DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
art
It sounded like a perfect partnership. Renowned sculptor John Houser dreamed of building the world's tallest bronze equestrian statue, a stunning monument to the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate that would pay tribute to the contributions Hispanic people made to building the American West. The city of El Paso, Texas, was looking to improve its economic fortunes and thought Houser's statue would increase revenues by creating a significant tourist attraction that would celebrate the city's Hispanic heritage. What both partners failed to consider was that different segments of the community remembered Juan de Oñate in very different ways.The Last Conquistador documents the conflict that resulted when Native Americans and members of the Acoma Indian community brought to attention the fact that Juan de Oñate nearly wiped out their ancestors and sold them into slavery. Though violence was associated with nearly all conquistadors, Oñate was so brutal that he was actually recalled to Mexico City, put on trial and convicted for the acts he committed.
El Paso quickly divided along lines of race and class, forcing the artist to face the unanticipated moral implications of his work and city leaders to wrestle with a decision to spend public money on a tribute to such a controversial man. After completion of the statue, everyone was forced to come to terms with a landmark that is viewed by some as a monument to culture and others as a glorification of genocide.
Houser says about Oñate, "It's not up to me to defend him
or accuse him." What is the role and responsibility of the artist to the community when creating public art?
Maurus Chino says, "Violence is violence; genocide is genocide, and there has to be recognition about what really happened." In response to suggestions that it is time for the Acoma to "let go" of the past or "get over it," a Native American man says, "Our city is thinking about putting up a statue
of an individual that massacred or tried to wipe us off the face of the eart... You're going to tell your
grandchildren, 'I remember 9/11.' Well, we remember Juan de Oñate."
In response to criticism of the monument's subject, Conchita Lucero asks, "Which one of us hasn't had a benefit of the things that the Spanish brought?"
In 2005, P.O.V. aired Jessica Yu's film In the Realms of the Unreal. The film is the astounding tale of outsider artist Henry Darger, who, unbeknownst to anyone, had created a 15,000-page novel and hundreds of illustrations that have inspired artists and viewers since their discovery. Three years later, Darger continues to fascinate and astound, and last month, Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger opened at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.
Dargerism is curated by Brooke Davis Anderson, the director and curator of the Contemporary Center at the American Folk Art Museum. Three years ago, we worked with Brooke on one of our favorite website features — an interactive audio tour through several of Darger's works for the P.O.V. In the Realms of the Unreal website. Now Brooke has been kind enough to answer some of our questions about the show at the Folk Art Museum, and Darger's continued hold on our imaginations.
Henry Darger:
6 Episode 3 Place not mentioned. Escape during violent storm, still fighting though persed for long distance. Zoom into the image. © Kiyoko Lerner. Image used by permission of the American Folk Art Museum.
P.O.V.: Tell us about the show you just curated at the American Folk Art Museum — Dargerism, Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger.
Brooke Davis Anderson: The Dargerism show illustrates how Henry Darger has been influential to eleven contemporary artists over the last 25 years. The show examines how one artist has played a role in contemporary discourse in the art world, but one of the underlying themes of the show is also the self-taught artist's movement from the periphery of the discourse to the center. In a way, I'm trying to be playful with this show: I'm suggesting that if so many artists are influenced by Darger, then he can no longer be considered to be on the margins of art history.
The eleven contemporary artists in the show are very diverse — they work in painting, sculpture, video, drawing, photography, etc., and Darger's influence on them are integrated into each artist's oeuvre. In fact, this is the first time the Folk Art Museum has highlighted academically trained artists, and it's also the first time we have exhibited video and contemporary photography.
In terms of Darger's influence, some artists are very taken by the roles girls and women play in the work of Darger. They respond to Darger's powerful Vivian girls by creating their own mythological figures. Justine Kurland, for example, portrays Tom Sawyer-like girls; Amy Cutler forces the girls she portrays into work situations, which harkens back to Darger in subtle ways.
Other artists, like Trenton Doyle Hancock and Yun-Fei Ji, were released to become storytellers when they discovered Darger's work. Both were in graduate school and feeling that their work was too narrative, but then they saw Darger's 15,000 page novel and the journeys of his characters! Yun-Fei Ji said "Darger took the monkey off my back..." while Doyle Hancock said that Darger's work gave him "the permission" to pursue narrative art.
Read more after the jump...
Earlier this month, I headed to Austin for my first SXSW festival. I attended both the interactive and film portions of the festival, and found myself quickly overwhelmed by all the panels, conversations and parties that transform this college town into a creative mecca every March. I kept thinking, if I were ten years younger, I would be in heaven right now. My twenty-something self would have fit right in with the crowd attending this year's festival. The interactive crowd, in particular, was flamboyantly dressed, friendly, intelligent and passionate about the Web. By Saturday, I knew I had to pace my thirty-something self, or I would find myself slumped over my keyboard twittering ZZZzzz's to the world.
Trying to hit the right balance between the frenetic pace of the interactive offerings and the (somewhat) slower pace of the film fest, I headed to the movies on Sunday to see the doc that piqued my personal interest the most. Beautiful Losers had its world premiere in Austin to a nearly packed house at the Paramount Theater on Congress Street. The film by Aaron Ross and Joshua Leonard was billed as a "collective portrait of ten artists" who sparked the "most influential cultural movement of our generation."
The artists documented included some favorites of mine — Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Shepard Fairey — and others I wasn't as familiar with, so I was very excited to learn more about the early days of the D-I-Y movement, their inspiration and the story of how they became who they are today in the art world.
More after the jump...
Every Friday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
This weekend, the documentary The Unforeseen will begin trickling into theaters. On the surface, it's about urban sprawl in Austin, Texas. It traces the history of the booming growth of that city, and the tensions that arose between developers and environmentalists trying to protect a natural spring-fed watering hole called Barton Springs. As a piece of strong social advocacy, I'd recommend it. But it's a whole lot more than that.
What really makes The Unforeseen stand out is that it breaks new ground in what could be dubbed the poetic documentary genre. First-time director Laura Dunn does more than chronicle a history, she imbues it with visual resonance, taking the time to shoot Texas fields of grass and gurgling brooks with the cinematic panache that recalls the gorgeous cinematography of fiction narrative director Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line). And for good reason: long-time Austinite Malick was the executive producer of The Unforeseen. His input, as well as that of director of photography, Lee Daniel (who has shot most of Richard Linklater's films, including Slacker and Dazed and Confused), is apparent throughout the documentary. Dunn and company may even go overboard in achieving beautiful imagery, such as when a wizened farmer clutches a sickle and stands in a field watching a construction crew ripping up the earth. But I'll forgive them that. The film feels like a feature-length version of that early 1970s "Keep America Beautiful" ad with the Native American (Chief Iron Eyes Cody) wandering through garbage heaps, and eventually shedding a tear (see the ad on YouTube) And that's something I've always wanted to see.
Read more after the jump...
Adele Horne is the filmmaker behind The Tailenders (P.O.V. 2006), which examines missionary activity, the loss of languages around the world and global capitalism in an unusual and essayistic way. Adele, winner of the "Truer Than Fiction" Award at the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards, writes in with her thoughts on the history of essay films.
I think of my film The Tailenders as an essay film (with a strong observational bent). In fact, all of my films are in some way essayistic. The essay film is a sub-genre of documentary. It's a mode that allows the filmmaker to meditate on a theme or explore an idea, rather than being limited to representing real (visible) events. In 1940, Hans Richter wrote a manifesto entitled "The Film Essay: a New Form of Documentary Film," in which he imagined a new genre of film that would make "problems, thoughts, even ideas" perceptible and would "render visible what is not visible." In 1948, Alexandre Astruc coined the term "camera-stylo" to suggest a new means of writing through cinema, with the camera serving as a pen, creating arguments, meditations and inquiries with as much range of form as exists in the written word.
Both Richter and Astruc were asking: What if a film doesn't have to enact a dramatic story or represent real events? Could a film be an exploration of an idea? They turned to the hybrid literary form of the essay as a model. Michel de Montaigne originated the modern literary essay in the 16th century, with writing that combined anecdote and philosophical speculation. He called these writings "essais," from "essayer," meaning "to attempt, to try." I like to think of essay films as "films that try." They grapple with a set of questions or try to come to an understanding of a difficult subject. Their forms are idiosyncratic and variable and usually found in the editing room, rather than scripted in advance.
What I like about making essay films is that they allow me to think through filmmaking — making the film is an act of exploration, in which the outcome is not predetermined.
Read more after the jump...
Last August, P.O.V. aired Andrew Walton's Arctic Son, set in the remote village of Old Crow in the Canadian Yukon. In the film, we watch as a father and his son are reunited after almost 25 years apart. Stan Jr. turns to art to express his emotions and to share his view of the world around him. (Check out a video clip of Stan Jr. as he talks to Walton about his work, and the relationship between art and commerce.)
Many viewers commented on Stan's art after the film aired, so we thought it would be fun to show some of his recent work.
View a
slideshow of Stan, Jr.'s recent drawings. All images © Stanley Grafton Njootli, Jr.
More images of Stan's art will be available on the retail DVD of Arctic Son, which will be available through Docurama this summer. A preview DVD is available for sale here.
Today, Stan Jr. lives full-time in Old Crow and works as a computer support tech at the Vuntut Gwitchin Government Building. He continues to draw and paint with the hope of bringing his artwork to a larger audience. In March, he will be teaching a two-week art course in Old Crow through Alice Frost Community College. For those interested in contacting Stan Jr. about his artwork, he can be reached at njootli79[at]yahoo.com.
