January 2014 Residency Summary and Response to Critical Theory

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.