Indelible Lalita at Notre Dame

My film Indelible Lalita will be screening at the DeBartolo Peformance Center at the University of Notre Dame on Friday, April 11 at 6:30pm as part of a monthly screening series sponsored by the Harper Cancer Research Institute. I will be there for a Q&A.

I'm excited to show the film in this context, as I have been approached by many audience members who have faced cancer themselves or with family members and were moved by the film.

We had a fun screening last week (photo to the left, by Marie Hartness) at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Harvard University: another type of audience for this personal story.

The Art and Design of Sustainability

Massachusetts College of Art and Design is in the running for the Second Nature Climate Leadership Award. As part of the competition, the schools submit a video, which we produced over here at JMP. It was a great experience working with the various students, staff, and faculty at MassArt to create this video: it's clear that sustainability is truly in the DNA of MassArt. The entire MassArt community strives to make the world a more sustainable place through art and design. They have, among many other things, installed over 1500 LED lightbulbs, made sure their new facilities are LEED silver or gold certified, and created many classes and student organizations about sustainability. Good luck, MassArt! We're rooting for you!

America Reframed rebroadcast

On Tuesday, March 11, World Channel will be re-broadcasting My Louisiana Love, a powerful story about a young woman who returns to southeast Louisiana to reunite with her Houma Indian family, only to find their traditional way of life threatened by environmental disaster.

I had the pleasure of editing and co-producing this film with Sharon Linezo Hong and Monique Verdin.

The Imprint of the Past Upon the Present

I was glad to make it out last night to the LEF Foundation-hosted gathering in honor of the 60th Anniversary of the Flaherty Seminar. I've been to the Seminar three times over the last 18 years, and each time was thoroughly memorable.  Spending a week in upstate New York, watching movies all day and night (last time I was there, we watched over 80 movies in 6 days), and talking about them with fellow filmmakers, programmers, and critics over meals and drinks.... it's a dream scenario.

The program was an interesting collection of documentary shorts set around the world - though, in keeping with Flaherty tradition, no one in the audience knew what we were going to see until it came onto the screen.  None of the films a traditional film structure.  As director and several-time Flaherty curator John Gianvito (pictured above, talking to Flaherty board member Elizabeth Delude-Dix) described it, what tied this program together was these films exploration of "the imprint of the past upon the present."  I'm quite taken with that idea.

These are the films that screened:

• Complex by Sirah Foighel Brutmann & Eitan Efrat (Beligum, 2008, 9 min.)
• Satyagraha by Jacques Perconte (France, 2009, 5 min.)
• 14.3 Seconds by John Greyson (Canada, 2008, 9 min.)
• Tito Among the Serbs for the Second Time by Zelimir Zilnik (Serbia, 1994, 43 min.)

Gov. Hassan Visits Pittsfield Schools

I had a great time filming at Pittsfield Middle High School today, documenting Governor Maggie Hassan's visit there for Nellie Mae Education Foundation.  Nellie Mae has invested in districts across New England as they implement systemic change towards more student-centered learning.

I am also working on a longer-term documentation project for the school, creating a series of six 10-12 minute videos about different aspects of their remarkable transition. It's been interesting to spend so much time in a small rural school (about 30 students in each graduating class), one that reminds me a little of the school I attended in Ohio.

Amazed at My Production I Students

At the end of every semester, I question whether we should have a film screening just for my section of Production I at BU.  After all, we do a course-wide screening where three selected films from each section are screened together in a big hall.  I feel bad requiring my students - who by that point are exhausted and ready to head home for break - to come out in the evening for another event.

But I always decide to do it.  Because to me, it's an essential part of learning filmmaking - to sit in a darkened room and watch your film with a group of strangers (the students all invite friends, family, and actors, so there is a good mix of people). If your film is working, it will leap off the screen and make sense; if there are problems, they glare at you.  This year I had two sections, 32 students in all, and I was so impressed with the amount they learned. Most of them were complete beginners in September, and now, only there months late,r they can come up with a good story, direct it, shoot it, record non-synchronous sound (some even composed and recorded their own music track), and edit it into a powerful film.

When they lights came back on, spirits were high and I was convinced again at how important this is. (By the way, you can see an example of one of my students films

here

.)

Congratulations to the students, and have a great break!

Art and Science Overlap at the Koch Institute

I was walking around Kendall Square at night recently for the first time in a while, and was dumbstruck by the beauty and resonance of the huge installation in the lobby of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. What a great intersection of art and science: microscopic images from cancer research blown up into seven-foot diameter circles, printed on fabric and placed over light boxes so they glow with rich color and clarity.

After reading an article in the Boston Globe from when the installation was launched, I understand that it was the result of a contest for scientific images - one that will be renewed every six months.

I was drawn into this same sort of imagery while making my documentary Indelible Lalita: the beauty of modern medical imaging technology to show the inner workings of our bodies.  The ecocardiograms, CT scans, ultrasounds, and colonoscopies I filmed were all translating purely physical information into into pictures.  But somehow I couldn't help but feel something of my subject Lalita's spirit in there.

I was hoping to learn more about the artist behind the Koch Institute exhibit, but only found a reference to John Durant, director of the MIT Museum, who advised the Institute on its display space.  The Institute's public galleries include videos with people talking about cancer; a huge floor mosaic depicting the buildings of MIT (fabricated in a week by robots working for Artaic!), and a 40-foot mural delineating the pathways and mutations of cancer cells. A wonderful job curating this public/private space.