Marin and Beyond

If you're not reading the GreenCine Daily website with the frequency prescribed by its title, you may not have noticed that the site published my interview with Lance Hammer, the director behind one of 2008's most assured and affecting debuts, Ballast. It was published a little more than a week ago, and already the pointer post has dropped off the main page (a tribute to the Daily editor David Hudson's unflagging prolificacy). I would have mentioned it here at Hell on Frisco Bay earlier, but I wanted to be able to name the Frisco Bay venues where the film will be showing starting the Friday. I've now learned that Ballast will open here in Frisco proper at the Sundance Kabuki, where a filmmaker q-and-a is expected to take place opening weekend. In the East Bay, the venue is Berkeley's Elmwood, and in the North Bay, it's the Rafael Film Center. Hammer is self-distributing his film, so a ticket purchase to Ballast at any of these venues might be seen as a vote for greater filmmaker (as opposed to distribution company) autonomy when it comes to controlling the release of their films.

Speaking of the Rafael Film Center, it recently released its calendar of film programs for the next few months. Just coming off its stint as a venue for the 31st Mill Valley Film Festival, the restored San Rafael theatre is the North Bay location to see a lot of the season's most exciting commercially-released films, new and old. There are a number of exclusive screenings that should tempt potential bridge-crossers to come to Marin county for a night at the movies as well.

First, let me talk about the latter category. If you missed last Friday's in-person tribute to Harriet Andersson hosted at the Rafael by the MVFF, you might want to note that she's still in town, and will be on hand for a screening of Ingmar Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel tonight. The screening is part of an eclectic set of Bergman's theatrical and television works, some of which are making their Frisco Bay premieres at the Rafael this week. There are a few selections repeated from recent Bergman retros around Frisco Bay, such as Cries and Whispers, perhaps Andersson's most powerful performance, which plays October 16-17. But there are also genuine rarities such as the Blessed Ones and the Best Intentions. The full five-and-a-half hour television version of Bergman's crowning achievement Fanny and Alexander will make its West Coast theatrical premiere in a HD presentation on October 19-23.

From October 29-November 2 the Rafael will host a series entitled Irving Thalberg's MGM, showing three films the mogul made at the most "star-studded" studio in the early 1930s. On the 29th, Red Dust pairs Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the steaming jungles of colonial-era Vietnam. On the 30th it's Ernst Lubitsch's slice of perfection the Merry Widow. And Private Lives, a vehicle for Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer that I have not seen, rounds out the trio on November 2. Another short series is a four-film, seven-day (Dec. 5-11) stint of Janus Films' touring Essential Art House collection of landmark foreign classics that stopped by the Castro last year and the Pacific Film Archive the year before. (Which reminds me to mention that, according to the Janus website, the PFA has booked Masaki Kobayashi's trilogy, the Human Condition for February 15th.)

The Rafael will have three November one-off events with guest speakers: a November 15 screening of Wall-E accompanied by a presentation from sound designer Ben Burtt. Burtt, visual effects whiz Craig Barron and silent film historian John Bengstom will take a look at Charlie Chaplin's silent-sound hybrid Modern Times November 20th, and Christopher Plummer will be on hand for a showing of Man in the Chair November 29th. Perhaps even more eye-catching, at least to my baby blues, is the December 4th return of the now-traditional "the Films of..." series highlighting films made exactly 100 years ago, in this case the Films of 1908. It will include early efforts from Max Linder and D.W. Griffith, as well as J. Stuart Blackton's famous "trick" film the Thieving Hand, all accompanied by Michael Mortilla at the piano. Back then they were just films, but today motion pictures of the Thieving Hand's length are considered shorts, and the Rafael will also be presenting an exclusive selection of some of Sundance 2008's better efforts. I've seen three of them, which range from good (Dennis) to excellent (Yours Truly and my olympic summer, which both also show up on the new SF Cinematheque calendar on November 6th.)

There's three more Rafael bookings I'd like to highlight, but these are not Marin-exclusive screenings. Each is booked to play for at least a week at the Rafael, but also at other Frisco Bay theatres on the same dates. In reverse chronological order, I'll start with Lola Montès, opening November 19 at the Rafael, the Elmwood, and the glorious Castro Theatre. This is a picture that I've only seen on video, where one barely gets the sense of its grandeur and scope. I can't wait to see it on a screen big enough to do justice to director Max Ophuls' vision and to the larger-than-life life of its subject played by Martine Carol, Lola Montez (who counted Frisco Bay as one of her realms of conquest).

Momma's Man opens October 24 at the Rafael, the Camera 12 in San Jose, and the Clay. One of the very best new films I've seen all year, this is the third feature directed by Azazel Jacobs, son of avant-garde film legend Ken Jacobs. He cast his father and his real-life mother Flo Jacobs as the parents of the lead character Mikey, a new parent who cocoons in his childhood loft rather than face his responsibilities as husband and father. As strange and alienating as his behavior may seem, the relationship between Mikey and his parents feels so natural that I really felt I started to understand what might lead a grown man to act in such a way, and what might or might not be able to lead him back out of the vicious circle he's drawn around himself. At one point he asks, "is this an intervention?" as if he hopes the answer will be yes, but knowing deep down that his parents' personalities preclude them from giving him that kind of a wake-up call. For me, the final shot packed a powerful dose of emotion that was unexpected given the detached, almost casual style that the rest of the film uses to present, but not underline in a heavy-handed way, the heartache of the situation.

Finally, Ashes of Time Redux opens October 17 at the Rafael, the Camera 12, the Shattuck in Berkeley and the Lumiere. I've considered the original arthouse wuxia to be among director Wong Kar-Wai's most interesting films since watching a scratchy print at the 4-Star several years ago, but I've never gotten around to revisiting it. I had no idea that the screening would be the last chance I'd get to see the intact film. According to articles like this one, this Redux version is not a new "director's cut" like so many reissues these days, but rather an attempt to preserve film elements that were not only at risk but in fact already becoming unwatchable due to poor archival practices in the Hong Kong film industry. It's great to see Ashes of Time's images (shot by Christopher Doyle, of course) back up on cinema screens, in such vivid colors. But I must confess that some of the attempts to patch over preservation problems are very distracting, particularly the new musical score with its too-prominent cello parts. (Yo-Yo Ma is great, but is not the solution to every musical problem.) The cast is packed with the greats of what many consider to be the peak period of Hong Kong cinema, but there's something bittersweet about seeing them (especially the late Leslie Cheung) digitally-spruced-up for a release like this: one can't help but wonder how many other films from the years before the handover are left to decompose because nobody who cares enough has the clout to save them.

Travel Logs

I'm back from a very pleasant and rejuvenating trip to Costa Rica- my first time in Central America. Since it had been quite a while since I had a vacation that involved neither family nor a film festival (or both), I felt like I was getting some much-needed perspective while there. But though most of my time was spent in rural areas and wildernesses where it was easier to view monkeys, sloths, and tropical birds than movies, my thoughts did turn to cinema from time to time. I tried to be on the lookout for traces of homegrown Costa Rican filmmaking but came up empty. I did catch a broadcast of Ernst Lubitsch's charming Bluebeard's Eighth Wife the one time I stayed in a hotel room equipped with television. And I at one point made a foray to a mini-multiplex in the country's second-largest city Alajuela, where I caught a dreadful Hollywood product (X-Files: I Want to Believe), picked from the four available options -- all big-budget films from major North American studios -- because it was the only one not dubbed in Spanish and that seemed less likely to feature more explosions and adolescent power fantasy than my travel companion and I were in the mood to suffer. Too bad it was still such a bad movie- succeeding at simulating the veneer of intelligence but nothing more. Anyway, for the most part this trip was a real break from cinephilia.

Back in Frisco, where the options for moviegoing are more varied (more on that soon), I was pleased to see that the interview I conducted with Guy Maddin last May was published at GreenCine during my absence from the blogosphere. I hope the conversation is as enjoyable to read as it was to have. The occasion of the interview was the San Francisco International Film Festival's screenings of Maddin's tongue-in-cheek travelogue of his hometown, My Winnipeg. If you missed this film at the festival or during its brief run in town, it's still playing through Thursday, August 14th in San Jose, at the Camera 12 cineplex. Definitely a film worth a little travel time to get to see on a big screen.

Around The Bay: an interview with Alejandro Adams

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/7/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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Last Friday I had my first experience attending Cinequest in San Jose. Once I'd survived the transportation logistics of getting down there from the second-most populous city on Frisco Bay, I had a great time. Srdjan Golubovic's the Trap wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be, but everything connected to the experience (the presentation, the helpful volunteers, etc.) was very smooth. In the evening I finally sampled the restored California Theatre (no current connection to the Berkeley Landmark) for a screening of the Ozu masterpiece I Was Born, But... with Jim Riggs behind the organ controls. What a great theatre to experience silent cinema in! What a shame it's so rarely utilized for such. Cinequest is bringing Eisenstein's October and organist Dennis James next Friday night, and if I weren't already so mentally committed to attend the Peter Bogdanovich/Cybil Shepherd in-person tribute at the Castro that weekend I'd surely head down the peninsula for seconds. Who knows how soon another opportunity will pop up again?

Another Cinequest film worth going out of one's way to see is the first feature by local cinephile Alejandro Adams, Around the Bay. Michael Guillén has eloquently summarized the reaction to this confident debut in advance of its world premiere screening this past Saturday. The film plays twice more at the festival: Tuesday, March 4th at the Camera 12 and Saturday, March 8th at the San Jose Repertory Theatre. Adams showed me a version of Around the Bay last fall, and though skeptical going in I became quite taken with the film. When bumping into the director at the recent Terence Davies series at the Pacific Film Archive, I proposed interviewing him over e-mail. The resulting conversation follows:

Hell on Frisco Bay: Alejandro, I first became aware of you through your writing and editing the website BRAINTRUSTdv.com, where you assembled an impressive collection of essays, interviews, and other documents, primarily concerning new motion picture technologies. What is the relationship for you between writing about filmmaking and doing it?

Alejandro Adams: I have an ongoing debate with a friend about the notion of the artist who writes about art and also perpetrates it. He feels that if you're a sworn visual artist, you have to give up talking about it. I feel that talking about it is part of doing it. However, if you're hyperverbal, as I am, you can describe an idea for a novel in conversation and deflate your urge to write it. Or you can upstage your own film by doing an interview in which you reveal all the motivations behind every technique. I think there's so much in this film that I can talk about what I did intentionally and still allow people to have their own experience. In an interview I did with two critics a few days ago, I explained the title of this film, and within minutes after I explained it, they both talked about what the title meant to them--very valid, personal interpretations which I would never refute. And I think Around the Bay has the capacity to allow people into it, allow people room to enter it and move around freely.

But, yes, it's potentially dangerous to write about film and simultaneously make films. I think Bresson's little book is a great example of how to do it right. Very internalized, very process-oriented, not critical of specific films he hates in the world, but with every breath he answers those films to which he so vehemently objects. On many levels Around the Bay refutes those films to which I vehemently object, and that's something I would never do as well in writing.

HoFB: Well, thank you for taking time out of your busy premiere week to risk upstaging your film! I don't think what we discuss here will get in the way of audiences' experiences with Around the Bay.

I. Working With Actors

HoFB: Many ultra-low budget films feel to me like a wasted opportunity to serve as a window onto a kind of realism that the mechanics of Hollywood just can't reach. Wasted, I say, because so often actors seem to want to provide elaborate performances that overshadow the material and the setting of the film they're in. The actors in Around the Bay almost completely avoid this.

AA: I know exactly what you mean, and I agree, but you have me chuckling because there is a really flamboyant, overshadowing performance at the center of this movie. Five-year-old Connor Maselli gives a totally over-the-top take-no-prisoners performance that probably constitutes the only sensationalism to be found in this film, since there's no sex, no music, maybe two instances of profanity, and no violence, except for this kid's unique brand of terrorism--and there, I've said it, for those who want to see the political metaphors, which are as valid and present as anything else.

HoFB: The Noah character isn't what I usually think of as "sensationalism." Though he certainly operates at a different energy level from the other characters, it's very much in tune with and in service to the film.

AA: I should mop up a bit and confess that I tally instances of sensationalism in this film because to me sensationalism is anathema to storytelling. Sensationalism is melodrama. Sensationalism is gimmickry. To me, sex scenes and music are the same thing, a way to remove responsibility from the director to carry a character or plot forward without smoke and mirrors. Now, there are whole films built around sex which are perfect, or books like James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime, which simply IS sex, and that's one of my favorite books. So this isn't puritanism I'm talking about, but a different kind of purity, a relentless character-making storytelling purity where the director is allowed no recess, no smoke break. There are no ambient shots in the film, no shots of trees or sky or water that aren't organically connected to a person. Ambient mood shots are like stuffing, like music, also a way of taking a break from the people who populate a film. I'm not saying I dislike Terrence Malick--in fact, he may be my favorite director--but for this film, I put a lot of that stuff in and just saw pretentiousness and bloatedness and a lack of rigor and vision. A diffusion of purpose.

HoFB: How does a first-time filmmaker find actors so willing and able to reign in the instinct to be larger-than-life in their characterizations?

AA: Think of how the contrast between Connor and the adult cast makes the courage of their quietness, their understatedness that much more palpable. If I were an actor, my insecurities would probably have driven me to over-act in order to compete. But here I think we see the opposite: restraint. I cast the movie very instinctively, having seen very few actors, knowing more or less before auditioning someone if I was going to cast them. Everything that happened between me and the cast happened at the casting stage. I couldn't have made the wrong actors into the right ones. That sounds hokey, but it's true. About actors wanting to be larger than life--well, the key roles were filled with actors who had no such inclinations. But even though I wanted that mutedness and pursued it and nourished it, the movie needed some contrast, and that's there too, I think. Some "bigger" acting in a few places, which serves to emphasize the general understatedness of the acting overall. You know, the exception proves the rule.

HoFB: I don't mean to imply that these performances are inert, or that the characters resemble inscrutable Bressonian figures. Daisy and Wyatt are selective about verbalizing their true thoughts and feelings but they're expressive nonetheless.

AA: I'm not sure everyone would agree that Steve Voldseth, who plays Wyatt, is expressive. I had a little flurry of debate with Phillip Lopate on this point. He had a very strong reaction to the Wyatt character, more or less took a flame-thrower to him, and Mort Marcus, when he talked to me on Cinema Scene, said he was yelling at the screen and called Wyatt one of "the most emotionless men ever to come to the screen." As far as I'm concerned, Wyatt expresses anxiety in the scenes in his car, which is his sanctuary, and I think if you look carefully you can almost see him making decisions there--right before the third act begins, for example. My wife says, "I only trust Wyatt when he's in his car," referring to the fact that he's too composed, smug, distant, dissimulating, manipulative when there are people around. The car scenes are vital to me because whether the viewer is aware of it or not, that's where this character graduates to a full-fledged human being. There have to be moments in which the viewer is allowed NOT to hate this guy, and it has to be done incrementally and subtly, with pinches of development rather than heaping tablespoons. Showing him in the car, though it's exclusively from behind--another distancing device--is a way of permitting the viewer to see him in his most intimate moments, as if he's in confession.

HoFB: What astonished me most about Conor Maselli's performance as Noah was just how un-"actorly", how unprecocious he came off. That is to say, he felt like a real kid. Can you talk a little bit about working with this actor? What's the difference for a five-year-old between acting in a film and "playing pretend"?

AA: We did a scene at the audition--totally improvised--in which he played scrabble with a Daisy and a Wyatt. He couldn't even read, didn't understand the game. The point was for the Wyatt and Daisy auditioners to use him as a pawn in some little competition they were having, to test the kid's loyalty, to see which of them he trusted. So they were saying "Put those letters together in the middle of the board" or whatever, and finally he just snapped and said, "Where!? What are you talking about!?" He wasn't aware of the harsh lights, the cameras, or me hovering over the whole thing. He didn't look at his mother in the audience. He was really in that moment, trying to play that game, and annoyed with these two people badgering him. He was already Noah. And the funny thing is that the two actors in that scene who were doing the Wyatt and Daisy roles were the ones who got the parts, too.

During production Connor would find his mother and say, "Please call me Connor. I want to hear my name." That will tell you how much acting was going on. Near the end of the production he called me into the back seat of his mom's van and said, "Can you give me more direction next time?" I think he wanted less responsibility for creating this character. He wanted someone he could blame it on. It's not that easy, just ask Steve Voldseth.

Another thing to point out is something else Mort Marcus said to me. We were talking about the distinction between a "child actor" and a kid just being a kid. He made the point that acting is creating something. If we'd had an unimaginative kid playing Noah, there would have been no material. If acting is creating a role, and improvisation is creating material, then there is no way to make this distinction. It's a semantic convenience. It robs something from Connor, something from me as director, and something from the gestalt chemistry of the cast if we say, "No, he was just running wild, he wasn't conscious of playing a role, and I hardly ever told him what to do." The same goes for him as for the adult actors--is it any different when Steve is driving or Connor is kicking in the pool? A camera is on and they have no lines and they're doing something they would do in reality, without the cocoon of a fictional character. Can we really make distinctions between what is so-called acting and what isn't, if the camera captures it?

II. Writing For the Screen

HoFB: Around the Bay is about a family. So are many highly successful films; I think it's because the family is the most interesting, and probably the most psychologically and politically important social grouping humans have. How did you come to make a film about this particular family?

AA: The short answer is that this is in no way autobiographical in the traditional sense. In autobiography we don't find stories, we find justification and condemnation posited as narrative, as a narrativity of experience, an often falsified description of how we became who we are--and, again, all that can result from that exercise is justification and condemnation, and I'm not sure that has value even therapeutically. I'm often irritated by openly autobiographical films and writing.

I've been a writer of novels and short stories--none published--for fifteen years. This particular story--of the young woman who comes to stay with her estranged father and helps care for her half-brother--was a story I tried to write intermittently for a year or so before giving up. I couldn't "see" the father character. He was much worse, much less sympathetic. I couldn't come to terms with this guy, but I had created him and in some way I needed to know him. I'm starting to sound like I have a Romantic view of the artist, which really isn't true at all. I've never felt particularly mystical about writing, but in this case it was just an unusual impediment, something I'd never faced. When I had a chance to make a feature it made sense to me to bring this vital, nagging story to the screen and see if I could meet this guy and get rid of him.

HoFB: There is a touch of melodrama in the set-up for Around the Bay once put into words: Wyatt loses his job and his girlfriend at the same time, and then he reunites with his long-lost daughter. However, the way you've presented all of this makes it feel less like plot than something intrinsic to his character; he's just the sort of guy who would have his life fall apart all at once.

AA: I think when you tell a real story, when you care about dramaturgy, you're going to be accused at some point of tending toward melodrama. I think there's a lot of vitality in Around the Bay. I think there's a lot of apparent randomness, a kind of restless energy that suggests there's no real narrative force behind it, that the chaos within the family at the center of the story is a reflection of chaos behind the camera. That feeling is erroneous. The dramaturgy is so sound, in fact, that the three-act structure is as transparent as in any Hollywood film. And I'm proud of that. I think low-budget indie films have been trying to avoid telling real stories, and I don't know why. Probably because if you have a kick-off like a guy losing his job and being dumped by his girlfriend, it feels melodramatic. But you've pointed out that the character is strong enough to withstand the plot I've burdened him with, so I think you're seeing the compromise I've struck between the bare necessities of an engaging plot and characters so dense that we can argue about their motivations and read emotions or sensations into their gaze. I wouldn't want to trade one of those things for the other.

HoFB: How much back-story did you write for each of these characters?

AA: Back-story was mostly left to the actors themselves. I would have been implicitly assigning motivation if I'd worked out too much back-story in advance, and that would have thwarted the complexity of what we were trying to do. I should mention that the short story I was trying to write was told in this same remote, non-psychologizing style, where none of the characters had a traditional point of view. I was reading a John Updike piece recently in which he talked about the New Novel of the sixties--Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet--and used the phrase "deadpan facticity." That's what the story had and that's the tone of this film, though the distancing devices in prose and cinema are totally different. It's almost impossible to prevent people from identification with characters represented cinematically, because of the syntax that's been created to facilitate identification--I'm headed toward Kracauer here, I think--whereas in prose you have to work to encourage identification. So you see things in Around the Bay that might not necessarily be revolutionary but that are used in ways we don't often see because very rarely is a film trying to modulate audience identification among three characters. Maybe there are three plotlines, and we care about someone in each plotline, but three characters constantly interacting with one another, where none is given the upper hand or the privilege of being the exclusive protagonist--that's much less common.

III. Technique and Distance

HoFB: Your film is filled with unexpectedly effective techniques such as blackouts and jump cuts. One would think these would be distracting but for me they helped to convey the characters' mental and emotional state and even tell the story. Were these techniques written into the script, or developed in the shooting or editing processes?

AA: Again, you're addressing something that's being modulated pretty carefully. I'm really glad to hear it works for you because it's risky to bring conspicuous technique--in this case, distancing devices--into something in which the characters are meant to be dense and real, not simulacra, not puppets of the plot. Not that I dislike Alain Resnais, but you can see where he's making the choice in Last Year in Marienbad to be totally impressionistic at the expense of presenting us with workable human beings. Around the Bay is elliptical and impressionistic by nature, and not all of those elements are distancing devices. A while back you told me that you recognized the practical function of the blackouts on a second viewing, but on a first viewing it had seemed like nothing more than empty technique--form over function. But you said you'd realized that they were used to convey specific information. I'm not sure everyone's going to get that, and I suspect there will be plenty of people who think it's just "experimental" for no apparent reason.

HoFB: Certain flourishes reminded me that great cinema can (must?) weave depictions of the actual with the imagined, hoped, feared, etc. Can you speak to your unusual approach to presenting dialogue?

AA: There are ways the sound is used in this film that might seem like aesthetic self-indulgence, but if you pay attention to the scenes in which those devices are employed, you may see a subtext of a sort of non-immediacy of experience, a shorthand for conveying a relationship in which the people seem to be communicating but aren't. On the other hand, sometimes certain words or phrases that are laid over the picture are made to coincide with specific gestures which reflect an immediacy of experience, of emotion--watch Daisy for instance. With Wyatt and Noreen, we hear hollow, repetitive dialogue, truisms about responsibility, and their scenes don't conclude. They are profoundly inconclusive, though not particularly vague. All the inconclusiveness was meticulously sewn in, as was the general, going-nowhere quality of the dialogue.

HoFB: Regarding distancing devices, as I suggested in my reaction piece (not for the spoiler-wary), I felt more distanced by the milieu- the fancy compound and the accoutrements of high-stakes Silicon Valley living. Technical devices were distancing insofar as they served to emphasize the barriers characters created out of the materials around them. Could I ever relate to Daisy's discomfort during the scene in which Noreen cooks her an omelette! But then, I related to different characters at different moments in the film (perhaps this is why I found Wyatt's gestures and physical cues expressive.) How does the film stylistically allow space for viewers to project and empathize at different points in the film?

AA: Distancing doesn't always have to be a matter of conspicuous technique. It can be a normal shot held too long or something done from a slightly different angle, which isn't particularly noticeable but is felt viscerally. I can talk about the omelette scene, since you brought it up. You certainly should feel for Daisy in that scene, but look at the last couple of shots and how they're constructed. A close-up of Noreen's hands washing dishes--when was the last time we saw Daisy helping with domestic labor?--and then Daisy eating this extravagant breakfast, as she calls it, and watch the shot of Daisy. Nothing unconventional, but think about how long it's held and compare that to the average shot length in the rest of the movie. After sympathizing with her, we see her stare disdainfully at the woman for whom domesticity is innate--staring, sizing up, chewing, staring, sizing up, chewing. I get a little creeped out by that shot because there's an unfamiliar quality in Daisy's eyes there, something like scorn rather than defensiveness, and maybe that's why it holds so much extra meaning and fascination for me. Noreen may be a textbook interloper in terms of plot, but things aren't that cut and dried. Which is the more idealistic response to the possible family combinations put before us--the Wyatt/Noreen/Noah model in which the kid has a functional mother figure who strives to hold father and son together, or the Wyatt/Daisy/Noah model in which a man tries to reconnect with his forgotten daughter but in execution it's essentially every man for himself? Isn't the best scenario the one in which Wyatt had never called Daisy in the first place? Don't we kind of wish for that on some level at the end?

IV. The Cinema Experience

HoFB: What was it like to finally see your film up there on the big screen?

AA: To be honest, I had very low expectations for our transfer from standard definition to HD, and I'd warned people involved in the production that the projection wasn't going to do it justice. But there it was stretched across that 40-foot screen, and it looked great in terms of resolution, way better than it had any right to look. And sound is at least as important as image in this case, so I have to point out that those inexorable or relentless sounds which are devised to toy with the senses literally felt like they were coming up through the floor, through the seats. I mean, those are the moments of "bigness" or grandiosity, when crickets are screaming at the top of their lungs, when CalTrain is at full speed, dozens of glasses and forks striking tables and plates to wash out the smallness of the human voices, the smallness of these lives. I was able to feel all of that for the first time, viscerally.

But most importantly, the whole movie played well for the audience on a screen that big, with massive sound, which surprised me. I considered this an intimate story, a film for an audience of one, but they proved that it could be consumed at the theatrical level. Even in the silent passages, which I expected to make people really uncomfortable and fidgety, they were rapt. With a sell-out crowd of 500, we had only seven walkouts. I told them afterward I was disappointed that we had only seven walkouts, that I was hoping about half the crowd would walk out--that way I could call myself a misunderstood genius. And I know it wasn't aloof politeness that kept them in their seats because they reacted very audibly to certain scenes. And the sensitivity and vehemence of the questions afterward--no one can fake that level of investment. Very perceptive, very in-tune. For a movie this oblique to register so deeply with a sell-out crowd, people coming and going, that is baffling to me. If you make something that you assume will alienate and frustrate everyone, and instead they're electrified--well, that just makes me want to stop talking about the movie in such proprietary terms because it's not mine anymore. It's theirs. It's kind of heartbreaking to say that because I made this movie for myself, in every possible sense. But now it's one against 500, and they've staked their claim. It's time for me to disappear.

HoFB: Once again, thanks for being willing to talk about your film here, Alejandro! I look forward to following how Around the Bay fares now that its journey onto festival screens has been launched.

Around the Bay plays at Cinequest in San Jose twice more: March 4th and March 8th.

Adam Hartzell interviews the director of Host & Guest

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/16/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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I have to hand it to the 10th SF Asian Film Festival and the 5th Korean American Film Festival, both of which ended for me Sunday with a screening of the 1963 Korean War movie Marines Who Never Returned. Its first ten minutes felt as eerily documentary-like a depiction of combat as any I've seen on film. It makes me glad I still live in the Richmond District not far from the 4 Star Theatre, though for some of the programs hosted there in the past week and a half I would certainly have traveled much longer distances. And I was delighted to learn last Friday that the venue had booked four more days of festival fun, starting yesterday and ending on Thanksgiving, in the form of a Chinese-American Film Festival. Along with films from China and the Chinese diaspora, there will be one more Korean film in the program. Sometime contributor to this site Adam Hartzell has more:

This year, when asked to help out with the San Francisco Korean American Film Festival, I decided it was time for me to do more than simply write the program notes as I have been asked to do in the past. And do more I did, much more than a guy who has a regular day job that requires him to wake up at 4:30 AM, work 10 hour days, and travel abroad from anywhere from a month to two months should really do, but that’s what you get sometimes for volunteering. Thankfully, I worked with a great bunch of people who equally worked their butts off. But regardless of how much you work, some things just don’t work out.

And one of those things that didn’t work out was we weren’t able to get Sin Dong-il’s (alternate Romanization is Shin) wonderful film Host & Guest into the festival. This had to do with coordination difficulties across the globe, conflicting country holidays and work schedules. Let’s just say I was working outside of my skill set. But thankfully, Director Sin intervened on my behalf and Frank Lee of the 4 Star Theatre offered to open up some slots amidst his Chinese-American Film Festival that began this Monday. Host & Guest will be screening this Wednesday, November 21st at 9:30pm, and Thanksgiving Day at 5pm.

It’s been over two years since I’ve seen Host & Guest, but it’s a film that's slowly grown on me as I've sat with the images and dialogue of the bizarre coupling of a bitter, arrogant film-less Film Professor and a conscientiously-objecting Jehovah's Witness. What I recall after two years away from the film (for thoughts fresh from my viewing the film at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2005 you can go here) is that I appreciated how, although strong in its contempt for the Cheney/Bush administration, the film didn’t focus its critique solely outward, but inward as well. Host & Guest is equally as critical of the South Korean government as it is the United States. Host & Guest is equally critical of itself as it is others. In this way, what might appear clumsy in less skillful hands was gently laid to grow within my thoughts and my emotions that followed me after sharing witness with Sin’s vision.

I asked Sin if I could do an interview with him of a few simple questions over email. I offered him the option to respond in Korean if he felt more comfortable speaking in his first language. He responded mostly in Korean with an exception I will note. Along with thanking Sin for taking the time to answer my brief, amateurish questions, I must also thank Kaya Lee for her willingness to translate under a tighter deadline than I’d prefer to request. I adjusted some of her translation for flow, but I wouldn’t have been able to do this without her. Equally helpful to bringing the film to San Francisco were the SF Korean American Film Festival director Waylon McGuigan, Frank Lee of the 4 Star Theatre, Kim Hee-jeon of CJ Entertainment, and Director Sin’s sister who lives in the Bay Area but whom I won’t name because time constraints don’t allow for me to confirm whether she’s comfortable with my posting her name here.

The following is the interview.

Adam Hartzell, for Hell on Frisco Bay: The title, Host & Guest, is an interesting one. What brought you to use that title for the film?

Director Sin Dong-il: I was building the story’s plot and surprisingly, the English title Host and Guest came across my mind before the Korean title. I really loved the English title; so, I chose one of the main characters’ names as “Ho-jun” from “Host” and the other’s name was “Gye-sang” from “Guest”. I felt so much interest in the idea that two characters who have totally different ideologies respectively on the surface meet each other as a host and an uninvited guest, that is, as a visitor. As their relationship proceeds, each character becomes a host and a guest as well, and it means both are the host of their own lives.

HoFB: Could you talk a little bit about military service in South Korea to give American audiences an understanding of it since an understanding of the obligation all young Korean adults have is important to the film?

Director Sin: Korean people have been considering men’s military service as an obligation that they should accept naturally without doubt because of ideological confrontation and military tension between North and South Korea which has been ongoing for more than 50 years. Such represents that nationalism is controlling Korean people’s consciousness. It is true that people who refused the military obligation under conscience demands for peace have not been known to the South Korean public. I believe nationalism is an anachronism as the cold war composition has already collapsed around the world.

HoFB: Being a first time film director, having one character be a film professor who has never made a film makes me wonder how much he is based on your own experiences. Does that character represent your life in any way? Or is he more the kind of person you are worried you could become?

Director Sin: My life experience helped in making the film. Unlike the U.S. film market, South Korea’s independent film industry is very vulnerable. It is very hard to pursue my original thought into film without negotiating with the commercial/business world. South Korea’s film industry is focusing on box-office value too much. Actually it will bring serious risks/result in the end. I débuted with a feature film, but making a feature film is too hard. I am so gloomy whenever I think about how to get financial support for my third film. If anybody is interested in my third work after watching Host and Guest, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I always welcome producers for my work… just like a host and a guest. [laugh] It’s half seriousness and half joke. In addition, even though Ho-jun is called a professor, he is actually a part time instructor.

HoFB: If there is any kind of statement about the film you wish to make, feel free to add anything else you might want to say.

Director Sin: [Here, Director Sin Dong-il chose to type in English.]

Most people see only what they want to see. This world labels you a stranger once you trespass the standardized rules of the society. I want to open the door that is shut fast to these strangers.

If you want to look at this film closely, I would like to call your attention to Ho-jun’s snobbish elitism, deeply ingrained in his personality. Ho-jun finds himself transformed into an enemy of himself after having gone through days full of breakdowns and failures. He then meets Gye-sang, another soul, who’s also wounded by the prejudice and ignorance of the world. Thanks to Gye-sang, Ho-jun finds himself again, no longer as a "visitor" in his own life, but as both "host" and "guest."

I dedicate this humble film to those who are dreaming of a different world.

An Interview With Judy Wyler Sheldon

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 11/4/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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André Bazin once called him "the consummate artist". James Agee said he was "one of the great ones." He was William Wyler, and this weekend has seen a confluence of celebrations, re-evaluations, and analysis of the work of this director, in the form of the William Wyler Blog-A-Thon hosted by Mike "Goatdog" Phillips.

William Wyler and Margaret Tallichet ("Talli"), his wife, named their first two children after characters in his films. The eldest daughter Catherine was, like a great many girls born in 1939, named after Merle Oberon's character in Wuthering Heights. She would executive-produce a documentary on her father called Directed By William Wyler, built around the last interview he ever gave, three days before his death in 1981.

The second Wyler daughter was born just before the 1942 release of Mrs. Miniver, and was named Judy after the on-screen daughter of Greer Garson's title character, who was played by child actor Clare Sanders in the film. Now, under her married name Judy Wyler Sheldon, she is the president of the board of directors of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, an organization that I volunteer for. To contribute to this Blog-a-Thon, I thought it might be fun to interview a Wyler family member. Indeed, it was a delight to experience Judy's warm humor over the phone, and to hear her share a few reminiscences about a man who, as David Cairns succinctly put it, was "interested in human experience in its entirety." Here is my transcription of the conversation:

Hell on Frisco Bay: Though we've never met, I've seen you on the stage at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. How did you become interested in silent films?

Judy Wyler Sheldon: I really was neither interested, nor did I know a thing about them until my siblings and I were invited to go to the festival in Italy - the other big silent film festival, called Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, which takes place in Pordenone every year up in the Friuli area of Italy. They were doing a retrospective of my father's silent films in '95, '96, something like that, and they wanted us to come over. I have two sisters and a brother, and we thought, "Oh! Film festival? Italy? Why not!" We were thinking it was going to be like Cannes or Venice: what are we going to wear, what jewels should we take...

HoFB: I hear it's a pretty down-to-Earth festival.

JWS: It's VERY down-to-Earth. Everybody was in blue jeans. So we went to the festival and had a wonderful time. I saw my father's silent films for the first time. He never talked about his silent films. He just considered that part of his schooling. We saw not only his but a lot of other people's silent films. It was a week-long festival. When I got back, I was talking about it, and a friend of mine said "Well you know San Francisco has a silent film festival. It's pretty young, and you should find out about it." I did, and I got involved a couple of years later, joined the board, and now I'm the president of the board. So that's how it came about, but until then I really didn't know anything about silent films. And of course seeing my father's films... you know he started very young. At Pordenone they showed the films that they had chronologically. They started with those two-reel Westerns, which we thought were perfectly horrible. I remember sitting in the theatre with my siblings and we're kind of elbowing each other as we saw one film after another, all kind of the same plots, terrible camera-work, and wondering "what are we going to say?" We knew we were going to be interviewed, and answer questions. Fortunately as he got a little more experienced they did get better, so the last few that they showed were okay.

HoFB: I think William Wyler is probably best-known today for all the Oscars and Oscar nominations his films were awarded. Did you watch the Oscar ceremony growing up?

JWS: Well, I don't so much remember watching them on television, but I did go to the Oscars a couple of times. I went the year that he was nominated for Roman Holiday but didn't win, and I went the year that he did win for Ben-Hur. Those were really exciting. Although it was embarrassing, as they'd always send a limo to take you to the Oscars. You'd collect into this long line of limos going to (wherever the Oscars were being held in those years), and there'd be fans there lining up to see the stars getting out of their limos. They'd come and look through the windows, which weren't smoked in those days. They'd peer in and they'd say "Oh, that's nobody," because my father wasn't recognizable except to a few people in the know. I just remember finding that so humiliating, that they'd dismiss us with "Oh, that's nobody" and go on to the next car trying to find some big movie star.

HoFB: I believe Roman Holiday is one of at least two of your father's films in which you can be seen in an on-screen role. Is that correct?

JWS: Right. There are only two, and the first one, which is the Best Years of Our Lives, I'm in for about three seconds in a scene in the drugstore. There are lots of clients in the drugstore, just sort of in the background, and I'm a child of five or so, with my sister.

HoFB: Is there any way we can recognize you if we play the DVD?

JWS: Gosh... I'm just a little girl in a dress, with my sister, who's three years older than I am. It's just fleeting, and I can't even remember which scene it is. It's obviously one of the scenes with Dana Andrews.

HoFB: I recently looked at those scenes and I think I spied a pair of little girls looking at him in the very first scene where he visits the store.

JWS: It could be that one. I'd have to go back and look myself, but it's really fast. In Roman Holiday I got a little bit more of a chance. It was maybe five seconds more (laughs) and I actually was supposed to mumble "don't take my camera," because I was wearing a camera and Gregory Peck wanted to take pictures of Audrey Hepburn getting her hair cut. His photographer friend Eddie Albert wasn't with him, so he goes out and sees a group of schoolgirls at the Trevi Fountain. He comes up to me and tries to take the camera from around my neck and I'm saying, "Don't take my camera." My sister, who was in the scene as another schoolgirl, calls the teacher. She says, "Oh, Miss Weber" and the teacher comes over and glares at him. We have a younger brother and sister who say that we did such a bad job in that scene that, as a result, none of us were ever asked to appear again in a movie. And my younger brother and sister were never in a movie. They blamed us completely!

HoFB: I read somewhere that there was an attempt to get them into Ben-Hur...

JWS: I don't remember that there was ever any attempt to get them in. They did both have these very elaborate costumes made for them by the costume department at Cinecittà. They were wonderful costumes. My brother and sister were six and eight. My brother had this wonderful Roman soldier costume made for him, with a helmet, you know, and the whole thing was just fantastic. My sister had a woman's kind of toga. The Roman soldier costume has passed around our family, and my two sons both wore it as a Halloween costume.

HoFB: Roman Holiday was notable for being shot on the streets of Rome, helping to take Hollywood out of a studio-bound mindset. Did you enjoy life on location with your family there?

JWS: Oh, yeah. Although I was in school in Switzerland for most of the time. I was in Rome during the summer, when he was first shooting the film. It was a lot of fun, and my father had lots of fun making that movie. It was the first movie he made in Europe on location, and I guess it was the first big Hollywood movie that had been made in Rome. I remember my parents saying how the city authorities leaned over backwards to make it easy for them to film there, closing off streets and all the stuff that's much harder to get done today. My father had just the most wonderful time, and my mother as well, living there while making this movie. They just had the best time, and my father ended up buying... well, I don't know if he bought it or if it was given to him... a Vespa, like Gregory Peck had in Roman Holiday . He careened around and then brought it back to the States with him. We were living in Beverly Hills when he had it. We had a weekend house in Palm Springs, and that's where he took it, and we have lots of home movies of the whole family piled on this Vespa: my father, my mother, the four of us. We even have one with the dog!

HoFB: I'd like to go back to the Best Years Of Our Lives, which is just a tremendous film. One of the very best of all the Oscar Best Picture winners. That film, and your father's direction in particular, have been praised as unusually sensitive in portraying a character who lost his hands in World War II. Your father lost most of his hearing in an accident while shooting documentaries of the war in Europe. Was his deafness something that was publicly known at the time?

JWS: It wasn't something that he was trying to keep a secret. He was deaf in one ear. He could hear in the other ear, so he wasn't totally deaf. He did come back from the war with that injury wondering if he'd ever be able to direct, because at first it was much more serious. I think that did give him a lot of empathy with the character you mentioned. And also just the experience of coming back and having to adjust to their old lives, or new lives. I think that made it very personal.

HoFB: Is it a coincidence that the Silent Film Festival uses American Sign Language interpreters for all the film introductions and q-and-a's? Was that policy something you brought to the festival?

JWS: No, no. That was not something I had anything to do with. In fact, I think it predated my being part of the festival. But it's such a natural for our audience because, I would guess, silent films could be very attractive to people who are hearing-impaired.

HoFB: In 2002 the festival brought the silent version of a William Wyler film called Hell's Heroes.

JWS: Yes, and that was the centennial of my father's birth, which is why they chose that one. And actually the year that I went to Pordenone for the first time with my siblings, they showed that.

HoFB: What was it like to bring Hell's Heroes to the Castro screen, and to the Silent Film Festival audience?

JWS: Well, it was wonderful, naturally. To get to see these films on a big screen with live music in an old movie palace. I mean, as you know, there's nothing like it! It was thrilling, and that year we were able to get Terrence Stamp to introduce the film. Obviously, he wasn't a silent film actor, but it's harder and harder to find any of those these days! It was wonderful to have him give some reminiscences about working with my father on the Collector. So, it was a wonderful, wonderful evening. Most of my siblings were there, and other family, and of course my kids were there, and my husband, and it was just great.

HoFB: Do you often watch your father's films?

JWS: I watch them from time to time. I have DVDs of most of them, the ones that are available. But there's just nothing like seeing a movie on a big screen. I have to say I much prefer seeing a film in a theatre, if it's possible. Of course, that's not always possible.

HoFB: Hopefully somebody will put together a full retrospective of his films one of these days!

JWS: Wouldn't that be nice? We'd love that! When I say "we" I mean the family. We would encourage that, and support that, and work for that in any way we could. That would be great!

HoFB: Is there anything else you think film buffs might like to know about your father?

JWS: Well, he was my father, so I'm biased, but growing up, I never thought that much about the fact that I was the daughter of this well-known film director. It's only in my adulthood that I've begun to appreciate what he brought to the craft. But as a human being, he was a really wonderful guy. He was not only interesting, he was funny, with a wonderful sense of humor. He was a humanitarian, and cared very deeply about all kinds of causes, and was just a great person. I feel very proud to have had him for my father.

HoFB: Well, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with me, and with the readers of this Blog-a-Thon!

JWS: You're very welcome!

Power Of The Image: talking with Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS PAGE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 11/14/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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I've been focusing the majority of my filmgoing activity over the past few months to revivals and retrospectives, but I can say without question that there is at least one new film in Frisco Bay theatres absolutely worth the attention of moviegoers who prefer visionary cinematic achievements to would-be rollercoasters determined to be forgotten five minutes after exiting the mall: Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary on the work of "subliminal environmentalist" photographer Edward Burtynsky, and on the context he's found himself working in for the past several years: the factories, the energy extraction centers, and the rapidly transforming cities, villages, and post-industrial wastelands of modern China.

The award-winning film was directed by Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, whose often poetic approach to the material inspired me to track down her other films available on DVD: Let it Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles and The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia. They're both excellent and the latter is a particularly compelling counterpart to Manufactured Landscapes. They're similar in that each film follows a photographer whose stunning compositions inspire drastically conflicting emotional reactions in viewers, and indeed sometimes within an individual viewer, but very different in approach to presenting these conflicts. Burtynsky's work has hung in the boardrooms of corporations that profit from the industry his images depict, as well as of activist organizations working to minimize the physical impact of human industry and globalization on our planet. In Manufactured Landscapes Baichwal and cinematographer Peter Mettler have created an often horrifying, often beautiful, largely pictorial investigation of the apparent contradictions in Burtynsky's work.

When presented with an opportunity to speak with Baichwal and Burtynsky in late May, while they were in town together "doing press" on the film, I leapt despite my rather paltry experience with interviewing. I was nervous, and they were probably exhausted from being asked about the film all day, but if perhaps I didn't establish the rapport that other, more experienced interviewers like Glen Helfland and Michael Guillen seemed to, at least Baichwal and Burtynsky were comfortable with following up on each others' answers, and I felt lucky just to get to be in the room getting it all down thanks to my handheld digital recorder. The recorder was one of the first things mentioned when I sat down with them at a table in a room adjoining a publicist's office. Before I even had a chance to turn it on, I noted that it bore a label "Made in China." This launched Burtynsky into a story about his daughter...

Edward Burtynsky: It was three Christmases ago. We have the tradition of Christmas stockings that "Santa" brought. The youngest had just started to learned how to read. She pulled out a plush toy, and she looked at it. She read "Made in China" and she turned and looked up and said, "Hey Dad, even Santa shops in China!" [The room fills with laughter.] Out of the mouths of babes.

Hell on Frisco Bay: There was even a Santa Claus in the film.

Jennifer Baichwal: There were two Chris Marker moments in the film for me. One was the stills, at the coal distribution center, and the other was the hydrofoil. The whole scene on the hydrofoil reminded me of Sans Soleil, which is one of my very favorite films.

HoFB: I loved it when I saw it at the Castro several years ago.

JB: It's extraordinary, just the most incredible film, but [the hydrofoil scene in Manufactured Landscapes] reminded me of the people asleep on the ferry. This was only after, when I looked at the footage; I wasn't thinking about it when we were shooting it. [to Burtynsky, who nods:] Do you remember that scene with the Santa? With the guy on the boat just standing, looking at the Santa Claus sign. You ask "what is this thing doing here?"

HoFB: I saw Manufactured Landscapes at Sundance, and of all the films I saw there it's the one that has haunted me the most since January.

JB: It is pretty haunting. It was haunting being there. I'm still reminded of those locations where we were. I mean I think about that kind of thing every day now. And I'm beginning to look at how I'm engaging in this process that is directly related to what's happening over there. And trying not to.

HoFB: One of the workers, who is demolishing his own city to make way for the Three Gorges Dam, looks at a test photograph you've handed him, and he says "it's a very broad view; it's hard to see the details."

EB: Right.

HoFB: I was able to view your photographs in a gallery setting. There were I believe six of them on display in Park City during the festival. Looking at them in this setting, I definitely felt like it was easier to hone in on the details than when looking at a reproduction in a book, but I wonder if you also see the film as a presentation of some of the details that might get lost otherwise?

EB: I think the film successfully moves from a broader view, to look at some of the more nuanced, human scale moments that are within the subject. Jennifer was able to go into some of my photographs from the macro, and then follow some of the paths through the images, traversing some of these paths. It was used quite sparingly, but when it was, it was used very effectively. I think the film was in keeping with how one is confronted by the work itself. You start out seeing and trying to absorb the overall, and then you enter it, and because it's a large format, you're able to investigate the smaller things that often belie the scale. Often the scale isn't immediately present in the picture. It's only when you go in further that you start to find things you can understand the size of, like a ladder, or a 45-gallon drum, or a person, that it reveals itself in a way that would be difficult on a first view.

JB: It really is what we were wrestling with; how to translate these photographs intelligently into film. Peter and I talked about how we would move back and forth between the wide view and the detailed, which is how you look at those photographs. Because the detail is so extraordinary and the resolution is so extraordinary, you can see, when you look in close, all of these things happening. Then when you pull back, it's just about the scale. And often you're confused by the scale. At one point there's this truck and then you pull back and it looks like a little toy truck. You wouldn't have any idea how big that was unless you started there. There are tricks of scale where you really have to look to see. "Okay, that dot, that is a human. That's how big this place is." So we follow these inherent narratives that are there in the photographs. Teasing them out was a strategy that was something I really wanted to use; to keep moving back and forth in a rhythm, macro to micro.

HoFB: I remember one shot in particular, where the camera is traveling over some high-rises. We can't tell if the camera is flying over Shanghai, or one of Ed's photographs. And then it pulls back and we see we're looking over someone's shoulder, looking at the photograph.

JB: And you know what, that was important to me because issues of representation are. Every time you engage in the language of documentary or photography, you have to talk about that. On the other hand, you can't only talk about that. You can't be constantly self-referential, and just reflect on what it means to be representing just this person's view of a real place, and are we filming all those layers? But I really felt it was important to make reference to it, and include those deliberately confusing moments, where you're not sure where you are, or what vision you're looking at, what frame you're looking at. Is this reality? Is this the photograph, the image? Is it the photograph in another context? And that's sort of where we begin and end also: in the museum, making reference to the fact that in some ways that is the end point of this vision.

EB: One of the things that was consistent with what I'm doing, where Jennifer's coming from and where the cinematographer Peter is coming from, is that I think all of us are believers and proponents of very strong visual language. We're all interested in the Power Of The Image at a time when there's the Power Of Theory and the Power Of Concept. Not to say that the work is devoid of any of these things, but as visual people, we invest enormous amounts of energy to get the visuals right. That's something that I fight for in my work all the time, and I know that Peter does, and I know that Jennifer is just absolutely fastidious about getting what's possible out of the scene and out of the materials afterwards. So there is a visual determination of trying to translate all that through truly powerful visual narratives, and I think that probably has helped the film become a piece, and in a way a work of art in itself. It isn't a documentary on me; it's a parallel piece that exists in its own right.

JB: Art is really one arena of inquiry that allows you to engage intellectually and emotionally with issues. Take something like the Al Gore film which I felt was very powerful because of him, because of his commitment to what he was doing. It's a completely didactic film. It is an archive of a slide show. There is nothing artful about that film. Yet it... persuades you. Because of his passion. And in some ways, we end up at the same place through an entirely different route. A route of witnessing, of being in these places we are responsible for but don't normally see. I think the arena of art is a very powerful arena because of the possibility of melding the intellectual and the emotional.

EB: It leaves enough openness of meaning. The viewer has to conclude or put closure to it themselves. We're not saying, "this is how you have to think about it." Coming to those conclusions and arriving on them yourself is a much more powerful and lasting way to leave somebody with something than to say "you need to think about this this way". And most people coming out of the film, I would be willing to gamble, arrive at the same conclusion: "Uh, oh!"

JB: It is open-ended. It has to be. It can't be fixed. In the film there's enough to help you contextualize information without fixing the meaning, ever. Because for me, past films have been very dense; the last film with Shelby Lee Adams [the True Meaning of Pictures] was very dense with argument, you know. We were cutting between people literally having arguments on screen. For me, this film was really an exercise in restraint in allowing the images to lead and the pictures to tell the story, and to then pull back. Somebody asked me, "What are you most proud of?", and I'm proud that I was able to do that. To pull back and let it be as sparse as it was, as it needed to be.

HoFB: One word I used in writing on the film for GreenCine was "neutrality"...

EB: I don't know if that actually describes the film at all. If it were truly neutral, then there would be no problem for us screening the film in China, and that's a big question for us right now. What is neutral? Is it culturally, is it globally, or in China, where they see their neutrality differently than the free market democratic system we see as neutral? So I think it's almost like "what is normal?" How do we place it, when every culture has a different definition of what is normal. I think "what is neutral" is an equally slippery kind of idea to pin down. "Neutral" is almost paralleling "objective". We're forever wondering if we could ever achieve objectivity. Media are not objective, whether we use stills or film, or whatever.

JB: I don't think any sane person could argue for objectivity, which in some ways is the same thing as neutrality. It's impossible. Neutrality almost feels like nothing, like you're in a place that is not advocating anything. The difference here is that the complexity of what you're seeing in the film does not allow you to have a simple response. There are so many layers. You know, the idea that somebody thousands of miles away is making the spray mechanism for your iron that you use every day, that is shipped here, and when you throw it away, goes back there. The complexity of this, and the fact that there are no easy answers to this predicament that we find ourselves in, that's what I mean by being "open-ended."

HoFB: Are the photographs shown in China?

EB: The book is for sale in China. It sold well there.

JB: Wow.

EB: The book is in China, and with no adverse effects. If they had a problem, they would approach Noah [Weinzweig, producer and translater], I think. Because Noah is the one who made it all happen. But nobody's ever talked to him. No-one's ever given him any grief. I think that they're so very busy there, with too many bigger fish to fry, in terms of issues. And I think that they also recognize that they have to open up. They are opening up. With the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World's Fair, they're inviting the world and it's press into what's normally a fairly closed, controlled society. You can't control 8,000 reporters walking around the streets of Beijing, and not have them interact with your people, and hear stories from their mouths. That's what they really don't like. I mean, where they get upset is where we're at Three Gorges Dam, or we're talking to a factory worker or we're talking to a ship worker and it's not the worker that they want, and their story isn't "I'm a happy worker here in China, happily making more money than I was as an unhappy farmer". That's the story they want you to tell. "We're moving ahead, modernizing, and we're bringing our people out of poverty. And yes we know we've got some problems. We're working on that. But don't just focus on the problems. Please, take a look at the fact that we have lots of positive stories." And you know what? It's true. It's not all bad, and it's not all simple. Also, I bet you we can go into North America with a film camera and we can find the some of the same waste and the same dreck work happening here. It's still happening here. I did that kind of dreck work when I was going through school.

JB: And you photographed it.

EB: Yeah. It's not that we've left that chapter completely, but it is true that the chapter's shifting. It is moving over there, and though it still exists here, it's still an industrial process and an issue.

JB: It's just that it's so much bigger over there, and it's so dirty. We find it pretty easy to send the things away that we now know to be dirty, and move them to a another place.

EB: Right, and it's so much bigger because in the last fifteen years we added 4 point something billion people to the planet.

HoFB: You tell the story in the film about your oil epiphany, and I found that was really interesting, where at one point you were driving in your car, and you were realizing...

EB: That all roads led back to oil.

HoFB: Right. And you also talk a bit about shooting film stock with silver in it at a silver mine, and I've been recently reading about nitrate stock, and how in 1926 up to one-thirtieth of all the world's silver supply was tied up in the motion picture industry. It's been making me think about how the appeal of art for humans might, consciously or not, be in the stain that it leaves on the planet.

EB: The appeal of art is that people have found meaning in the marks that they leave behind, from the first cave paintings in Lascaux. From the earliest mark-making, I think it's still the same impulse. We find meaning in trying to tell stories about our passing, and our perceptions of what we see. For most artists who devote their lives to it, it's something you really can't control. The need to leave those marks is the reason you get up. Because you're interested in that process, and being able to translate your world through another channel, or create some new form or new way of expressing yourself.

JB: One of the things that drew me to the photographs in the beginning was that Ed acknowledges his own implication, and we all have to acknowledge our own implication. Existing environmental discourses, early environmental discourses were very polarizing. Very much a kind of us-and-them situation advocating radical solutions while most people just could not imagine living that way. So not a lot happened. I think there's something about the acknowledgment: "I'm steeped in this." Ed went [to China] first to find out where his computer went when it died. I've probably filled the tank in my car with oil from one of these tankers. We're all joined to these processes and it's not easy. How are we going to get out of it? We all have to get out of it together, and that acknowledgment of complexity is very powerful to me, in him as a person saying that, and also in his work. In these processes that he's photographing instead of just having this, "I'm good and you're bad, and if you were like me you'd stop what you're doing."

EB: The first of the twelve steps of AA is to acknowledge the problem.

JB: [laughing] Acknowledge the addiction.

HoFB: Well, it looks like I have to acknowledge that my time is up, so thank you both for your insights into this marvelous, important film.

And in came the next interviewer...

Manufactured Landscapes is currently playing at the single-screen Lark Theatre in Marin County, the Shattuck in Berkeley and the Lumiere Theatre here in Frisco.