Sold On Sellars

From Los Angeles to Vienna to London and back, UCLA World Arts
and Cultures Professor Peter Sellars has dedicated his life to
spreading artistic vision.

Only returning to Los Angeles to teach his Monday night
four-hour course titled “Art as Social Action,” Sellars
preaches that art is not just a medium for beauty or entertainment
““ it truly can enact change.

“Art is about making a space for democracy ““ where
voices can be heard,” said Sellars, also a controversial
film, theater and opera director. “We need a space where
diversity has real meaning. Difficult and dangerous things can be
brought up in an environment where they will be respected and
recognized. And that’s why art is so important right
now.”

Sellars’ charisma for the art of “right now”
is what initially attracted Marina Goldovskaya, a Russian
documentary filmmaker and UCLA film professor, to Sellars.

After coming as a guest speaker to Sellars’ course
“Art as Moral Action” in 1997, Goldovskaya began
filming her first American documentary. The subject: Peter Sellars,
professor and artist.

“I had my camera with me because I am carrying it all over
the place. Without even asking his permission, I started shooting.
Then when I came home and I looked (at the footage), I thought,
“˜He’s a perfect character for a film,'”
Goldovskaya said. “Actually, I captured that
immediately.”

Goldovskaya gratefully accepted two grants from UCLA for the
production of the film, and the documentary was underway.

“It is such a burden and then it is such a responsibility
because you’re exposed all the time,” Goldovskaya said
of the hardships of being the subject of a documentary. “And
sometimes you don’t want to be exposed.”

Despite his reservations, Sellars allowed Goldovskaya to shoot
her film.

“She just completely overwhelms you with her infinite
curiosity, interest and positive energy. Try saying no to her
““ you can’t,” Sellars said.

Over a period of six years, Goldovskaya captured the L.A. life
of Sellars. He constantly traveled, but every time he returned,
Goldovskaya would capture more footage.

Eventually, in 2003, Goldovskaya found a structure for the film
that she said had been missing previously, what she calls the
“thread” of the film.

“And then it happened,” she said. “I went back
to lecture and I got a piece that was missing in the whole building
of the film. And suddenly I felt, “˜I have it. I have the
film.'”

The thread for the filmmaker and her subject was the constant
relationship, the battle, between art and life.

The film features characters ranging from video artist Bill
Viola, for whom Sellars created an exhibit of his work, to the cast
of Sellars’ production of Jean Genet’s “The
Screens,” which poet Gloria Alvarez adapted for the
Cornerstone Theater Company and performers from the community of
Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles. In this sense, the film is not
about Sellars as an artist in and of himself. It is about the
collaboration of lives involved in the creation of art.

“I’m a director. A director is a useless thing.
You’re the not the person with talent. It’s everyone
else in the room who has talent,” Sellars said.
“What’s interesting about the movie is that you meet
all these really interesting people. And you can see that the work
that I do is actually not about me, but about them ““ about
these really interesting people that are all flowing through my
life.”

Sellars’ position as a professor served an important role
in the creation of the documentary. Excerpts from his lectures are
keystones in the flow of the film.

“He’s found a way to be very, very comfortable with
who he is and doesn’t mind sharing it,” said Kristine
Navarro, a fourth-year political science student. “(His
course) doesn’t feel like a class; it feels like he’s
just teaching us about life.”

Together, Goldovskaya and Sellars hope to shed new light on the
ideas of documentary filmmaking and the relationship of life and
art.

“I am trying to convey his world and what he thinks about
art. It resonates with me because I think the same way. And
that’s why I started making the film ““ because I feel
that we are similar in our thinking and our feelings,” said
Goldovskaya. “If I didn’t feel this way, I
wouldn’t make a film about him.”

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