Hey, Everyone!
Great News!
"Stuff" got an Oregon Media Arts Fellowship for $5000! It's going to be a real help because I'm at the point now where I need some music and some more shooting and some more... oh, well, there goes the 5 bills! But it will really push the film along. The Oregon Media Arts Fellowship was designed to reward those whose work shows exceptional promise and who have demonstrated a commitment to film or video art. The Oregon Arts Commission, the Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation and Oregon Public Broadcasting fund the Fellowship. The Northwest Film Center/Portland Art Museum administers the Media Arts Fellowship program. The Oregon Film and Video Office and Chambers Communications provide additional support.
Blessings to all!
Larry
Stuff
I am pleased to present to you the trailer from a personal documentary film that I have been working on for the past two years, Stuff. This film, about men losing fathers, is for me a personal journey that I hope relates to everyone.
This film is being made through small grants from arts organizations and donations from people like you who can relate to what happens to a person when a parent dies. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help us finish the film. Any tax-deductible contribution you can make would be greatly appreciated. Please pass this letter and trailer along to the people you know who might find it interesting.
I am deeply grateful for your time, attention, and support.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Johnson
Director/Producer, Stuff
| About the film [Top] | Watch the trailer | |
Part road movie, part meditation, Stuff finds true moments of illumination in its search for the meaning of what it is to be a son and a father. Stuff will include live action and animated sequences. |
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This film is made possible in part through grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and the Oregon Media Production Association. |
Stuff is an intimate and unflinching examination of fathers and sons. It interweaves the stories of two men, the filmmaker and his friend Phil, a carpenter, after the deaths of their fathers. The filmmaker attempts to understand his father and himself through a storage unit full of the stuff his father left behind, while Phil seeks to overcome years of pent-up anger as he drives his father's ashes to Iowa for burial next to his father’s mother.
Project Description [Top]
“The psychological or physical absence of fathers from their families is one of the great underestimated tragedies of our time.”
-Samuel Osherson, Ph.D., Finding Our Fathers
Over the last two hundred years, the father’s role in the family has been gradually minimized. The colonial father was head of the house and involved in all levels of the family. After World War II, the father’s role had been reduced to breadwinner and occasional disciplinarian. Many baby-boomers grew up in households in which the father was either emotionally or physically absent and the mother was in charge of the child rearing. Hence, the natural relational development of boys from the world of the mother to that of the father was often interrupted. Of the 7,239 men surveyed in the Hite Report (1981) “almost no men said they had been or were close to their fathers.” This, coupled with the baby-boomer’s rebellion against traditional family values in the sixties has lead to, among other things, an epidemic of depression across all sectors of our society, a rise in divorce, violence and dysfunction, and the overuse of medications as a replacement for parental love.
Through the interwoven stories of the filmmaker and his friend, Phil Wilson, STUFF will re-enact this drama of interrupted development and show how it may have affected the protagonists' growth as men. It will also show how a father’s sickness and death stimulates an urge in a son to seek the fulfillment of an unanswered need for intimacy with the father. Phil Wilson:
“You know, it seems like there’s just no way to resolve the fact of somebody being so utterly gone to me. I don’t know if anybody can ever do it. ... Like last night I walked down stairs and I saw something, which hit me, which made it hit me that I'm fatherless. And I just couldn't except it for a moment until I just looked away and didn't deal with it anymore.”
Phil and the filmmaker attempt to connect with their fathers through different ritualized acts. Phil undertakes a journey across the country -- a kind of pilgrimage to his father’s hometown -- and enacts the ceremony of returning his father’s remains to the earth next to his mother’s grave. This brings a sense of completion to his grief. The filmmaker, on the other hand, connects with his father through his father’s stuff, his home movies, pictures, books and tools. He moves the stuff from California into a storage unit, then moves it again. The stuff becomes a burden. He tries to sell some of it, and it starts to get mixed up with his own stuff as his life starts to disintegrate. It seems this search is somehow connected to a crisis of self-awareness in the filmmaker’s life. Soon, the film itself becomes a means to find his 
father and himself, as he integrates the ideas of the film into his consciousness. The act of making the film liberates the filmmaker to look at himself and his relationships with fresh eyes. For the audience, these thought-provoking stories will catalyze similar self-analysis.
STUFF will also explore the problem of Alzheimer’s disease and the stress it puts on families of those suffering from the disease. The filmmaker’s mother, a victim of Alzheimer’s, will be featured in STUFF, as the filmmaker visits her and attempts to communicate with her. Robbed of her opportunity to grieve for her husband by the lack of comprehension caused by the disease, she lives with only seconds of memory, doomed to a kind of purgatory of the moment. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, over 5,000,000 Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, and a new person is diagnosed with the disease every 72 seconds. By 2030 the cost of caring for those with Alzheimer’s will approach $400 billion, enough to bankrupt the Medicare system. Building public awareness and support for Alzheimer’s research is a necessary and worthwhile cause.
“Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some resolution which it may never find.”
-Robert Anderson, I Never Sang for My Father
Filmmaker Bio [Top]
Lawrence Johnson, Producer/Director of Stuff
Lawrence Johnson has been making films since his childhood, and has developed a national reputation for historical and cultural documentary and films for museums across the country. Many of his films have been seen on Public Broadcasting stations across the country. He has created films for museums such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Washington State History Museum and the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Johnson has taught cinematography at the Portland Art Museum’s Northwest Film Center and has completed several residencies through its Filmmaker-In-Schools program. Stuff will be his first personal documentary.
Filmography [Top]
LAWRENCE JOHNSON
SELECTED FILM AND BROADCAST VIDEO
Celebration! The Plains Indian Museum Powwow - 2006.
three possible scenes - 2002
Coming Home was Easy: The West Coast Salmon Troller – 2003
The Mustache - 2001
Hand Game - The Native North American Game of Power and Chance - 2001
Arrow Chain - Reclaiming Our Heritage – 1990
Mas Fever - Inside Trinidad Carnival - 1989
Work Is Our Joy - 1989
Steam Whistle Logging - 1987
Remembering Uniontown - 1985
The Ghostwriter – 1981
R.V.N. - 1973MUSEUMS AND INTERPRETIVE AUDIO/VISUAL
“Range Creek: Archeology of Place” Utah Museum of Natural History – 2006
"Oregon, My Oregon" Oregon Historical Society - 2004
National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame - 2002.
Oystering on the Chesapeake - 2001
Plains Indian Museum - 2000
Boonshoft Museum of Discovery - 1999
Tamustslikt Cultural Institute - 1998
Sunny Valley Applegate Trail Museum - 1998
In The Presence of the Past: The Miami Indians of Indiana - 1998
Washington History Museum - 1996
Sea Album - 1995
Sacred Encounters - 1993NORTHWEST FILM CENTER RESIDENCY PROJECTS
Alien Invaders - 1997
What Is My Homeland Now? and So They Will Know Who I Am - 1994
Wetland Neighbors - 1993
Science for the Real World - 1992
The Hidden City - 1991
Restoring C. S. Price -1990AWARDS & FESTIVALS
2006 – Honorable Mention, Experimental, Kansas City Jubilee Film Festival
2004 – Best Live Action Short, RiverRun International Film Festival
2003 - Telly Bronze Award
2002 - Bearded Child Film Festival, Grand Rapids, Minnesota
2001 - Northwest Film Festival, Spokane, Washington
2001 - Native Peoples Film & Video Festival, Montreal
2000 - Opening event, American Indian Film Festival, San Francisco
2000 - Native American Film & Video Festival, Smithsonian Institution, New York
2000 - Five Rivers Film Festival, University of Montana, Missoula
1999 - Certificate For Creative Excellence, U.S. International Film and Video Festival
1998 - Gold Apple, National Education Media Network
1998 - Cine Eagle
1998 - Certificate of Merit, Outdoor Writers Association of America
1997 - Muse Award, Second Place, Cultural Studies, American Association of Museums
1996 - Second Place, World Populations Film and Video Festival
1996 - Finalist, Cascade Awards, Documentary
1995 - Golden Muse, American Association of Museums
1995 - Muse Award, First Place, Cultural Studies, American Association of Museums
1995 - Muse Award, Third Place, Interactive, America Association of Museums
1994 - Young People’s Film & Video Festival, Certificate of Achievement
1994 - Cascade Award, Best of year, Multi-media
1992 - Best of Show, Student Category, North American Association for Environmental Education
1991 - Muse Award, Third Place, Artist Programs, American Association of Museums
1991 - Golden Reel, Local Documentary, National Federation of Community Broadcasters
1990 - Gold, Houston International Film Festival
1990 - American Association of State and Local History, Award of Merit
1988 - American Association of State and Local History Certificate of Commendation
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