Angles: Women Working in Film and Video (2003)

History my imagination. It was an image I had conjured up as a child listening to my mother recount her memory of camp. I imagined and tried to re-create something she had remembered. Ultimately, I re-imagined something she has now forgotten because she says she never remembers recounting this story. What is your background, and how did you start working in video? I was actually an art major at the California Institute of the Arts. I started out painting. I felt pretty alienated in terms of the kind of dialogue that was going on and was constantly figuring out how I fit in. I was one of the few students of color there. Eventually, I became interested in media criticism and media deconstruction. Although these works were not directly about identity or race, I was aware as an Asian-American woman of how much my experience was unrepresented, how much influence the media had, and how much it lied. I eventually got interested in video as a means of talking back and appropriating the media. Eventually, I used it to create my own images. Video was the easiest and cheapest way at the time. And there was room for experimentation. It was a quicker turnaround time, more accessible and more affordable. It came down to basic economics. What about film? I was interested in taking film courses but [the school] made it very difficult for people outside the film department to take film. Then, once you were in the film course, [the teachers] made it seem so mysterious and inaccessible. It became very intimidating. Later, when I got out of school, I got my first film job as production assistant on E/ Norte, followed by a string of other P.A. jobs on low-budget features. Eventually, I moved to New York and interned at Film Video Arts. I saw the process broken down, and that you can make a film or video for very little money if you're resourceful and the equipment is available. How did you learn to use video? I took some classes at school, then I tried teaching myself. I tried HE LIFE OF pioneer filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché is documented in Marquise Lepage’s fascinating The Lost Garden. Guy-Blaché (1873-1968) is worthy of critical and historical recovery. Her contributions to film include the use of slow motion, fast motion, stops, fade-outs, double exposures, sound film and color processes. She started her film career in Paris while working as secretary for Leon Gaumont, 14. @ ANGLES to work around what I didn’t know. After I got out of school, I started getting more technical training at FVA where | interned in exchange for classes. A lot of things I learned on the job, working on crews or, later, working in the field as an editor. Has media-making become more accessible to women and minorities through community access centers? There has been this opportunity for people to realize that media does not have to be unobtainable. It’s demystified. With very simple means you can actually produce something out of nothing. The second hardest part rests on the responsibility of the maker to commit the energy, time to learn the skills properly, to finish the projects and to learn to be as resourceful as possible. Interview by Elfrieda Abbe, first appeared in Angles, Volume 1, Number 4, 1992. © 1992 Elfrieda Abbe Rea Tajiri is a third generation Japanese-American who grew up in Chicago. She has an MFA from the Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. Currently she is working on a digital film inspired by Haruki Murakami’ novel, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, about the complex relationships between members of a contemporary Asian American family. She lives in New York City. Filmography History and Memory (1991). Received the International Documentary Association Distinguished Achievement Award (1991), Special Jury Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival (1992). Passion for Justice (1993). A documentary about human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama. Co-producer with Pat Saunders. Strawberry Fields (1997). A dramatic narrative. Little Murders (1998). A digital video about the mystery of death, communication of spirits and the redemption that comes from knowing the truth. to New York in 1910 and started her own film produc who manufactured film and cameras. She was fascinated with the new moving picture tion company, Solax Films, technology and made little which she later moved to New films to help Gaumont sell his Jersey, where it became the products. Gaumont soon largest studio in the United appointed her the company’s first movie director. For Gaumont, she produced more than 100 sound shorts and hired colorists to paint directly onto film stock. She directed what is thought to be the first film narrative, Le fee aux choux. Guy-Blaché came States. In 1957, the French government awarded her the Legion of Honor for her contribution to French cinema. —Excerpt from review by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Volume 3, Numbers 3e4, 1998