In Motion: Art, Uncertainty, And The Beauty | Zoran Dragelj | TEDxCapilano U
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HKUTlemUEc Video ID: 1HKUTlemUEc ============================================================ [Applause] Hello, I'm Zoran. I'm a filmmaker, fler, and cultural bridgebuilder. And I'm about to step into unknown. Stepping into unknown can be described as grand for me cinematic like an epic scene in a film. But for me, stepping into unknown is sometimes less dramatic. It is open at times lonely and quiet. A profoundly full of possibility. I think back early in my life when my family decided to leave my homeland and move to Canada. How they stepped into unknown trying to create something for my brother and I. That moment shaped me for who I am right now. Next unknown moment was starting my art career and attending Emily Carr and trying to figure out what will I do. My art career, visual art career, allow me to travel the world and go Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, well, that's okay. What I was doing, my visual career allowed me to travel the world and and go to places like Costa Rica. And why there? Because I heard about Beetto, eccentric self-taught artist who, and that's me, a self-taught artist who creates, this is Costa Rica, uh, who creates world out of his dreams and recycled objects. I planned this unexpectedly and I was on the first flight to Alea in in San Jose to learn about this artist and how he dreams and how he creates. If you happen to be in Costa Rica or anywhere in Latin America and if you ride any of the carousels, you're bound to be on one of his carousels. He's the person who built his own home. Has all three generations of his family living under the same roof. Creates these wonderful horses that are all throughout Latino America. And and he's passionate and he is a true dreamer. He even crucified himself on a cross because he was doing religious monuments and he wanted to know what this stake for six hours he would be dangling on a cross and trying to figure out all of this stuff with him and venture to the jungle of Costa Rica to learn how he dredges the silt under the riverbed and brings it and car and and casts this beautiful little monument. and little like cigarettes and that's him on the rough roof rocks playing with a stick or he finds this abandoned objects and he makes something about of them. This is one of the big strawberries that he actually created out of out of the rebar and nothing else. He created the statue of Virgin Mary 15 time 15 m tall. He wished it was bigger than that. That's him. And what I learned while working with Betto is that you have to rely on your instincts because that makes the connectivity with a person. You can't and you can't control. It's uncontrollable. His devoted husband and a father to his kids. While I was with while I was with Betto and I g came back to Vancouver, I was also developing u a short and then that short became a longer feature and that was Friends like these. And despite a gra a ground uh and this and despite the independent scene being small in Vancouver, I try to organize a a really good selection of actors and friends to work with me and I created this bold independent feature friends like these that we premiered at at several different film festivals and got the awards. with no large crew, with a really good crew and a script, we we were able to make this together. My work is created in different places and those places whether that's in Vancouver or internationally is always about the crossroads a cultural crossroads here I'm with on part of the tot train collective which is composed of Charlene Wickers Chango Cummings Connie Zabo Mera and myself and we work with Cambodian youth to create across uh nation a live presentation of arts and culture. This was live. It was at the same time in Vancouver and it in Cambodia and we use internet to connect and do the cross. At the center of this is connectivity. It's what we as artists, we're trying to do. We like to connect and we like to share the experience and our work. We work with dancers who never danced before. I was able to screen my film, my other short film, Rolling Stock. We work with other youth who also wanted to be part of this larger program at Arts umbrella. We we presented our work collective work as part of my work also took me to China and Woolong and that's where I had a much broader sense of what's happening in cultural and the art world. I was in Chonqing documenting short stories with different filmmak international filmmakers and I ended up being in Wuong and Wuong is the area where the tree grows and one of the locals asked me where I'm from and I said I'm from Canada and this fine gentleman said Canada and then he said this and those are the moment moments I cherish the most because those are the moments that are spontaneous with no pl pre-planning, no hesitation. They just come out and people share those moments and Wonga met Tuja people and they communicate by singing and that's their communication. they had over 60,000 songs but now they dwindled down to about half of that and and the government is Chinese government is trying to preserve their songs because that's the way of communication so I went ended up being in a in a in a thief fields with a tuja elder who was singing to his people the songs they were learning they made a welcome for me I'm just a simple filmmaker from Canada, but they greeted me with open arms and they they wanted to share the stories and they wanted to present. That's me and my colleague Theo, the filmmaker I was working with and our Chinese translator and a guide bang and and these are the people dressed in their attire and their custom garb. I went to Tul Tunang, which is a place full of culture preserved just because it was on a map when the Japanese bombed it in the Second World War. When I said I mentor, I don't teach because I believe in in in knowledge sharing and because film is a communal language that doesn't need translation to speak truth, tenderness, love, rage or hope. In China, I was asked to talk about cinematography and and and Canadian filmm and that was the communications. Most of the students spoke English, but they were also curious about how we work together. When we are asked what's in the unknown, we are maybe a bit confused. And I think this question needs to be reframed. I think we should be asked what we are carrying into the unknown. I believe that visual arts gave me the transfer allow me to carry memory, imagination and questioning. And at the same time, it gave me courage to carve up the space not just for me, but those people who I work with. In the unknown, I found freedom. And [Music] in arts, I found the community. Thank you very much. [Applause]