By Julieta González

Yuri Elise Makino, associate professor in the media arts department at The University of Arizona since 1998, was recognized as an “emerging artist” by the Arizona Commission on the Arts (ACA) in 1999. The ACA presented Makino one of its coveted fellowships in the visual arts that year for her work in film. In 2004, Makino received recognition again from the ACA and an award for a collaborative experimental documentary video.

An independent filmmaker, Makino teaches production courses including a graduate-level production class in which she helps her students develop the genre of filmmaking that is called the “personal documentary.” Much of the research involved in this effort requires her students to develop diary projects. “The richest documentary work comes from things that they know and which they are passionate about as opposed to trying to emulate something they have seen on the screen,” says Makino.

The personal documentary, a type of ethnographic film, is a body of work that Makino says has been developing over the past 25 years. Much of this work by independent filmmakers has aired on public television along with varying ethnographic works made by independent filmmakers. “The work might come from a very personal place within the filmmaker but it has a lot of social significance,” says Makino. “This work needs to get sent out to film festivals and then distributed to different venues. We need to have this type of work seen as we continue to push the boundaries of what we see as ‘media.’”

“Llama Walks,” Makino’s personal documentary, won the “Best of Arizona Award” at the Arizona International Film Festival in 2003. “It’s a very intimate story I started filming when my Swiss grandmother turned one hundred years old. It began as a project about my grandmother and aging but then I realized that what interested me most was my mother. She’s a very unconventional persona and so are her views on aging. The project ultimately became about my coming to terms with my mother aging through witnessing as she accepted the eventual passing of her mother.”

Makino’s mother was living in Guatemala when Makino was finishing up her master’s in fine arts degree in film and television at New York University in 1996. Now in her mid 70s and residing in California, Makino’s mother owns two pet llamas that pack her supplies on overnight hiking trips. An avid hiker, she acquired llamas once she could no longer carry a heavy backpack. During the initial stages of the documentary, Makino’s older sister was due to have a baby. The filmmaker incorporated the events and made the home birth of her sister’s baby the centerpiece of the film, thereby creating a personal documentary about birth and death in the cycle of life. Makino’s grandmother passed away at age 104.

“I would say that rather than being a scripted, narrative traditionally structured documentary, this is a kind of poetic documentary,” says Makino. “The key to a successful personal documentary is to find themes that are universal. The fear of eventually losing our mothers is something we all can relate to,” she adds.

Makino’s continued interest in personal documentary and family stories, developed into her most recently completed work, “Tokyo Equinox.” Using impressionistic visual techniques, Makino documents the journey she and her sister took to Japan two years ago to see their father for the first time in 15 years.

“I like to think of ‘Tokyo Equinox’ and ‘Llama Walks’ as companion pieces about my parents, my Japanese father and Swiss mother. Stylistically, the works are quite different. The camera and sound are much more expressive in ‘Tokyo Equinox.’ I wanted the work to capture the intense dream-like moments that we experience when we travel through a foreign land and to give expression to the tenuous, yet visceral connection I have with my father,” Makino explains.

In “Tokyo Equinox,” Makino juxtaposes images of her sister awaiting their father with a sumo wrestling match to express the anxiety and tension of meeting. Makino uses no dialogue, but instead employed a powerful score to communicate exposition and emotion. “Tokyo Equinox” has screened at several international film festivals across the country.

Makino notes that the experimental visual techniques of “Tokyo Equinox” have inspired the approach to her current experimental video, “111 Degrees Longitude.” Produced in collaboration with a filmmaker in Montana, this work will explore two locations resting on the 111th meridian ­ Tucson and Bozeman. The structure will be designed as a correspondence between Makino and her collaborator. Each will direct, shoot and edit short vignettes that will serve as visual letters, creating a dialog about their subjective perceptions of these similar western towns. The vignettes will be a response to the “letter” that came before it, thus building a sense of shared experience, but also identifying the uniqueness of the physical, cultural and personal life in the two places.

The film will use modern digital technology to capture and edit the images, while following traditional methods of letter writing as a form of communication. To produce this project, Makino received a Jack and Vivian Hanson Institute project grant. Makino will use the grant to support student involvement in the post-production and exhibition phases of the project.

In addition to making short works, Makino is developing “Alma,” a feature-length screenplay about a Mexican undocumented woman. Based on a true story, the script was also inspired by Makino’s travels in Mexico and living near the Mexican border.

After completing her masters in fine arts in film and television at NYU in 1996, Makino traveled extensively through Mexico on her way to visit her mother in Guatemala, who was living there briefly. Her travels inspired her newest feature film project co-written with Gretchen Maurer. An early draft of “Alma” made Makino a semi-finalist for the 1999 Sundance Film Maker’s Lab. She has received various awards for the development of “Alma,” including the Roy W. Dean grant, two Amazon Foundation grants and various grants from the UA.

“Alma,” presently in development, is a coming-of-age father-daughter story about Alma Sanchez, a teen-age Chicana migrant worker who discovers she is not a United States citizen. Alma is jailed in a maximum-security prison for holding false papers and discovers that her father has lied to her about her citizenship birthplace because of his own fears of deportation. When Alma finds her true identity, she rebels against the limitations imposed by her father and embraces her own ambition of becoming a doctor.

“The film is intended to give voice to Alma’s character and to her compelling struggles as a migrant worker. She finds her identity and achieves success in this country. My work really tries to give expression to under-represented voices,” says Makino, who was born in Los Angeles to Japanese and Swiss parents.

Makino is seeking funding from public television, independent financers and cable companies to produce “Alma.” According to Makino, cable television has helped open up the market for lower budget feature films. Prior to cable, the typical route to have a film distributed to a broad audience was to secure funding from a major studio and then have the film released in theatres. The “middle ground” of cable has helped get more projects viewed than before. “Private financing and money from European investors for feature films really dropped in the 1990s right along with the economy,” says Makino. “But cable television and pubic television have created an opportunity for filmmakers outside the mainstream.”

Makino strengthens the work that students produce in her classes with information on how to write grants for film projects and discussing the business side of this creative activity. In addition to funding for film projects, Makino also addresses the use of technology. “For example,” says Makino, “digital production and affordable software have really allowed filmmakers to take greater control over their projects and have provided more opportunities. The process is more democratic now and not as much in the hands of the elite as before.”

Technological development of high quality equipment available to her students will help them to take advantage of an increasingly diverse market and outlets for their finished product. “Granted, there is still not a lot of money there, but it’s now more affordable to make work and have it seen,” says Makino.

Makino believes that film making will give voice to the experiences and the history of under-represented cultures. “Those voices are not really supported in the way that other discourses are,” says Makino. “Therefore, I think that the key in the classroom is to model for students that these experiences are really very valuable and very powerful. They should not be silenced nor diminished in importance. These voices should be heard.”