Close Your Eyes and Look As Far As You Can See

A visit to Real Art Ways packs a double whammy. It's a cinema (with reasonably-priced indie movies you frequently won't find anywhere else besides NYC and SF) and an art gallery. Once you've paid for your movie ticket, the gallery is free. And they have wine!

I saw several exhibits there this weekend. In the main gallery, Olu Oguibe has built a beautiful, traditional New England stone wall. Does putting it inside an artspace, as opposed to a field, make it art? Well, it begins a dialog at least. Oguibe fantasizes about people heatedly discusses this question while viewing his piece.

In the Real Room is an exhibit by Ryan V. Brennan called "Close Your Eyes and Look As Far As You Can See." It consists of four pieces of "cinemallage"--elaborate, colorful sets which look like pop-up books. Each piece has a tiny screen on which plays part of a stop-motion animation fantasy. The animations were filmed using the sets. Cinema + collage = cinemallage. Get it? It's accessible and cool.

Beijing Taxi

With one Chinese lesson under our belts, Alma and I, along with my screenwriting buddy W. T. Brooks, headed down to Hartford to see Beijing Taxi at Real Art Ways. Are we optimistic or what? We caught "hao," "xai jian," "ba," and a few other words, but overall I'd have to say: thank God for subtitles.

The real draw was meeting the director, Miao Wang, for a discussion after the film. (There she is with Bill; the other photo is a still from the film.) Miao is Chinese-born, but immigrated to the U.S. after Tianamen Square. Struck by the changes each time she returned to Beijing, she decided to make a film that would capture the spirit of her rapidly-evolving city. The months leading up to the Beijing Olympics seemed the perfect time; the gregarious taxi drivers the perfect guides. After riding in many taxis and lurking in many driver-frequented noodle shops, she narrowed her protagonists to three: Bai Jiwen, Zhou Yi, and Wei Caixia.

Miao became quite attached to her stars, particularly to Wei Caixia, a young married woman with one daughter. There was an endearing sweetness to all three drivers, but particularly Wei, who has an unfocused yearning for "freedom." She doesn't really want to drive a cab, she doesn't really want to run a shop, she doesn't really want--as her husband continually suggests--to work full-time. She would like to give her daughter things she didn't have as a child: real art lessons, for example. She dreams of her daughter becoming an artist. If she hadn't been driving through the streets of Beijing, speaking Mandarin, I would have pegged her for an American.