Family Trees and Tobacco Leaves

Ross McElwee’s Bright Leaves (2003) is an autobiographical exploration of McElwee’s familial roots in both the North Carolina tobacco industry. The film begins by Ross searching to find out more about how his great-grandfather both created and lost his fortune in the tobacco industry. Deeper into the film we see Ross also explore the paternal ties in his own family, particularly the relationship Ross has with his father and his relationship with his young son.

As a fan of Ross McElwee, I chose to view this film not so much for the content presented but because of McElwee’s autobiographical style. I particularly like how he takes a larger subject, such as the North Carolina tobacco industry, but always brings it back to diving deeper into his own self-identity and relationships with friends and family that he finds defines him. We see this also in his 1985 film Sherman’s March. A quote from Bright Leaves that I feel sums up Ross’ roots exploration of the film is found at the opening of the documentary when he says, “My wife then said I’d been looking a little anemic – maybe in need of a transfusion – my periodic transfusion of Southerness.” Here Ross introduces his desire to get back in touch with his Southern roots and throughout the film we see him do so as he establishes relationships with cousins he’s never before met and also the intimate relationship he is building with his son.

Similar to Ross McElwee, I have found a common theme in my own work to be concerned with questioning my own self-identity and the stories of the past that have shaped me to be who I am today. I am inspired by Ross’ candidness and willingness to be frank and vulnerable from behind the camera. These are tools I hope to implement as I continue to make my own documentaries.

It's Not Your Business

Abby Epstein’s The Business of Being Born (2008) is a passionate commentary on the American health care system’s approach to childbirth. The film focuses on the fact that while the majority of the world still implements the “old-school” way of midwifery, the U.S. most commonly uses drugs, medications, and hospitals.

I was attracted to this film mainly due to the fact that in just three short months I’ll be giving birth myself. As that time approaches I find myself feeling incredibly inadequate and unprepared so I watched this film to educate me on the topic of childbirth. In my experience of watching Epstein’s film, I feel she definitely did her job as a director in making me care about the subject at hand. As I watched I began to question the validity of my choice to give birth in a hospital, even though I do trust my doctor. However, I didn’t trust her tactics in making me care and felt the film was very biased and in favor of women choosing to give birth with the help of a midwife rather than a doctor. This was shown by the subjects interviewed as well as some archival footage of films and documentaries about birth. Almost every subject interviewed, from doctors and experts to expecting mothers and midwives, each were in favor of midwifery and against the hospital experience of giving birth. Unfortunately, the director only very briefly included the opinion of just a few doctors that questioned the safety of hiring a midwife.

A particular scene that stood out to me most was when the Executive Producer, Ricki Lake, spoke in an interview about how she felt she was cheated out of fully “experiencing” her child’s birth because of the intervention of doctors and nurses. This was the first point of the film where I began to question my decisions as an expectant mother. Questions like am I putting myself or my child at risk by welcoming a doctor’s “intervention? Am I a bad mother for not first choosing a midwife over a doctor? In the past few days the more I’ve considered these questions and the film that raised them, I’ve come to the conclusion that the focus of the film is certainly a valid argument toward childbirth, but it is not the single right way. 

Fireside Chat

I think by far this was my favorite assignment we did this semester. Not only because of what I was able to create and express, but what my classmates shared about their beliefs and passions. While others were presenting, I thought to myself, "Man, I kind of wish we did something like this earlier in the semester so we could get to know each other on a more personal level." The vulnerability and willingness to open up that so many people presented was humbling to me and made my appreciate my classmates more. I appreciated that we could create a space where we felt comfortable to do so.

For my belief that I presented I knew instantly that I wanted to focus on my true passion and the reason I ventured into film in the first place: preserving and perpetuating cultures. Previously, I have been shy to voice this passion of mine because I haven't yet met anyone in the program who shared a similar interest. In fact, leading up to the presentation I was nervous to open up because I didn't know if anyone would understand or even care. I was completely wrong. Conversations I had with classmates after the fireside chat proved me wrong. I even met Rae's husband who had served in New Zealand and got so excited about what I was talking about. That was really cool, just to be able to communicate like that with someone I didn't know.

After the fireside chat I had an interesting conversation with my husband about my belief. When I told him I talked about preserving culture he instantly disagreed and said we need to focus on preserving the values that stem from cultural traditions. I was taken off guard and a little defensive, but as I thought about it I think he's right. Now my belief has evolved into preserving both cultural traditions and values, two inseparable parts of culture in my opinion.

Concerned Citizen

View doc here. Made by Aaron Fisher, Shawn Hall, and Taylor Barlow Tiave

Teaching is crucial to making our society a better place.  Some of the most influential people in my life were my teachers in public schools who motivated me to not just learn but to dream.  My (Shawn) aunt, who teaches elementary school in Orem, embodies this type of teacher.  She spends hours meticulously planning fun interactive lessons so that her students will not just pass their tests but learn life lessons to help them become better citizens as they grow up.  When reading about Goldbard’s Datastan and Storyland, I couldn’t help but think of my aunt’s unique way of teaching her students.  For her, stories, drawings and art teach us just as much as numbers and figures.

When it came to editing the short documentary, we needed to strategically plan what would and would not be included in the small time frame we were allotted. What was good about our footage was that this schoolteacher had plenty of examples of how her students are not only learning scholastically, but she is also going the extra mile by teaching them lifelong lessons such as conflict resolution. The problem we found in this was picking out which parts to use since, unfortunately, we can’t use everything. Since some of her interview was a bit rambling we decided to use her most concise declarations to show how she was herself simultaneously being a concerned citizen and creating future concerned citizens.

What was interesting to us about Shawn’s aunt, was her pride in problem solving. She seemed really invested in making sure that her children reacted and responded to each other in a dignified and respectful manner. She took great pride in her children, and new that they were also capable of doing great things. Much like Robin William’s character in Carpe Diem, she believes that if her students learn new ways to view the world that they will improve their communities and the world at large. In her eyes, her kids were the future. She believes her kids can change the world, and she feels that it’s her job to make sure that they are developed into productive members of society. Especially with the current divisions in societies created across America based on race and income, this caring teacher strives to make sure that her kids respect each other and each other’s backgrounds as well.

            When we were filming this project, what we decided to do was get a lot of establishing shots. We made sure to get shots of her room and the exterior and interior of the school, to make sure that the setting and the environment of these kids was known. The teacher had such a beautifully decorated classroom, and we wanted to highlight all of the care and time it took to make it that way. What was even more interesting about this classroom is that the teacher changes up the theme for every this, and this year’s theme was the Pixar movie UP! We also set out to get shots of drawings done by kids in the hallway and shots of encouraging signs and papers as well, to show that this school was a nurturing environment. Not only that, but it’s a place where kids can mature and become good people. And we also did long shots of the teacher in an interview style so that with these longer takes, we can juxtapose audio over other establishing shots and also cut back to her interview. This way, we can make the interview and documentary polished, and really be able to hit home our argument and subject matter.

World Building

(Pamphlet pg. 1)

(Pamphlet pg. 2)

When creating something we truly believe it is incredibly important to think about the intricate qualities that make up the world. There are so many nuances that make up this world. It lives in its own culture, and breeds new identity. It was an interesting perspective to see how coming together with other people can help develop and create those things. There were three different articles we decided to use to best describe the world of gradually losing sight, and gaining the ability to see ghosts. We felt that showing a billboard of an issue, a pamphlet, and a P.O.V. perspective of a person affected by this affliction would gives an interesting view on the culture and the world that surrounds these articles.

A P.O.V. immerses us directly into the world and the people that are suffering within it. I set out to document how these people would feel, and it would look like. Using an incredibly powerful flashlight and long exposure, I was able to attain the image that is present. I thought if I were to deal with this and constantly see ghosts in this fashion, it would be difficult.

As we were brainstorming as a group we wanted to focus on what a young teenager would be going through is suddenly their vision was rapidly changing and they had to deal with seeing ghosts. Just like normal puberty, many teens go through this dark abyss barely understanding the changes taking place. Surely this is what some teens seeing ghosts would feel so we decided to portray that through a billboard advertisement. In the image the background is black and white while the billboard remains in color to show how the teens don’t instantly lose sight of color. We also thought it’d be cool to include in this world a psychotherapy line to help troubled ghost-seeing teens.

What we also decided to do was touch on the literature of this world. Losing color and seeing ghosts is a transition for everyone in the world, just like puberty. So we thought, what if in this world, seeing ghosts was treated regularly, just like puberty, and what if it was an actual process from puberty as well. With that idea we decided to commission a stereotypical puberty pamphlet that kids get when they reach that age. But instead of addressing puberty itself, it addresses the change kids have from losing their sight and becoming knowledgeable of the ghost world around them. This would be an excellent example of literature because it gives insight into the culture of this society in regards to health and normality in regards to the body. Not only that, but it also shows how this phenomenon is a cultural norm that occurs regularly and is expected to happen to everyone in this society. This pamphlet is able to highlight society’s views on the issue, as well as trying to make it apparent that this transitional stage is natural and happens to everyone, just like puberty. With these examples, we feel that we are accurately able to portray this society, and how the people in this society feels and perceive the environment around them.

Webspinna Battle

What we found interesting about this week and the webspinna battle, was how open ended it really was. Going into it, we knew we needed to do a battle of sounds with a partner, and create this story, or this theme that we can show to the class. And with that theme or story, we can educate people on how we feel about a certain subject, and how they should possibly feel about it as well. From the start, we wanted to do something that involved music. We were both impressed by the mashup of The Beatles and Jay-Z. We found it interesting how someone took the theme of old meets new, and combined the two together, showing that they could work as one.

So what we wanted to do was take that concept of old meeting new, and applying it to music from this generation and the last. We wanted to combine the classics of yesterday, with the classics of today and see how they compared and contrasted against each other. So with these styles, we thought it would be fun to do a Pitch-Perfect style riff-off battle, where I was representing the New Age, and Taylor would do The Old classics. And we also thought that since lip sync battles are really popular at the moment, that it would be fun to memorize certain lyrics from our songs and lip sync along to them in front of the class. It was a lot of fun to find the songs that we were going to perform. Not only that, but we found that some of the songs applied to our subject matter, such as the lyrics from “Radioactive” where the singer says “Welcome to the New Age”.

Our decision to create a battle between the new age and old age of rock’n’roll gave us the opportunity to find differences as well as similarities between the two genres of music. In Jonathan Lethem’s article “The Ecstasy of Influence” he speaks on the technique of musicians having the opportunity and sources to recreate music from past sources, for example blues and jazz musicians. We live in a day where technology gives ample resources to remix, rewind, and replay so one can create their own version of a song or a piece of that song. For example, the remix artist, Pogo, takes classic Disney songs and literally puts his own spin on them creating a new age of Disney music.

Many things can be learned from this assignment and the approach we decided to take. Similar to what is discussed above, we were able to highlight differences between the two genres, however, what brought them together was their similarities. This can be applied with not only music, but any form of art. We can remix two vastly different mediums or techniques in order to produce a more abstract and meaningful piece. It also poses a challenge that promotes creativity built from limitations.

Textual Poaching

Ko Ngatokimatawhaurua te waka

Ko Mahia te tupuna

Ko Ngapuhi te iwi

Ko Te Uri o Hua te hapu

Ko Hikurangi te maunga

Ko Awarua te awa

Ko Taanara raua ko Tiiana oku matua 

Ko Barlow raua ko Wihongi te whanau

Ko Taylor Terewai Tiave ahau

Growing up I was at a constant personal battle trying to understand my identity. My father's side is made up of mixed Caucasian blood while my mother's is a mix of Maori, Tongan, German, and English. When I filled out forms in school, and even now as an adult as I fill out government forms or surveys, I'm always torn between marking "White" or "Pacific Islander". Why do they only give the option to fill one? Where does that leave us multiracial beings? The older I get the better I understand how to uphold and keep alive my Polynesian ancestry in not only a predominantly white society, but also a post-modern society.

For the past few years there has been a vast number of viral videos released of high schools football teams (or similar settings) performing the traditional and sacred war dance, the haka. Anciently, these chants were used to honor ancestors and to prepare warriors for battle. However, nowadays we often see it performed by boys (and sometimes even girls *knife to my heart) who have little to no understanding of its sacred purpose, other than they want to look "cool" and "fierce". In a video like this, for example, they look nothing but the opposite. I not only find it disgraceful but incredibly disrespectful. Excuse my bluntness.

Oil Portrait of Ina Te Papatahi by C.F. Goldie

That is why for this assignment I wanted to pay an honest and sincere tribute to my Maori heritage, something I hold very dear to my heart. I was inspired by an 18th century classic oil painter, C.F. Goldie. He is primarily known for his captivating oil paintings of elderly, tattooed Maoris. The first piece I created was a manipulation of his oil portrait of Ina Te Papatahi. I decided to recreate it as an Andy Warhol pop art style piece to represent my bringing my culture into the modern day.

Waka Taua of the Maori of New Zealand by Herbert Kawainui Kane

The second piece I created was to represent my grandparents (my mother’s parents) immigration to U.S. In Maori culture, we learn of the seven waka (canoe) that traveled to New Zealand. Ironically, my family went the opposite direction of their ancestors in search of better opportunities. I purposely meshed a painting portraying Maori voyagers and a photo of my mother’s family as they travelled by boat to America to show this contrast. I’m grateful for my Maori ancestors and their discovery of a new land, New Zealand, as well as the sacrifices of my grandfather and his family to find their new land, America.

Maori Girl with Moko Chin by New Zealander Photographer

The final piece I created is a representation of my own self and how I carry on my ancestors’ legacy in a land other than my Maori homeland. My culture and ethnic heritage inspires me to create work and media that properly perpetuates not only my own culture but others as well.

***Just for kicks and giggles here's what a haka should look like

Haka