I met with my mentor Dana Levy on March 4 in New York
City. My focus this semester will
be to shape my documentary about the Mizrahi family who emigrated from Iran as
a result of the Islamic Revolution. As a first step, I wrote out the story as though I was telling
it to a friend, leaving out the visuals I might use to illustrate it.
This version weaves in what brought me to this investigation as much as it tells
the story of the Mizrahi family. On some level the Mizrahi family’s story
becomes my story.
Dana was reassuring that I would likely be able to use the
interview footage already shot. I’ve been working on this film since 2008, at
varying stages of my development as a filmmaker, so I’ve been concerned about
the interview quality. Dana said
that with creativity, a film can be beautiful in spite of this.
Dana’s response to the first experimental exercise I
did was that she’d like to see me take more of a 3-D approach to the objects I included.
Rather than scan them and present them as 2-D, I should film characters interacting with
the objects by pointing or holding them. She recommended that I watch the film Nobody’s
Business by filmmaker Alan Berliner to stimulate my visual thinking. Alan owns an archive of found footage. In Nobody's Business, he weaves in short clips of old boxing matches to represent his relationship with his father.
