Using digital video to create professional quality films is, by
now, far from controversial. The medium’s low cost and ease
of use does, however, mean that filmmakers with something
controversial to say are able to put their work out into the world
more than ever before.
Recent UCLA Design | Media Arts graduate Eric Olsen didn’t
think the digital film he and his partner Abdallah Omeish submitted
to the 2002 Canon Digital Creators Contest was likely to win an
award. He wasn’t sure that a competition sponsored by such a
large corporation would reward risky filmmaking.
“Most of the stuff they gave prizes to didn’t have
much to say. I was thinking that they might not choose us for
anything, because some people might think it was offensive,”
Olsen said.
The duo’s film, “A World Apart,” depicts the
same moment in time in two drastically different places: Los
Angeles and Ethiopa. The first half of the piece depicts the
shameless excess of the L.A. nightclub scene. Awash in red hues and
neon glare, young people drink, smoke and dance. The second half,
shown in black and white with heavy contrast, shows hungry
children, emaciated adults covered in flies, and finally, a rotting
corpse.
Far from subtle in their message, the two artists were chosen
from over 5,000 submissions from 77 countries to receive an
honorable mention from the 2002 Canon Digital Creators Contest.
“A World Apart,” along with other winners from the
digital photo (print), digital graphic and illustration, and Web
design divisions of the contest, will be on display May 1-17 in the
EDA gallery, room 104 of UCLA’s Kinross Building. The
Department of Design | Media Arts is hosting the exhibition.
Olsen and Omeish met through a mutual friend when Omeish was
searching for a partner to work on a project based on some footage
he had shot while in Ethiopa. The experience left a deep impression
on him.
“The first time I went filming, I came back and I
couldn’t talk,” Omeish said. “The most difficult
thing was that part of me was questioning why I was doing this. I
had to learn to detach myself from what I was doing so I
didn’t end up bawling. I had to tell myself that I’m
here to raise awareness about what’s going on.”
“I had lofty expectations for “˜A World Apart,’
because at its core is a righteous political statement, and
I’m a sucker for righteous political statements,” said
contest judge Scott Ross in his comments about their film included
on Canon’s DVD wrap-up of the competition. Ross is the
president and co-founder of Digital Domain, a visual effects and
digital production powerhouse that supplies its expertise to many
of the biggest Hollywood studios.
Other standout pieces that will be on display in the exhibition
include “Fine Tune,” Kentaro Sawaguchi’s Silver
Award-winning digital photo which sits inside a layered plastic
box, turning it into a changeable, three-dimensional piece of art.
Takuya Suzuki’s “Fujin Raijin” took an honorary
mention in the digital graphics and illustration category for a
series of backlit, pixilated panels showing an obscured object
lying just beneath the surface.
While many of the gold and silver winners in each category were
rewarded mostly for technical innovation or pure aesthetics,
several winning pieces, including “A World Apart,” show
that in its role as an arbiter of artistic taste, Canon is willing
to recognize digital artwork that makes a statement.