Other America – film-maker gets under the skin of the country in 12 snapshots

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/dec/14/other-america-short-films-james-coulson

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Other America is a series of 12 short films about the US, shot by the British film-maker James Coulson. Or rather, Other America is a series of 12 short films shot by the American film-maker James Coulson. Midway through shooting his love letter to parts both off the beaten and on the wrong side of the tracks, Coulson took American citizenship.

He’s not alone, of course – America is made up of those who arrived, fell in love and stayed. Many then made artistic or personal statements about their adopted home. But Coulson could also be said to have engaged, fascinatingly, in a skewed version of the writer Bill Bryson’s attempt, in The Lost Continent, to find Amalgam, USA, the small town of his American childhood.

“Since I was a child,” Coulson told the Guardian, “I’ve always been fascinated with New York and always wanted to live here. The New York depicted in Spider-man, the beats of Afrika Bambaataa and the lyrics of Public Enemy, as well as the films of Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee, stoked my fascination with the Big Apple.

“After moving to America and working as a director, I became more aware of the ‘Brand America’ being put forward on a larger scale by popular culture and advertising. I’d led a cosmopolitan but sheltered life after moving to New York, so I wanted to see the ‘Real America’.

“I wanted to understand more of what it is to be American.”

The Other America series thus came to be thanks to a realisation familiar to many a pampered coast-dweller: that away from the urban, urbane eastern and western edges of the US, another world exists. The Midwest, the Deep South, the West. The entirely unfairly named “flyover” states.

“I felt I needed to have first-hand experience of America,” Coulson said. “I thought if I filmed my journey and interviewed various random strangers, the experience would be more meaningful. I was interested in meeting the people who aren’t represented in popular culture or mainstream media.

“After travelling the country and speaking to so many people about their lives, any negative preconceptions were dashed.”

Coulson says the title of his project “both signifies my quest to meet these people, but also reflects on myself as the ‘other’, an immigrant from England”. There is also, however, a sense of otherness to his films, in the sense of the slightly uncanny.

The series opener, Population Four, was shot in Amboy, California, a desert town on the Nevada border which “sold for $4,000 on eBay”. Like most people Coulson met on his travels, the six-minute film’s interviewee, town postmaster and store worker Brad, is affable, funny and informative, despite being unable to remember the name of the town’s fourth and final inhabitant. Yet in Coulson’s beautifully composed frames, in the stillness of his camera, Amboy comes to seem a little like something out of a David Lynch movie.

Asked about influences, Coulson cited a photographic predecessor. “One person said they felt the films remind them of a 21st-century Robert Frank; that the snapshots are like photographs, but also go deeper – like snapshots into the mind. I am terrifically honoured by this assessment.”

Coulson is releasing the films at the rate of one every two weeks – three are online now and a fourth follows on Monday. In a Guardian exclusive, that fourth film, Black Owl, which considers life on a reservation in South Dakota, is viewable first here:

Currently, the US is more than usually gripped by concerns over racial and economic inequality. As he travelled, Coulson experienced and filmed such stories.

“Race is a constant theme in the Other America series,” he said. “The film Black Owl attempts to provide a snapshot of what it’s like being Native American and living on a reservation. Later in the series, Rock Creek Park highlights the division of black and white in Washington DC and the surrounding issue of homelessness. The series also looks at the conflict between its citizens and corporate America.

“My hope is that as the series continues, these aspects will reveal themselves and that people might question further what is going on in American society. The film Empty Stores, for example, tries to convey my dismay at how many small towns in America are transforming, for what seems the worst, thanks in large part to the power of so-called ‘big box stores’.”

Other America is a lo-fi project. Coulson, in New York a director of “content, ads, entertainment promos”, worked without a crew and on a “shoestring budget”, travelling 14,000 miles, mostly sleeping at state park campsites, carrying a single DSLR camera and a sound device. Back in New York, post-production involved the calling in of favours, people “from companies such as Nice Shoes (editorial and colour correction), Machine Head (music) and Sound Lounge (sound design and mixing)” working on the project in their spare time.

“The experience of driving through southern Utah was quite magical and otherworldly,” Coulson said. “I was fascinated with the landscape, in particular Goblin Valley, which features in the last film, The Buzzard Eater. The film is about the life of a Vietnam veteran, and how he attempted to adjust after his return from conflict, including facing real experience nightmares by participating in re-enactments of historical conflicts.

“At every turn, there were surprises, both human and geographic. I hope people who watch the films share that sense of discovery.”

Coulson is now back in New York. His journey, however, is not over.

“Some of the films don’t necessarily have a beginning or an end,” he said, “but as a series, the message becomes more apparent. I’m currently working on a feature piece that will involve the featured characters and tie their stories together as a theme.”

The films in the Other America series are released biweekly here.