Film / Video

Upon winning the Grand Prix at Cannes last year, "Japan's leading woman director"–Naomi Kawase, now in the "spotlight" of the Walker's Women With Vision series–spoke in Buddhist terms of the benefits of difficulty. "You try to find strengths–and I don’t mean money, cars, or clothing," she said. "It’s not necessarily something visible. It can be the wind, the light, the memory of the ancients…"

Nature and ancestry are indeed key elements of Kawase's The Mourning Forest, whose weighty production stumbled a bit en route to the Cannes stage–merely by way of gathering strength, its maker would say. (She'll have more to say about the film when introducing it at 7pm Thursday.) If anything, though, the relation between past and present–the focus of this year's "Vision" program, as it happens–bears even more directly on the filmmaker's little-seen documentaries.

Kawase–still not 40 years of age–had made more than a dozen docs before her first narrative feature, Suzaku, took its own Cannes prize, the Camera d'Or, in 1997. Since then, she has made a half-dozen more nonfiction works, all exceedingly rare in the U.S., including Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth (2001) and Birth/Mother (2006)–nature and ancestry, past and present intertwined in both, each film connected inextricably to the other.

(Some practical details: Birth/Mother screens at the Walker on Thursday at 5:30, just before Kawase introduces The Mourning Forest, while Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth screens the following afternoon in room 155 of Nicholson Hall, introduced by the director and co-presented by the U of M's Institute for Advanced Study Film Collaborative and its Consortium for the Study of the Asias. Both of these screenings are free–and not to be missed.)

The more experimental of the two (in a close contest), Sky, Wind finds Kawase combining discrete audio and video tracks in complex and sometimes disorienting ways. Clips of the director's teary phone talk with the biological father she had never known–"How did you get my number?" he asks, among other, more generous things–are played over benign images of people watching TV, as if to measure the oceanic distance between raw familial drama and an evening's entertainment. (Kawase has made it clear in interviews–as if it wasn't obvious in her films–that she's no fan of the Hollywood style.) Elsewhere, shots of nature–slow pans up the stems of dead or dying plants, for example–appear immediately poignant in the context of the filmmaker's own separation from her roots. (Kawase's great aunt Uno–star of Birth/Mother–raised the girl from birth at her niece's request.)

If the soundtrack of Sky, Wind bears the burden of conveying the film's story (i.e., Kawase attempts to come to terms with her father), the visuals serve as the director's reflection on the details–as the present rather than the past. This autobiographical doc also juggles elements of fiction–as when a clapperboard appears in a long scene of Kawase talking to an artist about getting a tattoo to match her dad's. What's amazing about the presence of that clapperboard isn't so much that it breaks the spell of nonfiction, but that it gets us thinking about the fundamental artifice of most any documentary, a personal one not least. Clapperboard or no, isn't "reality" already being directed in a film whose maker chooses to visit a tattoo artist and roll the camera? Here, Kawase effectively collapses the distinction between her life and her art–much as a tattoo does, you might say. To etch one's story in celluloid or on the body itself is to leave a permanent record–or, in some cases, a scar.

Birth/Mother–naturally–is about pain. Its first words are Kawase's, spoken from offscreen to her great aunt Uno–"Why did you adopt me?"–over the close-up image of something indistinctly bloodier than a Peckinpah frame, perhaps a placental sac. Filming while her elder was in the final stages of dementia, Kawase dares to begin the doc with her confrontational approach to the 90-year-old Uno, who's reduced by the conversation to tearful quivering. It's a fascinatingly bold, even abrasive film, never more so than in extreme close-ups of Uno's bruised, sagging flesh in a bathtub–shocking images, these, beautiful only through the viewer's strenuous effort (and not necessarily then).

Nearly every image in the first half carries with it the smell of death, reminding us that it's not a film about a relationship, but about the end of a relationship–the end of a life. At one point Kawase sings "Happy Birthday" (in English) to her great aunt and giggles as the old woman struggles to blow out candles with her thin breath. As much as the 1970s' American family docs of Western legend, Birth/Mother is unsparingly direct–and the gutsiest film of Kawase's that I've seen. The film's eventual focus on Kawase's pregnancy–culminating in the emergence of baby boy Mitsuki–relives it only somewhat of its ingeniously harsh vibe. Kawase fictionalized this material for the relatively gentle Mourning Forest, in which a young nurse befriends an old man with dementia, following him on a quest to find his wife's gravesite. But Birth/Mother plays as a work of the toughest love–a cathartic purge, seemingly at the expense of a dying woman's final memories. (Message: Past and present may indeed be closely connected–but the world belongs to the living.)

Kawase's films–her narrative films in particular–have been widely compared to those of Ozu and Naruse for taking intimate approaches to interpersonal relations. Not surprisingly, the work has proven too intimate for some. Writing from Cannes, Esquire's Mike D'Angelo–not a critic generally known for his great sensitivity–issued sarcastic advice to Mourning's bereaved heroine: "Talk to a shrink, lady." Expressing himself more tactfully, the Buenos Aires-based IMDB writer who notes Kawase's "exhibitionism" does have a point. Both Birth/Mother and the narrative feature Shara–labors of love in the literal sense–climax with Kawase's delivery of Mitsuki, while Sky, Wind contains glimpses of the then 27-year-old filmmaker receiving her first Cannes prize. "After Kurosawa and Oshima, I think Kawase will be the next internationally known name among this generation of [Japanese filmmakers]," said… Kawase!

The director, a noted lover of basketball, is hardly her winning team's only cheerleader, as evidenced in a post-Grand Prix message to GreenCine Daily from a fan named Beruk: "I'm so happy for Naomi Kawase! Please marry me Naomi!" Note to Beruk: Sorry, she's taken. Might you find what you're looking for in the wind, the light?

During the last week of March, Walker's Women with Vision festival offers the rare opportunity to meet Japanese director Naomi Kawase, who's not only Japan's leading female filmmaker but also one of its most internationally known independent filmmakers. It's no wonder everybody is heading for tickets of her latest film Mogari No Mori (The Mourning Forest) which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival last year, and which will be introduced and discussed by her in person.

But Shara (Sharasojyu) the other fiction film screened in the "Spotlight on Kawase" series should not be missed either. The film contains an amazing scene that blew me away the first time I saw it, and did so every time I have seen it since. You shouldn't pass on the chance to see it in the cinema.

The 7 minutes long dance scene I am talking about is surely not the only reason for seeing the film, but it will strike you emotionally in a way that seldom happens. It's neither pathos nor a melodramatic constellation that is touching about this scene. Its stirring momentum is more a healing force that evolves out of the street dance of the city festival one of the protagonists is taking part in. There is the physicality of the voices and the energy of body movements, as well as the rhythm of singing or rather shouting, which provides a connecting bond for the group dancing as well as for the people watching. And all of this is transmitted by the film in a way that the liberating force of healing becomes perceptible to the audience of the film, too.
There is another reason why Shara, which was released in 2003, is interesting in terms of Kawase's work. Kawase herself plays Reiko, who is pregnant in the second half of the film, and at the end she gives birth to a little boy at her home among her family. One year later Naomi Kawase is pregnant herself and gives birth to her son Mitsuki. And she includes scenes of her giving birth in the documentary Tarachime (Birth/Mother). So we have two birth scenes, both with the same woman and directed by her as well, and the fictional scene precedes the one in the documentary.

Film Critic and Walker Blogger Rob Nelson, clearly a man of many hats, is currently teaching a documentary film studies class at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He asked his students to weigh in on Nina Davenport’s documentary Operation Filmmaker, which will be playing at the Walker this Thursday (It’s a free screening!) as part of the Women With Vision Film Festival. Head over to the MinnPost page to read what they had to say.

Faces of a Fig Tree (Ichijiku No Kao)
Directed by Kaori Momoi
Saturday, March 15 7:30 pm

This year's festival is subtitled Past/Present and is particularly interested in looking at the ways in which women filmmakers reveal how the past has shaped the present. Would you say today's challenges and obstacles for women filmmakers have changed? And how do you think the situation in your country is in particular when compared to other countries?

I often joke that "A Japanese man prefers a woman he can take down" but in Japan, which has a long history of chauvinism, women--let alone women filmmakers--still have a difficult time in the work place. As proof of that, there is not one female director in the Japanese major movie industry. I feel that now and from now on, with a rooted coed system (where men experience being bested academically by women), young men find it easier to work with and share a respectful relationship with women. As an actress I wrote scripts on set and participated creatively as an actor thinking to become a filmmaker. The time for female filmmakers has only really just begun. I can assure you that from here on out there will be a deluge of women artists.

Why are you a filmmaker and how does working with film help you tell your story?

I think there is a certain something that films express better than other arts such as literature or music. It's something subconscious or intuitive that a living being gives birth to. This instantaneous feeling that emerges from my body keeps me making films.

The world in which the Kadowaki family lives seems at the border of reality and fiction. Their environment appears dominated by fantasy while all the characters are going through intense transformation. What kind of aesthetic and style did you use to enhance this sort of surrealism?

To die, like a television switching off, suddenly causes the picture of daily life to disappear. Consequently, to live, means partaking in daily living. Daily life doesn't contain a lot of big surprises; if we don't look at it through our memories or other people's eyes, it doesn't hit home that we're actually happy. The themes in this film are 'Why can't we feel the happiness we have now' and 'isn't it a let-down not to be able to?" I wanted to show people that calmly eating around the dinner table, if you stop to look at it, is beautiful.

You are well known as an established actress. With Faces of a Fig Tree you directed a film yourself for the first time. Did the experience of directing change your view of acting?

Actors are an entity that neither transform nor perform. I found that I wanted them to lend their talents and become creators on set.

Could you choose your favorite scene in your film or an anecdote related to it and tell us what you particularly like about it?

During filming, I never explained to the actors what scene we were shooting. I wrote the script, but the majority of the time the actors spoke in the scene as a response to my lines and instructions. Then it was a matter of arriving back at the lines from the script.

I like the dining table where the family is eating croquettes after the father has died. The children knew that they were eating at the table after their father's death, but with the mother's line "Your father sure is late tonight" it seems as though they become completely unsure of whether he is even dead anymore and they just continue eating silently. I think of them as children clumsily trying to support their mother, who's grown a little bit funny in the head after the death of her husband, through the mundane daily routine of eating. That's my favorite scene.

Translated from Japanese by Robert Behnen, edited by C. Marran

We’ve got a very exciting weekend ahead of us!

Women With Vision opens this evening with what will be a packed, sold out screening of Older Than America. If you missed your chance to get tickets, don’t worry, I know the filmmakers are planning to bring the film back to the Twin Cities for more screenings.

Saturday brings three exciting programs: The first of two Women With Vision Short Film Programs, the WIFTI Short Film Showcase, and the local premiere of Maria Speth’s Madonnas. Tickets are still available for all three of these programs.

Sunday, in conjunction with the Sabes Foundation Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival, we will be presenting the documentary Making Trouble. The Walker’s allotment of member tickets have sold out, but there are a very limited number of tickets remaining from the Jewish Film Festival box office. Call 952.381.3499 to check availability and purchase a ticket.

The Mirroring Cure
Directed by Charlotte Ginsborg
2007, UK, video, 28 minutes
Saturday, March 8, 2:00 pm

Women With Vision is proud to announce that Charlotte Ginsborg is flying in Minneapolis from London this Friday to introduce her film The Mirroring Cure presented March 8 on International Women’s Day. Part of the Short Films, Program One, The Mirroring Cure is a genre mix of documentary and fiction which tries to understand how the employees of a company are affected by the demolishing of an old building and the construction of its replacement.

Operation Filmmaker
Directed by Nina Davenport
Thursday, March 20, 7:00 pm

This year’s festival is subtitled Past/Present and is particularly interested in looking at the ways in which women filmmakers reveal how the past has shaped the present. Would you say today’s challenges and obstacles for women filmmakers have changed? And how do you think the situation in your country is in particular when compared to other countries?

I hesitate to be so blunt, but I do think film is still an extremely sexist industry. Just look at the statistics published each year by the fabulous Guerrilla Girls. They have fantastic billboards, such as one proclaiming, “Even the U.S. Senate is more progressive than Hollywood: Female Senators: 14%, Female Film Directors: 4%” and “The Anatomically Correct Oscar: He’s white & male, just like the guys how win!” Fortunately, things are much better for female documentary filmmakers, probably because the industry is less hierarchical. We don’t need anyone’s go-ahead to start making a film. But even then, you see a kind of sexism in the sensibilities of the festival programmers, a major factor in determining which films succeed and which fail, and also with audiences. And the majority of well-known documentary filmmakers are male.

Why are you a filmmaker and how does working with film help you tell your story?

I actually began my career as an artist in still photography, specifically black & white street and portrait photography, inspired by photographers such as Diane Arbus and Bruce Davidson. In the photographs I admired most, you could feel the connection between the subject and the photographer and I think that had an enormous affect on my filmmaking. I have been a subject to greater or lesser extents in all my films because I am interested in how people respond to being photographed. I’m also interested in my relationship to the people I film. Needless to say, Operation Filmmaker takes the subject/photographer relationship to an extreme.

Was the production of this film a learning experience for you in terms of documentary ethics and narrative as well as film production?

My film is in fact all about documentary ethics. The conflict that often occurs between a documentary filmmaker and his or her subject is normally kept out of the film, but since I’m an American and had control over the film and Muthana is Iraqi and felt powerless to control the film - and sometimes felt invaded by it - there was an obvious parallel to the American invasion of Iraq. This seemed the perfect set-up to examine an issue that lurks behind the scenes of many documentaries - that they are often made by people with resources about people without resources - which always poses a real moral quandary.

You have a very interesting way of blending the reality and the fiction of war. How do you think the representations of war and its portrayal in the media in particular affect the sense people make of war?

I think the way we sanitize the war in the news makes people more complacent than they would be if, like Al Jazeera, we showed images of dead bodies - or if we let scenes organically unfold and play out, the way they do in documentary, rather than reducing everything to superficial sound bites. I think today’s news media in the U.S. is of appallingly poor quality, it is actually much better in Europe.

Could you choose your favorite scene in your film or an anecdote related to it and tell us what you particularly like about it?

One of my favorite scenes is when Muthana is angry that I tried to set parameters on the idea of getting him a visa to the U.S. and he is so fed up with me, his life, and the documentary, he yells at me, “Fuck you! Fuck Kouross! And fuck David Schisgall!” I just love the idea of the documentary film subject totally rebelling and telling the filmmakers off. At the moment it occurred, I was extremely upset that I was trying to help him and his only response was to be angry, but when I watched the footage later, I found it hilarious. I also love all the scenes from DOOM and how uncanny and surreal it was that Muthana ended up on a multi-million dollar film set that was all about creating an atmosphere of war when he was trying to escape war. Not to mention, all one had to do to see war was turn on the nightly news. But by the time you’ve edited 400 hours down to an hour and a half, you pretty much love every scene that’s managed to successfully avoid the fate of ending up on the cutting room floor.

It Happened Just Before (Kurz davor ist es passiert)
Directed by Anja Salomonowitz
Sunday, March 16, 2:00 pm

This year's festival is subtitled Past/Present and is particularly interested in looking at the ways in which women filmmakers reveal how the past has shaped the present. Would you say today's challenges and obstacles for women filmmakers have changed? And how do you think the situation in your country is in particular when compared to other countries?

I think the situation for woman filmmakers in general is difficult: to be accepted by a man’s world. Here in Austria there are many woman filmmakers but many also claim about the bad conditions.

Why are you a filmmaker and how does working with film help you tell your story?

Making movies was, and is, the only thing I wanted to do. It makes me happy, full, and live worth it. Besides my family :-)

In your film, the testimonies of women who have experienced human trafficking are told by non-actors filmed in their work place and who could have witnessed such tragedy. Why was it important for you to create this kind of mise-en-scene ?

There are three documentary layers in the movie: the stories of the woman are true, the people who tell the stories are amateur actors in their real lives and, most important, the places where it could have happened are real: the border is real, the brothel is real and also the diplomatic household. So these three documentary layers are mixed together and they give something new.

Normally when you see a documentary about trafficking in woman, the woman tells her story and she cries. She has this black thing over her eyes etc. What you feel is that you pity her. I wanted to take away the pity from the woman - and talk about the things they need. They do not need pity, they need to have rights. A different law situation concerning migration as it is now.

So I separated the stories from the woman to give a look on the pure stories themselves. On the conditions that make them happen.

I was certainly concerned with questioning prevalent documentary methods. Does the victim always have to tell their own story? On the other hand, can someone else recite the story but nevertheless still communicate something of the person? I am concerned with this grey area.

Was it difficult to persuade the protagonists to take part in the film? Were they afraid of being connected with human trafficking?

To find the amateur actors was for sure a big part. We made a long street casting to find them. When someone was found, I accompanied them in their all day life for days, months and years.

And then I rehearsed with them very, very much.

The diplomatic woman I asked again before we shot: are you really sure you want to do this? And she said yes. But for sure it was not easy for them.

They had to deal with these stories, to think about them, to connect them with their own life. This was part of our work. But they were not afraid of being connected with human trafficking because they knew they are doing something against it.

How or where did you find the stories of the women?

The stories are based on true stories, on interviews. They come lefö, an ngo in Vienna who works in the field of trafficking woman, and also from women themselves. It was agreed with lefö that the women should not be able to be identified. It deals with real, exemplary narratives from specific areas in which trafficking in women takes place such as where women are sold into prostitution or, for example, where they have to work, effectively as slaves, in diplomatic households.

Could you choose your favorite scene in your film or an anecdote related to it and tell us what you particularly like about it?

I am often asked if the waiter really hurts his head in this scene or if he plays it...yes, he plays it. While I was rehearsing with this people I asked everything very exactly: how do you start work every day, where do you give the ashes etc. While we were doing this he was awkward, he often hurt himself. So I wrote it back in the script and he also had to do it while we shot.

Jesus Camp, the film about a now-closed “Kids on Fire” bible camp by documentarians Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (whose Boys of Baraka showed here at Women with Vision 2006), keeps racking up awards like the Special Documentary Jury Prize at Tribeca and the Sterling Award at SilverDocs. Now you can watch the entire film at GoogleVideo.
Via Digg.

…or at least a cacaphony of clacks coming from a roomfull of viewmasters.

The evening was a huge success and great fun. It started with a screening of Play, a fantastic and beautiful film from Chilean filmmaker Alicia Scherson. She was kind enough to come to the Walker for her screening, answer some questions, and hang out at the reception that followed.

Film/Video curator Sheryl Mousley, Play director Alicia Scherson, and Visual Arts Assistant Curator Yasmil Raymond at the Women With Vision opening Night reception

During the reception, Vladimir was on hand to present two different Vladmaster shows. (see the image above) I have been looking forward to these for months, and I am happy to say they did not disappoint. They made for a magical experience, giving the sense of being alone in a crowd in the best possible way. If you happened to miss the shows, Vladimir left some of the Vladmaster shows for sale in the Walker Shop. Not only are the shows incredible, but the Vladmasters are beautiful art objects as well, each created by hand.

Women With Vision continues this week with the start of the Blacklisted thread with Our Daily Bread on Wednesday, March 8. Our third, in a series of six, Women With Vision podcast will hit cyberspace this week. Check the podcasts out for interviews with WWV filmmakers and upcoming festival highlights.
Thanks to Dean for the photos.

Come to the Opening Night of Walker Art Center’s 13th Annual Women With Vision Festival. Admission includes a viewing of Play, introduced by writer/director Alicia Scherson (visiting us from Santiago, Chile!) (7pm), and a reception (9-11pm) with complimentary appetizers by Wolfgang Puck Catering, cash bar, and Vladmaster performances with artist Vladimir in person. New films, snacks, and VIEWMASTERS!!! Don’t miss this opportunity to see a great film, have one of the most unique screening experiences of a lifetime, and interract with two phenomenal artists. See you there!
Mention the Walker Blog offer, and get a two-for-one deal off the normal $12 ($8 member) rate. Call 612.375.7600 for the box office

Go to the Women With Vision website for more information on these programs and the rest of the festival. Also, be sure to check out the Women With Vision PODCASTS!

For the 2006 Women with Vision festival, we're producing a six-episode podcast featuring interviews with selected filmmakers and comments by Walker film curator/festival director Sheryl Mousley. To subscribe, copy and paste this URL into iTunes or your podcast aggregator of choice: filmvideo.walkerart.org/wwv/rss.wac. The series schedule is below.

The interviews featured in the podcasts can also be played online at the festival website or accessed via the telephone by calling 612.374.8200 and entering the code for the interview. Sheryl's comments are only available on the podcasts.

We want to know to know what you think about this programming, so please leave your comments here or complete the survey that will be distributed at the related film screenings.

Podcast Schedule
Women with Vision Podcast #1
Release Date 2/27/06
The premiere podcast features interviews with the festival's opening-night artists Alicia Scherson and Vladimir.

Women with Vision Podcast #2
Release Date 3/3/06
Festival director Sheryl Mousley discusses this year's theme: Confronting Silence. Featured filmmakers are Emily Haddad and Abigail Child.

Women with Vision Podcast #3
Release Date 3/7/06
This introduction to the Reflections of Place short film series features interviews with Joanna Kohler and Cynthia Madansky.

Women with Vision Podcast #4
Release Date 3/11/06
Interviews with Cheryl Wilgren Clyne and Kimi Takesue are included in this program on Experiments: A Series of Short Films.

Women with Vision Podcast #5
Release Date 3/16/06
An interview with screenwriter Norma Barzman headlines a program on the festival's Blacklisted series.

Women with Vision Podcast #6
Release Date 3/18/06
Festival director Sheryl Mousley discusses Women with Vision highlights.

I first heard about the artist Vladimir and her Vladmaster shows through accounts from the Portland Documentary and Experimental (PDX) Film Festival. I was instantly intrigued. Like many kids, I had a viewmaster toy growing up, and loved the thought of them being repurposed, customized, and used in a public setting. Later, I came across online video highlights from last year's PDX festival and got a better taste for what Vladimir was doing. You can see that video here. That's Vladimir working on a show at the beginning, but be sure to keep watching for footage of one of her performances later in the clip. Seeing a theatre full of people with their faces pressed against Vladmasters and hearing the cacophony of clacks when everyone advanced to the next image really had me hooked. I showed the clip to Film/Video Curator Sheryl Mousley and Women With Vision Program Associate Verena Mund, and they were equally intrigued and immediately contacted Vladimir about coming to the Women With Vision Film Festival.

I'm happy to say that Vladimir will be here for the festival's opening night on Friday, March 3. For more information on the show, see the festival schedule on our homepage.

Vladimir was kind enough to indulge my curiosity and answer a few questions.

Joe: What drew you to make work involving viewmasters?

Vladimir: I’ve always been very excited by technical problems and reverse engineering, so it started out just as a technical challenge as far as whether or not I could figure out how to make my own viewmasters. However, once I’d figured out how to photograph and mount the pictures, I realized what a fascinating story-telling medium the viewmaster was. In this I was very much inspired by a 4-disc classic viewmaster story called simply “Dinosaurs.” I think that it was originally photographed in the ’60s and it tells a sprawling story which begins with consecutive battles between a T-Rex and a succession of a brontosaurus, stegasaurus, and triceratops, and then concludes with fiery volcanic eruptions and a single-title explanation that mass extinction is on its way. I was enchanted firstly by the model dinosaurs, but also by the absurdity of trying to tell such an epic, action-packed story with only 28 little still pictures.

J: When you created the first Vladmaster reels, did you intend the viewing to be a intimate personal experience, or did you always plan a mass vladmaster viewing with dozens of people clicking through a show in an auditorium?

V: The first two sets of Vladmasters that I made were intended for individual consumption. One set retold four of Kafka’s parables using toys, the other recreates four of the cities from Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities. I chose both works because they were very visually evocative but textually brief and because I could easily abridge the texts to fit into the tiny text windows on viewmaster disks. I made these disks to sell at a few places around Portland.

The idea of doing performances came about through Matt McCormick, Portland filmmaker extraordinaire who also runs the PDX Film Festival. I asked him if I could do something viewmaster-related for the festival, imagining an installation or something like that, and he responded by throwing me into the Invitationals and telling me to do something for a big big crowd. The Invitationals the show where Matt invites experimental and underground filmmakers from all across the country to debut a new work and then there is an audience vote to crown someone the World Champion of Experimental Film.

It was getting put on that bill that made me have to come up with a performance out of the viewmasters and so I did the CD soundtrack and my first public/mass viewmaster show which was Lucifugia Thigmotaxis, also known as the cockroach story. The first show was for that 400-person audience and I had no idea whether it would work, whether people would know what was going on, whether they’d obey the little dinging bell. Miraculously, it all did work wonderfully and from there I’ve been refining and playing with the performance format since. I think that the public performances are much more exciting than the more personal ones. There is a thrill of having that sort of public/private experience of seeing your own version of the tiny pictures at the same time that everyone around you is doing the same thing. Also, the sound of many many viewers clicking simultaneously is quite marvelous.

J: Can you describe the process of creating a new show?

V: Well, I’m a terrible procrastinator. I only really make new shows when I have promised to produce something for someone or some event. Usually about 2-3 months beforehand I spend a few weeks making myself sit in coffee shops hunched over little 3X5 index cards jotting down ideas and images and phrases. I also spend a lot of time visiting toy shops and thrift stores and model railroad shops looking for toys and odd items that might be inspiring. And I sometimes go to library and inernet research as well, although usually the fact-based stuff that I learn winds up getting tossed out as it doesn’t work so well in the story. Eventually, all of the ideas boil down into a concept and I’m able to write out a script and rough drawings for each of the 28 photos.

Then I go about prop-collecting and usually do all of the photography over the course of about a week. I also design the disks and get them to the print shop. This is about the time that I am figuring out who amongst my friends seems to have the right voice and demeanor to do the soundtrack and also talking with musicians who might like to do the music.

If everything is timed right, the film and the disks return at about the same time and, when the show in question is the 400-person Invitationals for the PDX Film Fest, I then spend about 3-4 weeks getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night and spending every waking moment not at work gluing little tiny photographs onto disks. Terrible pains shoot through my wrists as I listen to books on tape. Last time around I did Moby Dick, I Claudius, The Third Man, and Strangers on a Train.

J: What kind of an experience can a first time attendee of a Vladmaster show expect?

V: They should expect to arrive and be handed a viewmaster viewer. I short while later they will also receive a small, rather attractive packet of Vladmaster disks. They ought to take care NOT to peek at their disks prior to the commencement of the audio narrative as that tends to spoil the whole experience just like eating dessert before dinner. Soon the audio experience will begin and an authoritative male voice will instruct them in the proper workings of the viewer and the insertion of the disks. Said voice will also introduce them to the ding noise which will accompany them on their four-disk journey. Then the story will commence and they will be led through a photographed story by narration and music and dings. Most people find this a very pleasurable experience.

J: When you were crowned World Champion of Experimental Film, did you get a championship belt? Has your title since been challenged?

V: There is no champion belt but there is a very nice trophy which is commissioned by a different artist every year. Sometimes garish, sometimes elegant, sometimes light-up, it is a wonderful addition to any mantlepiece. The way that the title works is that the Champion is invited to return to defend his/her title the following year. I first won in 2004, then came back and won again in 2005 and am now preparing to come up with something to return with in April of 2006.

However, I have decided to retire from the Invitationals after this year.

J: What are Vladland Lottery Tickets? What can I win?

V: Vladland Lottery Tickets are another example of my reverse-engineering fixation. They are ink-jet printer generated scratch-it lottery tickets. The most recent was entitled Handsome Cameraman Lottery and featured photographs, culled from old manuals, of handsome cameramen demonstrating the proper usage of super8 and 16mm cameras. Possible prizes that could have been won included “Unimaginable Wealth,” “Super Powers,” and “Beer.” However, most tickets were losers and the only winners won “Beer.” I just made them to give around to friends for fun. However, none of the winners ever once took me up on their “Beer.” Perhaps they still remain unscratched.

As part of the 13th annual Women with Vision Film Festival, the Walker will be premiering Deepa Mehta’s Water (March 18), the third installment of her elemental trilogy. Mehta, a native of India now residing in Canada, is no stranger to controversy. The first film of the trilogy, Fire (Also playing Women with Vision - March 12. The second film, Earth, will be presented on March 12.), was met with extreme protest, resulting in the first cinema to show the film being burned to the ground. When she returned to India to shoot Water, complications arose immediately. Mehta was burned in effigy by protesters, her life was threatened, and the film’s sets were ripped apart and thrown into the River Ganges. Eventually the production resumed in Sri Lanka and the film was finished. A fascinating account of the events, as well as some images, from the film’s camera assistant can be found at The Bright Lights Film Journal website.

In inner-city Baltimore, 76 percent of African-American boys don’t graduate from high school. And, as the school system complained to the president of a philanthropic foundation five years ago, five percent of troublemakers were making learning nearly impossible for the other 95 percent. The solution they came up with was Baraka School, an experimental school in Kenya–yes, Africa–where “at-risk” kids are shipped to get a radical education away from the influences of drugs, violence, and poverty. In the east African language Kiswahili, “baraka” means blessing, and for some of the boys featured in the new documentary Boys of Baraka, it seems a fitting name. Shot over three years, the film focuses on a handful of boys as they face loneliness, discipline, and catharses in Kenya:

Devon, now 15 and a ninth grader at the Academy for College and Career Exploration in Baltimore, recalls a moment that changed him. After he deliberately bumped a teacher, two counselors took him for a “night walk,” far from campus, and left him to find his way back. The chattering of baboons filled the dark skies. “Tears were running down my cheeks,” he says. “That was a lot more scary than Baltimore. I was walking all by myself, thinking about everything [my grandmother and teachers] always told me about doing good. I wasn’t so tough. That was when I started to listen.” Richard struggles with his reading — “something wrong with my brain,” he says with a laugh — but one night, to grand applause, he shares a poem he has written. The title: “I Will Survive.” Devon and Romesh make the honor roll, and Montrey, by now reading books on his own for the first time, earns 95s. “Before Baraka, I always failed math,” says Montrey, now 15 and a Baltimore City College freshman. “I never went [to class]. With all those teachers coming after me, I learned to value my education.”

The Boys of Baraka screens at the Walker on March 16 as part of the 2006 Women with Vision festival of film and video. Watch the trailer here. To hear this morning’s review on NPR by Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan, click here. Look for more Women with Vision preview posts in weeks to come…