Some things have changed and some have not!

March for Equality
Dublin 22nd 2010

Fundraiser - A lovely night

We held a fundraiser for our short film Education of Saints..

My producer Lyniel Dao and Creative producer Ria Murphy helped me to organize a brilliant fundraiser for our short film that will be screening at the IFFI in Sept. It was a lovely night and so great to see friends and meet new contacts. We were fortunate to have William Rogue playing acoustic guitar with Phil McConn accompanying. 

Since film is such a collaborative process I have been given the go ahead to have a cinematographer come along to help me film. Raul Varela, www.raulvarela.com is a very talented filmmaker in his own right who has just returned from Mexico where he was filming a documentary about the Zapatista movement. Lyniel and Ria will also be coming and I feel very grateful to have their help and support. I feel sure their expertise will help to make the documentary a much stronger product. I will also feel liberated form the technical side and able to focus on the subjects and my research.

I leave for Ireland tomorrow and I am thrilled to begin networking and planning there. I will be in Galway first and will line up all my interviews and make initial contact with each of my interviewees. I will then travel to Dublin to film the March for Equality on August 22nd. The remainder of our time will be spent in Cork and Galway. 

I will be posting with much more frequency once I arrive in Ireland.. feel free to leave comments as I would love to engage about the subjects I will be covering.

2 weeks in

I'm 2 weeks into my research here in Berkeley, I have been reaching out to organizations in Ireland and so far have had an incredible response form members of the gay community and organization connected with Gay rights. This is really encouraging for me as it means that there are women who have a story to tell and are willing to do so,  I know this story needs to be heard and I feel blessed to be meet these women and hear their unique stories.
I also met with documentarian Rual Varela who has just returned from a trip to Mexico where he interviewed members of the Zapatista community and is making a film about Comandante Ramone, take a look at his website at www.raulvarela.com His advice was incredibly helpful and seeing his footage was absolutely inspirational.
My dear friend and producer Lyniel Dao will be accompanying me to Ireland and I'm thrilled to have her input and expertise not to mention her support. I know the quality of my interviews will be infinitely enhanced by her presence.
More updates and images to come...

The Summer Begins

Having bonded, we each embark on our personal adventures.
Last week all of the scholars met, there are 20 of us in total, ranging from physicists, biologists and chemists to historians, geographers and filmmakers, with almost every other subject in between. I encourage you to visit the Haas scholars site to learn more about my cohorts diverse projects. http://research.berkeley.edu/haas_scholars/scholars/2010-2011/index.html

We spent a week in the beautiful Julia Morgan Building with Leah Carroll and Terry Stratham as facilitators. Rooms were shared, as were meals, knowledge and kindness, in spades. You see many of us are headed for far away places and some will be going alone to do intense and sometimes dangerous research. There will be foreign languages to navigate, new customs and a pressure to find the best research to really commit and to come home with something new and strong. For those scholars staying here, there will be countless frustrations in labs or on site. This is all inevitable and yet for both groups we now have the consolation of one another as far away as we are from our fellow scholars. There's something comforting in the very existence of these people, people I didn't know two weeks ago.

I have 2 months in California before I leave for Ireland. I"ll spend my days researching, conducting trial interviews, and I'll purchase my equipment and meet with every documentary filmmaker I can get my hands on. So far I've been blessed in this regard. I have been consulting with Klara Grunning-Harris, an extraordinary filmmaker and human being and her insight has been invaluable. Every time a fear surfaces about my ability to do this project alone or the when I am struck by the limitations of my equipment, she reassures me by reminding me of the importance of voice, the clarity of my vision and redirects me to focus on articulating my visual style. Priceless advice.

As for the interviewees and all the logistics of going to Ireland. I will be staying with two wonderful friends, one is in the country on a horse farm and the other is in Galway city. It will be amazing to see them and also to get their perspective on life in Ireland for women in the last decade. I envision filming horses, fields, stones and beautiful faces full of stories, experience and life.

Films like the BBC's Sex in a Cold Climate and Peter Mullan's Magdalen Sisters continue to inform me about how to give narrative and imagery to such a heavy topic. Yet their content lives in the days in which these atrocities occurred. I want to hear about any healing there is now and hopefully show the therapeutic effects of nature, art and community. Right now I am just planning to visit the old buildings, to walk around them, to take in the stone walls that held so many young women. There is a laundry in Cork that particularly draws me, apparently there are still murals on the walls painted for the children in the nurseries, daughters of the Magdalenas, orphaned and separated by walls from their mothers. The fact that I used to play and walk by these places, oblivious to their existence and the suffering within is a haunting feeling. It somehow makes me feel complicit, oddly involved and I am drawn to illustrate the effects the closure of these asylums had on women then and now. This is just one topic I wish to cover and I will elaborate on the others next time I write.

Haas Scholar 2010

I am honored to say that I have received the Haas Scholarship for 2010. Thank you so much to everyone who has helped me to achieve this grant by supporting and encouraging me. Thanks especially to Katherine Sherwood, Patrick Kriwaneck, Kwame Braun, Anne-Marie Collins and Karen Culligan.

I also want to say congratulations to the other scholars, I am truly looking forward to the interdisciplinary community and to the discussions we will have in the Fall and Spring.

 I just added my proposal to the site, I am sure the project will evolve and grow as the summer and year unfolds. I look forward to sharing my adventures and experiences over the coming months and I would love to hear your comments and feedback.

Women of the Aran Islands

I just received one of my letters of support from a woman in Ireland who has volunteered to be interviewed. I worked for her in the Summer of 2000 as an assistant teacher to children on the Aran Islands. I have decided to include the geographic area of the Aran Islands in my documentary. I can think of no more pointed example of a traditional micro-culture that has been subjected to the influx of social change. In researching my proposal, I have been hard pressed to find any other accounts of Aran womens personal stories regarding the ways their lives have changed in the last few decades. My contact in Ireland has already spoken to a woman from Inis Oirr (the smallest Island) who has agreed to be interviewed. Provided i receive the scholarship and am able to travel to Ireland, I believe I could have an invaluable oral and visual record of a changing time. I can already visualize the shots I plan to take of this photogenic land.
www.aranislands.ie

Two Weeks Away

Letters of Recommendation are an interesting item to procure. "Please write down everything great about me.." I have been really fortunate to have some generous people willing to divulge the reasons they believe I am suited for this project. So now.. revised proposal in hand I am two weeks away from submitting my proposal. Then the waiting game begins. I've added two links to this blog. They are the art schools I plan to visit in Ireland and the sites are absolutely worth perusing.