especially profound, but hopefully this will provide you with a little inspiration… and dancing!

DOWNLOAD HERE (from Megaupload)

Or listen to it streaming (from Project Playlist)

I Turn My Camera On [it's about filming! ...maybe]
Video Tapez [you've gotz 20!]
Summertime Clothes [summer ballad #1]
Summertime [summer ballad #2]
Made It Fine [inspiration to blog often!]

Lucas [sorry, I couldn't resist!] - Turning Japanese
Julia [a little Bollywood fusion] - Jogi (Main Mix)
Sarah [this is how I imagine South Africa] - Lion in a Coma
Cynthia [your project, to a T] - Walking with a Ghost
Jared [allusions to gender identity...? this one's a stretch] - Grace Kelly
Grace [from another great film set in Africa [and don't let your NGO get you down!]] - Hakuna Matata
Anh-Thu [H20 + Asia!] - Rains in Asia
Elisa ["the necessarily intersubjective," to quote Anh-Thu] - I am the Walrus
Adam [I now equate this song with your project] - Postcards from Italy

Hi all -- greetings from Beirut.

My apologies for being absent in the discussion. I have read all your posts from the road but haven't replied nor really gotten around to posting my own.

Things are going well and I should have a proper post by week's end....just wanted to send a quick byte so you know I'm alive.

J

And the main points of the essay are...!?!

Last night I had a long discussion about my project with one of the young artists I'm following (off-camera; my bumbling Vietnamese when it comes to semi-in-depth, -intellectual conversations is too much of an embarrassment for me to be reflexive on-screen). I'd never intended for my video to be plot-driven but since keeping up with everyone's posts and remembering the lessons from class, I feel a strange need to find the story or narrative arc typical of classic docs. From Jeff and Julia and others I have an idea of the types of shots needed to build this kind of work. For an essayistic piece, I have no clue! The young artist (whose opinion I respect) responded with his reservations about my drive to follow a person or people "at their heels" to get a deeper sense of their world. He explained that it was extremely difficult and inconvenient for artists and poets because they don't have a regular work routine and wouldn't work from the heart if there is a stranger following them with a camera. Also, life here is leisurely, often full of uneventfulness. The thought of me trailing someone to their morning coffee or taking siesta or having a meal (there's a saying that even when the gods strike, they avoid mealtime; meaning, no business at this precious hour!) makes many people raise an eyebrow or just plain chuckle dismissively. The artist said it'd be a different situation if I were to follow a craftsman, like a weaver or someone like that, who had regular, sustained work. He said he used to do a kind of fieldwork for his art pieces too, sometimes, traveling among the hilltribe people and eating and sleeping and living with them to observe their routines. So, he understood what I meant. But it was different with city people. Agh. I started to think of how very much like anthropology his description was. And I thought about how messed up the pursuits of anthropology and its bedfellows were. Here was another example of a 'developed' urbanite following some more 'pristine' or 'traditional' ethnic groups to further his/her own worldview or understanding. Nothing inherently bad in that I guess but it makes me cringe because of histories of domination and subjugation that are easily erased when one moves from the level of society to the individual.

Anyway, I don't want to do a cinema verite type doc. But I feel compelled to look for the elements of that genre because that's what's discussed most often with regard to documentaries.
So, what are the basic/essential building blocks for an essay piece?

Thus far, I've gotten images of the landscapes and sites around Hue that catch my attention. I've also filmed artists at work and then interview-style. I intend to use the interview sound clips as voiceover in conjunction with interesting visual images. But I guess I'm waiting for the focus or 'golden thread' to emerge out of review of the footage. I had a vague idea for a structure: start off with the 3 artists I'm following by establishing their ties through the gallery owner I met, then move to my reflections of their commentary/work and incorporate my own poetry on related themes, then move to the 2 Hue poets. It's not clicking just yet. And I have only about 3 work weeks left!

But on a more positive note (despite my comment to Ty's latest entry), I think I've been won over finally! Jeff was concerned during the semester that I didn't like what I was doing or that I didn't feel like I was making progress. Now I can say that somehow I've gotten over my repulsion at the tech aspects of the camera and I feel much more comfortable using it. Also, I am slowly beginning to understand what Jeff means about being in a different state of mind or element when behind the camera. I no longer feel it's a huge obstacle to being in the world and instead feel that it's just a different way of being. Perhaps that's because I do have another body with me when working many times.

Overall, I keep pulling on Julia's directive to "have fun!," which really helps with the sanity.

But any thoughts on elements of the 'essay' will really be appreciated!

Good Developments

After a relaxing, head-clearing trip out of the concrete jungles of Tokyo and into the green jungles Hakone for a one day/night stay at a hot springs resort (chocolate hot springs! green tea! wine!!) and traditional Japanese hotel, I have made some encouraging developments. While on the trip, I pressed my Tokyo University friends about Shimokitazawa and if they knew anyone who lived there/hung out there. One member of the program (Harvard College in Asia Program) where I met these students in February lives and frequents the area (he wasn't on the Hakone trip though). They said they would contact him for me but warned that he is 'difficult'. Unsure of what that means, I went ahead and contacted him via Facebook on my own as well.

Anyway, the real windfall came on Monday, when my grad student friend that I met through someone at the film festival, Colin, took me to a small alternative/countercultural bookstore that opens its doors as a cafe once a week. The walls were lined with posters of protest events and festivals and the people seemed interesting, but it was when one of them pulled out a jew's harp and started jamming and putting every one in various states of trance that I knew I was in a special place. Tuesday night, I went to a house that Masa has opened up as a cheap living space for people left home and or jobless due to the economy. The room we were in was sort of a communal space, with different art projects by members lining the walls and ceiling. I met Adachi, a man who works as a caretaker for the elderly by day and a didgeridoo performer and activist (some say communist!) by night and weekends. Together him and Masa are organizing a 'peace and freedom' music and art festival outside of Tokyo in an abandoned elementary school in early August. Masa is also a key player in the Save Shimokitazawa movement against the proposed redevelopment of parts of the city. They do 'sound demonstrations' in front of government buildings in protest! So I've told them all about my project and they are enthusiastically interested and want to be a part of it. I've already gotten go ahead to come to people's homes. I basically can't believe how quickly I found this group of very interesting people who are so friendly and so willing to help me (then I think about the disaster that was the last three weeks and I get over it). Masa speaks some English, but luckily my friend Shiho, who does speak English, has taken a strong interest in the project and people as well and wants to help me as much as possible. It seems as though pieces are coming together in a way that I did not expect AT ALL, and with people/a place that is completely different than what I had planned on, but nonetheless much more interesting and exciting to me. Between all of the protests and performances they have told me about it seems like there will be a lot that I can film, and the major challenge at this point will be figuring out how to focus and pull the different threads and people together into a story, which like Ty, I want. I am thinking that the Monday night cafe can be a central scene, since it is where a lot of these people come and go, talk and perform. I just have to figure out who, in addition to Masa, I will want to go more in depth with. Based on where I've come from and what I've said, does anyone have feedback regarding this group of people or any ideas with how to proceed? I'm very excited about it, especially since they are all so friendly and inviting (and chill!), but just need to figure out how to proceed with shooting and focusing in on what matters. I have 7 full weeks left in Tokyo. I perceive the language barrier continuing to be frustrating, but I have some help so I am confident I will be able to work through it.

So far all the feedback I've received has been really helpful, so please keep it coming--thanks!

Special Olympics and Olympic-Sized Trials

Back in Kathmandu, again unexpectedly, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s that you’ve just gotta roll with the punches… especially if you’re operating on Nepali time. Either I find out what’s happening at the last minute, miss it altogether, or find out way in advance and everything falls through. The bad news: to my total dismay, the students just started a two week summer vacation smack in the middle of my ten-week stay. The good news: within that summer break, three days have been filled with the Nepali version of the Special Olympics, and this Saturday there will be a district-wide, day-long deaf picnic in a nearby village. (On the Fourth of July, no less! Same idea, different cause of celebration.) In the remaining vacation days, I’ll catch up on logging (ay caramba), get establishing shots around Banepa, and film at the hostel where ten students live. For the next 72 hours, however, I am unabashedly vegging out in Kathmandu. Three straight dawn-to-dusk shooting days in an chaotic, unpredictable environment 28 long, long kilometers from the familiarity and control of the deaf school has left me exhausted. On the flip side, I survived a wild ride on top of a bus (as pictured; halfway regretting not bringing the camera up there) and got some killer footage at the games (Sumit, the school’s star athlete, passed out promptly after crossing the finish line to bring home the silver medal in the 400m race… it was Kerri-Strugg-in-the ’96-Olympics epic!).

Like everyone else’s projects, this film has been an ever-morphing entity and an exciting, all-consuming rollercoaster. The “golden thread” is proving to be an elusive one… I had a brief panic attack after reading MacDougal’s “Social Aesthetics” (better late than never…!) and his methodology for selecting student subjects in order narrow the focus of his study. My plan (and, in fact, execution) had been to follow all the teachers and students, intending to pick and choose the interesting bits in the editing room—since the school has a mere forty students, I intended to create a “portrait of a place” by piecing together disparate elements (people, classrooms, conversations) in and around the school. Now, I’m not convinced this could maintain the interest of an audience for twenty minutes (even given the novelty of sign language), nor would it provide a solid structure for a film. Still, hope is not lost; though I realize MacDougal’s method is one of many ways to focus a film, I am finding certain relationships to be emerging as particularly captivating—a recent graduate spends afternoons teaching sign language to a twelfth grader who recently lost his hearing, the first graders learn as much from one another as they do from the teachers, a group of young women spend their final days crafting together before parting ways for the real world, the school’s sole deaf teacher is passionate, expressive, and the students’ unanimous favorite... With my remaining time, I plan to focus on five relationships (though I’ll probably narrow it down to the most compelling three in the end)—I’ll braid the three stories together, possibly through location and character overlaps, though I’m not entirely sure how best to go about braiding (with a golden thread, perhaps?). I am so open to advice, constructive criticism, and gaping holes (no matter how obvious you think they might be).

Besides the treasure hunt for a golden thread, I’ve run into three serious obstacles. Sorry to burden you with a mountain of questions, but I’m really at a loss. Any advice/tips/insights on even one of these hurdles (and/or feedback on the basic structure) would be super-helpful!

1.) CONVERSATION: The deaf sign over one another—interrupting one another, starting before the other finishes, and constantly breaking off into smaller sub-conversations and rejoining the main conversation. And, oh my goodness, are they fast. This leaves me with two choices: (1) I can shoot in close-ups and medium-close ups (a la my final project at the ASL table), and sacrifice crucial parts of the conversation and keys to post-production translation, or (2) I can fit all the subjects into the frame (a la Stephanie Spray’s piece), an aesthetic break from my typical filming style (the dreaded “long take”), and make it difficult to cut ins and outs. With method 1, it’s difficult to keep up with a conversation of two people, and impossible with four or more. Picking up overlapped conversation and piecing conversations together with L-cuts won’t be possible with a visual language. With method 2, is it okay to cut into close-ups—faces of people watching, etc.—or is it too obviously faked, since the majority of the scene would be shot with a static frame? How can I deal with this dilemma? I’m also finding that while the girls and women naturally form arrangements conducive to framing (sitting in semi-circles, holding still, etc.), most of the boys have ants in their pants—they constantly shift around, step in front of the person signing, and form tight circles that are hard to break into. Even when they’re sitting, a boy will always sit down smack in front of the camera like it’s not even there, or he will scoot forward or backward to block or be blocked. Should I avoid conversations with more than two people, conversations with boys, etc.? Any tips on how I might best film a visual language?

2.) TRANSLATION: I’ve been clinging to the naïve fantasy that by the end of three months, I’ll be totally fluent in NSL and can come home to effortlessly tranlate 20+ hours of conversation. However, when I asked Krishna (the head teacher) the content of what I thought was a pretty simple, straightforward conversation between two boys, she had no idea what they were talking about… and this is after fifteen years of signing daily in a deaf school. In other words, YIKES. One possible solution is going all Forests of Bliss on you and not translating at all. From the beginning, I’ve made an effort to film events accessible to a Western audience: math lessons, the sign language lessons between the two boys, the recent grads’ crafting circle, sports and games, etc. In theory, it'd be possible to build a film that doesn’t need translation. However, I think that translated conversation is crucial to really understanding this rich culture, creating story lines (which I want!), revealing personalities and relationships, and maintaining the audience’s interest. I don’t think every scene and every gesture need to be translated, but I do think a few scenes of conversation will be critical. What’s a girl to do? I’ve been in brainstorming mode… I could show potentially key conversations to the people who originally had them, and work through the nitty gritty of the conversation. This is especially feasible with Sharmila and Krishna, with whom communication has been more advanced. The main problem is that more often than I’d like to admit, I have no idea what my subjects are talking about. I’m so focused on cinematography that I often don’t know what I’m getting—even when my frame is static, there’s something about watching a conversation in two dimensions that makes it more difficult to understand. So with this growing Mt. Everest of footage, I don’t know which conversations have the most important content—just which conversations have the best lighting, framing, etc. Waiting until I return to Harvard will cut me off from my subjects (few have e-mail, and the internet in Banepa works sluggishly, if at all), but there are a handful of people in America fluent in NSL that I could potentially rope into the project. I’m taking steps in the right direction… Any time there’s a written component of a scene (blackboards, lesson books, passed notes), I’ve gotten close-ups of the Nepali, which I hope will later help decode anything I don’t understand. More and more often, I try to get a debrief from the subjects post-conversation, but this is tough when a conversation is 10-15 minutes long, or when the conversation ends naturally because people must leave. How are those of you who don’t know the language fluently dealing filmically (Lucas and Julia, are you the only two?)? Do the rest of you have any suggestions?

3.) ETHICS OF FILMING: This is perhaps the toughest yet, since there are never such clear-cut lines when it comes to moral reasoning. Nevertheless, I’ve been totally floored by the heavy issues I’ve been dealing with, and thought you anthro folk might be more experiences in the area. I’ve been asking myself a lot lately, “Which matters more, getting this shot or the feelings of the person this will affect?” It all seems like such a precarious balance—building a strong, three-dimensional film requires that you get shots that might not always be emotionally easy and forces you to get closer when you’d rather pull away, but at the same time, building trusting relationships is an important part of the process too, and I often don’t know when it’s better to turn off the camera and forfeit a scene. Shooting at the Special Olympics was really tough for me—I was constantly on edge about shooting handicapped strangers, especially without their explicit permission. The footage was mostly just unincriminating establishing shots—people chatting, spectating, and participating—but I was very worried about how I would be percieved. Are there any guidelines to filming the physically/mentally handicapped? Also, the night before last, the grandmother of my host family had what seemed to be a stroke (after a night of high blood pressure and total paralysis, she’s lost the use of her right face and arm, can’t hear, and can’t speak), and I’m currently facing the very real, sobering possibility that she might be dead when I return to Banepa. If she survives, she will undoubtedly be in a precarious state, and the vibe in the house is bound to be different. I feel so selfish to even have this on my mind, but I am wondering how this will affect filming. I’ve been shooting Krishna and her family in the house as part of the project, and there are several shots I haven’t gotten yet that are important to the opening sequence as planned. I would feel really uncomfortable incorporating the grandmother’s illness or death into the film, but I also don’t know: is it okay to shoot at all? How are y’all grappling with the ethics of filming? How far can you push til you’ve pushed too far?

I can’t wait for your feedback and continued posts… In the meantime, thinking warmly of y’all and sending all the good karma I’ve gained circumambulating stupas!