¡Colores!; 1902; Filmmaker Godfrey Reggio; Artist Farooq Hassan; Photographer Alexander Heilner; Artist Tom Otterness

>>Narrator: IN THIS EDITION OF COLORES! >>LEGENDARY FILMMAKER GODFREY REGGIO SHARES THE VISION BEHIND HIS FILMS AND INSIGHTS INTO HIS NEW FILM THE HOLYSEE >>Godfrey Reggio: We're blinded we aren't seeing the world we live in. Art can help us resee that world. >>IRAQUI ARTIST, FAROOQ HASSAN FLED HIS COUNTRY TO FORGE A NEW LIFE FOR HIMSELF AND HIS ART IN THE UNITED STATES >>Farooq Hassan: Here indeed, I feel complete freedom. >>PHOTOGRAPHER ALEXANDER HEILNER VIEWS THE WORLD FROM A LOFTY PERSPECTIVE. >>Alexander Heilner: Some of the things I photographed are actually clearly designed to be seen from the air, looking down from a god's-eye- view if you will. >>TOM OTTERNES TAKES ON THE CHALLENGE OF TURNING A WORKDAY COMMUTE INTO A MOMENT OF ART. >>Tom Otternes: People are on their way to work and, you know, pretty focused. So to break through that is a challenge.

>>IT'S ALL AHEAD ON THIS >>FUNDING FOR COLORES IS >>Narrator: RENOWNED FOR MAKING THOUGHT PROVOKING FILMS SUCH AS KOYAANISQATSI, FILMMAKER GODFREY REGGIO USES MOTION PICTURES TO STIMULATE AUDIENCES TO SEE OUR WORLD

ém SOFT MUSIC >>Godfrey Reggio: I FEEL PRIVILEGED TO BE A FILMMAKER BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE AT THE TROUGH OF CINEMA, RELIGION, WHATEVER YOUR POINT OF VIEW ABOUT IT IS, THE NEW DIVINE TECHNOLOGY, AS IT WERE. ANYTHING THAT WE SAID ABOUT GOD IN THE PAST WE CAN SAY ABOUT MIRACLE MACRO. I WANTED TO, IN EFFECT, TAKE THAT MIRACLE IN REVERSE,

AND USE IT TO TRY TO OFFER A GIFT, THROUGH THE MEDIUM THAT EVERYONE IS ENTRANCED WITH, THAT IS OMNI PRESENT, THE SCREEN, THAT ONE CAN NO LONGER ESCAPE AND PUT SOMETHING LIKE A MIRROR, OR A HAMMER, DEPENDING ON YOUR POINT OF VIEW, THROUGH A MEDIUM OF ART, OUT ém SOFT MUSICém >>> BEFORE I DO A MOVIE, IT'S OBSESSIVE FOR ME THAT I HAVE A TITLE. I DON'T KNOW WHY. BUT, IF I CAN'T NAME IT, I CAN'T FEEL IT. OKAY? SO THAT IS MY REAL LIMIT. SO, OF COURSE, I DROVE MYSELF CRAZY. I WENT THROUGH A LOT OF DIFFERENT TITLES, SAVAGE EATON, ORACLE OF KATRINA, ET CETERA, BUT WHAT KEPT BUBBLING UP INSIDE OF ME, THIS IS ALL ABOUT PERCEPTION. I AM NOT OFFERING YOU A SPECIFIC IDEA, I AM OFFERING YOU TO OBSERVE

SOMETHING THAT IS HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT. IT IS ALL ABOUT SEEING. I SAID, HOLY SMOKE, HOLY TERROR, HOLY ém SOFT MUSIC ém ORLEANS, BEING AWAY FROM IT BUT IT BEING IN ME, NEW ORLEANS JUST WENT THROUGH A DEBACLE, THE LIKES OF WHICH MOST CITIES IN NORTH AMERICA HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED; THE 2005 HURRICANE KATRINA. MY FIRST IMPULSE AS A FILMMAKER WAS TO GET DOWN THERE AND TO LENS IT. ém VIOLIN MUSIC ém

>> I DIDN'T GET TO SHOOT FOR ANOTHER ALMOST FOUR YEARS SINCE THAT EVENT. SO, THE VIEW I HAD OF IT ACTUALLY MATURED AND I REALIZED, HAD I GONE DOWN IN 2005, I WOULD HAVE BEEN SHOOTING THE RUINS OF A HURRICANE. BIG DEAL. SORRY TO PUT IT THAT WAY. BUT, THERE ARE MANY HURRICANES AND WE SEE THEM ON THE NEWS ALL THE TIME. WHAT I GOT TO SEE NOW WHEN I WENT TO SHOOT FIVE YEARS LATER, ACTUALLY, IS NOT THE RUINS OF A HURRICANE, BUT THE RUINS OF MODERNITY. >> THESE BUILDINGS THAT BECAME LIKE MAUSOLEUMS WITH THEIR WINDOWS LIKE CHOIRS SINGING DEATH SONGS. OR AN AMUSEMENT PARK THAT HADN'T BEEN USED FOR OVER FIVE YEARS, WHERE THE SWAMP WAS LITERALLY RECLAIMING IT THROUGH ITS VEGETATION AND ALLIGATORS AND SNAKES.

>>THESE WERE LIKE SETS, WHEN YOU THINK OF THE RUINS OF MODERNITY, THAT NOWHERE IN HOLLYWOOD, COULD THEY BUILD. MY FILMS ARE MADE NOT ABOUT SOMETHING SPECIAL, NOT ABOUT A MONSTER, OTHER THAN THE MONSTER THAT WE CALL PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT. >>THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE. I ALSO WANTED TO FILM IN LOUISIANA THE SWAMPS, WHERE PART OF MY FAMILY COMES FROM, THE CHAPALA BASIN AND I WANTED TO FILM IT NOT IN A BEAUTIFUL COLOR LIKE IT COULD LOOK LIKE NATIONAL GEO. >>I WANTED TO FILM IT IN AN INFRARED SPECTRUM BEYOND COLOR, A SPECTRUM THAT IS PRESENT BUT UNPERCEIVABLE BY OUR SENSES. ALL OF MY FILMS ARE PREDICATED ON SEEING,

IN A NEW WAY, THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE, WHICH FOR ME >>WE'RE BLINDED. WE'RE NOT SEEING THE WORLD WE LIVE IN. ART CAN HELP US RE-SEE THAT WORLD. ém SOFT MUSIC ém >> ART IS A GIFT. IT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS REQUIRED. THERE IS NO NEED FOR WHAT I TRY TO OFFER. NO ONE NEEDS WHAT I AM PEDALING. IT IS A GIFT FOR THOSE THAT WISH TO TAKE IT. >>ART; THE BEAUTY OF ART IS THAT IT HAS NO MEANING. IT IS A MYSTERY. IT CAN BE, HOWEVER,

EXTREMELY MEANINGFUL TO THE VIEWER. IF YOU HAVE BEEN TO A CONCERT, LET'S SAY, ONE DOESN'T SAY, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS RIFT OF MUSIC TO YOUR LOVED ONE. >>ONE SAYS, GEE, I WAS MOVED, I WAS TOUCHED. I FELT IT. IT COULD CHANGE THINGS IN ONE'S LIFE. POETRY CAN DO THAT. A PIECE OF ART CAN CHANGE SOMEONE. SO, ART HAS, IN THAT SENSE, >>THE ABILITY TO, GET READY, INFLICT ITSELF ON THE VIEWER, SO THAT IT BECOMES BEYOND INTELLECT SOMETHING THAT DEALS WITH THE COMPLEXITY OF WHO WE ARE. IN THAT SENSE, IT COULD BE A GREAT MOTIVATOR TO CHANGE. ém SOFT MUSIC ém >> TO JOIN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, TO WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN, OKAY, YOU CAN DO ALL OF THAT, FOR ME IT IS A BIG WASTE OF TIME.

YOUR WORLD IS YOUR WORLD OF RELATIONSHIPS. YOU ARE EMPOWERED TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR WORLD OR YOU'LL LIVE IN A ROOTED FUTURE AND HAVE MAYBE SATISFACTIONS BUT NO REAL MEANINGFUL EXISTENCE. ém VIOLIN MUSIC ém >> I FEEL THESE FILMS WEAR A MASK OF A FACE WITHIN US ALL. I TAKE MYSELF AS THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECT FOR ALL OF MY FILMS. I TAKE MY OWN MENTAL ILLNESS AS A STATE THAT THE WORLD IS IN. >>IF ONE DOES NOT HAVE THE COURAGE TO BE HOPELESS

ABOUT THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVE, THEN THEY WILL NEVER HAVE THE COURAGE TO BE HOPEFUL ABOUT CREATING ANOTHER WORLD. THE WORLD THAT I AM TALKING ABOUT THAT, FOR ME, IS HOPELESS, LIKE HUMPTY DUMPTY IS OFF THE WALL IS THE ROOTED FUTURE. >>THE FUTURE THAT IS ALREADY SET AND DETERMINED BY THE TECHNOLOGICAL WAY IN WHICH WE LIVE. TO SAY NO TO THAT FUTURE, TO SAY NO TO TECHNOLOGICAL NECESSITIES IS THE ESSENCE OF FREEDOM. >>Narrator: A FAMOUS AND PROLIFIC ARTIST IN IRAQ, FRAOOQ HASSAN LEFT HIS COUNTRY AND HIS LEGACY TO COME TO THE UNITED STATES AND BEGIN HIS CAREER ANEW. >>It's a far cry from his five-bedroom mansion in Baghdad. Farooq Hassan turns an already tiny apartment kitchen into his art

studio. >>Farooq Hassan: When I work I like to hear music. >>Narrator: But as long as he has canvas and paint, Farooq is satisfied. >>Hassan: I feel inside me inside my soul that this painting is the only one here. It's the only thing in here. So actually I don't feel that I'm in a small place. It's just me and the painting. >>Narrator: Without skipping a beat Farooq carries forward the art career he start more than 50 years ago. >>Hassan: I tried to test young. >>Narrator: Over the past fifty years in Iraq Farooq mastered so many styles

so diverse you might think the work came from several different artists. His work hung in galleries in London, Amman, Jordan and at home in Basra and Baghdad. The Iraqi government contracted with Farooq to design more than 80 different stamps. The people of Iraq knew the art of Farooq Hassan. In 2010 Farooq fled to the United States, and left behind all of his work, and his fame. >>Hassan: It's like losing yourself. Of course but I try to renew myself here. >>Narrator: Farooq took his work to the Geezer Gallery in Multnomah where the curators embraced his art immediately. Without a doubt he was extremely experienced. His layout his form, his design, the color. It was magnificent. He's into that

master's quality. Obviously into a lifetime of artwork. The gallery is hanging Farooq's solo exhibition. He is flourishing. And what a thrill to be a part of that. Today Farooq's paintings strike a similar central theme. >>Hassan: I want to create a beautiful painting. The first thing I choose, the women. Women is beautiful. Of course. they're beautiful. I believe the women is the origin of the life indeed. >>Narrator: You'll find examples of veiled women in Farooq's earlier work. Today Farooq has done away with the veil. >>Hassan: This woman is the truth. The truth is open. But the untrue is covered.

Cover their mind, cover their brain. Here indeed I feel complete freedom without any feeling of something who watch me what I do or what I paint or what I think. Here I have freedom, I have freedom here. p >>Narrator: Once a national treasure of Iraq, Farooq Hassan starts over as a complete unknown in a new country and begins the process >>Narrator: NEXT WE MEET ALEXANDER HEILNER, AN ARTIST WHOSE WORK LITERALLY DISCOVERS NEW HORIZONS. HEILNER TAKES TO THE SKIES TO CAPTURE STRIKINGLY ABSTRACT AERIAL PHOTOS.

>>Alexander Heilner: Well my entire life I have always loved flying. My father worked in the airline industry, so we were able to travel quite a bit, and my face has been plastered against the windows of commercial planes literally since I can remember. >>I am fundamentally obsessed with this conjunction of the natural and human- built, but particularly in the landscape. It's a real kind of abstract and schematic way to think about things, but that's kind of how my mind in thinking about a map or looking at a map and thinking about the actual landscape and looking at the actual landscape and sort of making those connections and finding out for myself what's actual and real and what's people's perception of the world below. >>These two things kind of come together: this map view of the world, which you get from looking down from an airplane, and this obsession that I can't really explain about wanting to understand how artificial and human-built things live together, work together, collide, overlap, sit in proximity. There's a lot

of human intrusion into the landscape, and now is being done very consciously- some of the things I photographed are actually clearly designed to be seen from the air, looking down from a god's-eye-view if you will, and I'm sure that's how the developers thought about it. >>Unlike with a lot of photography, I have kind of a time limit. I'm up in a plane, I'm paying by the hour in many cases the weather isn't great, I'm not feeling great so I don't want to be up for too long. So I'm looking to try and find something fairly quickly. >>I try really hard not to crop my images much. I'm not categorically against it, but I really do most of that in the camera. I put a lot of faith into my own visual intuition, my own ability to kind of see the moment through the viewfinder. >>That's not to say that there isn't a lot of preparation, but once I'm in the plane looking down it's really looking for shapes and geometry and trying to find a moment where there's geometric alignment and a real conceptual alignment, where I'm getting the sense that there's a natural and then some human-built elements, and that it all comes together at one spot.

>>There's an art to talking to the pilot. I'll be looking out the window with one hand with my eye pressed to the shutter and just sort of motioning, and good pilots who've done this before really know how to read that. >>Flying in these small planes, in order to actually look straight down on the ground you have to be banking around the subject matter, often at a pretty steep angle. And I have to keep watching and watching and watching as the streets turn or the riverbank turns whatever it is I'm photographing is actually turning in the frame as we go. And I have to look for that perfect moment. I'm watching for both the geometric alignment with elements in the frame visually, and also a sort of conceptual alignment where things that I'm seeing in the frame that are natural are really balanced in whatever way I want to show them with things that are artificial or human-built. >>I'm not interested in telling people how to look at the world. I am interested in that people look at the world, and that people look around and pay attention and draw conclusions.

>>to student: Do I have total control over all the color management? >>Alexander: I think teaching, for me, is very similar. I see it as me trying to help students share their visions and, in a sense, expand everybody's vision. >>I'm a real person of this time and place. I can't image having lived long ago and certainly can't fathom what we'll be in the future, but I'm pretty intrigued with what's going on right >>Narrator: FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS, THE ARTS FOR TRANSIT PROGRAM HAS TRANSFORMED THE UNDERGROUND SUBWAY STATIONS OF NEW YORK CITY INTO A CANVAS FOR PUBLIC ART. HERES A LOOK AT THE WORK OF ARTIST TOM OTTERNESS >>Otterness: I loved being able to pitch to such a hardcore New York audience down in the subway, it meant that I could pull out my blackest humor, and I'd have some takers (laughs) It

is a hard audience to sell to, and people are on their way to work and you know, pretty focused, so to break through that's a challenge. >>Otterness: I usually try to make something that's subject specific you know so I went back immediately and did research on the building of the subways in the late 19th century, and sort of the political era at the time, Tammany Hall, and I ran across Thomas Nast work, the famous political cartoonist from that period. And I grabbed a lot of stuff, came straight from Nast, the money bag head people, corruption. >>Otterness: Almost all the projects start with drawing, it's a very an animation style of drawing, you know that I can make

my original, that I can make these figures, and this idea of tubular arms, and hands I have types for these guys, they are all of different social classes, so this guy is like a white color guy, maybe he should have pants, I guess. >>Otterness: I can't tell you how many hours I've spent in that subway. I spent time drawing the telephones that existed there or the loudspeakers or people and how they would sit and hangout in the subways. I actually built a full scale model of a staircase and overhead beams and the railings and everything in my studio so there was some very meticulous planning, but then when you actually get out on site, not all of it goes out the window, but certainly some of it does, and you have to respond to the real situation there. >>Otterness: I think it's one of my talents, you know

the placing of work in this kind of like Zen Garden way, or the unexpected, and it's both a surprise and it's a nook or a cranny that you don't expect - eye contact is very important for me, so that I would be sure that you would have eye contact when you're walking up the stairs, or that one would look to another across the space. >>Otterness: There's a few pieces that ask you to engage with it, you know. New Yorkers usually they'll sit next to it, but they're not often touching it, you know, they'll kind of like, not really being affectionate to this sculpture, I'm just sitting here cause it's an empty seat. >>Otterness: I think I set a record that the project went over a ten year period. I kept adding more and more work, and far beyond what I was under contract for, I kept throwing more and more bronze

in, the more excited I got, and finally my wife said, that's it, you gotta like save inheritance, and she kind of pulled me in. >>Otterness: When I'm depressed I go take a detour into the subway and go over to 14th street, and get out and just spend 15 minutes and somebody's always there, doing something with the work and I think, what's my problem, everything's okay (laughs), I get back in the subway and I go on my way. it's one of the big payoffs of doing public work is just to see that all >>Narrator: NEXT TIME ON COLORES WE TALK WITH INDY FILM MAKER ED BURNS. >>Ed Burns: You can tell the story that you want to tell without any interference from anyone. >>Narrator: PAINTER GREGORY

EUCLIDE USES NATURE FOR MORE THAN INSPIRATION Gregory Euclide: If I just made beautiful paintings, what I'm trying to get at in the work would be lost. p >>Narrator: NEW MEXICAN JAMES KOEHLER WEAVES LANDSCAPE INSPIRED TAPESTRIES p >>Jams Koehler: The Tapestries are always going to take on their own life, they are always going to have an appearance that is different from what had initially imagined when I began the process. And that's OK with me. It's part of my being a creator. >>Narrtor: UNTIL NEXT TIME