《玛纳卡玛纳》是一部由Pacho Velez / Stephanie Spray执导，Pacho Velez / Stephanie Spray主演的一部纪录片类型的电影，特精心从网络上整理的一些观众的观后感，希望对大家能有帮助。
《玛纳卡玛纳》精选点评：
●这部片就像现代艺术一样，只能留给你自己理解。我等凡夫俗子只敢感受，不敢置评。
●有无搞错？！就这也入选烂番茄Top100，那我也能当纪录片导演了
●就着自己看电影的大成见，极力推荐这样的人类学视角。在仪式的时空轮回里看风景人事。manakamana，这座古老神庙的名字也如咒语般回环，和这部电影绝对五星的剪辑节奏实在是天作之合。
●哈佛人类学感官实验室？？？就是 盯了一段时间。。有点晕。。。
●主要在索道纜車的紀錄片，分開上山和下山2部份，拍攝揀選的上山燒香乘客，表現各不同，有沉默的，有閒話家常的，有細說沿路變遷的，也有忽發奇想演奏音樂的，每短時間不長不短，但是也暗暗反映這種旅遊開發的正反意見和心情。
●我要买个袖珍摄像机去做两百趟旋转木马
●确实够大胆 够前卫 够疯狂 不过也有点让人昏昏欲睡 我忍不住在几个地方快进了 确实只是一部实验性质的电影 不过也给人一种看尽世间百态的感觉 好几处让人忍俊不禁
●杰出？疯狂？有趣？实验性的确是有了 可我实在不喜欢把这样粗制滥造的创意称为电影 我看到的只是朝圣者和平凡人在镜头介入下的不自然 还真把自己架在缆车里的镜头当成神？11个长镜头 敢问11的含义？还是和这空有想法的片子一样 纯属兴起？ multi-tasking得看完
●16mm颗粒感，无懈可击的结构，6上5下（因为羊是有上无下），中间2分钟黑屏是寺庙钟声人群的声音，最后结尾还有一个很小的lens flare似的2秒，颜色是pastel粉黄，白，黑，fade，提醒胶片的存在
●哈佛大学的感官人类学实验室创作的影像，与其说是纪录片，不如说代表了当代影像艺术的高阶水平，他们开启了影像创作非常重要的一个面向——非人的视角。
《玛纳卡玛纳》观后感(一)：听记整理@HFA
声明：在被各种experimental的东西洗脑之后118分钟根本不枯燥呢，反倒觉得有趣得不行。由于在special event里面没有做笔记也怂逼不敢录音，如回忆有误或遗漏的地方欢迎指正。
背景介绍：Pacho Velez 现在教书，教intro to film， Stephanie Spray之前有在尼泊尔工作，现在在哈佛读博，是Sensory Ethnography Laboratory的teaching fellow，归在人类学department下面
tephanie 官网在此：http://www.stephaniespray.com/about/
acho Velez官网在此：http://www.pachoworks.com/
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1. 电影使用aaton super 16mm拍摄。一共拍摄了35趟。虽然一趟11分钟，但是为了录让大家完全上下缆车不得不呆在缆车上又下又上。所有的缆车镜头分了两个夏天完成拍摄，实际拍摄时间大概6，7个礼拜。 剪辑时间一年半，但是中途有各干各的事。Pacho开玩笑说比如两人聚一块干1天然后各忙各的隔个40天（此处有萌笑）
2.关于sound design，Stephanie说其实没有太多design，基本所听既所录。 除了有一些低频，羊上去的风声算是后期混的音效，还有转场的地方画面全黑的时候算作拟音，因为实际上是创造出来的空间的声音，有缆车的的声音，甚至加了一些其他的比如庙的声音。btw, 缆车出发到达的地方实际上并不是全黑的，弄成全黑是考虑到作为剪辑的转场。
3. Pacho说他们花了很多时间构思跟反复。比如年轻人放在哪儿，老人小孩放在哪儿，女人放在哪儿， 老阿姨们放在哪儿。比如母女吃冰淇淋那场他们想了很久，如果放在太前面那么基调一下子就太high，可是放太后面变成ending又觉得会不会有太多暗示。 结构上就好比一朵花，慢慢绽开，渐渐清晰，然后又慢慢收起来。自然的一个过程。
4. Stephanie说在芝加哥有一次放映的时候有尼泊尔的观众问为什么你们没有谈到temple， 拍了这么多去拜庙的人却一点manakamana没讲。 stephanie说其实我们一开始并没有没有那么多的从人类学种族学的角度考虑， 我们没有在一开始告诉大家manakamana是代表什么，人们坐的缆车是通向哪儿，是不是跟宗教有关。对于那些知道manakamana是什么的人而言，它的意思已经在那儿了。 对于不知道的人们来说也没有把重点放在这个上面，所以这也是把祭品羊放在上去的最后一次（第6次）的原因，作为一种暗示跟终结。 它们是祭品，不会再回来了。 也从另外一个角度视觉化人们坐缆车上山的原因。 当然片子是很open的结构，开放给大家解读。
5. 到底哪个作为ending scene也想了很久。stephanie笑，因为他们想要有电影质感，而一般电影常用音乐结尾，他们就想用父子谈乐器那段。可是放在影片里面又觉得不大对劲， 最后放了夫妻那段。（此处观众问那段音乐是自然而然发生的吗，stephanie笑，sort of。） Pacho说，音乐的部分并没有要求他们在哪里开始演奏，就是在他们上缆车之前问了一句你们会演奏吗，如果你们在中途演奏一段的话我们会超乐意嗒。
暂时这些，有想到再补充。
《玛纳卡玛纳》观后感(二)：Manakamana，念一道时空咒语
忍不住还是迅速地记一下观感，难得认真写一篇影评。
Manakamana是一座尼泊尔山脉中的古老神庙，古老如它的名字，或者说如它的咒语。manakamana，就差把后面的m和n调换一下位置，就可能变成一个回文。简单的元音反复，像是人类语言源头欲望的发声，mama／papa，是语言最初的单调也是撇去任何意义和指涉的欲望之音。mana在这个名字被重复了两次， 这个人类学家们不断研究的对象，莫斯写了一整本《巫术总论》分析的原始魔法。不论是不是巧合，manakamana都代表一种魔法的语言，先于一切意义的指向。
manakamana，语音上的反复和回环几乎成了整部电影时间结构的隐喻，一个个不完全的对称结构依靠缆车中转站的黑暗衔接起来。圆环不会带我们去同一个起点，我们不断在通往原点的旅程上来到别处。这般的回返和抵达是朝圣的最基本结构和逻辑，是此间生命作为朝圣最基本的体验。如果manakamana中的ka是一座山的山顶，那在魔法（mana）的两次牵引下，我们不断从山脚来到山顶／山脚来到山顶／山脚，这异样的空间感便是这部电影最基本的非现实观感。
直到电影过半，我才慢慢从一种空间的悖论中发现逻辑。电影第一次缆车之旅，老人和小孩没有言语交流，我们在一次向上的行径中体验高空中绿林的伸展、也体验自然在人工机械搭建起的移动节奏中变幻的面貌。耐心地抵达山顶，人与风景逐渐被缆车站的阴影所笼罩，第一次黑屏，缆车在轨道上转过一个半弧，背景中时而有窗户、有人。接着从黑屏中出现一个新的乘客，缆车启动，但令人惊讶的是，它并没有按寻常的时空逻辑向下开去，而是继续向上。但这第二次，一个衣着艳丽、头戴红花的当地居民捧着一束花，她的额头和脸上都点了红点，我们没有被告知这是何等的仪式，只有到第三第四次行程中我们才直到这辆缆车通往何方。于是，缆车继续向上，丝毫不遵守它的机械原理，但这次缆车镜中的风景却不是同一个。我在极端的疑惑之下无法厘清这里的空间关系，像是一种纯粹的魔法，在向上之后缆车仍能向上，却也能再次回到它的原点。于是我们开始追问，这向上的旅程究竟去往何方？
电影前半段反复上山的镜头是一次对去往manakamana朝圣的隐喻，是人类的集体上升——精神的、肉体的、心灵的——仿佛只有当所有人都反复着这脱离尘世的动向，我们作为对电影怀揣过多假设和预想的观者才能从一种对电影现实可解的假想中彻底和电影中的人们一起坐上这趟缆车，一起进入一个神圣与世俗、科技与自然交错的非现实的旅程。只有这样不合常理地将向上的片段剪辑在一起，通过缆车中转的那片黑暗过渡，我们才能从面对两个方向的上升风景交替的影像中进入那些村民的主观时空感受——空间的非现实性与上山朝圣的体验从现实向非现实的进程相互映射。
缆车中转站的黑暗恐怕是每个人都会注意到的，它令每次行程之间的续接仿佛一气呵成。它的黑暗映照着电影本身——电影院的黑暗。它的旋转也暗示着电影的拍摄和放映，胶卷的转动、时间的流变。但这段黑暗如果属于机械运动的时空——缆车轨道、放映机卷轴、电影院——导演在剪辑中花的大功夫便是让这个以机械和世俗为基础的时空运动彻底变成一种非现实的魔法，让机械彻底升华为古老的仪式、神秘的回环时间。在剪辑之下，缆车抵达的山头与缆车开始的山脚相接，这是一个黑色的、神秘的、完满的圆，从终点连接到原点，时间重新开始。这样回环的时间属于仪式、属于信仰，它的重复趋向无限、或许也不断趋向零，于是山头的庙宇、那个永远不会抵达、不被呈现的精神巅峰也是电影中的无——抵达它的同时，我们抵达黑暗，抵达电影的原点，抵达零。零和无限的相接，就在中转站的黑暗之中，黑暗与信仰之光既是科技与信仰的反题，也是同一。
因为镜头的交替不断让我们看到缆车两面的风景，这风景的变幻令我们一直无法确定所见的是不是同一个地方，加之缆车运动方向的悖论，我们始终在一次科幻的超现实旅程中徘徊。风景是一道自我与景象之间的屏，它的两端被屏分割，看与被看、观众与演员在屏的两边，是自我与自我之镜像的照面。一次上升的缆车，我们看着村民的脸（这里导演提到了安迪 沃荷70年代有名的《银屏测试》，他让他的朋友们一个个来到自己的工厂、说是为了他的一部电影试镜，让他们都在镜头前静止不动五分钟），看着他们看我们看不见的风景。他们看着我们看不见的风景，我们则看着他们看不见的另一边。但在下一程中，这样的关系将被层叠起来，我们将看到上一程中的乘客看到的风景，而他们将看到我们在上一程中看到的景色。风景被一座小小的缆车囊括，但风景也不断在观看的两端切换、延迟，此刻的风景也是彼刻之不可见，那道自我与自我之镜像间的屏也属于时间。
拍摄的天甚好，一边的山峦云雾缭绕、山色朦胧，不断让人想起德国浪漫主义绘画中“崇高”风景的典范之作；另一边的山峦艳阳高照，林木茂密葱翠在阳光下格外耀眼。这两边不同的山貌是风景与光的不同交汇，也是直到电影结尾才让我稍稍了解影片剪辑逻辑的关键。这烟云与艳阳的交替也是电影中各种成对的概念和感受中的一个：神圣与世俗、自然与科技、古老与现代、动物与人、风景与肖像、加上导演在采访中所说的——民族志与科幻。但最终这些成对的事物并不站在二元对立的两端无法和解，而是不断在一者中折射出另一者，好比山脚也是山头、山头也转为山脚。通往神圣的旅程由世俗的缆车为载体、自然的呈现始终被科技的动态所框定、要抵达古老与对民族信仰的探索我们仰仗着越发现代和科幻的手法（又或者科幻正在越发趋向古老，这也是诸多现代和后现代理论家们的观点）——电影又何尝不是最古老的现代科技？风景和肖像在这部电影中变得不可分割。这样一者中折射出另一者的手法贯穿全片，美国旅客与当地居民、吃冰激凌的两个老妇之间关系的张力、祭祀的动物与朝拜的人之间无声的对话，乘客不断提起的山头的林子和山间的路、过去的爬山和如今的缆车，依此类推。
于是，抛开一切更为复杂的关乎纪实与虚构、人类学与电影的思考，我不断回到电影的开头，这段沉默却胜过千言万语的旅程有两位成对的主角，一老一少。尽管电影结尾并未回到开头的景象——于是又是一个不完整的圆环——而是挑选了第三程中的那对夫妇，这一老一少仍然进入了海报。两人年龄的差异，两人互不相关的沉默作为电影的开场显然是导演精心剪辑中最慎重的选择。这个开场是一个巨大的隐喻，这次纪实的缆车之旅也是人生的缩影。Manakamana是一次次原点与终点的相扣，就像它名字中残缺的对称与镜像，这一老一少也是年轻的缆车在机械现实的重复中向年迈神庙的无限切近，也是现代胶卷在旋转的弧线中不断进入永恒。他们最终或许不是两个相互外在于对方的存在个体，而是被缆车这一情感与意识的载体融为一体的生命意识，他们的相遇是生命首尾面对面的凝视。或许，这部缆车上的电影就如它目的地的名字Manakamana一样，是一道关于时空的咒语。在一场灵验的旅程中，衰老也将回到幼年，天真也将历经沧桑。
《玛纳卡玛纳》观后感(三)：转：导演Q&A
原本想写一小段评论，查到网站上的导演访谈，里面谈到拍摄的手法、表演和纪实的成分、与当地人民的互动以及灵感来源、电影史先例（提到Andy Warhol的screentest的确不吃惊）等等，或许更能说明问题。就存在这里。
http://manakamanafilm.com
DIRECTOR Q&A
Directors Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez answer common questions about the making of their film MANAKAMANA in an interview with producers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel.
VP/LCT: What was the origin of the film？ Why Nepal？ How did you come up with the idea of making a film consisting of single shots lasting the duration of a roll of film set entirely inside a cable car in rural South Asia？
: I have been working and living in Nepal on and off since 1999. I started making films there in 2006. In 2010, I had been shooting in a small village outside Pokhara, mostly with a woman named Bindu and her family — she appears in the second shot of MANAKAMANA, holding a basket of flowers. I was feeling stymied because life in the village had become predictable, and so I started looking for ways to shake up what I was shooting. I had heard about a cable car that took passengers to the popular Hindu temple of Manakamana, the wish-fulfilling goddess, and thought a cable car would be a novel location for a film. I offered to take Bindu and her son Kamal on the cable car, and shot the ride on video. This experience made me feel that the surreality of riding in the cable car, high above the jungle, and the mix of emotions the trip inspires, was worthy of a film in itself. I imagined it would revolve around the circuit of the cable car and be composed of a series of shots of passengers for the duration of their rides, but little more.
V: Stephanie told me about this later when she was back at the Sensory Ethnography Lab in Cambridge. I mentioned a film set in passenger trains in Thailand called Are We There Yet？ by Sompot Chidgasornpongse, in particular some shots of people sitting and looking out the window. They were filmed with a tripod, so the seats and windows of the train were firmly fixed while the landscape scrolled past. These moments were relatively short, but I had the sense that inside of them was the kernel of another film, something that would combine portraiture and landscape in a more rigorous, sustained way.
For me, the choice to work in Nepal was largely incidental. I like traveling and experiencing different cultures, and I think that ‘foreignness’ can be a useful element in films when it functions as an alienation effect to let audiences see something familiar with fresh eyes, but I am more animated by themes like performance, mobility, and technology than by a deep investment in any one particular culture. I think that Stephanie feels quite differently, and the difference has been productive for our collaboration.
VP/LCT: How did you arrive at the formal structure of the film, and the sequence of shots？
V: When I was a student at CalArts, I directed quite a bit of theater, and I was intrigued about the “doubleness” of acting — actors’ studied non-attention to their audience. This interest carries over for me into MANAKAMANA — I’m watching the subjects’ awareness of their world, and how it shifts to acknowledge the passing landscape, other passengers, and private thoughts, before occasionally, obliquely returning to the camera, which is so clearly staring at them, yet is never explicitly addressed. These switches between different sorts of focus are crucial because they create the pace of the individual shots, which in turn creates the rhythm of the entire film. To make edits in the shots would have imposed another sort of rhythm on top of the material, obscuring these internal cadences. Our pace of editing was glacial. The final film has only eleven shots but it took us eighteen months of editing to arrive at it, which works out to our deciding on one shot every forty days or so.
: We decided at the outset that the units of the film would be uncut 10-11 minute shots lasting the length of an entire 400’ magazine of 16 mm film. How to structure these shots became a puzzle that we worked on for an eternity. We tried many variations, but decided early on that the trips inside the cable car would travel up the mountain to the top station and then, a little over the halfway mark, the trips would all return to the bottom.
VP/LCT: Non-fiction and fiction films alike are cast. How did you cast this film？ What were you looking for in your characters？
: Many of the characters we chose were from villages where I had been making previous films, because we already trusted one another, and they were at ease in front of a camera. The three older women in MANAKAMANA are my adopted Nepali mothers and two of them are co-wives. Pacho and I took advantage of these established relationships, since they were the least performative and the folks were more engaged with the landscape and the ride than the two of us with our equipment. Others, such as the American woman and her Nepali friend, were only acquaintances and we didn’t quite know what to expect, but we were happily surprised. Contrary to what many assume, Pacho and I were both inside the 5’x5’ cable car along with our riders; we didn’t simply send them off alone; this would have been technically almost impossible and wouldn’t have created the same tensions — between avowal or disavowal of the camera, and the different degrees of complicity, indifference, and discomfiture it engenders.
V: Casting is a guilty pleasure. I get to inspect people, head to toe, in a way that would be totally unacceptable in other parts of my life. It’s this intuitive, haphazard process that boils down to a single, fairly rude, question -- do I want to look at this person for an extended period of time？ Someone who, for whatever reason, captivates us.
VP/LCT: The film is by turns quotidian and mythic; profane and sacred; ludic and solemn; and intimate and removed. What do you see as the relationship between these various polarities in the film, and how did you put them into play？
V: These shifts enter the film through changes in the quality of our characters’ attention as they experience ‘transport,’ both up the hill via the cable car as well as the spiritual movement that comes from visiting a holy place. The body and the spirit, the sacred and the profane — in our quiet fashion, we tried to capture some part of the ebb and flow between them. For hundreds of years, people had to walk up this hill to visit the temple. And the cable car changed that journey from an active experience into a passive one. It turned pilgrims into passengers. Which makes me think about how technology has shifted people’s relationship to seemingly fixed quantities like distance and time, and through these changes altered basic social concepts like family, religion, and tradition.
: These polarities can be likened to audiences’ shifting perceptions between the foreground (the human subjects and the space of the cable car) and background (the massive landscape which is never revealed or encompassed as a whole). The two are always present and can, at times, be perceived together, but frequently exceed our ability to engage them both at once. The sacred and profane are intertwined for the pilgrims, whereas the sacred recedes and can only be experienced vicariously by most day tourists and foreigners.
VP/LCT: One of the most striking qualities of MANAKAMANA is that it has a fictional feel at the same time as an ethnographic investment in subjectivity and cultural difference and a documentary engagement with the real. Could you talk a little about these characteristics of the film？
: All fiction films retain a degree of documentary, in that they document performances, although this is more or less obscured in mainstream films with quick edits and effects. The works of fiction that I find the most compelling are those that give us time to linger in the space of shots, rather than hurriedly propel us forward by narrative agendas. It would have been impossible for us to recreate this film with the same subtlety had we hired professional actors and given them a ｓｃｒｉｐｔ describing the same scenes and dynamics between subjects. The opening scene in Nicolas Pereda’s film Perpetuum Mobile shows an elderly woman fumbling about with Kleenex tissues, slipping them in and out of her pockets, while sitting on a bed. It is framed oddly, as if the camera is hidden. It’s completely genius and astounding and I often wondered how he directed her in this scene; for it is purportedly about nothing, and yet it is extremely powerful. I feel her presence and her realness because in that moment she is no mere character. I later learned that this woman hadn’t been directed at all, but rather the camera had simply been left rolling, unbeknownst to her.
The distinction between fiction and non-fiction is frequently murky and the documentary engagement with the real is found across genres, but extremely hard to get on film, since most film subjects slip into becoming someone other than themselves, self-conscious representations, even if they are not purportedly acting. In MANAKAMANA, the trip itself is surreal; passengers are propelled above a jungle in Nepal, en route to a temple inhabited by a goddess who demands blood sacrifice. Most passengers have never been in airplanes and the time aloft can be frightening and exhilarating. This detachment it bestows upon the journey for the passengers heightens the sense that this world is fictional, for it is indeed a manufactured and unnatural experience for most of them.
V: I do a lot of my thinking about dramatic structure, aesthetics, and pacing through the lens of theater and of fiction. I’m also much more engaged by the ethical discussions around consent and representation in fiction than in documentary. And I like that fiction more often trusts its audience to luxuriate in images and sounds without worrying too much about conveying information. When properly employed, this reticence encourages audiences to actively generate their own understanding of an ambiguous situation. Documentarians can use the strategy too, though for many it seems too fuzzy, too open to multiple interpretations or misunderstandings. But embracing this reticence is, I think, where the element of fiction enters into MANAKAMANA.
VP/LCT: What was your division of labor in the film？ And what was the recording set-up in the cable cars？
V: Magicians. Secrets. Et cetera.
: Pacho operated the camera, the Aaton 7 LTR, while I recorded sound with a shotgun stereo microphone on a two-channel sound recorder. We knew we wanted consistent framing, so we hired Nepali carpenters to build a stable wooden base which we anchored our hi-hat tripod to. The camera we used had special significance for us as it was the same camera used by ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner for his 1986 masterpiece Forest of Bliss, which was shot in the sacred Hindu city of Varanasi, also a very popular pilgrimage site. Aware of the legacy of his films, we were propelled to think about how our film would relate to the portrayal of the ethnographic Other in film, and how we could counteract that.
VP/LCT: Why did you shoot on 16 mm film？ What’s wrong with digital？
: We chose to shoot on film not only for aesthetic reasons, but because it lends structural integrity to our commitment to filming the full duration of rides on the cable car. The time that elapses over a 400’ magazine of 16 mm film is roughly how long it takes for a ride up or down the mountain. The cable of the Manakamana cable car also runs parallel to the spool of film as it is exposed to light.
V: Film is beautiful. And messy in just the right ways. A clean, crisp digital image would have felt incongruous. It would have allied the film’s aesthetics with the engineers who designed the cable car instead of the locals who use it. Also, both motion picture cameras and cable cars are machines that measure time through movement. And both propel images past our eyes.
VP/LCT: Influences are both unconscious and conscious. Are there any films or filmmakers whose work has been formative for you？
V: I remember going to a Pedro Costa Q+A where he kept insisting that the work he did on Colossal Youth was no different from what John Ford used to do when directing a western. And, as precedents for MANAKAMANA, there are the obvious influences like Sharon Lockhart, James Benning, Robert Gardner, and Abbas Kiarostami. But I also love things like Henry Fonda square dancing against the backdrop of Monument Valley, so in the spirit of Pedro Costa, I’m going to talk about those sorts of influences.
tephanie and I were thinking a lot about mixing genres in this film. Not just landscape and portraiture, but also ethnography and science fiction. And they’re related. I mean, what is Captain Kirk but a 24th century anthropologist, ‘boldly going where no man has gone before’ to explore foreign cultures？ There’s a definite connection between classic scifi representations of space travel and our shots of people riding small metallic boxes through the air. Listen for it in the soundtrack, especially.
I was also looking and thinking about films like Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, or the car ride that George Clooney takes during the credits of Michael Clayton (an otherwise totally forgettable film -- but watch Clooney’s eyes in that last shot!), or the scene in Lisandro Alonso’s Los Muertos when the protagonist is riding along in the back of a pick-up while it races through the jungle. Of course, these are all very different films from MANAKAMANA, but they capture some of the same shifting consciousness, the sense of watching people think against an unfolding landscape.
: For MANAKAMANA, the influential films for me are those of James Benning, especially 13 Lakes and 10 Skies; Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests and Blowjob; and, similar to Benning’s work, Sharon Lockhart’s films Nō and Pineflat. Colossal Youth, Vanda’s Room, and Bones by Pedro Costa, and Los Muertos and Liverpool by Lisandro Alonso are similar stylistically and in content and have been extremely influential, as I saw how the mundane could appear mysterious and beautiful in cinema; Sergei Dvortsevoy’s non-fiction films Paradise, Highway and Bread Day taught me that cross-cultural appreciation didn’t require exposition or a complete knowledge of arcane symbolic meaning. In MANAKAMANA, Pacho and I challenged ourselves to take what we love from structural films, and infuse it with a sincere engagement with human subjects, who would nonetheless appear exotic to most audiences.
VP/LCT: What is the relationship between this film and your earlier work, and where does it fit in the evolution of your respective styles？
: Rather than fixating on “issues” or extraordinary events, in my films I have been interested in how a person’s presence could be evinced through subtle movements and expressions, and perhaps in conveying a sense of “realness” or personhood that could unsettle presumptions about cultural or racial difference and the inequalities they perpetuate. I hope that, if my previous films are about anything, they are about something basic about experience itself, what it feels like to linger in a place with people over time. For this reason, I favored rambling conversations to interviews, and shots that loiter with their subjects, allowing the shots to develop internally as well as within in the larger structure of the film. An implied subject in many of my films is time itself, and how its texture varies as it unfolds over the duration of the moving image and in our lives. For this reason, I have always been interested in long takes and duration. Several of my previous pieces are comprised of 11-14 minute single takes, sometimes handheld, at other times on a tripod. My film As Long As There’s Breath (2009) was 57 minutes long, and comprised of just 17 shots.
V: I’m not yet far enough along in my career to discern a path or an evolution beyond the hope that each successive film improves upon the last one. I dig a lot of holes seeding my various interests, and occasionally one sprouts into something worthwhile. A fair bit of my work has been agit-prop-style documentary, and a lot of it has also been co-directed with Harvard anthropologists, but I’m also increasingly branching out into other kinds of film. My next project will be a short ‘inaction thriller’ starring my grandmother, and I’m in the planning stages of an archival film based on Ronald Reagan’s Hollywood years. Both of these projects are a long way from the structural, ethnographic approach of MANAKAMANA. But I’m sure the experience of making this film will filter into future projects.