Movie: Never Look Away
I recently watched a movie titled Never Look Away. It is a German film about an artist from East Germany who moves to the West before the wall comes down. In the film, the artist tries many different ways to find something to actually make art about. I am not going to discuss my opinions on the film, although it is a good film, and I enjoyed the look. I wanted to discuss voice.
I will only speak about my experience with voice because that's what I have been reflecting on and what I reflected on when I watched the film. That, and some really beautiful people in that film fit their roles very well.
Anyway, my voice has come from many different points in my life that inform my present, and my voice keeps changing. I had awkward, angry teenage years, and I had lonely childhood years; I had relationship love years, and breakups too. My voice right now wants to be heard.
I talk at all angles in my pieces and create dense pieces where every line says, "Look at me, I am important." Look at me till you are overwhelmed and overcome by your overwhelm. I think I use lines more than edges, and I let forms be whatever they want to be, but they end up being more cartoonish because that’s how I escaped the things that were giving me the hardest challenges.
German expressionists, with their dramatic angles and lighting, also initially inspired me through Tim Burton's work. Tim Selick, too, created a world where high-class craftsmanship didn’t seem to exist, yet the work took a simple-looking form because of the mastery behind it. I did not know at the time how they achieved that level of simplicity, but my ignorance was an excuse to try.
And voice helps others try; I didn’t go to CalArts, but at one point it was my dream. My voice changed, though, and I found new avenues of possibility for my work to exist. I enjoyed working one piece at a time, one experience at a time, which is different than animation. It's not so much that my influences shaped me entirely; it's more that they let me start.
In the movie, the main character doesn’t have permission to start looking around for the things that are important to him. So much of his life is happening; it's hard for him to really think about what he wants, but he knows he wants to think about it.
His move to the West and his enrollment in a free-thinking school permitted him to go looking. I didn’t need to go to school to have permission to start looking, and I think that is one point the movie really hit me with. Just start, man; it's not about it being the next great piece, it's about me starting to walk in a direction I’ve always wanted to, without the expectation or outside influence that would keep me from the experience of starting.
