Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer, those
are the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station, gets, staff,
management or ownership.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Good morning, you'll find out with Pete in the Poet Gold.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the Poet Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We're on the air this morning with filmmaker Harry Roseman.
And before we get to Harry and this new film
which is going to be shown in Militant soon, we're
going to go right to the poet Goal for her
weekly poem prayer, incantation goal.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Please let it roll, Okay, Peter, I'm going to do
a short piece out of my new book, be the
poem Living Beyond Our Fears. And this is called a
love story. Not many words. Their eyes held the conversation
I watched on the train. It was a love story.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Well that's a good glove story. Yeah and yeah, I
mean there's a way in which what gets said in
a love relationship is probably the least important part. You know,
what's in your eyeballs, what counts.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
And it was sort of a I know we're going
to talk about Harry's film today, but it was sort
of a takeaway for me as I watched your film
because some of the shots were close up on the
expression in the faces, particularly in the beginning where there
wasn't any dialogue or was it either.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Wasn't a dialogue. The beginning has no sound, right, it
has no sound. At first I thought it was my
computer and I kept trying. I think, I text you
even it said is their sound?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
But what.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Once I realized no, there is no sound. What really
captured me were the expressions. It meant I had to
read the faces to sort of understand what was going on.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Nice reading your faces, and Harry, the name of your
film is China nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
It's a series of animations all under the rubric of
China nineteen eighty seven, and the different animations have different
titles within that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And rubrook is always a word that throws me off. Okay,
but China nineteen eighty seven. Very few people are going
to tune in for the flashy's height of that movie, right,
(02:25):
I mean the title doesn't give you everything is set
in China. Film you took.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Everything is set in China in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, yeah, but it's not like that was a year
of big turmoil in China. It's not famous for anything
other than you making a film about it.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
That's true. If it was maybe China nineteen eighty nine,
it would have been ten men square. But beat that,
which I was just as happy about because people were
quite relaxed and opening. It is a lovely time to
be there.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well it seems like it. I mean a lot of
the faces were you know, filled with filled with joy it,
you know, very very I didn't pick up like stress,
you know. Yeah, And throughout throughout the pieces, I watched
it all.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And people didn't seem nervous and happy to engage. And
I had I make up another because I don't know
the number. But no, I say, I learned thirty words
in Chinese. Uh, And it was so much fun talking
to people, and because it was early ish, and I
(03:39):
think the Chinese were probably used to seeing people who
you know, from other countries who spoke fluent Chinese and
mostly who didn't. But I think it was probably surprising
to bump into someone as bumbly as I was, but
jumping in, and I think it was taken with real affection.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Now on your visit, did you know that you were
going to do this film or was it something that's
sort of like, Oh, I think i'm here, I'm going
to do a film.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I knew I was going to do something. Okay. First
of all, I take loads of photographs anyway, but I
also brought an ambient tape recorder, which I don't usually
carry with me, and so I knew I was going
to do something, maybe film, like maybe not, I don't know.
But I took about roughly thirty five hundred photos. We
(04:30):
were there about a month and about thirty hours of sound.
And this was nineteen eighty seven, and then it took
me till twenty nineteen to do the first animation, so
almost like thirty years. And that was because I didn't
have a handle on what I was going to do exactly.
And the nice thing for me, and I think for
(04:52):
the work is that thirty years and now I'm still
working on them, and now it's forty years. It makes
the animations so much more about time and memory than
it would have been if I maybe did this in
nineteen eighty eight, right, And it really changed my relationship
(05:13):
to the material.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So as you as you looked back on the film,
you know the photos and things that you've taken for
this particular project.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Was it was there.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Any particular a section that stood out for you that
jumped and said, wow, I really you know that that
that was really a moment for me.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
There were so many moments. What happened is right away
after nineteen eighty seven, I would look at the images periodically,
so it wasn't like I put them away in thirty
years later. I took them out. Over those decades, I
would look at them. I'd listened. I listened a few
times to all the all the audio, and periodically I
(05:57):
would take a photograph and cut it up in photoshop
and make space and start making something that would lead
to what I made. But I wasn't sure where I
was going. And that happened for like I was doing
other work, you know, other works at the time, but
that didn't tell me for a while how I was
(06:21):
going to approach this and what it was going to be.
But the nice thing is which surprised me in some ways,
it was about memory, but because I kept revisiting it,
the memories were quite vivid, so it wasn't like some
foggy past. It was like it was so clear to
(06:41):
me what I felt like when I was there even
though all this time went by.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And when you say memory, Harry, what do you mean
it's about memory?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Well, for one thing in my I made a number
of decisions about what I was going to do. So
one thing I did is I decided I was going
to do the animations chronologically in sync to what I
saw when and where I went when. And the other
thing is for me. It became very particularly interesting as
(07:17):
I would look at the photographs and decide what would
happen within each storyboard. I made a storyboard for each film.
I was so struck by. Well, first of all, China
is very different now. See I don't only interrupt other people,
I interrupt myself in both. So China is extraordinarily different.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
A friend of mine, a sculptor, Martin Purrier, went to
China a few years ago and he sent me some
images they took, including of the bullet train. So I
thought his images looked like the future and mine looked
like the nineteenth century. So the difference was huge. And
even though some historical places have been saved and stayed,
(08:06):
and if you just sent it on those places bracketed,
they would it would look the same. But boy, it
feels different, and there was a lot of new construction
at that point, so there was the beginning of you know,
Beijing feeling like Queens, New York, but just sort of
relatively early on. And in my approach and how I
(08:29):
thought about it, the idea of memory became part of
my vocabulary because it was so long before. And then
I would also look at people's faces and go, what
happened to them? This is thirty years later?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
They like totally roll out now was telling hold the
secret at a certain point.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
So sorry about that. So I was thinking about these
people like sometimes they'd be kids, and I said, wow,
they're like forty fifty years old. So I kept thinking,
and these people may be dead. I could have been dead.
I'm just not and so that was very interesting for me.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And so when you said what happened to their faces?
You're talking about the aging?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, what happened to these people whose faces we were
looking at right right? You know, because it was thirty
and then eventually at this point forty years ago, And
I found that very emotional actually, and then I'm also
I don't know how much of this would show in
the films. But then I would say, you know, not
(09:34):
only did a lifetime go by, but what you know,
what were these lives like? And then I would say, oh,
I bet that none of these people will ever see this,
which also struck me as poignant, you know, because I
wish I could send letters to some of these people
and say you're in this film I made. Here it
(09:55):
is I don't know if they are they are, And
even the people on the trip, most of them are
dead now and one or two I can't even find
even though I don't know if they're alive or not. Uh,
people that were pertinent to the film and going to
China and being in the film films.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
One of the things I want to say is Queens.
And you're saying China looks like Queens, New York, Queens,
New York looks like China. Now, I mean a lot
of Chinese people.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Oh yeah, well Flushing, Flushing. I always remember that Flushing
was sort of like the other Chinatown in the Outer
Barrow then outside of in New York City.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And it's really Chinese carea.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Now, which ahead, if you're just tuning in, you're listening
to Finding Out with Pete and the poet Gold and
I'm the poet Golden. We're here with Harry Roseman, filmmaker
of a it is it entitled China.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
There's many short films, different lens, but they're all under
the umbrella title of China nineteen eighty seven that you
got it, but each one has a separate title, and
where they're going to be shown is in Militant, New York.
I'm giving a little plug here, no, no, no, for
May thirtieth, May thirty, Saturday at seven o'clock May thirty,
(11:18):
and then there'll be a Q and A afterwards with
me and four of my assistants over time.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Okay, we're in. We're in Militant.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
At the movie house theater, the movie house tea like
a real movie theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, that's fine.
I'm pretty excited. Yes, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
What do you think people will take out of it?
What do you hope if somebody sees that much?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Oh that's such a hard question.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, then is a very thoughtful beginning comes there?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
So well, well, okay, and I made these rules for
myself which I didn't stay yet, which which was I'm
not I wasn't allowed to use any images of China
that I did not take on that trip in any
of the animations, and I was not allowed to use
(12:11):
any sound that I did not record on that trip.
But I also allowed myself to do what I wanted
with any of the images and any of the sound
morphed them change because there's a certain amount of almost
surrealness in some sections of the films. Yes, And it
would partly depend on what was happening what I would
(12:33):
allow myself, Like there's the last one, which is by
far the longest, which is about a half hour and
took two years just to do that one. There's a
whole cemetery sequence, and I allowed myself to get pretty
surreal because I started thinking of that whole place as
a different realm. And so I didn't answer your question,
(12:54):
I'm not avoiding it. Maybe I think I am avoiding it.
What do I hope? Oh god, well, I thought.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Even though I didn't see the whole film, and I'm
looking forward to going back and like having more time
to sit and watch it. But I know the parts
that I did see. I walked away with joy. Oh cool,
you know, to be honest with you, I walked away
with joy. It was just something about you know, I
got for whatever reason I got very much into the images,
(13:28):
the faces, the expressions, the movement, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The movement and the space is very important because everything
was initially flat, right, All that was in a sense
invented through the material I had to work with. Okay,
But back to your the first response, the joy I
and I this is something I cannot explain ever since
I was very young, growing up in Brooklyn, New York,
(13:54):
with no real experience of Asia, I was fascinated by Asia,
by Japan, by China. And I had my brother and
I shared a bedroom and I made our room into
a Chinese room and I cooked us at dinner. I
have no idea where that came from, except right from
the beginning I was taken with, felt close to touched
(14:18):
with the culture and the art and the music. No
idea why or where that came from. So I felt
that and to get to go I was thrilled to death.
I mean it was like I never thought I would
get to go, you know, to China, and so I
was exuberant the whole trip. I was wildly excited. Every
(14:43):
minute for like a month. I was like, up, and what.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Made you go to China?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh? Well, that was such a fluky and wonderful thing.
We had a friend, Michael Maser, another artist who's now deceased,
and actually, besides wishing some of these people who in
the film could see it, Michael died before I started
this project, and I keep thinking every time I look
(15:09):
at it, I wish he could see this. So he
was a good friend and he was organizing this trip,
organizing it around ancient gardens. So we went to I
think five of the six ancient capitals, and he very generously,
and we didn't have that much money at that point,
said why didn't I treat you? And I immediately said yes.
(15:33):
And Catherine, immediately, my wife, said no, because, as she said,
it's too big a present. You cannot we cannot take
such a big present from someone. It's just not right.
But I just wanted to so I would have said yes, yes,
which I did. I was so desperate to go, and
(15:54):
also I felt insanely at home there, and again there
was something submerged. As far as I know, I have
no real Chinese heritage. I kept saying, guarantee that, Okay,
I guarantee that. But when I was there, I go,
these are like my people, what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:12):
And a few people on the trip, including the National guide,
said to me, you know, you're getting harder and harder
to find in the crowd. I took that as the
biggest compliment. And you know, I said, Oh, that's because
I'm so comfortable here right right right now.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Who knows it may be you know, somewhere in your DNA,
you know, you just don't. There's amazing things that I've
that I've found out, the things that I have an
affinity for, that that are actually in my gene makers.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
That you know about it, you know, Yes, yeah, I've
never done any of those, you know, partly because I
think the ones that from everything I'd read and here,
the ones that are very accurate get very expensive, and
the peripheral ones are kind of a little vague guessing.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And the ones that are accurate, we have no idea
the accuracy. You go to a palm reader.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, actually, but I you know, I would I wouldn't
be surprised to find out that five hundred years ago
one of my ancestors lived in Kaifong. I say Kaifong
because there was a Jewish population in Kaifong. I don't
know a couple of hundred years ago and we did
get to go there, and.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, none of the traces of your Asian Jenes will
pay us or evident on your face.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
No, not not too evident. I you know, it looks
like a New York Jew.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yes, that is very evident.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
But so again I just don't know why. So again,
I like the joy thing. I think you know, these
are about They're about a number of things, so they're
about the trip, but they're not a document. I do
list in one of the films kind of list of
(18:01):
people who are in it, and I say the tourists,
and then I lest the other people who were with us.
So you know, it's so much about the form as well.
So it's about China. It's about memory, but it's about animation.
It's about taking something that's flat and making it have depth,
(18:24):
making it have movement, making it have time in a
more literal way, which is something in various ways that
have always interested me in my work.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, one of the scenes I remember being particularly struck by.
It was fairly early in the film, and you have
a distant picture of a beach and then you notice
still and then somebody's riding a bicycle around and several
people start riding bicycles and that's all your animation. Yeah,
(18:56):
and it was amazing in itself, But so is it
about being amazed by the animation.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Maybe it's about my own amazement, you know which, then
maybe I'm sharing and that image actually I think it
was on the train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, and
there were all these stills along the way from the window,
and sometimes i'd make something happen, like their apartment, and
(19:26):
I would move the photographs like we're moving along on
the train, and we came to this very interesting place
which looked like a lot of new construction and this
big sand area that like a beach, but there was
no water there. It was maybe it was going to
be constructed on Sunday, but there were maybe one hundred
people on bicycles in it. And I was very taken
(19:48):
with that image, and so me and one of my
assistants point I decided I would have that was one
I would have a lot happen in. So it was
it was very complicated to get all those bicycle riders
moving and also to be in the right space and
relationship to each other.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And it's intriguing things to watch because you're the first
bicycle movies. Hey, that thing is moving the other ones.
What's going on? Is this is this movies or is
it a photo?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Great?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
But yeah, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Finding Out with Pete and the Poet Gold. I'm Peter
Lane and I'm the Poet Gold and we're here with
Harry Roseman speaking about his new film that's going to
be shown May thirtieth at seven pm at the I
don't have my glasses. Only pue my glasses on, right,
so you can jump in here the movie house theater
in Military.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So here's another thing about these films that I wanted
them to hold. I wanted them to be both clunky
and technically say that phrase. And so I really tried
to have a balance between holding on to the fact
(20:56):
even in the more elaborate scenes, wants flat still photographs.
And also, for instance, one of my current assistants, Sylvia
fiat Fieryatzi, sent me so we all do things on it,
(21:17):
and I give my assistance to simons and they make
suggestions and I take them or I don't take them.
So she sent me this. This is in the last animation,
an image of in the cemetery of a giant Buddha,
my friend Michael, and he leans against it and the
Buddha falls over, and then they both fall flat. But
(21:39):
everything looks strangely our ticket dimensionally, but also flat like cardboard.
And when she sent it to me, she said, this
is just a sketch and we'll do it right after it,
I said, no, no, no, no, no, this is it because
the awkwardness I thought was perfect and really beautiful. So
(22:01):
it's a weird way to put it because it's made
on the computer, and you know, scan photographs is I
wanted it to be. I feel slightly handmade, so the
balance between what we could couldn't do and then could do.
(22:22):
I thought very hard about how to keep that balance
between slick computer stuff and handmade clunkiness.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Wow, I even make the decision between the still photographs
and the motion. I thought you were just doing both,
like when things start moving, I assume you're doing video.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
And right, but I'm not. It's all happening in the computer.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So as part of the drama of it is the
new artistic possibilities through technology.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah right, yeah, absolutely, Like in music, it's sort of
like digital versus analog.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, you know, in which what you want to what
you want this character of these things to be like,
and how you want to use one or the other
or some combination where that becomes the ethos of the vocabulary. Right, absolutely, No, Hanry.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
It seems to me you brushed by yourself before. In
some sense, the movie is about you and your artistic imagination. Sure, okay,
good in that.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Case to say that reminds me of something my wife
probably said, I'm interrupting. Yeah, okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So, because it's really, in one level about your artistic creativity,
it would be worth the listeners knowing about some of
your other artistic accomplishments so that they could do that.
So if you wouldn't mind talking about yourself for a
few moments, I think it would be.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, it's funny in some ways when I'm talking
about this, I'm talking about myself.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And one thing Katherine says, that's always funny. I do
a lot of seventy one I photographed groups of people,
and sometimes if we're in a restaurant and I'm photographing
the people having dinner with and someone says, you want
me to take the picture, And I would say no,
I have to take it. Catherine says, they're all about
him anyway.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Which have a theater background, also, don't you, Well, not really.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
When I was in college, I danced in public, you know,
at various places.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
You're very easy to have talked about things and all
yourself in a very current way. But what I would
like you to do is break for a few minutes
about some of your artistical accomplishments. She was a public
art over a thirty or forty year period.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Sure. Well, now I've been making a lot of films,
including animations, but historically I've probably known more of his
sculptor than anything else. And I also have done many drawings.
I've done some public emissions which you were referring to.
I have not a lot of them. Oh god, they
hard and time consuming. So I have one in the
(25:13):
New York City subway near Wall Street, and that was
so excruciating doing these things, and it was this huge
relief like forty one feet long. That took me actually
only a little over a year, working all the time
(25:34):
and sort of teaching a little bit. And then I
have a really big project at JFK Airport at Terminal four,
like six hundred feet long, including the spaces, and that
took almost I don't know, or at least three and
a half years. That one almost did me in. It
was so so work intensive.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
But everybody who wins is the country is JFK. At
that point we go bares hundred feet.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Of your artwork, right, anyone who am to the international
air terminal. But if they enter the country at JFK
through that terminal on the other.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
To say hi in a sense, and it's an unusual thing.
And they're all curtains in different senses of blowing, you know.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
In different right, cloth and curtains.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Cloth and curtains. Yeah, And to me it always hit
me if you're going to capture America. You know, somebody
comes from a foreign country to America or in the
airport and you have curtains blowing in different directions. One
of the things America is about, what we want to
be about, is freedom. And the freedom of having the
wind depicted on the through the curtains I think is
(26:46):
really cool.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Thank you something, thank you.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
And I mentioned that because it might make people more
interested in China nineteen.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Eighty I'm trying to sell are you trying to sell them? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Because you have a very wide range of interest and accomplishments.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Well yeah, go ahead, no, no, no finished. So one of
the things that I sort of always knew this, But
about a year ago, I gave a talk a bu
about my work at university, Yeah, Boston University. I hate
when people say Nichels and don't say what it is. Yeah,
Boston University in the art school. And I when I'm
(27:27):
asked to give a lecture about my work, it's always
my favorite thing to rethink of my work in a
context I hadn't talked about before. So the title of
this talk was relief space for those who need like
a little nudge. Like a coin is a relief, It's
(27:47):
just a very shallow relief. So relief is something that
usually has a front, like a painting, has some dimension.
It can be very deep, like the sculptures at the Parthenon,
or it could be as slight as a coin. And
so this talk goes all the way back to the sixties,
the work in the sixties, into the films, all tying
(28:08):
everything together through this idea of a relief space. So
that was exciting for me to I probably kind of
knew this, but I hadn't articulated it to myself that
that's one thing that connects what I do over time,
because I move around a bit and I.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Have a story. I have a notion, Harry that you're
always talking about the president. You're always in the present.
So you reflecting on your forty fifty year careers in
Autist through rethinking it, reimagining it in the present.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, well, I you know when I'm working, when I'm
doing my work, we're going to go.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
We only have a half a minute.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
No, I'll wait till we have Harry on a game. Okay,
I think it's going to My question is going to
take them a little bit more time?
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, okay, say the present is where we were.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
My impression is you're you're always reimagining things, so that
you're reimagining of the past. Of what you call memory,
I take to be a very report on the current
state of your thinking rather than an accurate description of
the of the past.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Well that's I like that. That sounds right. I'm in
I'm I'm in the moment.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, that's the way to put it. What I want
to say is if people want to see the film,
and please May thirtieth, May thirtieth seven pm seven pm
in the Movie House Theater in Militant. There you go. Yeah,
the half hour we had with Harry today gives you
an introduction to going there. You have to be wide
(29:57):
opening your imagination, bring and.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Enter the place animated for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Thank you, Harry.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Harry, it's so wonderful having you on again. It's such
a pleasure when when you come visit us.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Back and enjoy very much.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Thank you, and to our listeners listening to finding out
peting the poet goal, we appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Thank you for being with us.
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer, those
are the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station, gets, staff,
management or ownership.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Good morning, you'll find out with Pete in the Poet Gold.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the Poet Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We're on the air this morning with filmmaker Harry Roseman.
And before we get to Harry and this new film
which is going to be shown in Militant soon, we're
going to go right to the poet Goal for her
weekly poem prayer, incantation goal.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Please let it roll, Okay, Peter, I'm going to do
a short piece out of my new book, be the
poem Living Beyond Our Fears. And this is called a
love story. Not many words. Their eyes held the conversation
I watched on the train. It was a love story.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Well that's a good glove story. Yeah and yeah, I
mean there's a way in which what gets said in
a love relationship is probably the least important part. You know,
what's in your eyeballs, what counts.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
And it was sort of a I know we're going
to talk about Harry's film today, but it was sort
of a takeaway for me as I watched your film
because some of the shots were close up on the
expression in the faces, particularly in the beginning where there
wasn't any dialogue or was it either.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Wasn't a dialogue. The beginning has no sound, right, it
has no sound. At first I thought it was my
computer and I kept trying. I think, I text you
even it said is their sound?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
But what.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Once I realized no, there is no sound. What really
captured me were the expressions. It meant I had to
read the faces to sort of understand what was going on.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Nice reading your faces, and Harry, the name of your
film is China nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
It's a series of animations all under the rubric of
China nineteen eighty seven, and the different animations have different
titles within that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And rubrook is always a word that throws me off. Okay,
but China nineteen eighty seven. Very few people are going
to tune in for the flashy's height of that movie, right,
(02:25):
I mean the title doesn't give you everything is set
in China. Film you took.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Everything is set in China in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, yeah, but it's not like that was a year
of big turmoil in China. It's not famous for anything
other than you making a film about it.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
That's true. If it was maybe China nineteen eighty nine,
it would have been ten men square. But beat that,
which I was just as happy about because people were
quite relaxed and opening. It is a lovely time to
be there.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well it seems like it. I mean a lot of
the faces were you know, filled with filled with joy it,
you know, very very I didn't pick up like stress,
you know. Yeah, And throughout throughout the pieces, I watched
it all.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And people didn't seem nervous and happy to engage. And
I had I make up another because I don't know
the number. But no, I say, I learned thirty words
in Chinese. Uh, And it was so much fun talking
to people, and because it was early ish, and I
(03:39):
think the Chinese were probably used to seeing people who
you know, from other countries who spoke fluent Chinese and
mostly who didn't. But I think it was probably surprising
to bump into someone as bumbly as I was, but
jumping in, and I think it was taken with real affection.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Now on your visit, did you know that you were
going to do this film or was it something that's
sort of like, Oh, I think i'm here, I'm going
to do a film.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I knew I was going to do something. Okay. First
of all, I take loads of photographs anyway, but I
also brought an ambient tape recorder, which I don't usually
carry with me, and so I knew I was going
to do something, maybe film, like maybe not, I don't know.
But I took about roughly thirty five hundred photos. We
(04:30):
were there about a month and about thirty hours of sound.
And this was nineteen eighty seven, and then it took
me till twenty nineteen to do the first animation, so
almost like thirty years. And that was because I didn't
have a handle on what I was going to do exactly.
And the nice thing for me, and I think for
(04:52):
the work is that thirty years and now I'm still
working on them, and now it's forty years. It makes
the animations so much more about time and memory than
it would have been if I maybe did this in
nineteen eighty eight, right, And it really changed my relationship
(05:13):
to the material.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So as you as you looked back on the film,
you know the photos and things that you've taken for
this particular project.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Was it was there.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Any particular a section that stood out for you that
jumped and said, wow, I really you know that that
that was really a moment for me.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
There were so many moments. What happened is right away
after nineteen eighty seven, I would look at the images periodically,
so it wasn't like I put them away in thirty
years later. I took them out. Over those decades, I
would look at them. I'd listened. I listened a few
times to all the all the audio, and periodically I
(05:57):
would take a photograph and cut it up in photoshop
and make space and start making something that would lead
to what I made. But I wasn't sure where I
was going. And that happened for like I was doing
other work, you know, other works at the time, but
that didn't tell me for a while how I was
(06:21):
going to approach this and what it was going to be.
But the nice thing is which surprised me in some ways,
it was about memory, but because I kept revisiting it,
the memories were quite vivid, so it wasn't like some
foggy past. It was like it was so clear to
(06:41):
me what I felt like when I was there even
though all this time went by.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And when you say memory, Harry, what do you mean
it's about memory?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Well, for one thing in my I made a number
of decisions about what I was going to do. So
one thing I did is I decided I was going
to do the animations chronologically in sync to what I
saw when and where I went when. And the other
thing is for me. It became very particularly interesting as
(07:17):
I would look at the photographs and decide what would
happen within each storyboard. I made a storyboard for each film.
I was so struck by. Well, first of all, China
is very different now. See I don't only interrupt other people,
I interrupt myself in both. So China is extraordinarily different.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
A friend of mine, a sculptor, Martin Purrier, went to
China a few years ago and he sent me some
images they took, including of the bullet train. So I
thought his images looked like the future and mine looked
like the nineteenth century. So the difference was huge. And
even though some historical places have been saved and stayed,
(08:06):
and if you just sent it on those places bracketed,
they would it would look the same. But boy, it
feels different, and there was a lot of new construction
at that point, so there was the beginning of you know,
Beijing feeling like Queens, New York, but just sort of
relatively early on. And in my approach and how I
(08:29):
thought about it, the idea of memory became part of
my vocabulary because it was so long before. And then
I would also look at people's faces and go, what
happened to them? This is thirty years later?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
They like totally roll out now was telling hold the
secret at a certain point.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
So sorry about that. So I was thinking about these
people like sometimes they'd be kids, and I said, wow,
they're like forty fifty years old. So I kept thinking,
and these people may be dead. I could have been dead.
I'm just not and so that was very interesting for me.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And so when you said what happened to their faces?
You're talking about the aging?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, what happened to these people whose faces we were
looking at right right? You know, because it was thirty
and then eventually at this point forty years ago, And
I found that very emotional actually, and then I'm also
I don't know how much of this would show in
the films. But then I would say, you know, not
(09:34):
only did a lifetime go by, but what you know,
what were these lives like? And then I would say, oh,
I bet that none of these people will ever see this,
which also struck me as poignant, you know, because I
wish I could send letters to some of these people
and say you're in this film I made. Here it
(09:55):
is I don't know if they are they are, And
even the people on the trip, most of them are
dead now and one or two I can't even find
even though I don't know if they're alive or not. Uh,
people that were pertinent to the film and going to
China and being in the film films.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
One of the things I want to say is Queens.
And you're saying China looks like Queens, New York, Queens,
New York looks like China. Now, I mean a lot
of Chinese people.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Oh yeah, well Flushing, Flushing. I always remember that Flushing
was sort of like the other Chinatown in the Outer
Barrow then outside of in New York City.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And it's really Chinese carea.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Now, which ahead, if you're just tuning in, you're listening
to Finding Out with Pete and the poet Gold and
I'm the poet Golden. We're here with Harry Roseman, filmmaker
of a it is it entitled China.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
There's many short films, different lens, but they're all under
the umbrella title of China nineteen eighty seven that you
got it, but each one has a separate title, and
where they're going to be shown is in Militant, New York.
I'm giving a little plug here, no, no, no, for
May thirtieth, May thirty, Saturday at seven o'clock May thirty,
(11:18):
and then there'll be a Q and A afterwards with
me and four of my assistants over time.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Okay, we're in. We're in Militant.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
At the movie house theater, the movie house tea like
a real movie theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, that's fine.
I'm pretty excited. Yes, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
What do you think people will take out of it?
What do you hope if somebody sees that much?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Oh that's such a hard question.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, then is a very thoughtful beginning comes there?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
So well, well, okay, and I made these rules for
myself which I didn't stay yet, which which was I'm
not I wasn't allowed to use any images of China
that I did not take on that trip in any
of the animations, and I was not allowed to use
(12:11):
any sound that I did not record on that trip.
But I also allowed myself to do what I wanted
with any of the images and any of the sound
morphed them change because there's a certain amount of almost
surrealness in some sections of the films. Yes, And it
would partly depend on what was happening what I would
(12:33):
allow myself, Like there's the last one, which is by
far the longest, which is about a half hour and
took two years just to do that one. There's a
whole cemetery sequence, and I allowed myself to get pretty
surreal because I started thinking of that whole place as
a different realm. And so I didn't answer your question,
(12:54):
I'm not avoiding it. Maybe I think I am avoiding it.
What do I hope? Oh god, well, I thought.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Even though I didn't see the whole film, and I'm
looking forward to going back and like having more time
to sit and watch it. But I know the parts
that I did see. I walked away with joy. Oh cool,
you know, to be honest with you, I walked away
with joy. It was just something about you know, I
got for whatever reason I got very much into the images,
(13:28):
the faces, the expressions, the movement, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The movement and the space is very important because everything
was initially flat, right, All that was in a sense
invented through the material I had to work with. Okay,
But back to your the first response, the joy I
and I this is something I cannot explain ever since
I was very young, growing up in Brooklyn, New York,
(13:54):
with no real experience of Asia, I was fascinated by Asia,
by Japan, by China. And I had my brother and
I shared a bedroom and I made our room into
a Chinese room and I cooked us at dinner. I
have no idea where that came from, except right from
the beginning I was taken with, felt close to touched
(14:18):
with the culture and the art and the music. No
idea why or where that came from. So I felt
that and to get to go I was thrilled to death.
I mean it was like I never thought I would
get to go, you know, to China, and so I
was exuberant the whole trip. I was wildly excited. Every
(14:43):
minute for like a month. I was like, up, and what.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Made you go to China?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh? Well, that was such a fluky and wonderful thing.
We had a friend, Michael Maser, another artist who's now deceased,
and actually, besides wishing some of these people who in
the film could see it, Michael died before I started
this project, and I keep thinking every time I look
(15:09):
at it, I wish he could see this. So he
was a good friend and he was organizing this trip,
organizing it around ancient gardens. So we went to I
think five of the six ancient capitals, and he very generously,
and we didn't have that much money at that point,
said why didn't I treat you? And I immediately said yes.
(15:33):
And Catherine, immediately, my wife, said no, because, as she said,
it's too big a present. You cannot we cannot take
such a big present from someone. It's just not right.
But I just wanted to so I would have said yes, yes,
which I did. I was so desperate to go, and
(15:54):
also I felt insanely at home there, and again there
was something submerged. As far as I know, I have
no real Chinese heritage. I kept saying, guarantee that, Okay,
I guarantee that. But when I was there, I go,
these are like my people, what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:12):
And a few people on the trip, including the National guide,
said to me, you know, you're getting harder and harder
to find in the crowd. I took that as the
biggest compliment. And you know, I said, Oh, that's because
I'm so comfortable here right right right now.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Who knows it may be you know, somewhere in your DNA,
you know, you just don't. There's amazing things that I've
that I've found out, the things that I have an
affinity for, that that are actually in my gene makers.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
That you know about it, you know, Yes, yeah, I've
never done any of those, you know, partly because I
think the ones that from everything I'd read and here,
the ones that are very accurate get very expensive, and
the peripheral ones are kind of a little vague guessing.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And the ones that are accurate, we have no idea
the accuracy. You go to a palm reader.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, actually, but I you know, I would I wouldn't
be surprised to find out that five hundred years ago
one of my ancestors lived in Kaifong. I say Kaifong
because there was a Jewish population in Kaifong. I don't
know a couple of hundred years ago and we did
get to go there, and.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, none of the traces of your Asian Jenes will
pay us or evident on your face.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
No, not not too evident. I you know, it looks
like a New York Jew.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yes, that is very evident.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
But so again I just don't know why. So again,
I like the joy thing. I think you know, these
are about They're about a number of things, so they're
about the trip, but they're not a document. I do
list in one of the films kind of list of
(18:01):
people who are in it, and I say the tourists,
and then I lest the other people who were with us.
So you know, it's so much about the form as well.
So it's about China. It's about memory, but it's about animation.
It's about taking something that's flat and making it have depth,
(18:24):
making it have movement, making it have time in a
more literal way, which is something in various ways that
have always interested me in my work.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, one of the scenes I remember being particularly struck by.
It was fairly early in the film, and you have
a distant picture of a beach and then you notice
still and then somebody's riding a bicycle around and several
people start riding bicycles and that's all your animation. Yeah,
(18:56):
and it was amazing in itself, But so is it
about being amazed by the animation.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Maybe it's about my own amazement, you know which, then
maybe I'm sharing and that image actually I think it
was on the train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, and
there were all these stills along the way from the window,
and sometimes i'd make something happen, like their apartment, and
(19:26):
I would move the photographs like we're moving along on
the train, and we came to this very interesting place
which looked like a lot of new construction and this
big sand area that like a beach, but there was
no water there. It was maybe it was going to
be constructed on Sunday, but there were maybe one hundred
people on bicycles in it. And I was very taken
(19:48):
with that image, and so me and one of my
assistants point I decided I would have that was one
I would have a lot happen in. So it was
it was very complicated to get all those bicycle riders
moving and also to be in the right space and
relationship to each other.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And it's intriguing things to watch because you're the first
bicycle movies. Hey, that thing is moving the other ones.
What's going on? Is this is this movies or is
it a photo?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Great?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
But yeah, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Finding Out with Pete and the Poet Gold. I'm Peter
Lane and I'm the Poet Gold and we're here with
Harry Roseman speaking about his new film that's going to
be shown May thirtieth at seven pm at the I
don't have my glasses. Only pue my glasses on, right,
so you can jump in here the movie house theater
in Military.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So here's another thing about these films that I wanted
them to hold. I wanted them to be both clunky
and technically say that phrase. And so I really tried
to have a balance between holding on to the fact
(20:56):
even in the more elaborate scenes, wants flat still photographs.
And also, for instance, one of my current assistants, Sylvia
fiat Fieryatzi, sent me so we all do things on it,
(21:17):
and I give my assistance to simons and they make
suggestions and I take them or I don't take them.
So she sent me this. This is in the last animation,
an image of in the cemetery of a giant Buddha,
my friend Michael, and he leans against it and the
Buddha falls over, and then they both fall flat. But
(21:39):
everything looks strangely our ticket dimensionally, but also flat like cardboard.
And when she sent it to me, she said, this
is just a sketch and we'll do it right after it,
I said, no, no, no, no, no, this is it because
the awkwardness I thought was perfect and really beautiful. So
(22:01):
it's a weird way to put it because it's made
on the computer, and you know, scan photographs is I
wanted it to be. I feel slightly handmade, so the
balance between what we could couldn't do and then could do.
(22:22):
I thought very hard about how to keep that balance
between slick computer stuff and handmade clunkiness.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Wow, I even make the decision between the still photographs
and the motion. I thought you were just doing both,
like when things start moving, I assume you're doing video.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
And right, but I'm not. It's all happening in the computer.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So as part of the drama of it is the
new artistic possibilities through technology.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah right, yeah, absolutely, Like in music, it's sort of
like digital versus analog.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, you know, in which what you want to what
you want this character of these things to be like,
and how you want to use one or the other
or some combination where that becomes the ethos of the vocabulary. Right, absolutely, No, Hanry.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
It seems to me you brushed by yourself before. In
some sense, the movie is about you and your artistic imagination. Sure, okay,
good in that.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Case to say that reminds me of something my wife
probably said, I'm interrupting. Yeah, okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So, because it's really, in one level about your artistic creativity,
it would be worth the listeners knowing about some of
your other artistic accomplishments so that they could do that.
So if you wouldn't mind talking about yourself for a
few moments, I think it would be.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, it's funny in some ways when I'm talking
about this, I'm talking about myself.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And one thing Katherine says, that's always funny. I do
a lot of seventy one I photographed groups of people,
and sometimes if we're in a restaurant and I'm photographing
the people having dinner with and someone says, you want
me to take the picture, And I would say no,
I have to take it. Catherine says, they're all about
him anyway.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Which have a theater background, also, don't you, Well, not really.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
When I was in college, I danced in public, you know,
at various places.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
You're very easy to have talked about things and all
yourself in a very current way. But what I would
like you to do is break for a few minutes
about some of your artistical accomplishments. She was a public
art over a thirty or forty year period.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Sure. Well, now I've been making a lot of films,
including animations, but historically I've probably known more of his
sculptor than anything else. And I also have done many drawings.
I've done some public emissions which you were referring to.
I have not a lot of them. Oh god, they
hard and time consuming. So I have one in the
(25:13):
New York City subway near Wall Street, and that was
so excruciating doing these things, and it was this huge
relief like forty one feet long. That took me actually
only a little over a year, working all the time
(25:34):
and sort of teaching a little bit. And then I
have a really big project at JFK Airport at Terminal four,
like six hundred feet long, including the spaces, and that
took almost I don't know, or at least three and
a half years. That one almost did me in. It
was so so work intensive.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
But everybody who wins is the country is JFK. At
that point we go bares hundred feet.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Of your artwork, right, anyone who am to the international
air terminal. But if they enter the country at JFK
through that terminal on the other.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
To say hi in a sense, and it's an unusual thing.
And they're all curtains in different senses of blowing, you know.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
In different right, cloth and curtains.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Cloth and curtains. Yeah, And to me it always hit
me if you're going to capture America. You know, somebody
comes from a foreign country to America or in the
airport and you have curtains blowing in different directions. One
of the things America is about, what we want to
be about, is freedom. And the freedom of having the
wind depicted on the through the curtains I think is
(26:46):
really cool.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Thank you something, thank you.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
And I mentioned that because it might make people more
interested in China nineteen.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Eighty I'm trying to sell are you trying to sell them? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Because you have a very wide range of interest and accomplishments.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Well yeah, go ahead, no, no, no finished. So one of
the things that I sort of always knew this, But
about a year ago, I gave a talk a bu
about my work at university, Yeah, Boston University. I hate
when people say Nichels and don't say what it is. Yeah,
Boston University in the art school. And I when I'm
(27:27):
asked to give a lecture about my work, it's always
my favorite thing to rethink of my work in a
context I hadn't talked about before. So the title of
this talk was relief space for those who need like
a little nudge. Like a coin is a relief, It's
(27:47):
just a very shallow relief. So relief is something that
usually has a front, like a painting, has some dimension.
It can be very deep, like the sculptures at the Parthenon,
or it could be as slight as a coin. And
so this talk goes all the way back to the sixties,
the work in the sixties, into the films, all tying
(28:08):
everything together through this idea of a relief space. So
that was exciting for me to I probably kind of
knew this, but I hadn't articulated it to myself that
that's one thing that connects what I do over time,
because I move around a bit and I.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Have a story. I have a notion, Harry that you're
always talking about the president. You're always in the present.
So you reflecting on your forty fifty year careers in
Autist through rethinking it, reimagining it in the present.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, well, I you know when I'm working, when I'm
doing my work, we're going to go.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
We only have a half a minute.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
No, I'll wait till we have Harry on a game. Okay,
I think it's going to My question is going to
take them a little bit more time?
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, okay, say the present is where we were.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
My impression is you're you're always reimagining things, so that
you're reimagining of the past. Of what you call memory,
I take to be a very report on the current
state of your thinking rather than an accurate description of
the of the past.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Well that's I like that. That sounds right. I'm in
I'm I'm in the moment.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, that's the way to put it. What I want
to say is if people want to see the film,
and please May thirtieth, May thirtieth seven pm seven pm
in the Movie House Theater in Militant. There you go. Yeah,
the half hour we had with Harry today gives you
an introduction to going there. You have to be wide
(29:57):
opening your imagination, bring and.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Enter the place animated for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Thank you, Harry.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Harry, it's so wonderful having you on again. It's such
a pleasure when when you come visit us.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Back and enjoy very much.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Thank you, and to our listeners listening to finding out
peting the poet goal, we appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Thank you for being with us.
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