Watching and Learning

I have been voraciously consuming documentary films, with the aspiration that my editing practice would be reinvigorated. I'm simultaneously awed and intimidated by all the beautiful work I've seen and it has been helpful to remind me of the story I am telling.

The link is to a beautiful film by Chiara Clemente, it is a poetically shot documentary that pays homage to 6 female artists living and working in New York.
http://www.ourcitydreams.com/

Audio

Looking at footage, writing and organizing cannot be done without the audio for me. Recording my own voice and working with the audio files is so much fun. I recorded a conversation on skype with my mom and it was such a laugh. The unscripted conversation is really what I'd like to explore more. The conversations then can become intervals between interviews and b roll can illustrate them also.

Finally a bit of a breakthrough!!!

Bias and Working with Testimony

Since returning from Ireland I have been struggling with constructing my outline. I write daily, brainstorm, edit and compile data and yet my conclusions elude me. The desire to confine such complex issues within analysis is also not really fulfilling at this stage.

I have to ask the question of whether as a researcher and artist,  I can present an argument and conclusion to such complex issues? While I have the ability to do this, for a variety of reasons I resist presenting biased date.

At this stage it becomes important to ask..

What is this project at it's root?

A collection and a glimpse, born form the desire to show positive change.

What is hard is that what I have found is dark, complex and truly unresolved. I hoped to show the positive changes that can happen when women unite and now all I can see is the living evidence of sexism. This is just the filter with which I am viewing the data at the moment and that is what I need to shift.  To resolve the burn out I am currently feeling, I am going to edit some of the more joyful moments of my footage to music and see where that takes me and alternate that approach with writing the structure down,

Possibly the greatest lesson gained form this pursuit is finding that I am a researcher and an artist and that working with others lives in documentary form is incredibly challenging.

There are changes that have happened that are positive and by focusing more on these I hope to show that progress has occurred. That progress is in evolution.  Questioning the progress I see is important  and staying open to the truth is vital also.

Compiling my resources and interviewing people was my favorite part so far and this stage of working is work, a lot of hard work. I want to do these women's lives justice and that might be my current  problem. I am not the one who gets to save anyone else and honestly these women don't need saving and neither do future generations, sometime during the last week I forgot that I am only the one asking questions!

Letting people speak for themselves in this film  is really important and what I want to do is create an environment that is open and contemplative.

Handing over and trusting the process is once again what I need to return to.

Discovery is complicated, that is the thought I'll leave you with.. and this weekend I'll present some of my findings.

Eireann Aris

Cork City

County Clare

This week I will be returning to Ireland, I feel really blessed to be able to go back so soon.
The main focus of my trip, with regards to the research project, will be to travel to geographic sites suggested by my interviewees. My participants each selected a site that represented freedom to them and one that represents repression. using a medium format mamiya 645j, I will photograph these sites. When I return I'll begin the process of transforming these images into large prints that I will then weave together into an installation piece for one of the walls of the gallery.

I would also like to announce that the opening for my show, "Women in a Landscape of Change" will be on Wednesday March 30th in the Worth Ryder Gallery at UC Berkeley.

I will send updates from Ireland and my rough edit form the Magdalen Laundry section of the film will be posted shortly.

Happy Holidays,
Louisa

Magdalen Laundries

Today has been spent looking at footage of the Good Shepherd Convent, with the rain belting down on my skylight it's not hard to imagine being there now. After filming the place in September, I sat in my car for twenty minutes waiting for the waves of nausea to pass. Photographing the site had a profound affect and left me more committed to seeing these places turned into museums, so no one can have the luxury of forgetting what was done to so many women.

I am slowly and laboriously compiling the section of my film that will discuss the laundries. This involves listening to my interviews, cutting the video and looking closer at the images I took in September. It's incredible to me how much emotion the footage conveys, perhaps it's only because I was there and remember how disturbing the very air was around that massive institution. 

As I look closely at these pans and tilts I notice each time the image is unsteady and I know my grasp on the camera faltered. I recall how it was hard to breathe in that place never mind hold the camera. I was only a visitor there for an hour. How was it to fill your 24 hours there? years, a lifetime? For the estimated 30,000 women who were incarcerated in the laundries that was a reality we will never understand.

The following sites are excellent resources on the Magdalen Laundries in Ireland. I encourage anyone to visit them.

http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/index.htm

http://www.netreach.net/~steed/magdalen.html
 
There is new pressure from the EU for the nuns to release the census information. To sign an online petition please follow this link.

http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/index.htm

I will post a clip about the laundries within the week. Thank you for reading and as always your comments and feedback are appreciated.

Rough Cut

Intro
http://vimeo.com/16381696

Gay Rights
http://vimeo.com/16417967

I'd love your comments and thoughts,

Louisa