¡Colores!; 1944; Pueblo Storyteller Larry Littlebird, Female Scribe Julie Seltzer, Artist Don Harvey, Pixar Films Animator Sanjay Patel

>>Narrator: THIS TIME, ON COLORES! PUEBLO STORYTELLER LARRY LITTLEBIRD SHARES THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING TO LISTEN. >>Larry Littlebird: Listening to whats within is what the stories are really, truly about. >>Narrator: JULIE SELTZER IS WRITING OUT AN ENTIRE TORAH, A SACRED JEWISH TEXT, ONLY THE SECOND WRITEN OUT BY A WOMAN. >>Julie Seltzer: I dont think of joy and hard work as being separated, its also an opportunity to bemore quiet in a world that often feels very rushed and loud and overwhelming. >>Narrator: INTERSECTING POLITICS, GRAPHIC DESIGN AND PAINTING, DON HARVEY HAS BEEN MAKING ART IN SPACES WHERE OPPOSITE WORLDS COLLIDE. >>Don Harvey: If I connected it to sort of activism, it was an attitude about what the city looked like or could

look like and what design meant. >>Narrator: PIXAR ANIMATOR SANJAY PATEL HAS A UNIQUE PERSONAL PORTFOLIO. HE DRAWS UPON HIS EAST INDIAN HERITAGE TO ILLUSTRATE ANCIENT HINDU EPICS. >Sanjay Patel: Theres magic, theres fighting and animals, gods, demons and I just thought, I really want to tell this story in the most modern and graphic way as possible. >>Narrator: ITS ALL AHEAD ON COLORES! PUEBLO STORYTELLER LARRY LITTLEBIRD SHARES WHAT STORIES ARE TRULY ABOUT. >>Hakim Bellamy: Where do stories come from? >>Larry Littlebird: Where do stories come from? Oh my God. Thats where they come from. Oh my God. And there is nothing more creative than being

with the creator than telling a story. Because the creator loves stories and that brings should be. Like a father or a mother with their child. That is so essential to what a story is. >>Bellamy: How are stories connected to the land? >>Littlebird: This, right here. This is the listening ground. And so wherever I am on the Earth, I am one with that ground. So Im grounded. People who have separated from any kind of indigenous association or root... Its difficult because the technology just draws them away from

the moment. And thats really all we have. We have these moments and again the beautiful thing about stories is learning to listen. That is the beautiful thing about stories. There is a resonance that we vibrate with and there is a sound. Sound comes to us and they touch us. >>Bellamy: Why stories? Why is story the medium? >>Littlebird: Listening to whats within is what the stories are really truly about. A lot of people call me a storyteller and I completely refuse that. And a lot of people think because they hear me share lots of stories that Ive got some kind of brilliant memory. It has nothing to do with memory.

It has to do with listening. And Ive been blessed to have had elders my entire life who I was close with, who I could just listen to. How I understand myself is Im more of a story listener and every once in awhile I get to share some stories. And that allows me to listen one more time to a story. Yeah its my voice, but Im remembering where it came from and how it was shared. >>Littlebird: The greatest thing as Native people that we are about is our trauma. I had people, butI paid attention to whatever they might be saying to me. And that learning to listen

has allowed meto not become fearful about the trauma, but to look at it. See what it is, and then remember a story. These stories come for that very purpose. To help us find our way through any darkness. They become like a light. >>Bellamy: As a poet people are always, like, you know... So its so cool you get to go up there and talk and people get to listen to you and they get to like, hear your voice and that must be so like,emancipating. But for every one poem I put out there I get 5 or 6 in return and thats the rewardingpart. As a poet theres a magic in being able to gather people. And having people come together, in relationship as you called it. What would happen if there

were no listeners? >>Littlebird: Look at our world now. There are very few listeners, but there is a great deal of chaos. Now, that doesnt mean that chaos has to be harmful because you can actually put some incredible stuff together. But there is a tendency for humans to become very confused very easily, because thatswhat happens to us. And that chaos can lead to destructiveness. A destructiveness which is saying that Im just not any good. Im not any good. When in fact we are nothing BUT good. >>Bellamy: How do you know its the end of the story?

>>Littlebird: Oh thats a cool question because youre talking filmmaking. And if you dont see the endof the story youre going to be working on that for a long, long time. See youre describing literature, in the oral, its not quite like that. But for a moment were speaking shop here. The ending is because thats what is touching you. Thats what youre feeling, and thats what youre hearing, and thats what youre seeing. >>Bellamy: You made a distinction between kind of oral culture and literature, but can you tell us alittle more about this oral quality, this oral characteristic? >>Littlebird: In the beginning, was the word. >>Bellamy: Thats it? >>Littlebird: And here we are. >>Bellamy: It always comes back to that. It circles around.

>>Littlebird: Yeah. Here we are. What happens to us as humans is, we get caught in our own descriptions. And yet were in this word, but were not quiet to hear what this word is saying. >>Narrator: JULIE SELTZER, MAKES HISTORY, ONE ANCIENT LETTER AT A TIME, AS A FEMALE SCRIBE. >>JULIE SELTZER: Julie starts reciting passage in Hebrew, then: You shall repeat all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart from his land. >>SELTZER: I generally say, or sing, or chant a prayer or a line to get in a ready with the right intention. >>Narrator:: Julie Seltzer is

a soferet, or scribe, performing a tradition that has been passed downfor thousands of years. A feather sheets of parchment are all she needs to create a sacred Torah. of the Torah is probably the oldest continuous document that humanity has.And the Torah scroll, that is the hand written scroll of the Five Books of Moses represents Gods wisdom and what human beings need to know in order to be human beings. For someone to take on the sacred, holy responsibility of writing a Torah is an extraordinary commitment. >> SELTZER: I dont think of joy and hard work as being separated, its also an opportunity to be morequiet in a world that often feels very rushed and loud

and overwhelming. >>RABBI KUSHNER: The scribe is governed by elaborate rules for how the scribe would copy a Torah, including the number of letters in each book and the number of paragraphs, and the number of columns, and theyre all checked and double checked to make sure that the Torah that we read in the synagogue today is to the best of human capabilities flawless and exactly like the one God, according to legend, gave Moses on Mount Sinai that was written in black fire on white fire. >> SELTZER: So this is one of my favorite letters, the letter Peh. While its a Peh with the black ink, in the formation of the letter, what you see on the inside in the white space is actually anotherHebrew letter. Its the Beyt. I read the words, and then I say them and then I write them. It helps the scribe to not make errors.

>>Narrator: Though she is following centuries old scribal rules... Julie is actually breaking with tradition in two ways. She is a woman, in a field dominated by male scribes. And instead of a scribes customary solitude, Julie is writing her Torah in public view at the contemporary Jewish museum. >>SELTZER: According to traditional Jewish law, only a Torah thats written by an adult Jewish male will be kosher for use, so this is why women havent historically been scribes. >>Narrator: Barred from traditional scribal schools because of her gender, Julie looked online and found a teacher willing to train a woman. >>CONNIE WOLF: The Torah that Julie is writing for us will be the Second Torah ever written by a woman. Twenty to find very many female Rabbis and things have really changed and progressed. And so Im hoping in twenty years it will not be unusual to have a female scribe. >>Narrator: for Julie, being commissioned to write a Torah was a dream come true... but performing a spiritual act

in public is proving a bit of a challenge. >> WOLF: I dont know of any other museum whos really over a year period had somebody, in a sense, onview doing their work. There are artists who as part of a performance piece their work includes people and interaction...but not something thats trying to produce something that then will be sacred and used. So we really have been struggling with how to balance the interests of our visitors with the needs of Julie as she writes the Torah. >>Narrator: When she first started visitors used to come right up to Julie to peer over her shoulder. Now her space is cordoned off and a live video projection offers a voyeuristic view of her hand at work. Regularly scheduled breaks allow visitors the chance to ask their most burning questions. >>MUSEUM GUEST: Im just wondering Im sure there are times when there are mistakes made and Im just curious about how you fix those mistakes. >> SELTZER: Thank you for recognizing that

certainly there would be mistakes. The biggest myth is that a scribe cant make any mistakes and that if you make a mistake you have to start the whole Torah over. Which I think is kind of a remarkable myth simply because people actually believe it, which isamazing! Because something is holy it doesnt mean that you necessarily want to stay away from it, because holiness is also about coming close to something. So for me thats whats amazing, to be able to share that process, I get to be very close to the Torah as Im writing it and people as they watch can also be part of that process. >>Narrator: Before she became a scribe Julie was a baker for a Jewish retreat center. She would often shape ritual breads into her favorite scenes from the Torah. >>SELTZER: Ive made everything from a scene of people getting swallowed up by the Earth; it was a giant mound challah, ripped apart with little people flailing about, to ritual objects. And this

year is based on scribal oddities, or interesting things connected to a scribes work, so its usually words or other things connected to how Torah is written. >>Narrator: As part of her residency at the museum, Julie is combining her dual passions for bakingand scribal arts by conducting food for thought workshops for visitors. >>SELTZER: Were going to be making hamentashen but thats not the only thing were going to be doing. Were going to be talking about the holiday of Purim. >>Narrator: After studying a passage from the Torah, the class gathers in the museums kitchen to make baked goods related to that portion of the text. >>SELTZER: I love doing baking workshops and sessions because its a way for people to connect with Torah, with an easier entry way than the text. And everyone gets to participate and everyone gets to learn through doing. >>Narrator: Taking time to interact with the public has its rewards, but at this point Julie is beginning to feel the pressure

of completing the Torah. She is about a third of the way through and must finish by December at the rate of one column a day the work is painstaking and precise. >>SELTZER: Kind of like if youre going to run a marathon, you have the training schedule, if you follow the schedule, youll be ready to run the marathon. So I have my Torah schedule and if I write theamount that I need to write everyday then Ill complete it on time, God willing. >>Narrator: Right around the corner from Julies desk, visitors can lift a cloth to see a few of thesheets completed so far... eventually they will be bound together into one scroll and offered to a community in need of a Torah. >>WOLF: One of the great things about learning about the Torah is that they are always done anonymously. So theres only 304,805 letters, it does not allow you to sign your name to the Torah. Well be sending this Torah out into the world to be used and eventually no one will even know that Julie wrote this Torah. Because it will just be one of the Torahs being used

by a congregation somewhere who will really read it and use it as a sacred object and who wrote it is not important. But it will havea new life as a living document. >>Narrator: IN THE FILM BY TED SIKORA, ARTIST DON HARVEY APPLIES PRINCIPLES OF ENVIRONMENTALISM AND HIS CRITIQUE OF THE STATUS QUO TO HIS PAINTINGS. >>Don Harvey: Yeah so basically its just oil paint, with some medium in it and a little bit of dryerin it and its on a watercolor paper surface, because it doesnt absorb the oil and the pigment right away and I can move it. I just like to have a little bit of density and suggestion of space behind me so that it suggests ways to me to begin to build a collage on top. When I first move to Cleveland, a friend of mine

said you know the thing youll find is that Cleveland is small enough that if you want to accomplish something you can do it and you can find people towork with, and its big enough that people might hear about what youre doing outside of Cleveland, and I pretty much found that to be true. The urban landscape, the industrial forms, all the stuff that everybody talks about, I was just constantly amazed that I could look one way and see industrial (refuse?) and then look down by the river and see migratory birds or see turtles or whatever kinds ofthings were happening there. If I connected it to sort of activism, it was an attitude about what the city looked like or could meant. You know I was experiencing a lot of people whose attitude about the city was that you came in and maybe there was nothing really there worth preserving so you tear it down put something new in its place or you would take something old and dress it up would be so dressed up that you didnt recognize its age anymore. Its kind of like a building imitating itself

in a way. The pieces Im working on now are things that Ive drawn or designed in the computer that are collageparts. Some of them start with photo imagery like this one did and then I go through whatever manipulations it seems to need in the computer, some of the part are parts that Ive drawn and scanned in.Ill print out (paint?) and cut out and collage in, sometimes I paint directly on the backgrounds. All the work has sort of; I guess a cynical, political edge to it, some sort of (word). Sometimes itsjust sort of antiestablishment and sometimes its sort of openly political. And if I saw political Idont mean party politics or something like that, its not about trying to change somebody elses mindits about trying to say where you are, put your voice in the conversation, and hopefully like all politics if enough voices join together than something does happen. Its not meant to change someones mind, although I hope sometimes I might piss them off.

>>Narrator: POP ARTIST AND PIXAR ANIMATOR, SANJAY PATEL, ILLUSTRATES ADAPTATIONS OF ANCIENT HINDU EPICS. >>Sanjay Patel: Were working >>Sanjay Patel: Were working on a series of shorts based on Maters character called CARStoons, in this particular short theyre actually big monster trucks and they end up sort of in this big wrestlingmatch. >>Narrator: Pixar studios in Emeryville is known for bringing innovation and emotion to the world of computer animated films. Popular films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredible, and Ratatouille have garnered the studio 22 academy awards. Now a lead animator at Pixar, Sanjay Patel was still a student when he was recruited by the fledgingcompany almost 14 years ago. He was studying in the animation program at Cal Arts in Los Angeles. >>Patel: That program was

started by Walt Disney himself to train his animators. So I started making 2D animations. Toy Story had been released and they had brought it to Cal Arts and I was blown away with sophistication of it and the sophistication of the story telling. And so, I put down pencil. I have to use my mouse and I use 3D animation software. Essentially we have this car thats been built by the modelers and these models are very elaborate puppets and we have controls to move the puppet around and create different positions and make different expressions. I could just sort of, move this control and he could move his tire and hit McQueen. Move the upper lip, up, down, even their eyelids. If there is anything that Pixar espouses its just absolutely like the Church of Storytelling. It really does force

you to think in a very different way. Because of that, I have been able If there is anything that Pixar espouses its just absolutely like the Church of Storytelling. It really does force you to think in a very different way. Because of that, I have been able to pursue my own stories that I want to tell. >>Narrator: Since 2006, Patel has been publishing his own work; lavishly illustrated interpretationsof ancient Hindu mythology. His latest book is called Ramayana; Divine Loophole.

The Ramayana is one of the foundational myths of Hinduism, and tells the epic story of Rama, his brother Lakshmi, and his wife, Sita. >>Patel: The Ramayana is such a great story because its all adventure, plot, and action. Theres magic, theres fighting and animals, gods, demons and I just thought, I really want to tell this story in the most modern and graphic way as possible. >>Narrator: As Patel undertook the task of bringing to life dozens of scenes from this ancient story, he found himself using the skills he gained from his animation work at Pixar. >>Patel: Animating at Pixar makes me think about well, whats the acting and whats sort of the narrative arc that I could use for this little panel and that Im trying to draw. And it really reminds that character moments are so important in this great mythology that I want to tell and so I do feel like the two feed off of each other. This type of artwork would definitely be hanging around in my parents household, and this was definitely my indoctrination and introduction to Hinduism.

Id see stuff like this and just have no fing clue what this meant.I was raised in Southern California. My parents owned a motel in San Bernardino, California. My parents are from India, from a state called Gujarat. I could speak English really well, so I had stay home and help run the motel. I became a TV brat and I really in many ways just grew up in American culture. American culture was definitely fed to me through the television, mainly through cartoons. I could just really escape my reality and I became obsessed with watching cartoons, drawing cartoons, collecting comic books, then I would sit there and draw for hours and hours from these comics. >>Narrator: Although Patel Revered The Comic Book Heroes Of American Popular Culture, His Relationship With The Icons Of His Parents Hindu Faith Was More Complicated >>Patel: Indian culture in my life, I dont know, growing up, I hated it. I hated it. I hated it.

My parents were raising me in a sort of bubble of their own culture inside Southern California. I wasnt exposed to the stories of the Hindu mythology or Hindu faith at all. What I was exposed to was the iconography and imagery. >>Narrator: But Its His Perspective As An Outsider That Allows Patel To Reclaim The Iconography Of His Parents Culture, And ReImagine It For A Contemporary Audience. Patel is in the midst of creating a new book based on the story of the Hindu deity Ganesha. In Patels version of the tale, he plays off of the elephant god Ganeshas famous love of sweets. >>Patel: This is a kind of a fun little moment actually. This is after Ganesha, he tries biting downon the jumbo jaw breaker. And sure enough he breaks his tusk. So Im trying to figure out what wouldbe the most fun way to like figure out how Ganesha might react, like oh no!!. So I was thinking maybe he would be crying over here.

Growing up I always felt disconnected from my American friends simply because I was Indian, my skin was brown. From my Indian friends I felt disconnected because I was an artist. I felt outside in all these ways. And finally I found the thing that actually brought everything that I liked together. What Id like to think that I found my voice and this voice is something that feels really relevant to me and really important and really good. I just know so clearly that I am going to be doing this till the day I die. >>Narrator: NEXT TIME ON COLORES! SOCIAL ARTS PRACTITIONER NAOMI NATALE OF ONE MILLION BONES CONFRONTS THE GLOBAL ISSUE OF GENOCIDE. >>Naomi Natalie: To move forward with this understanding and this respect that if we belong to each other then were responsible to one another.

>>Narrator: THE PROGRESS OF LOVE IS AN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBIT THAT FOCUSES ON THE DIFFERENT STAGES OFROMANCE FROM INFATUATION TO PASSION TO HEARTBREAK. This is heightening the idea that cultures need rituals to perform acts like grief . >>Narrator: TECHNICAL DIRECTOR FOR CIRQUE DU SOLEILS ZARKANA, DAVID CHURCHILL, EXPLAINS THE INTRICACIES OF PREPARING THE SHOWS SET. >>David Churchill: Im sort of like the conduit between crazy and reality and we try to take the crazy ideas and turn them into reality as much as we can. >>Narrator: WALT POURIER INCORPORATES HIS NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE INTO HIS ART, STRENGTHENING LOCAL COMMUNITY AND OFFERING GUIDANCE TO KIDS. >>Walt Pourier: My philosophy of the art is more on the cultural side of it, expressive, making an impact. >>Narrator: UNTIL NEXT TIME,