Independent View; 105

Funding for independent view was provided by the members of KQED and the KQED campaign for the Future program venture fund contributors to the program venture fund include the following. Baldwin's epic collage essay and feature film specters of the spectrum. The year is 2007 a media outlaw named Bubu attempts to save the earth from the new electromagnetic order by travelling back in time to retrieve a secret lodged in an old episode of a 1950s science series specters of the spectrum and much more on tonight's episode of independent view. Your Guide to the world of independent film and video and this is the real story. Oh yeah accept some of it hasn't happened yet. Time is reversible don't you know. Good evening and welcome to independent view I'm Sylvia mulai. And I'm Michael Fox. Tonight's

show offers a broad spectrum of views on where things are headed at the turn of the millennium. We'll speak with a local filmmaker Gaetano my ADA whose most recent documentary piece is every step is a rich and enlightening portrait of the well known be enemies Zen monk takes not Han but forcefully Krug Baldwin our local media are just a filmmaker and talking on this program on his newest film specters of the spectrum opens in San Francisco this coming week. After successful screenings at the New York Film Festival and the Film Arts Festival. Craig is mostly known for his collage essay style and his commitment to making bold films on shoestring budgets. Before we talk with Greg let's take an advance look at specters of the spectrum. These clips are straight from his editing room. Thank you. Lady unbearable to take on. Nothing wrong with them. Girls are tracking that

detrimental electricity. Meanwhile my wife or the dad carries on with his house was never to raise the dead with his pitifully feeble transverse wave technology. When it was really fun. Yes Don Quixote with a do it yourself camera remote on your relentless noon to midnight Branson tell of the prehistory of telepathy. Time Mark. But as the caravan sets off for the fight of. Credit It's great to have you here tonight and independent of you. Thanks very much. What is the power and the fascination of found footage. Well it's certainly cheap that's for sure. For me that's what enables me to make films with some footage. There's also this project of mediocrity Elegy as you mention that sort of fascinates and drives me towards some kind of research effort to try to take the mid century trash and siphon through it in a way and perhaps try to figure out a little bit about how we came to

be here for what reasons and maybe where we're going. Where you more interested in science fiction or social commentary. I don't think the two are originally mutually exclusive. You know I think that when you can have it both ways I'm interested in engaging with individual fantasy and imagination. Yes but turn towards some consciousness raising project. Some people said the next century to be the century the image that this century was the century of the world and that's all over. You're on board with that on board. Well I don't know if they're going to be the next century. By the way if you had seen my earlier film tribulation 9 9 you might know that. But in any event I can't generalize in terms of entire centuries when it's found but it's. Found Footage is material that let's say it's the how do you find the dumpsters behind labs flea markets garage sales attics

dumps basements schools get rid of it hospitals you know libraries. So it's the material that it's too unwieldly to pack away and store anymore and so people get rid of it you know on whole lots you know thousands at a time or you can find it individually. Old home movies for example at a garage sale or flea market. And it's you have to treat the film storage when you have to do that. Oh yeah well you do but there's a lot of it. You know what I mean is you couldn't possibly bring it all up to some standard quality. Some of you just have to. Take it on its own terms speak it and appreciate it for the way the wear and the stress. That saying. You know most people wouldn't know what the term experimental narrative feature means. Who is the audience for the kind of films you make. Bents difficult films you make.

I wish I could answer that question. My films really are more artist oriented rather than audience warrior. I let the audience come to me. I don't necessarily seek them out. I think that's I follow my own vision and hopefully if you know if I'm feeling the right sensibility in there you know others will share my vision. But there's humor in your films. Yes. That's not just amuse yourself presumably. It's not calculated humor. You know it's the kind of thing again a product of my culture ration you know in this in the society right now. One of the unique things about your whole body of work is the way you shoot your own footage along with the found footage in other words you're mixing invention along with history. Test this dream to make your business create occurred just on the edge of the 20th century at the height of fame to see a clear expectation and dread.

Colorado Springs became the first Promethean to actually generate light. Creating hundreds of feet long. Tesla wireless transmission well before Marconi. Now we must add to the limitations of space and time impose on it. Now and in future centuries. You know and thousands of light years into. Tesla also begin picking up the fact that you mixed fiction with fact in a way does that mean that you're more serious about history or less take history less seriously. I think history is something that's subject to multiple interpretations. I want to exercise my option as an artist to kind of parlay it in my own terms and spend it my own direction in order to explore certain possible ideas I want to reduce history to a repetition of facts. But open up history to speculation and visionary fantasy

where you went to science when you were a kid you know I was into art. So again it's this. It's a critique really of science that my films are about from the point of view of someone who would rather want to. Just sort of question this the nature of natural science and open up to philosophy in fact and a critique of technology as well. It's not just technology in the abstract with technology as it's applied in the Western world that is controlled by corporations. You see some irony in filmmaking which is a highly technical art form is the one you've chosen. In fact what I try to do is demonstrate that films can be made in a super low budget through a technique that I call cinema povera by taking the detritus and the flotsam and jetsam of the film industry that is bloated and excessive and wasteful and then to redeem them and turn into some kind of creative recall live

new repurposed entity. For me that's an act of ingenuity that flies in the face of the increasingly technical and prohibitively expensive film industry. Craig what is your vision for independent film in the new millennium. I again I hesitate to to make any predictions about centuries or millennia I think that's kind of a totally new nation and how it was ation that that my film in fact critiques I think everything's going to break down into smaller and smaller you know years months. You know what I mean there's not going to be any way to generalize. I think that everything sort of flying apart and exploding and that certain artist and filmmakers should find their own way of making movies and not move towards the center in terms of large mass audiences but create their own idiolect. And so they should hold their own vision so I can make any predictions about the way the market may or may not go. I don't care.

My I'm really interested in radical subjectivity and developing your own vision and trying to expand the possibilities and the spectrum of kinds of filmmaking. What about money for me. Again my solution is cinema povera success through ingenuity necessity is the mother invention and by redeeming and succeeding again despite the odds. I call it masochism of the margins. Do you concern yourself an outlaw a media certainly. My film has a lot of biographical don't you know so I could not hardly. You know again conform to the expectations of the center of the of the audience and of the market of the industry. I could care less frankly. Thank you very quickly. With TV digital video now we think of that as the cheap we don't think of film in any way shape or form as being a cheap medium so it's great to hear you say that there is a cheap way to make films with film. Well DVD is not a film by the way though it can be transferred to film but in the case of material that deals with history sometimes you need those clips. And certainly they don't exist on DVD.

Ultimately all that material it's a compilation documentary goes back to film it comes from film you must go back originally to this material film. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you very much. You can see specters of the spectrum at the Roxy Theatre in San Francisco December 6 through December 9. Well credit Baldwin is a local legend in his own right. The bay area is home to a number of filmmakers who experiment with the medium in unique ways. Tonight's Spotlight will introduce you to the work of Michael Rudnik whose kinetic film sculptures will be featured at the Exploratorium under some Braith. You come from both a sculpture and a film background Michael. How do you work those two elements together in a single piece. As I brought my films out into different venue have I kind of felt restricted by showing my work and dark rooms with a folding chair than the

projector and locked it. This led me to start exploring installation art using a projector of. The work I've been doing in recent years these kinetic sculpture is a really delightful and seemingly simplistic thought I think that maybe more complicated than that. What inspires you what do you love about doing that kind of work. One of the things that I've run into and in the way I work is that I've had to create new methods for presenting my work I haven't depended on an existing method. And I kind of like that exploration and inventiveness. For instance my newer work is. Utilizing. Clear faceted cylinders which present animations. What I've tried to do is actually take all the technology you know to create something that has no tech.

I think one of the wonderful things that you know about my new work is that that when people feel that they feel that they've seen it before when in actuality and I got a patent for that it must be this new invention. And even when I made it I thought somehow this should've existed. So tell us a little bit about this upcoming show you've got at the Exploratorium where you'll be working with various other artists going to do a show with them were where I will try out a lot of different things. I will create things on the spot with musicians who will write music on the spot and I'll try to use their exhibits as part of projection. What's exciting about it for me is that I don't know how it will work but I know that something new will come out of it and it will. It will be a fun thing to experience. We've been talking with Michael Rudnik the filmmaker sculptor an artist.

Another of our picks this week is Juliet of the herbs a portrait of the woman who inspired the current renaissance and herbal remedies. The film's Bay Area premier starts December 3rd at the Rafale Theater in San Rafael. As the next millennium approaches there is much anticipation and speculation about how the world will change. But one man Zen monk take not Han continues to pursue his lifelong vision of world peace across the millennium. His remarkable life and inspirational teaching is recorded in a new documentary pieces every step. Let's take a look. You are meditating. In a meditation hall. And if you hear. The bombs. Falling. Around. The meditation hall being hit by a bomb yet and you are safe. But sings.

You know where the bombs are falling. And destroying. Houses and people around nobody there. And you know that. You cannot just continue. To sit in a meditation. So you get out of my patients. In order to help people. And that is called meditation in action. In a situation like. The war in Vietnam. We had to learn to do both and to see. Maybe the thing. Why. To relieve the suffering. We need to do something in order to change the situation. Joining us tonight is guy kind of my THAT director of Peace is every step. Welcome. Thank you. To just drive to the philosophies that take not before you decided to make this film. I did I was looking for someone who really embodied the things that I

had studied and had sought in various ways. And I was photographing him for a magazine article and spent over a week with him. And really he's really felt that there was more to be seen. And the only way to to explore that was to make a film. We often think of biographical documentaries as being about people who are no longer living. So what are the pitfalls of making a film about someone who's very much with us. Well I think first of all it's not meant to be a biography of this film. I was exploring as much his effect on people here in the United States on veterans but also on people like Dr. Martin Luther King and Thomas Merton and others who were you know a little more anonymous. His life is less interesting in its details than it is in the extraordinary experiences that he had and then was able to articulate and and share with people he lived through the Vietnam War in many ways under the bombs as he says but he also was a United States during that time. And it was

during that period when he was here watching the war there that he was able to have a profound an impact on people like King and Martin who in fact nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. It must be hard to be objective with somebody like tech not hon. How did you maintain your. Point of view you object to. Well you know I think that it begs the question did I. I think that here I was clearly hoping to celebrate someone who was articulating things that were important to me. And he did it in a way that was unique and compelling and which is why I felt he would he would hold a film and I would hold an audience and be able to to reach people that wouldn't necessarily come to him. And it made it worthwhile. Do you think that this interest in and on and this form of Buddhism do you think that it's just a fad or is it something that really a fair question a few years back several of

us started a magazine called tri sickle magazine which is a Buddhist Journal. And we asked ourselves that question then it will this last and the only way to to really answer that is to try and to support it. And to that end we're we're even. Several of us are now organizing an international Buddhist film festival would be based here in the Bay Area to provide a venue for filmmakers and for audiences for educators to really see what is available internationally. We think of the Bay Area of course as the center of the world and it is but there are films that celebrate things of this nature being made in Europe being made in Asia and we're going to find a way to make them available to audiences here in United States. Let's take another look at the film on the first night. Then I was sitting there and. I saw. This this man this this Vietnamese Buddhist man. I'm sitting on this riser. And I looked at him and I

realized. That I never I didn't know the Vietnamese people any other way. But as the enemy. And. And suddenly I realized that the. He was in there was my enemy. And I just started to cry. One of the themes of the film is transformation. How do you. Use film to convey transformation in such a difficult thing to put over. I'm glad you picked up on that because the film again is not so much a biography of taking on Hans as it is chronicling the transformative power of ideas and action. And I think we see clearly that clip we just saw is an extraordinary man an American veteran of the Vietnam War who 18 years old found himself killing people by the end of the film. We realize hes become himself a Buddhist priest and a peace activist who travels all over the world. So we see transformation is possible by very very simple means.

Breathing paying attention. Being in the present it's not necessarily required that you become a Vietnamese or you wear robes or you try and transform your life style. You change your perspective Buddhism is is first and foremost about seeing things as they are. So changing your perspective is a transformative act and it can have an effect not only you but everyone around you. And to go on says in the film elsewhere he says one person to me is a lot one person is an extraordinary thing so it really is the hope here is that people are not intimidated It's not about me joining a group or. It's about taking a few tools and taking the opportunity with moments of time to transform just yourself just through space around you. And then you can help others around your family first your community perhaps even your nation. You can influence history. It's been a pleasure having you on the show title. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Peace is every step screens on Saturdays and Sundays that no one carries rebel theater. Beginning

tomorrow through the summer 12th. Every week an independent director of programs scheduling Scott wire tells us about the independent films coming up after tonight's show and throughout the week. That's right Sylvia. Scott programs KQED is ongoing showcase of independent film and video also known as independent view. One we can catch him he lets us know when to tune in. Let's try to find him now. Either. Tonight's film is they doing the labor by local filmmakers Roseanne Johnson and Kelly Peeples tells the humorous tale of a young girl's first crush. And the question happens to be Michael Nesmith of the Monkees. The.

Inspiration for Daydream Believer came while we were watching a lot of movies and TV that talked about rock stars and how they felt about their fans and people chasing them. This is a really good choice because they're all over the media they have their own TV show and they had records and it was really easy for me to imagine a little girl being able to place herself within the context of the TV show. But it occurred to me that every each and every girl who is a fan of some star rock star or movie star has this imaginary relationship with them. And I was interested in exploring that aspect of female sexuality. I just felt that it was really important to show that women are taking charge of their sexuality that her early.

The. Following day dream believer tonight is Mark Edgington in the sky about a young man who will do anything to keep his girlfriend from splitting up with this girl and become obsessed with the guy. Used to stand outside his apartment and watch the movie. Right over. Him. Also tonight at 11:00 local filmmaker Susan blows the roof Barbie's Dreamhouse to explore the history behind this cultural icon in the nation. Sometimes it seems that much too much has to do with Barbie. You can't get issues to stay out of the five minute ideologies and hear to her with great tenacity. You know. I have to blame BBI nation on my daughter Nora who is five years old. She got her first private doll and she came up with this weird game that she called jealous Barbie now and jealous Barbie. Mom had to sit down on the floor get a Barbie

doll and Nora's Barbie was just better than my Barbie in every way. Better hair better clothes better boyfriend and I have to be jealous for hours on end. This is like some you know feminist fifth layer of hell that I have to do and I started telling people about it and they started telling me their Barbie story everybody's part of the story was weirder than the next and I thought this is a film. Regret you dream of. Making Barbie nation was kind of four years of what I like to call passionate ambivalence. I'm just was totally torn about the idea of Barbie on the one hand. I'm a first generation Bing doll and I love all those little purses and you know and little muffs for Barbie doll on the other hand watching my daughter get into it I'd be terrified that I was creating this. You know People magazine materialistic monster and I just struggled with that throughout

making the whole film and it was only in the final days of the editing room that I came to feel that this was not about a dead piece of plastic. This was about. How people can take the most mass produced thing and make something unique and for me in a world that is becoming increasingly computerized and mechanize. That's a ray of hope. For those bring back lots of memories. If you don't mind I like to argue about the way I mean work. So I'll see you guys later. Thanks Scott. A piece of my childhood just flashed before my eyes. You too. Daydream Believer. Barbie nation an unauthorized tour and an eye in the sky will be shown tonight immediately following our show next week. Join us for an interview with James Shamus the renowned screenwriter and producer who has teamed up with director onlly to bring us such films as The Wedding Banquet. The Ice Storm and now their most

recent collaboration a civil war drama called Ride with the devil. Also on the show two local filmmakers who have taken distinctly independent paths with their work. Sandra Davis will discuss her new film a preponderance of evidence. I will talk with trin the way in about her fascinating documentary Tiger's Apprentice. Don't miss it. And remember if you would like more information about any of the screenings and events we've discussed on tonight's show log on to our Web site at. W w w dot KQED dot org slash in view. We'll see you next Friday night at 10:00. When I was 19 I told that. Actually you can. Funding for independent view is provided by the members of KQED and the

campaign for the Future program venture fund contributors to the program venture fund include the following.