A Diptych by Robert Fenz introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Robert Fenz.

Transcript

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Audio Collection page.

A Diptych by Robert Fenz introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Robert Fenz. Friday February 3, 2012.

John Quackenbush  0:01 

February 3, 2012, the Harvard Film Archive screened A Diptych by Robert Fenz. This is the audio recording of the introduction and the Q&A that followed. Participating are HFA Director Haden Guest and filmmaker Robert Fenz. Take note that the recording starts just after Haden Guest is introduced to the audience.

Haden Guest  0:30 

These are films that take place in five different cities, five different locations around the world that are all sort of united in the way that they deal with the question of revolution, of change, the way in which the social, the cultural is inscribed as a type of text onto landscapes onto cityscapes. It is work that's exquisitely photographic, photochemical and cinematic graphic and those were all key elements to the work of Robert Fenz as you'll understand when you see tonight's films. Mr. Fenz is one of the last, I think, of the really great photochemical artists working today in 16mm. His intuitive understanding of what is silver gelatin, what is possible with the photochemical is quite extraordinary and you'll see this really in the difference between the shots, the way that he constructs his films. It's not just in terms of subjects, it’s also in terms of the texture, texture becomes text in Fenz’ films. When we last showed Meditations on Revolution, it was presented live with a great musician and composer, Leo Smith, a trumpeter and a professor of jazz improvisation at CalArts where Robert Fenz studied and Leo Smith was, in fact, one of Mr. Fenz’ great mentors. And this idea of improvisation, of structured improvisation, he says is key to Fenz’ work. And equally important though is the idea of traveling as a way of seeing the world differently and there's a certain heightened perspective of the traveler is something that is really acute and real and genuine in Fenz’ work. We're going to see that in the films tonight.

We're going to begin actually with a short work. We're going to begin with a short work by Shiloh Cinquemani called Berlin Tracks, and then we're going to a film called The Sole of the Foot which in many ways extends I think the meditations on Revolution Project. And next will be Correspondence and Correspondence is a very special film for us tonight because—to use the term meditation from Robert’s earlier work—it's a meditation on the work of a filmmaker, very important to us all here, Robert Gardner. Robert Gardner, one of the founders of the Harvard Film Archive, one of the great artists working within an ethnographic tradition and a mentor to Robert Fenz. And so this is a work that looks, brings fresh eyes, fresh perspective, certain melancholy distance as well to the work of Robert Gardner’s extraordinary film, and I'm absolutely delighted we can present it.

There's so much to Robert Fenz’ work; he's also a talented photographer and there's a wonderful book that's come out called The Sole of the Foot and we actually have a few copies that Robert smuggled out of Berlin that are going to be available. So for the first five people who rush to the box office after the screening... But first we're going to have a conversation with Robert afterwards so I want to invite you to linger and linger you will want to because these films will leave you meditating in a deeply meditative state of mind, shall we say.

I’d like to ask you to thank the Film Study Center here at Harvard, whose wonderful institution whose director, Lucien Taylor is co-presenting this tonight's show with us. I want to thank Lucien Taylor and I want to thank the Film Study Center. Most of all, I want to thank Robert Fenz for being with us tonight. Please join me in welcoming Robert Fenz.

[APPLAUSE]

Robert Fenz  5:02

Thank you all for coming. And, of course, it's always well, I should say that usually I prefer not to say so very much before I present my films. Some of the films you'll see tonight are silent. One of them has sound—actually two films—Shiloh’s film, Shiloh Cinquemani’s film and my own are both silent. So I think that maybe words aren't necessary. But I will give you some words tonight.

And I'll begin by saying that The Sole of the Foot is a film meant to be seen in the manner that you'll watch it tonight. But it's also meant to be seen in the space of a gallery and the book that Haden mentioned as a part of that and it was presented last year in Berlin, the DAAD gallery, and is actually the first and last frame of every shot that's in the film. So it's another way to look at the film, not having to have the film present. The gallery exhibition also included the projection of the film but still photographs, eight still photographs that were blown up from frames that are normally discarded in the process of making a film due to something called ANB rolling, which is maybe too technical to get into at the moment. The notes should say enough about what the film is about but I'll be happy to explain more after the screening and respond to any questions that you might have.

My film Correspondence is a silent film as I mentioned. It's purposefully silent. Initially, I had intended to use sound but decided against it because of something that happened during the making, which is that the rhythm that developed through the editing made me think that sound shouldn't be there and then as I thought about it more, I realized that as Gardner’s films are all with sound, but a better way to sort of think about his work might be to create a very different kind of film, a film that's true to my own making, but speaks to his work. If you know his work, you'll certainly find my references to it. If you don't know his work, it doesn't matter. Because I think that there's something that you can take away from the film regardless, in any event. I think so and I hope so. Shiloh’s short film before my films is very special and I think a very good lead up to The Sole of the Foot. It's of train tracks in Berlin and it's a very abstract piece but we'll talk about that film as well as my films at the end of the screening now, which will be a total of about 65 minutes or so? Yeah? Thank you for coming.

[APPLAUSE]

Haden Guest  8:07 

I just wanted to remind everybody to please turn off any cell phones or electronic devices that you have on you. Thank you very much.

John Quackenbush  8:14

And now the discussion between Haden Guest and Robert Fenz.

[APPLAUSE]

Haden Guest  8:26 

Robert, thank you so much. It was amazing to see these two films tonight, two films that really when I saw them at the New York Film Festival last year, they stood out as really the highlight of that entire event. And I mean, I’ve come to think of your films more and more about in a way, their structure is so careful and precise and poetic and I am also always fascinated by the way in which the parts relate to one another. So I want to start out by talking about The Sole of the Foot. I mean, you describe a very particular geopolitics, if you will, going from France to Israel to Cuba and I was wondering if you could talk about this sort of dynamic between those three places in the way the different sort of rhythms that are given to them in the film. Tonight I found myself thinking is France sort of in a future tense, Israel in a sort of present tense, and Cuba sort of in the past. You know, just the way in which the Cuban sequences have the longest takes, a way in which the Israeli sequence has a sort of rough like, you know, aggressive restlessness in the way in which there seems to be a certain indeterminacy about the French sequence. I don’t know, that was just suddenly tonight, that struck me. But I was wondering if you could talk about the way in which these three places took form in this film, the way in which you related them to one another.

Robert Fenz  10:00 

Yes. Well, I think that you put that very nicely. And of course, I wanted to thank you before I forget for having my films here at the archive.

Haden Guest    10:10

You’re welcome.

Robert Fenz  10:14 

And thanks for the wonderful projection. It’s very difficult to have your film seen in this manner when you work in 16 millimeter. There's very few places in the world left that you actually see the film the way you meant it to be seen.

Haden Guest    10:29

Thank you for that.

Robert Fenz  10:33 

In every film that I make, I try to make images that reflect the places that I've chosen to film and the subject matter of course, so it's true that each section in The Sole of the Foot is quite different and my strategy for filming in each location was quite different. That has to do, of course, with the personal interactions that you have with people but it also has to do just with the way and– Well, because I don't rely on words and even music usually in my films, I believe in making an effort to try to demonstrate what I'm thinking either silently or just simply through the editing and through the image making. So it may be that because actually they're not that many films, I mean, I'll correct myself: there are many films but not many films that you'll see that are made without actors, without scripts, without text. I feel a deep sense of obligation to try to give a sense of the presence of each location and the present moment in each, in the present moment in which I chose to film in each location. Now that's influenced by something that Robert Gardner says in his book Forest of Bliss about the making of Forest of Bliss. In a way, he says all nonfiction films are made out of a combination of intention, circumstance and chance. And I think that's very true. My films include improvisation and improvisation is something that is similar to chance but is also quite different. It's different because when you're improvising, you're coming out of a certain training of image making and because I practice image-making, or used to I should say, practice it every day. The results that you get are special to that fact. Just like a musician who is able to make decisions in the moment, I, in my filmmaking, try to create that possibility for myself. So, my films are determined also largely their structure, largely because I always use the full length of the shot that I make. So, I choose to do that because I feel that's closest to how to an improvised moment. It's film as a fixed thing. It's once you've edited, it's done. You can change the dynamic between sound and image by, for example, having a live performance as we did last time, I presented my work at the Archive. But once you've made a print, that's pretty much it. Maya Deren always said films are never finished but they're abandoned. I feel that's always true. I mean, that is true, of course. They're abandoned but also they're not because you're never going to open up a film and go back to all the stages that are required in their production.

So, I'm losing my train...

Haden Guest    13:53

But thinking about how you describe this particular constellation of three very specific places.

Robert Fenz    14:01

Right, because I'm filming, because I'm trying to be true to the moment that I've decided to film. So, in France you'll have a combination of sort of longer takes and shorter pieces and portraits of people and more descriptive moments of place. It was my beginning. I began to film in France before the other locations, the other locations came afterwards because of circumstances. And I was filming with an Aaton camera and I always I believe that the kind of equipment that you use affects deeply the kind of film that is made. So if you're using one kind of film camera or another, actually the results that come are radically different from one another. If you use a video camera that allows you different possibilities, if you use a Bolex camera that allows you different possibilities. I chose to work with an Aaton camera because, of course, it's a French camera and I was filming in France and I thought that that would be something that was appropriate. And in fact, I told the story earlier today, and it happened during the filming and I'll tell it even though it's a complete sort of side story. But while I was filming one day and filming images I didn't care for much, I was not getting anything I thought was any good. I decided that I’d just go and have coffee. And so I sat down to have coffee and a few minutes later a group of people came over. There was a man and two women if I recall and they said, “What kind of camera is that?” And I said, “Well, it's an Aaton camera.” And they said, “Ah, and where is that camera from?” And I said, “Well, it's a French camera and it's made by a genius.” (I'll explain why. Maybe after the story.) And one of the women looked to the man who had a beret and was your perfect image of an elderly French man with a beret and he said– Well, he invented the camera. And I said, “That's incredible.” I felt like I was in Blade Runner, you know, meeting the master. And so, of course, I fell down and said, “Well, thank you” and he let me make an image of him which was also very nice. So that's Jean-Paul Beauviala who invented that camera and he invented it after working with the Eclair NPR with that company. Why was that camera revolutionary? As it was revolutionary, it maybe doesn't seem so special now because everybody handholds their camera but that camera was designed to sit on your shoulder and be lightweight in a way that no camera had been before. It's described on their website and by him as if you had a cat on your shoulder and it does feel that way. So that opened up also many possibilities for direct cinema making, you know, direct cinema as opposed to cinema verite and it meant that people could be really present in the locations that they filmed and be able to be with the people they were filming in a non-obtrusive fashion. It's a very quiet camera and it's a sound camera. Meaning that it allowed for the possibility of sound to be recorded in conjunction to it, which is not normal in filmmaking, though it's normal of course in video; it just exists in video without question.

That leads me to talk about sound and how sound was important in The Sole of the Foot. I played with sound a great deal. I played with the fact that you— as I said in my notes—feel that you might it sometimes is in sync and sometimes it's not. Yeah? Sync sound and color imagery makes you feel present. And as I was speaking with Lucien earlier today about a filmmaker, Ricky Leacock, and he said, “What did he want people to get from his films?” and he said simply, “I want them to feel like they're present.” This is something that, of course, sync sound does and color does. Black and white is the opposite. I mean, it's abstract immediately, you don't believe you're there. You might believe because we see films from the past and black and white that, you know, I don't know, that you’re there somehow in the past. So, in the Israel sequence in this film, I played with a sense of anxiety that came from the sound of the traffic. There's almost no moment of sync, except maybe the helicopter that you hear at the end that is flying over the border regions of Israel, Lebanese border and the Syrian border. But the progression of the film came out as I said, out of the circumstances of the shoot but also because—again as I'm quoting the notes—but basically I'm the child of immigrants and I thought that I was in this film making an effort to understand my own sense of place but people's sense of place in the areas that they inhabit. Their right to be there. And I did it, of course, in a very non-literal fashion other than when I played between the two synchronous sound and non synchronous sound. Because I think it's important for such abstract imageries to also exist in these places that are such loaded territories that don't allow for discussion or other ways of thinking about them. So The Sole of the Foot, of course, is quite loaded. It's dealing with African immigrants in France, people who are welcome and unwelcome. It’s dealing with Israel, a place that is almost impossible to make an image in so many ways. It's impossible because well, that's a whole night of conversation. And in Cuba which, of course, is a very popular place to film but my goal when I film there was to film something maybe less popular—and thus the extended duration of the shots. And also those shots and their extended duration reflected my sense of time in that place. So France, of course, is much more jagged while, in a way, it's sort of slow and fast and Israel is also slow, but very fast. And then Cuba is very slow in general. One time a former teacher of mine said that avant garde films—I'm not saying that mine is, I don't think that's an appropriate description of it, but maybe I'm somehow in the kitchen next to avant garde film—in the house that’s avant garde film, is that they're either slow or fast. So I'm sort of combining that notion, I guess. And my films are always slow and fast and they're abstract and they're very representational. So there's a dynamic that comes from the two. That is confusing and oh, maybe not at all... you know, maybe.

Haden Guest  21:23

Can we talk about the title of The Sole of the Foot? I mean, in one sense, it makes an obvious reference to travel to–

Robert Fenz    21:31

I'll say that Shiloh Cinquemani discovered that title.

Haden Guest    21:34

Okay.

Robert Fenz    21:35

And it was a title that came with extreme difficulty in a way. But at the same time, it seems perfectly perfect for the film because The Sole of the Foot ultimately means, because it's a film about places that you are where you stand, rather than any other reason. So you are occupying that space and you have your right or not to that place. But where you physically stand is where you are. And that's really what I was looking at. It comes from the Latin plantar. Which is plant and to be planted or rooted in place. And so when we were thinking of the sense of place, and certainly that was one consideration for a title but seemed really not good, we went towards this other title and I think it is appropriate for each–

Haden Guest    22:30

So place being defined as where you stand, so certain defined activities?

Robert Fenz    22:35

Defined or thought of in that way.

Haden Guest    22:36

Right.

Robert Fenz    22:37

So the Palestinians in Palestine, Israelis in Israel, the Africans in France, and the Cubans in Cuba, each in contested areas.

Haden Guest    22:48

It's also where you stand with the camera, though.

Robert Fenz    22:50

Oh, of course. Yeah.

Haden Guest    22:51

Right.

Robert Fenz    22:52

It's true. Yeah. The book speaks to that in the images. Not that I'm plugging my book really, it’s fine.

Haden Guest  23:00 

It is a nice book.

Robert Fenz    23:01

No. But it's the first, as I said, the first and last frame of every shot that's in the film or every direct cut and also because it's dealing with borders and the borders of the shots themselves. And Israel I filmed along the borders because I had filmed, I had shot a film before made by a filmmaker named Chantal Akerman called La-bas. And during that film we never left her apartment. I stayed 24 hours a day. She sometimes left. But I stayed in that apartment and didn't see anything of Israel. I have a sister who lives in Israel but I didn't even visit her. I just stayed in the apartment and we filmed from her window for a month. So when that film was finished I decided, well, I have to see what this place is in a clear fashion and what better way than, since it's a very small country, than to go across, around all of its borders. I mean, it's six hours from one end to the other, so it's not a really huge task to do so and then that was my sort of beginning point. And then I went in, yeah. And it's the center of the film. It's the center of the film that’s shot stylistically in a different way also because of the camera. I shot with a Bolex in Israel and a Bolex  allows for many more creative possibilities. You can do such rapid editing in camera, superimpositions, you know. They say for the Bolex that it's an optical printer and for those of you who don't know what an optical printer is, it was a machine that allowed you to do many tricks with film: superimpositions, fades, lap dissolves, all sorts of wonderful things on film. But it was designed that way for the same reason that in my other film, I included an interview, which I never do in any of my films, a film called Meditations on Revolution, Part V: Foreign City, where there's an interview of a jazz artist named Marion Brown. And it appears somewhere in the middle of the film and so that when you get to that point you see what you've seen before in a different light and what you watch later is also affected by it because the interview, and what he says in the words that he puts out, changes your dynamic to what you've seen. So Israel was very much intentionally made to be very different than the other two sequences so that your relationship to what you saw and what you were then to see would be quite different and that was quite intentional.

Haden Guest    25:30

I think it's really effective that way. And I mean, can you tell us a bit more about the exhibit that you had at the DAAD gallery just last August? Unfortunately couldn't make it so I'd like to know more about, you know, how it–

Robert Fenz  25:49

Actualized.

Haden Guest    25:50

Yeah, exactly and how it spoke to the film. So you have because the images weren't, were also very large, no?

Robert Fenz    25:57

They were very large, yeah, in the gallery. I mean...look, again, there are films that are made for different kinds of spaces, you know. In the art world now there are lots of people who are, not that many really, but there are some people who work with 16mm and they put it in that space and there usually is good reason. And as I made this film, The Sole of the Foot, I was interested in making a work that could perhaps exist in two kinds of spaces: the cinema space and the gallery space. The major difference between a cinema space and a gallery space is simply that in a gallery, people can leave when they want and here you stay to the end and I thank you for that. Or at least most of you did, I saw some of you leave!

Haden Guest  26:47

Nobody left.

Robert Fenz    26:47

Kidding. So, but what the gallery space provides for is a different opportunity of another kind of edit. So the images, the large images are in conversation with the film and in conversation with the book, in fact. They're equal partners and a different interpretation of the subject matter. So the images I made were the size of say a small 50x50 projection, you know, inch projection screen.

Haden Guest  27:21

I see.

Robert Fenz  27:22

And the film was projected in the gallery space, you know, at certain moments.

Haden Guest    27:26

Around the same size?

Robert Fenz    27:27

The same size.

Haden Guest  27:28

I see.

Robert Fenz  27:29

And they were frames that, as I said at the beginning, were blown up from discarded frames and I chose those frames because they would normally be lost and I wanted to pay attention to them and their imperfections also. Usually these frames are quite imperfect, yeah, they have a flair in them or there's a... you know, so that was really the point.

Haden Guest    27:54

So, I mean, I have seen some of those images and what's wonderful about them is how intensely photochemical they are. I mean, how you can see the texture of the gray. And that just leads me to the next question and topic, which is that of film itself. It seems that as much of a subject of your work is actually film itself and the way in which you play, for instance, in that wonderful shot in the French section where you capture people descending into the, what I assume is a subway, and you have that glass it has some sort of texture on it that is slightly out of focus. Or the final shot of the film with the rain, the beads of rain on the glass. Or also, the night sequences in which we see this wonderful dance of grain. So I was wondering if you could talk about how you think about your films or your images, I should say, photochemically because it seems that you are someone with such an intuitive understanding of that, and I know you take such great care with the printing and the actual development of your work as well.

Robert Fenz    29:03

Yeah. It's an interesting moment for the material that is film because, of course, Kodak just went bankrupt. That doesn't mean that they'll disappear but they might. Maybe they'll restructure and change what they've been doing for the last 30 years. But you know, I don't know. So, I mean, anyone working with any material should have a reason to do, so I think so if you choose to work with video, you should have a reason to work with video. I have a lot of reasons why I choose to continue to work with film. Part of the reasons might be perverse, in some way. I mean, film is very expensive but the cost of film causes me to be more careful. And I like that, you know, I like that I have to think about the shot before I make it and how long it should be because when I'm shooting I'm not thinking, “Well, it's because it's expensive.” But somehow when you train in film, that becomes a part of how you work with film. So as opposed to say, one French filmmaker I met some years ago who was making a film in Luxor and she had shot, I think, over a course of a week, 24 hours a day. And she said to me, and I can't argue with the point she made, which is that there was a moment that she wanted that she wouldn't have gotten if she hadn't videotaped for 24 hours. It's entirely possible that that's true. And that I haven't seen the project so I don't know, I'm not trying to be mocking of it. I think that that's actually a good reason to use video. The very fact that you can shoot for 24 hours and get something...

Haden Guest    30:51

But you have to shoot for 24 hours. [LAUGHS]

Robert Fenz    30:52

No, you don't have to. No, that’s mean. No, of course, you don't have to but you can and the fact that you can means that a lot of people do. Not 24 hours but they shoot a lot more than they might if they had the limits that film demands. But those limits are one thing. The fact of there are so many other reasons to work with film; grain, for example, vibration, the fact that a grain vibrates and the fact that the blade of the shutter on a projector vibrates and creates something called persistence of vision, which is the illusion of movement, but no true movement. The shutter passes over the frame so you're actually seeing as almost as much black as image or maybe not as much, but it’s present which creates a very different viewing experience. Which isn't esoteric, actually, it's very concrete. It's a really different visceral experience to watch something projected on film than when you watch something on video. And back to this limit question. I won't speak of limits but I'll say that when you work with film you simply think differently and we're in a moment where people will no longer think in that different way. And maybe that's okay. I don't know. But I do think that, and maybe I'll do it right now as I have before, I will confess, note it's passing. And that passing of that way of perceiving the world and of apprehending the world. Because it is passing, may not pass tomorrow, but it will in the next few years. That's for sure. Not in an archival sense, as we've talked about, because there will always be places that preserve work and film separate from anything else as a preservation media. It lasts longer than any other technology, any videotape or digital hard drive, as far as we know so it'll be around, but people won't go in, especially in nonfiction work because in nonfiction they abandoned film a long time ago. I think they abandoned it, I won't tell, I won't fix a date but I know that there was one period where a lot of nonfiction filmmakers got a lot of free film and at that time they worked with it more, but then when they stopped getting that film at a lower cost, it was around when the Hunt brothers bought all the silver in 1980 and they tried to corner the market and that really messed things up because they didn't even succeed, I mean, it messed things up for them too. So now people when they pick up a camera in any school and any part of the country, they might make experimental films, but they're not going to go out into the world and make a nonfiction documentary film. It's not likely and it's not common and it'll be less and less common, and that's a pity to me because, again, when you go out with a film camera and think about what you might film and how you should document something, there are so many choices that come into play. So it's a way of thinking really, that is changed.

Haden Guest    33:54

And I think we see this in Correspondence so exquisitely and to me this is one reason why it's such a really intelligent and poetic meditation on Robert Gardner's work where he has some really his finest image making, filmmaking was done with film. And I'm thinking about those in between shots as interstitial shots in what I assume as Cambridge of the frost on the glass where it looks like some sort of map of the world. And, you know, the depth and texture given to it is really entirely I think from the fact that you're shooting in film and in black and white. I was wondering if you could just talk—and we'll take some questions from the audience—about that film and about the prologue which I love the way you... in some ways it seems to be a sort of summary of the film before the pre-credit sequence or the pre-title sequence, or how should we say it, but I was wondering if you could talk about that?

Robert Fenz    34:56

Well, the opening is maybe one direction the film might have taken and then I changed my mind. Not really, but it is color and Gardner filmed in color. Again, that's interesting to me. I mean, well, he filmed in color in the 50s already, but in '60 and all his films except for maybe a handful really are all in color. Which as somebody working with anthropology is an interesting choice, of course, because it proceeds video and, as I was saying a few moments ago, that because it's in color and because well, speaking about his sound would be another discussion, but because it's in color it does give some sense that you're there and that you're more present. And I wanted the exact opposite to be true in most of the film, except at the beginning where I was directly quoting his work; in that there are images, not that are in his film, but the people who appear, for example, in West Papua the man who has a wound in his leg was somebody who at least said was in one of the battles that was fought in his film Dead Birds and I met him at the battleground. And the woman was the wife of one of the people who was in his film, Weyak. And so I thought it appropriate to sort of bring more closely and quickly a sense of his work in that opening sequence, which is only five minutes, and also to contrast his work very directly. In that, for example, when you arrive in Varanasi or Banaras when he was filming there it was called, you'll see that it's really a city that's quite different than how he documented it.

Haden Guest    36:49

The rickshaw scene.

Robert Fenz    36:51

The rickshaw scene with neon lights and everything. And I chose to film that way because I met an anthropologist on my first couple of days of my arrival, I met them through Ákos Östör who was somebody who worked with Gardener on Forest of Bliss and he suggested I meet a man named, Sarswati. And I did and—he had also been present when Gardner was filming and had advised him—I asked him what had changed in the city since when Gardner had filmed? A quite direct, easy question. And he said, “Well, in the past people came to Varanasi to die and now they come here to live.” And I thought, “Wow, well that just says everything, you know, actually.” And what he meant, because that city is a place where people do go to live and then die in fact, largely. In fact, people go there and might live there 10 years just because if they leave they won't do what they intend to do, which is break the cycle of reincarnation. So you can't go visit somebody in the neighboring town because if you die on the way out or in, you screw up. So people stay, you know, and not leave and Sarswati was one of them. But he was also talking about India now, which is that it's completely changed place from 1985. Economically, especially. So people coming to Varanasi were coming to work as bankers or coming to work as, you know, tourist guides or whatever reason. But that was a very different reality than when Gardner was there and that was true in every place I went, of course. The ways in which they are different could be explored more and might even require separate films, each location. But certainly I was trying to keep on track and though the temptation was always there to make another kind of film, as the temptation usually is when you're making work, because there are always subject matter in a place that takes your attention, demands your attention, but that you can't actually deal with. For example, HIV in West Papua is huge. That's not to say that I'd make a film specifically about that, but you could make a film that dealt with the fact of a place that had had no interaction or no contact with the Western world and then within 40 years has a huge epidemic of HIV that isn't addressed and isn't even being talked about in any which way. And it's so difficult to go there because Indonesia doesn't want you to go there, that it probably won't be documented. So I mean, yes, that's just a sort of indication of the fact that you could deal with every place in a different way, but my fascination was, of course, how a place changes. But, look, Gardner is a fabulous image-maker and, in some way, I was crazy to think that I should make a film about a filmmaker who made such strong images. So my way to deal with it in some fashion was to work with black and white which was to create some distance between his world and my own, the one that I was going to document. Yeah.

Haden Guest    40:18

And to work silent as well.

Robert Fenz  40:19

Well, silent, yeah, it’s true.

Haden Guest    40:21

Let's take some questions from the audience. As you know, we have some experts on Robert Gardner’s films and I'm excited to hear from them. And here's one right here, Mr. Steve Livernash. Steve, you gotta wait for a mic.

Robert Fenz    40:33

If they're not here, where are they?

Haden Guest    40:35

I see a number of them here.

Audience  40:39

In your discussion, just now I'm referring to the first film, you referred to the sound being sync sound as contrasted with non-sync sound, but before the film and in the program as well, the way you draw the distinction is you talk about it being in sync out of sync. Now there is a difference between non-sync sound and out-of-sync sound.

Robert Fenz    41:04

That's true.

Audience    41:05

And since I was expecting the latter, watching for it...

Robert Fenz    41:08

You were frustrated.

Audience    41:09

...I didn't find it.

Robert Fenz    41:11

No, it's there too, in fact, but the distinction maybe shouldn't have been made so directly. In fact, the film does drift in and out of sync, and it's also in sync and completely out of sync. So, you're right. And I'm partly right and then wrong. So...

Haden Guest  41:31 

Steve Livernash. Other questions, comments from the audience? Steffen Pierce, another expert on Robert Gardner.

Robert Fenz  41:43 

Wait a minute. I’ll do my best.

Audience  41:47 

No, since you mentioned you were in the—I think it’s called the Grand Valley of Guinea—where Robert Gardner shot Dead Birds, I was just wondering if they remembered him and if so, what they remembered about him? And since so many decades have gone by, he must be either forgotten or become a legend, I don't know which.

Robert Fenz    42:09

Well, you know, that's a really good question. In fact, people did remember him. You know, I came back afterwards and I talked to Bob and he didn't believe me as much as I said, I mean, that people did remember him and they remembered him actually.

And this is just for the people who really are interested in his work, but this you have a little tidbit like they called him, Pom, P-O-M. No idea why. So they remembered Gardener as Pom. What they called them, and they remembered his first, some of them claimed to have remembered when he first arrived in the area on a boat on a canoe like the canoe that's in the film. And how there was a large discussion around whether they should let them stay or not. And then it was a decision made that it would be okay for them to stay. But at first there, they thought that maybe they wouldn’t. But, you know, what's most miraculous about that particular area of Wamena is that there was no road when Gardner was there. So I put the road in this film because it was not a very big road and it didn't go very far, but it changed the way in which people moved radically. You know, where he writes in his journals for those of you who've read them, where it took sort of an endless amount of effort to get from one place to the next. Here you could get on the bus—that was in this film now—and go several miles with no problem. That had really changed things. But there was a really strong memory of him from those I met, and particularly one area, which was quite close to where he camped and camped with the full expedition that accompanied him. So that was quite interesting. I filmed one shot, and as I said at the beginning, there are some inside things that some people who know of Gardner’s work would be able to maybe better if not recognized, and at least have a sense of. So there are certain frames, not frames again that were in his film, but locations that were certainly prominent in his work, like the woman who was collecting salt, it's a salt well that he filmed in Dead Birds. You may not have known it to be salt and I didn't give you any titles to tell you it was, but it was and it was the same well that people have been going to for whatever endless amount of time. She was collecting with banana leaves.

Haden Guest  44:54 

I mean, so Robert Gardner, Bob, has seen, obviously seen the film... What did he think? I'm just curious to know.

Robert Fenz    45:01

Bob seemed to like the film. And that's already good. He didn't say that he didn't. But no, he said more than that. He said tha—I think I won't be able to quote him directly—but that he did not know of another film about a filmmaker that remains so true to that filmmaker’s work. So that's sort of a nice thing to say, but also quite accurate.

Haden Guest  45:28

I think so. I mean, to me, I'm just struck by... it seems to me very melancholy.

Robert Frenz  45:33

Yeah, it's not melancholy. It is melancholy in a way as much about what we were speaking about the passage of a medium and a way of thinking about things by using that medium, as much as anything else. I mean, even Gardner doesn't shoot film anymore. So, you know.

Haden Guest  45:59

Just to me it’s like the distance, like locating it, near here in snowy Cambridge that's sort of just quiet, empty room to me gives a certain...

Robert Fenz    46:08

Of course I was in Cambridge and I knew when I began to film that I would have to travel to the places or at least some of the places that he went to because I certainly couldn't just be in Cambridge and film Gardner here. So much of who he is has to do with where he went and the way in which he went there. So I knew that there's a risk in doing the project that way because, of course, I wasn't looking to make a film like his ever. But to understand a person, you, I guess, want to understand their obsessions or their preoccupations and that certainly was a part of why I went to the places I did and chose to film that way. But it's a film about memory and film is so suited to memory. It's suited to it in a very concrete way because if you're in the field and you're shooting film, you don't see what you've made until you get home usually. So whatever it is that you documented or recorded or captured is only visible at home and you have to revisit where you were and your intentions in that place when you're back home without really much possibility of returning and correcting any errors. So in that regard it's very much, I think, in a very straightforward way linked to how we remember. And I think that that's important.

Haden Guest  47:32 

I agree. Well, I think you'll agree with me that we'll all remember tonight's film on this very special evening, so please join me in thanking Robert Fenz.

[APPLAUSE]

Robert Fenz  47:43 

Thanks for watching.

[APPLAUSE]

©Harvard Film Archive