Judith
Barry, my advisor last semester, said, “When you shoot this film [referring to
my documentary “The Mizrahis”] and it is released—hopefully it will be—you want
it to be visually compelling as well as compelling on the level of the story.
So the question is: ‘How do you get there?’”
There
are many directions I must pursue to develop my skills and artistry as a
documentary filmmaker. I have to harness my energy and systematically tackle
the challenges that lie ahead, but doubt has crept into my mind. Where do I
begin? How will I get there? In my
January residency critiques, faculty and students highlighted a number of areas
for focus: work on your technical skills of lighting, sound and camera; analyze
documentary and narrative films and study of the language of film; develop your
directorial skills to bring out your characters’ personalities; write another
treatment draft for “The Mizrahis,” paying attention to the visual strategies
in addition to the narrative strategies; and the biggest bombshell, explore
experimental film to inform your work. My ideas and themes are a steadying and
driving force: I am determined to tell stories and create narrative arcs around
issues of identity, displacement, culture, the Middle East, and family roots.
The critical theory class on the archive helped me think of new ways of
representing these themes and may provide an avenue through which I can venture
into more experimentation.
When
I attended film school at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts, we were
encouraged to work with crews, assume a specific role and carve a niche for
ourselves as either a producer, director, editor, director of photography,
sound engineer or lighting technician. I chose producer/director and editor –
but the concept was to be part of a team. The notion of working solo on video
projects is new for me and involves embracing many skill sets that I haven’t
previously focused on. Nevertheless I have accepted this challenge and shot all
my own footage in the Fall semester—but not without noticeable flaws that were
pointed out in my critiques during the residency. Ben Sloat commented that the
midtones and the shadows in the “Salad Stories” footage were great but the
highlights were too blown out causing a loss of information in the texture. He
also felt that the audio was overly resonant even though he did like hearing
sounds in the background. Nuriko Suzuki noticed one of my shaky zooms in the
“Salad Stories” footage, but this was filmed before my mentor advised me never
to zoom. Deb Todd Wheeler commented that the salads at the end were shot
beautifully but was distracted by one or two scenes that were burnt out. Interestingly,
I discussed this with my mentor last semester, Michal Goldman, who said she
liked the blown out window in one scene.
Another
area of discussion was related to my directorial skills and work with my
characters. For my long takes with Sharona, the main character in my film “The
Mizrahis,” faculty and students commented on her comfort level or lack thereof
in front of the camera. My intention had been to layer audio reflections of her
past life in Iran over scenes of her gardening at her home in Newton or
selecting vegetables at a farm stand in Weston. Comments included: “She looked
self-conscious in front of the camera,” “the sense of thinking didn’t come
through and I wonder how you can pull that out more,” “I couldn’t connect with
her—she maintained this containment,” and “I didn’t get the sense that she was
far away from the bazaar [in Iran].” I’m not sure how to resolve these issues.
Judith Barry has suggested that I take acting lessons to improve on my ability
to work with characters. She said, “when you’re working with people you have to
make them feel absolutely comfortable so they’ll tell you their secrets.”
Michal Goldman has said that she carefully selects her characters by doing
pre-interviews and assessing whether they can be engaging on camera. Given that
I’m determined to tell the Mizrahi family’s story of emigration from Iran as a
result of the Islamic Revolution, I’m faced with the challenge of bringing out
emotion and animation in subjects who are not naturally engaging on camera.
Judith
suggested I continue to watch and deconstruct films to learn more about film
language and techniques. Examples she gave include Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave for its visual
conception and tension; use and lighting of dark space; framing of bodies and
strange shot structure, and David Lynch’s Blue
Velvet for its use of dark space. According to Judith, these filmmakers are
very good at lighting people with dark skin, a challenge I have encountered in
my filming of “Salad Stories” and “The Mizrahis.”
Thematically,
I have gravitated consistently to themes revolving around the Middle East,
cross-cultural exploration, cultural hybridity, and food as a vehicle for
dialogue. At the longer time-based screening, viewers were more focused on the
content of “Salad Stories,” were curious about the individual characters and
their stories, rather than on the technical or artistic elements. Ben Sloat
envisioned the salad as a structure that exposes many other elements of culture
and causes cultural collisions by bringing different backgrounds together. He
also wanted to see multi-dimensions of each character so they’re not just sunny
and positive. In my meetings last semester with Michal, she felt strongly that
“Salad Stories” is a short film, so the cut I did for the residency was
10-minutes long. During the residency, opinions varied on where I should go
with this project. Judith agreed that short is good given today’s viewers’
attention spans and the repetitive structure of making a salad, but Ben Sloat saw
possibilities of it being a longer project. I have envisioned continuing to
collect and archive additional salad stories, but realize the need to carefully
conceptualize this project; think through the goals, artistic strategies, and
possible benefits for the viewer; and play with the editing format to infuse
the film with tension and make it less predictable. How should I balance the
focus between the salads and their makers?
Joseph
Fontinha observed that my work makes overt references to domesticity and he
cautioned me about doing so because it may seem like I’m glorifying
domesticity. It is clear--themes of cooking that have traditionally been in the
domain of women are prevalent in my work. Additionally, the work I brought to
the January residency did feature women exclusively. However, I did shoot a
male Kibbutznik making an Israeli salad who didn’t make the cut because the
location was poorly lit. I explore domesticity because I’m interested in the
domestic arts and I sometimes long for and idealize what I believe, perhaps
falsely, was a simpler existence for women in the past. Pamela Drix concurred
with my opinion and said that domesticity is a fascinating space to
investigate.
The
most consistent comments throughout the residency revolved around moving away
from the traditional documentary format into more video art and
experimentation. Ben Sloat suggested I look at Shirin Neshat’s video work for
its aesthetics and emotion. He saw the “Salad Stories” project as a
multi-channel piece on 4 monitors or projections so viewers are physically
moving around to watch everything separately, which would allow for different
types of engagement. He feels that there’s something about the explicit
documentary tradition that can be very passive for the viewer. Both Ben and
Judith suggested I watch Chris Marker’s film San Soleil, which is a personal narrative documentary that goes
from abstraction to representation at certain moments. Ben also suggested that
I re-edit “Salad Stories” to show much more of the environment inside and
outside the characters’ homes and the culture as I see it, and perhaps also
include historic imagery.
Cesare
Pietroiusti also pushed me to think about video art and experimentation. He
commented that the “Salad Stories” short was well edited and done nicely, but
pushed me to think of incorporating the medium of film, like the technological
devices of sound, into the story to add a whole new layer of meaning and
questions. It struck him that during the 10-minute cut, the subtitles changed
from Hebrew to Arabic and if he didn’t know either of the two languages, he
wouldn’t have perceived a change in language. He saw the power in the
subtitling that made him think something very specific that otherwise the film
wouldn’t have told him. He found this the most interesting part of the film and
called it “a moment of salad,” where something is mixing deeply with something
else. He encouraged me to enlarge these moments and play with elements that are
part of the video making language so they become intertwined with the story. Salads
are a metaphor for mixing and confusion.
Lynne
Cooke suggested I introduce some reflexivity that will cut the familiarity of
the framework I’ve set up and make it more participatory. She gave the example
of Anri Sala’s film about his Albanian grandmother making bread, which has
themes of continuity and family, but the illusion is broken at the moment when
the recipe appears on the screen. Pamela Drix suggested setting up a
performance piece where I invite someone to make a salad in a public space and
film the event. The topic would then be about people’s reactions to an event
that is not normally present in that kind of space.
Several
readings and themes from Charles Merewether’s collection The Archive: Documents of Contemporary Art resonated for me and may
help me move in a more experimental direction. In the class we had two
assignments: 1) to pick one of the excerpts and discuss it; and 2) to create an
archive. For the first assignment I researched The Atlas Group Archive, in particular Archive #17. In taking this
reading at face value, one might think that Lebanon was riddled with post-war
paranoia after the Civil War ended in 1991, and couldn’t even forgive the
operator doing surveillance for turning the camera away to watch the sunset.
However, it turns out that some of the documents in Walid Raad’s The Atlas are fabricated, which raises
the question of the extent to which we can use this archive to build an
understanding of this period in Lebanon’s history. The issue of veracity in art
and filmmaking is an interesting one to explore. Is it legitimate to fabricate
when information is missing or to make a point? Where is the line drawn between
integrity and artistic license? The consequences can be benign as in Sarah
Polley’s recent documentary, The Stories
We Tell, which wove together Super 8 family footage with reenactments. She
was unaware that viewers would have difficulty distinguishing between the two.
At other times fabrications can be misleading and unethical. I wonder if the
level of acceptance of fabrication is different for video art and traditional
documentary.
My second assignment, to construct an archive, helped me
conceive of new ways of harnessing my ideas into art forms. I drew from
Christian Boltanski, who reconstructed and memorialized the past using traces
in Research and Presentation of All that
Remains of My Childhood, and Ilya Kabakov’s Sixteen Ropes, which created meaning out of garbage. I conceived of
an archive using the contents of the Singer sewing machine I inherited from my
Turkish grandmother. In using wooden clothespins to hang thimbles, fabric
swatches, thread, string, needle packets, and my grandmother’s recipes and photographs
on a clothesline, I was beginning to tell her immigrant story as a young
teenager who left Turkey between the two world wars and ultimately settled in
Canada. In writing the drafts of my treatment last semester for “The Mizrahis,”
it has become clear that, for me, this film will also be about my longing to
know about my Turkish grandmother’s past and the realization that much of this
information is lost.
The main goals for my Spring 2014 semester should be to move
in the direction of experimentation, further develop my understanding of the
language of film, and work on my camera and editing skills. As my current
advisor Stuart Steck outlined, I should find a language of my own that combines
elements of experimental and conventional filmmaking. I’m not ready to become a
video artist, but I would like video art to inform my work as a filmmaker and
help break the predictability and monotony of the traditional format I’ve been
wedded to. While I expect to be engaged in experimental video exercises, I
would also like to find the time to further develop “The Mizrahis” documentary
treatment and figure out a pragmatic shooting and editing plan for completing
this project for my final semester in the LUCAD MFA program.
Works Cited
Merewether,
Charles, ed., The Archive: Documents of
Contemporary Art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.
