Speaking Directly: Oral Histories of the Moving Image Erika Balsom, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Kathy Geritz, Sandra Gibson, Narcisa Hirsch, Peter Hutton, Jim Jennings, Chris Kennedy, George Kuchar, Kerry Laitala, Owen Land, Annette Michelson, Aily Nash, Tomonari Nishikawa, Elizabeth Price, Luis Recoder, Lucy Reynolds, Ben Rivers, Warren Sonbert, Kidlat Tahimik, Jonathan Walley, Mark Webber Edited by Federico Windhausen SFCBooks 2013 Copyright © 2013 by San Francisco Cinematheque Speaking Directly: Oral Histories of the Moving Image (Cinematograph no. 7, 2013) All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. First Printing: 2013 ISBN 978-1-304-65302-4 San Francisco Cinematheque 55 Taylor Street San Francisco, CA 94102 www.sfcinematheque.org Ordering Information: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, educators, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the above listed address. U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers: Please contact San Francisco Cinematheque Tel: (415) 552-1990; or email [email protected]. Book design by Brad Steinberg 4 Contents Foreword 7 Introduction 9 Annette Michelson by Mark Webber 13 Coleen Fitzgibbon by Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder 29 Narcisa Hirsch by Federico Windhausen 47 Jim Jennings by Kathy Geritz 62 Kidlat Tahimik by Aily Nash 74 Kerry Laitala by Jonathan Walley 89 Elizabeth Price by Lucy Reynolds 105 Ben Rivers by Erika Balsom 118 Chris Kennedy and Tomonari Nishikawa 130 Four from the Archive, 1976-1979 159 Notes on Contributors 167 About San Francisco Cinematheque 169 5 Kidlat Tahimik by Aily Nash “When you work with the cosmos, suddenly you get ideas for how to treat some visuals, like some images that had no intention of being in the film. That’s the freedom of the independent.” Distinguished by their playfulness, exuberance, and relentless questioning of the status quo, Kidlat Tahimik’s films function on many fronts—the cosmic, the personal as political, and as advocacy for the notion of the indie-genius. Tahimik was raised in the Philippines during the US occupation, and his work teases out the complexities of a formative condition: namely, participating in a rich cultural heritage that is in danger of being degraded by the hegemonic effects of American culture. Yet his films manage to never polarize, polemicize, or simplify; rather, they exhibit a generous and gentle wisdom, offering incisive observations about the ways in which the political impacts all of our lives. Tahimik’s first film, the groundbreaking Perfumed Nightmare (1977), impressed international critics and filmmakers such as Susan Sontag, J. Hoberman, Werner Herzog, and Francis Ford Coppola. He went on to make several other acclaimed works including, Memories of Overdevelopment (1980-present), Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? (1980-94), and Turumba (1981). Kidlat Tahimik was in New York for his US retrospective tour in New York in the fall of 2012 during his US retrospective tour, which was organized by Jed Rapfogel of Anthology Film Archives, and myself. It took place at Anthology, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Pacific Film Archive; it also included visits to the New Orleans Film Festival, Tulane University, Bard College, Ramapo Collage, and Basilica Hudson. 74 This interview was conducted over a series of meals during Kidlat’s stay in New York—long breakfasts and dinners in Hudson, and a lunch in Brooklyn during the Sandy black-out. Special thanks to Ted Kennedy and Ben Rivers for their presence and input during some of these conversations. Aily Nash: How did you end up living in Paris and Munich in the late-sixties, early-seventies, and what led you to filmmaking? Kidlat Tahimik: During my undergraduate in theater at the University of the Philippines, I was a really happy and carefree guy, but then I was accidentally elected the president of the student government. First, I was elected one of the representatives of the college of arts and sciences. On the first Saturday after the elections, representatives from the different colleges get together and select a chairman. Usually it’s a law student or business student who runs for that position because they know their ambitions when they’re in school. But that year, my fraternity saw that the law student was very weak. So they maneuvered, made some alliances, and suddenly – ahhh – I’m speaking in front of 18,000 students, talking about nationalist policies, and leading rallies to Malacanang, the equivalent of the White House in the Philippines. By year’s end, I began to see myself as “presidentiable,” since lots of campus leaders in my school eventually ended up in national politics. It’s not that it was my ambition, but I thought maybe I was a potential president. There was this little voice, from I don’t know where: “A developing country needs economists, not artists!” So I shifted majors and went for an MBA in finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Thus, I ended up in Paris as an economist at OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) an organization of the rich countries to coordinate aid policies. I worked there for five years — in a three-piece suit! Maybe it’s good to get to know the enemy inside you, what you don’t want to be. But I still had this inkling to get back to theater. I joined the OECD theater club. I wanted to write this play, so one summer I took a break from my job in Paris to [go to] a farm in Norway. In the mornings I would pitch hay, and in the afternoons I would write my play on my little typewriter. But when I returned to Paris, I realized, to finish the play, I would have to take a sabbatical, a year or two. But I didn’t have enough savings. Nash: When was the point of no return, when you realized “I’m going to be an artist and I’m not going back to OECD in Paris”? Tahimik: After working at the OECD, maybe my next career stepping stone would have been The World Bank, the dream of many Philippine economists. Either I was crazy or something flipped. I realized, “I don’t need this life.” You become dependent on your economist payroll so you can buy many bottles of champagne and Pierre Cardin suits, and live the comfortable bourgeois life in Paris, in your 16th arrondissement flat. One thing that 75 KIDLAT TAHIMIK BY AILY NASH Photograph of Tahimik by Aily Nash. helped: I met this old French actor who was a really funny, nice old Jewish man. He had acted in one fi lm, Borsalino (1970). We’d gotten into a friendship. I moved into his big fl at in the 16th. It was a way to meet non-economists. I was the boring economist at cocktail parties, compared to the crazy artists who didn’t care what time it was. It was cosmic timing. As I was getting uncomfortable with “fertilizer distribution studies,” I was meeting a lot of artists in Paris, and I began seeing possibilities outside the box. It was beyond my expectations that I would give up my job. But because I started writing a play and getting focused...just at that moment I was able to cut the cord. And jump out for a free fall. I had written my play, and it wasn’t getting anywhere. I met this Swiss fashion designer who was interested in doing fashion from Philippine shells. We fl ew home. I introduced her to some shell makers. She made a cocktail dress collection de nacre (mother-of-pearl). On our way back at Schiphol airport, I saw a Munich Olympic announcement with cute souvenirs displayed. I realized I could make these Olympic souvenirs. That was the turning point. By helping a fashion artist, I’d made contact with Philippine shell makers. So now I had the exotic materials and a global event. My bridge to becoming a playwright. Each Olympics allow merchants to exploit their mascot. In 1972, it was the Dachshund, the sausage dog of Germany — on key-chains, T-shirts, throw-pillows — any conceivable kitsch. I proposed a dog mosaic out of mother of pearl, from which hung twenty-fi ve shells. When the wind blew, it would make a nice sound. This was going to be my bridge to 76 freedom. I fanned out prototypes to rural families. A real cottage industry. Two thousand dollars yielded 25,000 Olympic dogs. Nash: Just like in your film Turumba, you got a village to make paper mâché dogs. So that was your exit strategy? Yeah, one last MBA bridge...and I was going to burn it afterwards. Why not? I wasn’t necessarily selling my soul. The dogs were selling very well. Then the Olympic hostage crisis happened. The foul mood canceled all re-orders. So at the end of the Olympiad I was stuck in Munich, leashed to 25,000 dogs. I couldn’t afford the student dormitory. I was invited to a commune of artists outside Munich. That’s where I met my wife, and we had our first kid. There was also this crazy German film student doing crazy projects. He taught me to handle the 16mm Bolex camera. And how to make script-less films. He eventually played the American boss in my film Perfumed[ Nightmare]. He hated being in front of the camera. For his video exercise, he asked me and a Brazilian girl to be actors.