Passage (2001) film still [Enlarge in New Window]

Chel White: Path of Bees

The mind works in curious ways -- some more than others. Take Chel White's. Who else would think to amass xeroxes of faces that are smashed and distorted against a copy machine, then animate them to the sounds of cha-cha music?

It stands to reason that the maker of Choreography for Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha Cha), a festival favorite in 1996, would bring some original thinking to his first feature film, Path of Bees. White's screenplay-in-progress is ostensibly a story about two brothers, but it's also an investigation into how the mind works -- in its dream state and when it's slightly out of whack.

Together with co-writer Christine Toth, White is crafting a story that centers on Emery Forrest, a 25-year-old artist who left home at age 16 following his mother's suicide. He returns after his stepfather suffers a stroke. Not only does the young man face the possibility that he might become caretaker of his autistic stepbrother, but he also confronts memories of the past, including his mother's mistreatment by his abusive stepfather. Such recollections would be painful to anyone, but to Emery, who suffers from a rare (but real) neurological condition called temporal lobe epilepsy, it is physically painful to tap into deep memory. Only through dreams can he excavate and deal with his distant past.

But until he finds this backdoor, Emery avoids his memories altogether. "Because he lives so much in the present, that can create a neat contrast to his brother," says White. Autistic people often connect to the present through the past. "Numbers and dates are how he relates to the world," White says of one autistic case he met during research. "A song would come on the radio and he'd say, 'August 22, 1978.' I'd ask what that means. He'd say, 'This song was first played in Los Angeles on that day.' He was like the savants who can recall what the weather was like on your birthday."

Most challenging is the film's visual aspect, especially Emery's dream fragments and Walter Mitty-like fantasies. "There's a lot of surreal and interesting possibilities there," says the director excitedly, who has done special effects for three films by Gus Van Sant, a fellow resident of Portland, Oregon, as well as for various ads and music videos.

And he's done a few for his own shorts. The black-and-white Dirt (1998) was hand-processed, producing a flicker effect reminiscent of early movies (like those of Jean Cocteau, a major influence). It's a bizarre story of a man who likes to eat dirt -- so much so that he sprouts plants and becomes his own self-sustaining eco-system. And there's Passage (2001), commissioned for a live performance by the Oregon Symphony. This alternates stylized archival footage of human atrocities with images of primal innocence and vulnerability. To achieve that state of grace, White submerged his subjects in water, fully clothed, where they float as serenely as an embryo in its fluid.

Such low-tech effects are White's preference, even though he's quite capable of employing all the bells and whistles of digital technology. "I like things organic looking, not super glossy or antiseptic," he says. Which is why the film's title character -- the bees, who in Germanic mythology carry the souls of the dead -- will be real, not computer generated. "I'm creating some moths and fireflies for commercial projects right now and they're turning out beautifully, but I'd rather work with real insects and try to get them to cooperate," he laughs.

Like many writer/directors, White is slipping some autobiographical elements into his script. The epilepsy is one, although White's is a common variety. Another is Emery's job as a model for NASA trainees learning to fit space suits, an odd-job White once had. Plus there's Emery's life as an artist. White studied painting and drawing at Antioch College and will use his own pop-ups and collages as stand-ins for Emery's artwork.

During his first 20 years as a filmmaker, White stuck with experimental animation. "I was intentionally avoiding narrative. I was thinking it was kinda square." But with White at the wheel, those days are gone.

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Film / Video > Film / Video | The Human Animal | History | Northwest / Great Plains | 2001