Wednesday, May 27, 2009
A Vision of Desert Burbopolis
Video as an art medium has always felt like it had so much potential but more so than many media, it takes the right artist with the right formula to do be able to untap its unique powers. The essay is one of the most elusive of forms. The filmmaker must be careful and judicious of the elements they utilize to explore their topic and tell their tale.
Local 909er, a half hour video essay by multi-faceted artist Erin Baxter Blader is a stunning piece of work that explores the Inland Empire of Southen California. Baxter masterfully orchestrates the elements she has chosen: sun bleached video imagery, her narration that contrasts a stilted somewhat monotone with powerful impassioned content about what is happening to the region she calls home, several segments that utilize still photography in a way reminiscent of Chris Marker's La Jette and a sculpted soundtrack which repeatedly returns to sound of a radio being tuned.
"In the last three years more people have moved to the Inland Empire than anywhere else in the United States," Blader states in the film's narration. She moves through a series of short profiles of places like Upland where Blader lives. She contrasts a local County Fair festival in Upland that is barely attended with the synthesized old downtown Victoria Gardens Mall owned by the Lewis Corporation in Rancho Cucamonga.
We also visit Norco, California known as Horsetown, USA. One can get a good sense of the tone and voice of Local 909er by
viewing this excerpt from the film. Norco is one of the several towns filled with big burb homes filled with residents who commute two to three hours for work.
In the world of Local 909er big money and big profits are the ruling order. Master plan communities of new homes homes spring up in dairy land where residents "have to contend with flooded out roads, manure saturated mud on their cars and flies, the flies, and flies... ."
Then there is Banning, California, "pretty much in the middle of the desert." In this segment Blader shows how when big box stores like Walmart upgrade to Super store status the old buildings are abandoned and impact the buildings around them and other shops eventually close. One of the most compelling of segments in the film is when she shows "In Ontario, right next to the 10 freeway, you can see what a Target looks like when it dies." Big money abandons its old enterprises for new leaving multiple store closings in its wake.
The film closes with a return to Upland. Blader tells how the residents on her street know each other and take pride in how they work for their houses. She tells how a man came to her door and asked if they wanted to sell to make room for townhomes. She said we told him know. The last image is a balloon advertising new homes and development as credits roll. The last text screen asks the question "Does Every Neighborhood have to look the same?"
Local 909er (909 is the area code for most of the region and has been appropriated as local slang term for Inland Emiprites) was filmed over a four year period and was funded in part by th California Council for the Humanities. It appears on a recently released video collection called A Film Is a Burning Place: Works by Enid Baxter Blader. Most of her the other works on the disc seemed much more casual and did not connect with me. But it makes no difference because Local 909er is so strong and memorable.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:27 PM
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