What I learned in Visual Research Methods class

I learned to not be afraid to speak in the “I” voice.  I learned how to construct, albeit rudimentary, a blog and a website.  I learned that I’ve been using digital storytelling techniques without knowing what they were.  I learned that I’m an archivist.  I learned that for every person in the classroom there existed a passion for one or two particular topics and that the experience of the VRM class provided the environment in which these passions could be explored and structured into video essays, documentaries, mockumentaries, and digital stories. 

Although books and visual were combined in the class, books took a back seat to what can be accomplished via the visual.  Page to screen is a kind of translation and seems to work well in film and video.  Some of the emotional elixir that “stirs” the eye to deep feeling and connection seems to be lost in the translation from screen to page.  The collaborative project in which I participated was generated by a 18-page short story which translated into a bracumentary just over seven minutes long.  I had much more fun working on the bracumentary than I did writing the short story.  But the short story as script made the bracumentary easier to organize.

The class was fortunate to have had the resource of such an “expert” and professional as Prof. Juhasz.  This class was recommended to me two semesters ago as a “must take” four units.  I had a great time!

Thomas Turner – Negro League

 

Tom pumps his own gas.

 

  

  

http://www.thomasturnernegroleague.org 

 From a box of yellowed clippings and black and white photos from the 1940’s, and family photos that go back to the 1950’s, this website was put together to fulfill a digital storytelling class assignment and as a 95^th birthday present to Dad, Thomas Turner.  

As I write this, he is preparing to participate in the annual Gillette (corporate sponsor) and Major League Baseball (MLB) Civil Rights baseball game festivities May 14-17, 2010 at the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Willie Mays, Billie Jean King and Harry Belafonte will receive MLB Beacon Awards and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young is the keynote speaker at the awards luncheon.  Tom will participate, along with other former Negro Leaguers, on a symposium panel at the Freedom Center, attend the awards luncheon at the Duke Energy Center and an autograph session, with box seats for two games between the Reds and the Cardinals over the weekend.  Dad would describe this inclusive event – MLB and NLB players – and experience as being in “high cotton.”  

 My vision with the clippings was to show that the old ways of public recognition have not much changed; print has expanded to the Internet, but remains a primary point of communication media.  The photos are from my own 10-box set of family, vacation, and event photos and older family photos are from Dad’s collection.  

I remember when he bought an Argus camera and came home not with photos, but with these little slides we’d never seen before.  On summer nights, he’d set up the screen and projector in the back yard and run the extension cord into the kitchen.  All the kids in the neighborhood would gather round to see slides of themselves or family photos from a trip to the Grand Canyon on the big screen.  I’ve spent hours going through those boxes of slides to find just the right photo fto use in a family event or special occasion. 

 The other part of my vision was to organize the clippings and photos to constitute a set of storytelling dots that could be easily connected.  I’ve tread this terrain over several years and even though the territory is familiar, I get a different and more broad perspective each time I deal with it.  Another element to the story is the commercial value of being a former Negro League player.  Dad puts himself, his stories and his memories on display not for the money (I figure he about breaks even on what he spends on baseballs, photography, gas and other supplies required for his set ups), but to run a magic pencil over an invisible presence and bring it to life. 

 Dad is cantankerous and his hearing is more selective than ever.  He is easily irritated and quick to temper.  He drives too close to the mailboxes that sit on the country roads in and around Georgetown.  He breaks out into song for no reason at all. 

I’m planning to join Dad and Betty on the Civil Rights baseball weekend.  I’ll be driver, scribe and photographer.  I know we’ll have a good time!

Under Wraps: Why Do Women Wear Bras? (A Bracumentary) – Julie Durazo, Ana Thorne, Erin Wafer

Under Wraps: Why Do Women Wear Bras? (A Bracumentary)
– Julie Durazo, Ana Thorne, Erin Wafer

Visual Research Methods
Prof. Alexandra Juhasz
14 April 2010

Very First Time: Making, Thinking, Failure, Success of the Bracumentary

Making
Working backwards from the April 7th due date, Julie Durazo, Erin Wafer and I set a schedule and timeline for the tasks required to film the bracumentary. Our initial meeting took place at Julie’s apartment on Tuesday, March 16. Julie provided fresh fruit and I brought bagels and cream cheese. In this meeting, we discussed and agreed on areas of contribution and tasks for our project. At Erin’s prompt, we decided on the question we wanted to answer in our work – “why do women wear bras?”

To answer this question and several others, we decided to ask it of ourselves and a few friends. We agreed that we wanted a variety of personal views and individual histories, including our own. Julie named the “forum” as the venue in which the women would meet and suggested the Wizard of Bras shop as another resource for taping. Julie, Erin and I represented the issues of finding the best bra for the oversized breast, the smaller breast, and what it might mean to go braless. In addition, Julie and Erin volunteered their moms for the video. We contacted a few friends; however, they were either unwilling or unavailable to participate.

The forum took place on Sunday, March 21st in the Durazo’s lovely home in the hills behind the Rose Bowl and included Carmen Durazo (Julie’s Mom) and Cathy Wafer (Erin’s Mom). Carmen made a large bowl of fresh salsa that we enjoyed with chips and fresh fruit and other goodies that Erin brought. It was my pleasure to meet the entertaining Mr. Durazo who I’ve seen in action on Julie’s blog. In this peaceful and quiet setting, we would pursue the answer to our question.

Sunday started out gray and cool, but the sun came out around noon. While we waited for Erin and Cathy to arrive, Julie and I began preparing and setting up. While the equipment charged, Julie and I decided to tape the forum outside on the patio. While we swept and cleared the area, Julie noticed a deer on the hill in back of the house. After experimenting with a few locations and settings around the patio – taking background, lighting, shadows and the sun into account – we placed the chairs facing the sun and used a large umbrella for shade. Julie set up the camera on a tripod and shot each of us in the forum, taking her seat when it was her turn, and Erin took over the taping task.

We asked the women to give their name, age and bra size as a standard intro. Carmen offered her opinions and experience about oversized breasts and getting the proper support; Cathy shared her encounter with breast cancer and how her relationship with the bra changed following a mastectomy. We were fortunate that both moms were willing to share their experiences with us for this project. Julie echoed her mom’s sentiments; Erin was decidedly undecided on whether she wanted or needed to wear a bra; my position on going braless is a 40-year old habit. The afternoon’s forum taping went better than anticipated and resulted in more material than we could possibly use in the allotted five minutes.

After the forum dispersed, Julie taped the excerpt from my short story, “No Thank You, Otto Titzling” that I suggested we might be able to use in our piece. We taped in her parents’ fluffy and cozy guest bedroom. We also recorded the scene with Julie, her Mom and the corset at this time, and the bra snap that ends the piece.

Julie arranged the taping and interview with Bonnie, founder/owner of the Wizard of Bras in Monrovia on Tuesday, Monday, March 23rd, a day the shop was normally closed. Bonnie took us on a tour of her shop, talked about the history of the bra and women’s undergarments, the market, proper sizing, and her own community efforts to educate women about the importance of wearing the proper bra. While we had prepared a list of questions for Bonnie, we needed to ask only one or two of them because she was willing to share her information and provide market context. Erin and I agreed to participate in a bra fitting so that Bonnie could show how she determines a woman’s proper bra size. This was a revealing experience for both of us who thought we knew our bra size. The bra that Bonnie fitted me with was the most comfortable harness I’ve ever been in. The bra, however, was not a sexy, Victoria’s Secret bra, but rather a sturdy number that formed and held my body from the shoulders to just over the belly button. Erin admitted that the bra Bonnie recommended for her was also very comfortable and made her small breasts look larger. Julie was behind the camera during the 2.5 hours at the bra store which focused on the information Bonnie shared with us about bras, fitting, the market, and her work in the community educating women about proper bra fit. Her store and fitting methods have been featured several times in various media.

With footage from the forum, the Wizard of Bras, and supporting scenes, along with the history, background and images of the bra/breast gleaned from the Internet, we determined that we had more than enough material for our five-minute project, with enough left over for a larger piece if we decided to pursue this topic.

While we divided areas of contribution to the project, all final decisions were made in a collaborative and cooperative spirit. We didn’t always agree on every suggestion of visual/narrative choice. We did, however, discuss the issues until we came to a mutual understanding and accord. Erin agreed to gather a history of the bra; Julie arranged the use of her parent’s home for taping and the interview with Bonnie; I made my short story available to Julie and Erin as a point of reference, agreed to put together a collection of relevant images and statistics, provided drafts of narrative, and suggested a few titles.

Most important, neither Erin nor I had much technical experience and it fell to Julie to take charge of the tapings, music selections and editing. In our meeting of April 2nd at 42nd Street Bagel, and after viewing the first 1:30 edited minutes of the intro, it seemed that the three of us were in sync with what we wanted to convey and that we could trust Julie’s editing judgment. We went through the footage together and suggested beginning/ending points and scenes and dialogue that we thought should be included. We also discussed where we needed voice/over and where the visual would suit our purposes. Each of us made our contribution in different areas of focus: Julie, locations, taping, music, editing and all things technical; Erin, ethics, voice of reason and keeping the project on topic; Ana, writing, timeline and video length. The three of us decided on the flow of the video, its opening, middle content and conclusion.

We met again on April 5th at Hagelbarger’s where our discussion centered on staying close to the allotted allowable time for the bracumentary. We basically agreed to do split screen imaging and narrative in order to compress the visuals and v/over the information taped at the Wizard of Bras. At this point the forum footage was unedited. We went through it and selected what we thought were the most relevant points. I took some notes on our discussion and Julie used these notes for reference in the final edit which depended on her creativity and discretion.

The night before and the morning of our scheduled presentation in class, April 7th, YouTube wouldn’t cooperate and my PC was infected with malicious software that froze the system and bumped me off the Internet. After much persistence, I was able to see the final cut. It was just over seven minutes and I liked it.

Thinking
For me, this project has its most recent genesis in a short story I wrote a couple of years ago. After we’d decided to work on a group project, I suggested we explore the subject of women, breasts and bras. Julie and Erin liked the idea. The research I’d done for the short story included information for medical and non-medical sources that suggested that the wearing of a bra might constrict proper lymphatic flow allowing the build-up of toxins in the soft tissue that might contribute to breast cancer. This concept was broadened to include any/all tight garments on the body. For women this would include bras, panty hose, corsets, girdles, and even shoes. Research also included a long and extensive history of the bra, the issues of breast cancer and the global lingerie market. With several pages of statistics, and facts and figures about the bra, I thought that a visual representation of any conversation about the bra should be a more personal experience, reflecting opinions as individual as each woman who spoke on the subject. The bra/breast is a complex issue and the challenge was how to present its complexity in five minutes of video.

We had discussed having some statistical information on breast cancer and its attendant costs ($28 billion) and stats on the global lingerie/bra market ($29 billion) crawl across the screen with the appropriate visual. However, as the video came together as envisioned by the group and executed in the editing process, it became evident that crawling statistics might decrease the personal and individual impact we had agreed was important to such a short piece. Erin’s insistence on creating a question in the beginning and sticking to it, kept the project centered. And the method for deciding what to include or exclude – visual or narrative – depended upon whether or not it contributed an answer to the question “why do women wear bras?” and that it could do it in the space of a few seconds.

The final product does not include all of the facts and stats we gathered from research; neither does it suffer from the lack. If this piece took the form of a paper, the researched information would be more appropriate for inclusion. The bracumentary is representative and includes our original, collective vision of a reflexive, thought provoking, personal and particular, expandable topic that does not affirm a specific position. Carmen and Cathy contributed strong and sincere statements and I appreciated their enthusiastic support of this project. Julie and Erin are fortunate. Participation in this collaborative and creative effort made me more cognizant of the importance of staying on task, practicing patience, engaging in active listening, willingly compromise, and aiming for clarity in communication.

Failure
My own failure in this project points to the need for more knowledge of the technologies involved in the process and how to use them.

Success
I consider this project a success since it is the first bracumentary in which I’ve been involved:). I am bitten.

Ana

Under Wraps: Why Do Women Wear Bras – A Bracumentary

Book Review – Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

 

 

 

    

 

   

  

Amazons of the Huk Rebellion, Vina A. Lanzona

 

Vina A. Lanzona. Amazons of the Huk Rebellion: Gender, Sex, and Revolution in the Philippines
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009
Author: ANA THORNE
Affiliation: Claremont Graduate University
DOI: 10.1080/00497871003595711
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00497871003595711
Publication Frequency: 8 issues per year
Published in: Women’s Studies, Volume 39, Issue 3 April 2010 , pages 265 – 268   

Vina A. Lanzona. Amazons of the Huk Rebellion: Gender, Sex, and Revolution in the Philippines   

In Amazons of the Huk Rebellion, author Vina Lanzona places Filipina voices at the center of a discussion that reclaims their gendered political and social history. Within a framework of guerrilla warfare over a 30-year period, Lanzona records the private stories and military accounts told to her by a group of Filipinas who fought alongside men for land reform, social justice, and the elimination of poverty in their island nation. The oral narratives of the Huk women presented by Lanzona recover and validate the role of the Filipina Amazons in the resistance movement. While Philippine history has failed to reflect accurately the complex and contested representations of the Huk women, Lanzona presents an intimate look into their political and personal lives. At the same time, the author restores the women to their “rightful and central place” in the Huk movement by delineating their roles as women warriors, spies, couriers, wives, mothers, and daughters (5).   

Amazons of the Huk Rebellion outlines the historical timeline of the Huk movement (the first significant political and military group in the Philippines to actively recruit and train women) from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s by tracing the individual roles of the Huk women and their connections to the collective resistance. The first part of Amazons of the Huk Rebellion reflects the World War II struggles of the resistance movement, its designation as a Communist Party unit, and the Party’s attempts to control the sexual and social lives of its members by responding to such issues as “legal and forest wives” as a form of acceptable bigamy (13). Later in the book, Lanzona explores the larger debates around the issues of gender and the role of women in the post-war period, and the transformational influence of the Huk experience to change Filipina peasants into revolutionaries capable of commanding and marrying men, creating and carrying out military strategies and raids, capturing and killing enemies, and bearing and raising children.   

To compile the oral history of the Huk Amazons, Lanzona spoke to 70 women and 32 men between the ages of 62 and 88 who participated in the Huk movement. The interviews were conducted in Tagalog, the main language of the Philippines and Lanzona’s native language. Although the men and women relied on their memories to recall dates and events, Lanzona reports that her talks with the women gleaned a rich reserve of oral histories and stories. The women participated in an “active process of creation of meanings” and their recollections comprised their histories (18). In order to place the women in the historical record, Lanzona uses their real names (with the exception of two women) when quoting them or describing their experiences.   

The author does more than simply present facts. She also captures the unarticulated motivations, desires, and ideas of the Huk women that have been hidden from history. Lanzona found the women “open, candid, and surprisingly eager to share intimate aspects of their revolutionary lives” and discuss how their “political decisions fused with their personal lives” (17). The Huk women related their guerilla activities and also told Lanzona “what they had wanted to do and what they thought about their actions in the past” (18). In this way, the author combined historical facts with personal memory to present all sides of the public and private lives of the Huk Amazons.   

Lanzona records that the Filipinas had only two choices during the war, either “be victimized by the Japanese or resist them” (36). The reasons that Lanzona gives for Filipinas joining the Huk movement, however, note a broader range of choices. Women with little education and the expectation that they would end up as “teenage peasant wives,” chose revolutionary work and kept safe houses for Huk use (68). They acted as couriers and communications agents whose assignments required use of their kinship and social network relationships across villages and barrios. Women with previous political ties with smaller student, “peasant and leftist movements,” joined the Huks (42). Women trained and indoctrinated into the ways of the Huk rebellion, became valuable teachers, organizers, nurses, spies, and propagandists.   

Most of the Huk women, Lanzona reports, were the “wives, sisters, and even mothers” of the men they followed into the movement (44). Zenaida del Castillo, a Huk Amazon and daughter of a labor leader and Huk commander, explained that, “We all loved our father. We all followed his work and ideology because we wanted to be united in our family” (45). Lanzona presents that the maintenance of social and familial ties is an overriding concern of the Huk women even as they engage in supportive, ancillary, or active roles of resistance.   

Lanzona places the Huk Amazons within the legacy and mythology of female warriors within indigenous Philippine society and in the tradition of other female warriors in China, Vietnam, and Latin America. The activities of the Huk females fed the fascination of the Philippine press who characterized them variously as soldiers, military commanders, wives, mothers, former beauty queens, pretty girls, and rebel suspects.   

While all the female members of the Huk movement were called Amazons, Remedios Gomez, popularly known as Kumander Liwayway, is also referred to as the Joan of Arc of the Philippines. Lanzona counts Liwayway, who witnessed her father’s body on public display after being executed by the Japanese, among the women warriors who are seen as extraordinary because “they had stepped outside the accepted boundaries of female behavior” (177). Liwayway embraces this image and is quoted as saying that if being an Amazon means “carrying a gun, fighting with men against the enemy, and sacrificing my life for the cause of freedom, then I am proud to be a Huk Amazon” (156). Being an Amazon, however, did not preclude Liwayway’s identity as a woman. She managed to preserve her concepts of Filipina femininity even as she took on the masculine role of military commander. Lanzona relates that Liwayway “always combed her hair, manicured and polished her nails, and applied lipstick before going into battle” in order to instill “greater confidence” in the troops (155). In this way, Liwayway balanced the feminine and the masculine by “heightening the contrast between her feminine appearance and her masculine role” (177). What Liwayway most fought for, Lanzona records, was the “right to be myself” (155). She exercised that right when she appeared in front of her troops with her hair styled, wearing a full “application of make-up” and carrying a weapon.   

Dubbed “amasonas (amazons) in the Filipino vernacular,” the sensationalized newspaper stories of the victories, defeats and captures of the “women warriors elicited awe and admiration, as well as fear and hostility” (130). Lanzona tells that these accounts “ultimately bolstered men’s sense of superiority and domination” by portraying the behavior of the Amazons as anomalous and outside the purview of what it means to be Filipina (179). The Huk Amazons, according to Lanzona, appropriated and used the myth to provide an “image of female political power, military prowess, and autonomy” that was embraced by future Filipina activists (179).   

The women’s presence in the Huk movement brought the issues of gender, sexuality, and family into a highly structured military environment and challenged the women to combine and create new identities for themselves. The experiences of the Huk women informed their political ideologies and drastically altered their views of traditional female roles. Even though the Huk movement created a competing discourse on women’s roles in post-war Philippines, the Huk women did not represent the pre- or post-war “educated, professional, English-speaking ‘New Women’ nor the traditional, pious, passive, and devout Catholic Filipina” (177). Instead, the Huk women found themselves at the center of intersecting discussions that involved military actions, marriage, children, and social relations. The Huk Amazons negotiated these intersecting locations and managed to transcend gender and class limitations to create a new and expanded sense of gender identity. Lanzona traces successfully the role of the Filipina guerilla in relation to the collective Huk movement and explores non-essentialist relationships between men and women, while at the same time restoring the Huk Amazons to their rightful historical legacy. This work, told through the lives of the Huk Amazons, is a valuable contribution to the feminist tradition of women warriors and their families.   

Behind the Scenes

Women from the cast of The Vagina Monologues  

Antoinette Myers/Because He Liked to Look at It/Scripps; Nikki Redford/Wear and Say/Pomona; Ana Thorne/The Flood/CGU; Amina Simmons/The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could/Pomona; Daria Dulan/My Angry Vagina/Pomona

 

Feel like bustin' loose!

Fundraising Event – The Vagina Monologues – The Flood excerpt

V-Day Claremont

V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls.  It raises funds and awareness through benefit productions -among other things – of playwright/founder Eve Ensler’s sward winning play The Vagina Monologues and other works.  More than 4,000 V-Day events took place in 2009.  To date, the movement has raised over $70 million to educate millions on the issue of violence against women and efforts to end it, to create international educational, media and PSA campaigns, open shelters, and fund over 5,000 community-based anti-violence programs as well as safe houses in Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq.  The V-Day movement exists in 130 countries from Europe to Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and all of North America.  V-Day supports grassroots, national and international organizations and programs work to stop violence against women and girls. Visit http://www.vday.org.  The “V” in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine, and Vagina.

After a grueling audition, several weeks of early morning and late night rehearsals, the memorization of lines and movements, not to mention a hot, scratchy wig and pancake make-up, the end result is an almost eight-minute piece of unedited video shot by my teenage grandson with a Sony Handycam from his seat in the audience.  This performance occurred Saturday, March 6, 2010 in Balch Auditorium on the Scripps Campus.  This excerpt is titled “The Flood.”

Exploring Cultural Expressions in Zina Saro-Wiwa’s “This Is My Africa”: Elements of Identity, Framing and Composition in Cross-Cultural Documentary

TIMA-Draft-F1-022410-BlogPost-022610

Assignment number one inspired by an earlier post on “This Is My Africa.”

Extranjero

We leave our mark wherever we go, from Lincoln Heights to Mexico

 

They called him … puerco … negrito … el diablo. He learned the language. “Que le gusta bailar?” he asked the pretty girl in the yellow dress. Before the hearing aid, he heard her answer, “Si, te gusta el baile.”