Making Movies with Scraps

For class this week I watched three movies, all of which I enjoyed and each of which crafted a documentary with very little original footage. I am really getting into these experimental films, although I think the ones we are watching are more accessible than some.

The first one I saw was the charming History and Memory by Rea Tajiri. It really is a charming film and that is not to in anyway lessen the importance of its subject, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, or the powerful impact the film had on me. This movie is really made up of scraps - a repeated re-enacted “memory” she never had of her mother in the internment camp, some archival footage, some Hollywood footage, and some footage of a visit to Poston where the “camp” was located. There is also a device I loved where she uses text to describe a scene not captured on camera - as if to reclaim that which was not recorded on film. The movie is particularly resonant right now at a time when people’s human rights are being rescinded in the name of war or the perception of their not being truly American.

The next movie I really loved, and it was Bontoc Eulogy by Marlon Fuentes. It’s a great story about a Bontoc Igorot and his journey to America to take part in the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair where there was an exhibit of Filipino “natives” who were like animals in a zoo. The storytellling is amazing, the film is a blend of fiction and fact, and it signposts its unreliability as “truth” although there is something about it that feels very like accuracy.

Finally The Ties That Bind by Su Friedrich, which got kind of a hard time in class, but which I really enjoyed. I hated the ways questions were asked through a scratch on-screen text and I found the plastic house building pointless and the pictures of current events insulting to the gravity of the main story, but tha main story was powerful and beautifully told, and the character of her mother was fascinating and sympathetic. It’s about a woman who came of age in Nazi Germany and who refused to join the party, but did little to fight against it.

Also a good read on Bontoc Eulogy is “Bontoc Eulogy, History and Craft of Memory: an Extended Conversation with Marlon E. Fuentes”. It gives interesting insights into what parts of the video were based on what footage and his thinking behind the movie.

5 April 2006 | video | Comments