K
Joined: Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 1506
|
K
Here's some stuff I found online related to Leeteg. The first is an article on the Waldorf in Vancouver - which is to Leeteg as the Hala Kahiki is to Witco - and an article on a Leeteg-related film. If anyone knows where to aquire the film, please let us know.
The Waldorf Hotel: A Time Capsule
The Waldorf Hotel was
built in 1948 by original
owners, Bob and Pat Mills, now
both deceased. In 1970 the
ownership switched over to
Srecko (known as Frank)
Puharich. It is said that the
hotel's decline was partly due
to the Mills' frequent trips
to Tahiti where Bob indulged
in extravagant purchases like
the original Leeteg paintings
(now highly prized) and also
partly due to the fiery
arguments that followed as
debts ensued. In order to keep
the Waldorf alive, the Mills
were forced to bring partners
into the business. Frank was
one of the partners then,
investing his hard earnings
into the hotel and working his
way up from quarter partner to
half partner, to eventually
buying out the owner. These
days Frank Puharich, now in
his eighties and still working
in the kitchen, starts at five
o'clock in the morning and
leaves at ten at night every
day. Ownership
responsibilities have passed
on to two of his three
children, Marko and Vesna, who
together manage the hotel.
VELVET VENUSES:
DIRECTOR SIMA URALE
By Ed Rampell, Samoa
Samoa's first female director, Sima Urale, fills her latest film with images of bare breasts. The breasts belong to Polynesian maidens in sarongs with flowers tucked behind their ears -- the fantasy of Western men and antithesis of Western feminists.
"People have had a problem with Velvet Dreams having too many breasts," Urale chuckles. "But in actual fact we were very barebreasted back in the old days, and I don't think there's anything wrong with being sexual...I thought I'd play up the sensuality rather than try and pretend they're not sensual."
Only age 30, Urale is emerging as a major new directorial talent. Her 1996 debut film, O Tamaiti (The Children), won eight international awards, including the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Velvet Dreams, made for New Zealand television, recently had its U.S. premier at the Hawaii International Film Festival where it was a favorite.
Velvet Dreams opens up and expands the cinematic syntax of nonfiction film form. The film zooms in on the genre of black velvet paintings known for kitschy Elvises and clowns. The film tells the story of a renowned black velvet painter who produces barebreasted "dusky maidens" inhabiting tropical Edenic isles.
Rather than use a straightforward, talking-head narrative format, Urale ingeniously imposes a faux film noir style. The unseen narrator is a Sam Spade-like private eye who serves "as an entertainment device, but also to link the stories and the interviews together," says the director. The "fake, made-up narrator," as Urale calls him, falls in love with a nubile naked native nymph portrayed on velvet. The Humphrey Bogart sound-alike travels from New Zealand to Seattle (for a bizarre velvet painting exhibit) to French Polynesia, and back to New Zealand again on an epic Oceanic odyssey to find the model for his velvet vahine (Tahitian word for woman).
Along the way, in the Tahitian islands, the 47-minute documentary includes an interview with the velveteer Eric Cridland, and Jacqueline Cadousteau, the main model for the father of contemporary black velvet painting, Edgar Leeteg. In the end, the private eye never finds his "dusky maiden," but rather, in a Freudian twist, discovers the painter instead, a robust 90ish New Zealander named Charlie McPhee, who still delights in barhall carousing and wearing red blazers. In a subtle way, Urale insinuates that these velvet fantasies exist mainly in the minds of obsessed white men, yearning to escape from civilization and its discontents, and return to a mythic state of nature.
Urale inventively saves Velvet Dreams from being just another dull, conventional talking header. The director calls her documentary "a send up," or spoof, and makes her nationalistic and feminist points about racism, sexism and colonialism with a great deal of wit. Urale's satirical, dead-on observations are full of humor, rather than anger, making Velvet Dreams more accessible to Western audiences.
"It's about... the cliched image....[those] very sensual paintings." said Urale. "But I think the film goes a bit deeper than that, and it's really about the subjects, those women, and about the white painters who, in a way, colonized the Pacific by painting these women. But at the same time, they really did love the islands and married these island women."
Urale has a love-hate relationship with the velvet Venuses. "Yeah, I think they're beautiful images, but what I guess I'm trying to say in Velvet Dreams is that there are more aspects about the Pacific than just that image....The only thing they convey is ... sensual paradise, all those really cliched things about the Pacific, which are partly true. But then there's all these other amazing things about the Pacific that people don't know about."
Part of that Western ignorance about the Pacific is that there "aren't enough of us interested in filmmaking and writing... I'm still waiting for others to appear around me... I can feel quite lonely at times," she says with a laugh.
Urale's family emigrated to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, from Fagamalu, Savaii when she was six in 1974. Savaii is the larger of the two main islands that compose the independent nation of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa.
Although she loved painting and wanted to attend a school of fine arts, Urale ended up studying drama. She then acted for two years doing both white and Maori plays. One of her early directors was renowned Maori actress Rena Owen, star of Once Were Warriors [See Proud Warrior:Actress Rena Owen WIN 10]. But then she tired of it.
"I think you really get sick of acting because you tend to get typecasted by other people, and you end up... working on other people's ideas," she said. "So, I think acting can be quite uncreative, and I wanted to create my own stories. Because I think we have a hell of a lot of stories to tell."
What really bothered Urale was "the lack of Pacific Island... and Samoan works. And also a lack of stories I was more interested in. I was doing rehashed plans that were very well known...very popular, white plays, but not my kind of plays," Urale confesses.
So, the Samoan emigrated again, this time to Australia, where she studied filmmaking for three years at Melbourne Victorian College of the Arts, Film and Television School. She hoped, "going to film school meant that I was going to, you know, maybe have a bit more control in the directing arena."
After graduation, she returned to New Zealand and made O Tamaitit, a 15-minute black and white film, which is in Samoan with English subtitles. The film tells the story of a young Samoan boy living with his family in New Zealand who struggles with the responsibilities of looking after his younger brothers and sisters.
"It's got to do with integrity. It would not have been believable if I made a Samoan family speak English," she said. "Because this family was... immigrants [in Wellington] Éspeak Samoan."
She added, "It's quite an art-house little piece.... And it's an unconventional storytelling for a Polynesian story or content...It's very stylized, very visual and sound orientated."
What does the film future hold for this islander auteur? Urale says she has a development deal in the works to direct a feature, but wants to take her time.
"I just hope I continue to make really diverse films, because there're all sorts of aspects about me that I can bring out in... film... And there're a lot of issues that I feel really strongly about...I really don't want to be typecast as a particular type of filmmaker," she said. "Actually, I don't even want to be typecast as a Pacific Island filmmaker. You know, I hope to make all sorts of films, because there are so many wonderful stories out there."
|
