![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ch’u Maya (Blue Maya)
Nov. 14th, 2019 01:37 pmAs part of my journeyings in the wild East, a friend and I visited the Smith College Museum of Art. In the basement there’s a screening room that shows (one presumes) art films: when we visited, the 17-minute “Ch’u Maya” (or “Blue Maya”), a film by Clarissa Tossin, which features a dancer (Crystal Sepulveda) in leopard print dancing in front of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House, a mansion built in 1919 in the Mayan Revival style.
The informational plaque told us that the film is intended to critique the cultural appropriation inherent in the Mayan Revival style, but I don’t think it’s successful at that goal. Here you’ve got a wonderful dancer on a beautiful sunny day dancing in front of this building in a way that shows off its intricate design from many different angles. There are panoramic shots of the house, there are medium views like the scene where three dancers (actually all Crystal Sepulveda) dance on the lip of a fountain, and then there are close-ups that really get right up in the details of the carvings in a way that showcases the way that the crisp Los Angeles shadows are incorporated into the design. (There’s also a lizard, whose appearance must have been delightful serendipity for the filmmakers.)
There’s no talking and no particular story, just a woman dancing to a musical accompaniment, but the whole thing is unexpectedly absorbing: the dance and the architecture enhance one another to create a feast for the eyes.
Of course, if you walk into the film in a “It’s time to critique cultural appropriation!” frame of mind, you can definitely get that out of it. But you’ve got to bring the critique in from outside, as it were: on its own, the film really feels like a celebration of this beautiful building.
The informational plaque told us that the film is intended to critique the cultural appropriation inherent in the Mayan Revival style, but I don’t think it’s successful at that goal. Here you’ve got a wonderful dancer on a beautiful sunny day dancing in front of this building in a way that shows off its intricate design from many different angles. There are panoramic shots of the house, there are medium views like the scene where three dancers (actually all Crystal Sepulveda) dance on the lip of a fountain, and then there are close-ups that really get right up in the details of the carvings in a way that showcases the way that the crisp Los Angeles shadows are incorporated into the design. (There’s also a lizard, whose appearance must have been delightful serendipity for the filmmakers.)
There’s no talking and no particular story, just a woman dancing to a musical accompaniment, but the whole thing is unexpectedly absorbing: the dance and the architecture enhance one another to create a feast for the eyes.
Of course, if you walk into the film in a “It’s time to critique cultural appropriation!” frame of mind, you can definitely get that out of it. But you’ve got to bring the critique in from outside, as it were: on its own, the film really feels like a celebration of this beautiful building.
