Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision

Starring:Maya Lin
Director: Freida Lee Mock
Studio: New Video Group
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
It was for good reason this film won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Documentary, as it displays, in abundance, the emotional human responses Maya Lin elicits with her architectural designs and sculpture. There was much controversy surrounding her Vietnam War Memorial, not the least of which focused on her Chinese-American origins. Writer/director Freida Lee Mock uses conventional methods (interviews, archival footage) to follow Lin's career in chronological order. It examines her work since winning the contest in which her student model was chosen for the infamous Washington war memorial. The stark emotion evoked by Lin's sensuous and kinetic creations promises to bring tears to your eyes. Unfortunately, we learn more about her work than about the artist, whose personality is oddly absent from this film. Mock only somewhat reveals the intense focus and powerful vision that drives Lin. --Rochelle O'Gorman
Description
This Academy Award winner reveals the contentious origins of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and tells the story of its creator, a 21-year-old architecture student whose plan was selected from over 1,000 different designs, beating out some of the most prest

Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision
Average customer rating:

asian architect, american icon

3 X longer than it ought to have been

architect's attitude and sensuality

A wonderful film about a real American Hero.

Evocative!!

Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision
Starring: Maya Lin
Director: Freida Lee Mock
Manufacturer: New Video Group
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Amazon.com

It was for good reason this film won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Documentary, as it displays, in abundance, the emotional human responses Maya Lin elicits with her architectural designs and sculpture. There was much controversy surrounding her Vietnam War Memorial, not the least of which focused on her Chinese-American origins. Writer/director Freida Lee Mock uses conventional methods (interviews, archival footage) to follow Lin's career in chronological order. It examines her work since winning the contest in which her student model was chosen for the infamous Washington war memorial. The stark emotion evoked by Lin's sensuous and kinetic creations promises to bring tears to your eyes. Unfortunately, we learn more about her work than about the artist, whose personality is oddly absent from this film. Mock only somewhat reveals the intense focus and powerful vision that drives Lin. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Description

This Academy Award winner reveals the contentious origins of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and tells the story of its creator, a 21-year-old architecture student whose plan was selected from over 1,000 different designs, beating out some of the most prest

Customer Reviews:

asian architect, american icon.......2007-01-25

When Maya Lin was just a twenty-one year old architecture student at Yale, the committee for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial chose her proposal (a class assignment, it turns out) from a national competition of 1,441 submissions as the winning design. Then the battle began. Congress people and even Vietnam veterans opposed it, the latter caricaturing it as a "big, black scar in the earth." Others compared it to a boomerang. Lin was vilified as a communist. And a memorial designed by an Asian, woman, college student? In the end, after congressional hearings at which the young Lin testified, her design was built and then dedicated in 1982. I have taken my family to the memorial when we visited Washington and, along with virtually everyone who has visited, can attest to the incredibly evocative power of this public monument. The first half of this documentary covers the VVM; the last half reviews her other prominent works, namely, the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, the Museum of African Art, the Wexner Center at Ohio State University, a fountain commemorating the contributions of women at Yale, an open air Peace Chapel, and her work with the Presidio project in San Francisco. I am always inspired and encouraged to follow the story of a person whose sense of vocation is so strong and crystal clear. This film won an Academy Award as Best Documentary in 1994.

3 X longer than it ought to have been.......2006-05-04

why do documentarians need to pad their movies? this wouldve been a nice half-hour film about the building of the vietnam veterans memorial, but it gets lost in far less compelling side tales. truth be told: ms lin is just not a very compelling personality.

architect's attitude and sensuality.......2006-02-17

i watched this film after viewing Nathaniel Kahn's more personal depiction of his father. The latter one is an intimate conversation with the dead. This one is asking the viewers to share the growing process of a living person, in parallel to and through events in the recent history of the USA. A leitmotif of time and history running along with personal perception and interpretation of these events.
Maya's architecture, funny to say, is a lot about the sensuality of touch, which goes beyond the visual. Never in any other film about an architect's work does the audience being so moved - by the detail depiction of a hand touching a piece of stone engraved with names; the quiet flow of a thin film of water over a piece of stone being interrupted by the tip of fingers tracing the history of a place....tears....
We see in Kahn's architecture an emptiness of self in order to contain the infinity of the universe in the most cerebral way; while Lin's is an embracement of the past, present and future in the most romantic and sensuous. Sometimes i wonder if it is turning architecture into too much an emotional apparatus?
Anyway, i would recommend such interesting parallel viewing of the two films about these 2 american architects.

A wonderful film about a real American Hero........2004-11-09

This film moved me. Maya Lin is incredibly gifted, articulate, and seems amazingly humble. The Vietnam Memorial, and the hardships of it's creation, show the young woman's strength. It's truely a feat worth the history books. The most striking thing I got out of this film though was the fact that it wasn't a fluke. The rest of her work is just as incredible, even if not as well known. I'm so glad that I saw this film. The DVD is well done, audio is good and the extras, while sparse, are enough. Everyone really should see this film about one of the great artists living in our time.

Evocative!!.......2004-06-13

Maya Lin is a great designer, and this respectful film shows us her well mannered approach to art and architecture. I'll especially note her tactile abilities in her work process, and her perfection and concerns for the built environment in this film. This DVD of Miss Lin is a down to earth inspiration to a self starting person like myself.

Average customer rating:

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Description

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