Documentary class begins at Pierce College
Heather Carawan will be teaching The Documentary: A Social Force in the journalism department Fall quarter at Pierce College Fort Steilacoom.
Archive for year: 2013
July Past and Present in Tennessee
Blackberry Hillside
Memory hangs thick as kudzu in summer
Green fields
Holston river
Sultry nights
a park bench on a golf course
Partings in the wee hours
Broken hammock
Hound dog
Fireflies
total concept charades
a bowl of sordid chocolate mousse
honeysuckle stars above
Open space
but held in this humidity
a handful of friends
soon to be scattered
Hoping
Curious
Alive
Seeing Green
I just finished teaching a documentary studies class at Pierce College here in Washington. I am ready for some serious summertime escapism, now that I’m done with the academic quarter. I left my students with one of my favorite images from my own graduate studies, most of which are fading all too rapidly:
Stan Brakhage (1933-2003), experimental filmmaker, asks us to imagine the act of seeing before we have access to language. He envisions a baby crawling across a field of grass. How many shades of green can the baby see, before he knows the word, “green”? The idea is that before we come to recognize the shades in our crayola crayon box – forest green, yellow green, fern and granny smith apple… there is an infinite sea of green. Language limits us. Brakhage hoped that filmmakers would use the medium to break open our vision and find new ways of seeing.
I find this hard to describe to my students, especially after seeing – last week-end – the new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, in IMAX 3D. It was a feast of visual pleasures, but also an assault on the senses. I’m not sure that’s what Stan Brakhage had in mind. With their smartphones, tablets, earbuds and tweets – my students are bombarded with images: stills, movement, words and ads filling up multiple screens. And yet they were patient, for the most part, with the documentaries that we screened in class. They came up with cool ideas for their own imagined film proposals. I am inspired by their desire to dive a bit deeper than the superficial screens.
Spider, Wolf Creek, OR
Puyallup River, Tacoma, WA
Golden Given Rd E, Tacoma, WA
Andrew’s pine tree, Tacoma, WA
Capitol Hill mural, Seattle, WA
green mosaic
Gog-Le-Hi-Te wetlands, Port of Tacoma, WA
Earnest, Gog-Le-Hi-Te wetlands
Springtime on McKinley Avenue
This is the time of year when – if you blink – you miss McKinley Avenue in East Tacoma turning to gold. Never mind that East Tacoma has the highest percentage of low-income residents in the city of Tacoma; never mind that I’ve seen two neighborhood coffee shops fail in the same location, that are now replaced with a medical marijuana clinic. Never mind that the neighborhood bars far outnumber the neighborhood programs needed in this area.
At the beginning of April, the blossoming cherry trees planted along McKinley Avenue explode and make my morning and afternoon commutes glorious beyond belief. Here are some pictures – in case you blinked.
For additional information on the McKinley / Eastside neighborhood, visit http://postdefiance.com/mckinley-neighborhood/ . If you have stories about McKinley Avenue and the Eastside, please share them here. I would love to better know my neighbors and the history of this area.
Pierce College Documentary Class Begins
Heather Carawan will be teaching The Documentary: A Social Force in the journalism department Spring quarter at Pierce College Fort Steilacoom.
Screening at Mills College
Join the East Bay Mills Branch and the Mills College Office of Alumnae Relations for a screening of The Telling Takes Me Home by Mills Alum Heather Carawan – Class of ’91. This short documentary will be followed by a Q&A with the producer. Guests are encouraged.
Lucie Stern Building, Room 107, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613
