Filmmaker

At the age of twelve, I was deported to Ireland -- by my mother. She thought the change of scenery, and some time spent with her side of the family, would be good for my overly inquisitive nature. I quickly translated her act of banishment into my own deliberate act of self-exile. In my stubborn twelve-year-old mind, this seemed more dramatic somehow. At that age, I had little wisdom and what some would call a fairly banal Irish Catholic upbringing: my father was a gifted horseman, a raging alcoholic, and a crisis-fomenting tyrant. Needless to say, home was a place I didn’t mind leaving.

I spent the next year and a half living and working on a rural farm in the Irish countryside. I studied French and Irish at St. Aloysious College, but I chose to focus on mechanical drawing, a subject that allowed me to represent a construct of my vast twelve-year-old universe. I had been seriously drawing on my own since the age of nine, and in Ireland I seized the opportunity to study drawing techniques in school, along with the complementary subjects of math and physics.

My migration from a large family in the United States to an austere and isolated farm spurred my independent, internal creative life. My aunt and uncle had no TV, no phone, and no records post-1970. Without television or neighbors for the first time in my life, I was solely responsible for my own adventures: cycling the countryside, sketching farm animals, and applying my mechanical drawing skills to restoration sketches of the family farm.

When I was away from the farm, I spent time with a large collection of cousins; almost all were involved in local theatre. Watching rehearsals for their plays, I became skilled in the art of listening and observing. I discovered an Irish imagination, imbued with a complexity of poetry, politics, humor, and history, which pervaded the works they performed on the stage. I was fascinated by the nimble play of the language, the intricacies of character, and the timing of proper silences as an element of sound. Intrigued by the "persona" of a character -- the essential qualities that made a person unique -- I started drawing charcoal sketches of local characters’ portraits, and I even wrote character skits and improvisations.

After I returned from my exile in Ireland, I finished high school, then earned a six-year "degree" in the national competitive cycling scene. My week-long races around the US on Greyhound’s $49.00 student fares led me to settle in Utah. There, high in the Wasatch Mountains, I retired from bicycle racing and studied painting, drawing, and printmaking (woodcut and lithography) in college. At home, I continued my oil paintings with a series of portraits. Working with friends and borrowed equipment, I wrote a short absurdist critique of the network TV coverage of the Albertville Winter Olympics. After a deluge of unforecasted snow ruined our original script, I wrote a new one in just one night. We shot our video in Park City, Utah, during the following two days of the storm, and it later won two awards in a local film festival.

After college graduation, the curiosity fueled by my childhood experiences in Ireland compelled me to travel, so I joined the Peace Corps ten days after commencement. I arrived in Morocco, where I had the opportunity to design the English program at the FSTM, a brand-new science and technology university. The students there came from a language-study background of translating and transcribing. They knew perfectly well how to conjugate verbs, but they would fall silent when asked for the time of day. With no available textbooks or traditional teaching aids, I created a series of courses using theater, video, drama, and debate as in an experimental approach to teaching English.

Outside of teaching, Peace Corps volunteers are required to create "secondary projects." When the Peace Corps Washington selected a script that I had written for a safety training video, I was chosen for the lead role. My success in this project led to another work opportunity, this time with the Moroccan Educational Institute for Radio and Television. Over a year and a half, we wrote and developed an eight-minute pilot episode for a series using English-language TV time as a means to address current issues in Morocco. We worked with Japanese technicians in French, an Iranian director in Arabic, and an English-speaking writing staff to produce a pilot that would pass strict censorship standards and still remain entertaining to our viewers. Later on, other projects brought me back to the drawing board -- literally -- illustrating USAID-funded health manuals for Peace Corps Volunteer projects.

Before finishing my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, I wrote a series of staged events that I planned to examine in a video essay, or mock-umentary. My objective, at the time, was to exploit the naiveté of Americans overseas, those gullible new volunteers who were willing to swallow a sword just to scratch their stomachs. On the surface, the resulting film was a humorous and caustic treatise on American values and group identity. But the summer-long exercise of setting up, shooting, exhibiting, and discussing the video spurred me to explore my own roles as project creator, actor, and outside commentator.

Once I had completed my Peace Corps service, I headed north to a teaching post in Paris. As fate would have it, my office was two blocks from the Cinematheque francaise. Here, I spent the majority of my first wet winter days, mingling with a group of young video-makers who were exploring similar questions of identity. I began work on a series of large format portraits, using 35mm prints on canvas. I completed my first commissioned photo in 1998.

Since 1999 I’ve been working a day job in Kafkaesque environs, writing appeals and legal petitions. Meanwhile, I’ve begun another project, a portrait of a unique and gifted man, James Donaldson. I wanted to create a video narrative that would address serious social issues in an indirect and poetic manner. As the subject of my current investigation into character and truth, James’ life and music have forced me, as a storyteller, to confront my own technical limitations. James spent his youth in American juvenile orphanages after witnessing, at the age of five, his own father brutally murdering his mother. Thirteen years later, he met his father again, both men prisoners in the same penitentiary. James rose to fame and prominence as a Billboard recording artist with Chess Records, and, now, at age sixty-two, he fights a battle with homelessness.

This project, which has consumed my life for the last three years, has enabled me to develop my own voice and to explore my role as the storyteller of my own work -- whether the story is about a town or another man. Ever since my early childhood encounters with farm animals and Irish theatrical characters, I have looked for places to store the lives of the people I meet. I think of my drawings and photographs as the preliminary sketches for my films and videos, which are, essentially, concerned with truth. Not reality or even facts, necessarily, but the kind of truth that only art seems to address, truth that connects with the essentials of human experience. At UCLA’s MFA program in film production, I will develop a palette of techniques and refined skills vital to a professional, independent storyteller. For this is, in fact, what I am. I examine social issues through investigation of identity and community, adding texture to my own life as an active participant in the collaborative imagination of my generation.

While my desire to study film at UCLA is quite specific, my motivation comes from a wide spectrum of creative and social experiences, including my travels to Morocco, Paris, Ireland, and the United States. UCLA, with its production and documentary program, including the Marina Goldovskaya Documentary Salon Series, is a school that will nurture my diverse experiences and my single-minded creative visions, while also rigorously challenging me to grow as a technical filmmaker and creative thinker.

點評：

1.本文從童年講起，來一步一步的寫作者的經歷。
2.語言優美，簡潔。
3.思路，結構清晰。
4.實習經歷，工作經歷都有詳細的敘述。但都是平平的敘述，沒有什么激情的地方，在敘述經歷的過程中，要是改變一下風格，就更好了。

翻譯：

電影制作人

在我12歲的時候，我被我母親放逐到了愛爾蘭。我媽媽認為環境的改變，相處的時間多一點，可以有益于我過度好奇的本性。我很快把媽媽這種放逐的行為解釋成了我自己深思熟慮的自我放逐。在我12歲固執的想法中，這似乎很有戲劇性。在那個年齡，我有一點智慧和可以被稱為一個平凡的愛爾蘭天主教徒的撫養：我的父親是一個天才的騎師，一個瘋狂的酗酒者和一個助長危機的暴君。可想而知，家是一個我想離開的地方。

我花費一年半的時間，生活和工作在愛爾蘭鄉下的農場里。我在St. Aloysious 學院學習了法語和愛爾蘭語，但是我把學習的重心放在了機械圖，這個學科可以讓我描繪出我12歲的世界。自從我9歲開始，我就可以認真的畫畫。 在愛爾蘭，隨著數學和物理的學習，我抓住了學習繪畫技術的機會。
 
我從美國一個大家庭移民到一個簡樸的、與世隔絕的農場，這種改變激勵了我獨立自主、創新的個性。我阿姨和叔叔的家里沒有電視、沒有電話、沒有收音機1970。在我的生活當中，第一次沒有電視和鄰居，我獨自地負責我自己的冒險:在鄉下騎腳踏車兜風,描繪家禽，而且應用我掌握的機械圖技術修補家庭農場的素描

當我不在農場的時候，我和我的兄弟姐妹玩在一起，大部分時間我們是在當地的電影院里度過的。通過看他們彩排，我對藝術的評價有了自己的見解。我發現愛爾蘭人的想象力是把詩，政治，幽默和歷史融合在一起的，貫穿于他們的表演當中。我著迷于語言的簡練、人物的錯綜復雜，在適當的時候保持適當的安靜。角色所塑造的陰謀的特點—一個人獨特的本質特點—我開始畫人物肖像的素描，寫人物的諷刺短文和即興創作。

我從愛爾蘭放逐回來以后，我完成了我的高中教育，然后在國家的自行車比賽中，贏得了好成績。我每周一次的比賽要花費49美金的公共汽車費而導致我定居在猶他州。在那里有名的Wasatch Mountains，我從自行車比賽中退役了，在大學里開始了繪畫，素描和版畫復制。在家里，我畫了一系列的肖像人物。我和我的朋友利用借來的設備，我寫了Albertville冬奧會的網絡電視報道的一篇短的荒誕主義者的評論。突然下的暴雪毀壞了我們寫的原稿，我僅僅用了一個晚上的時間，就又寫了個新的出來。在暴風雪的第二天，我們在帕克城市，猶他州拍攝了錄象，不久便在當地的電影節中獲得了兩個獎項。

本科畢業以后，由于童年在愛爾蘭的這段經歷促使我想要旅行，所以在畢業典禮以后，我參加了和平軍團十日游。我到達了摩洛哥，在FSTM我有機會學習英語課程，這是一所嶄新的理工大學。這個學校的學生都有翻譯和轉錄的語言背景。他們知道如何完美的應用動詞，但是問他們一天的時間做什么，他們卻保持沉默。沒有教科書和傳統的教學方法，我利用戲院，錄象，戲劇和辯論來制造出一系列的英語教學課程。

在教學以外，和平軍團的志愿者還被要求去寫“中級計劃書”。當華盛頓和平軍團選擇了我為安全培訓錄象寫的劇本時，我也被選為了領導角色。這次計劃的成功也提供給我在摩洛哥無線電視教育協會工作的機會。一年半以后，我們為英語電視節目時間制作了一系列的八分鐘飛行員的插曲來說摩洛哥當前的問題。我們用法語和日本技師溝通，用阿拉伯語和伊朗主管溝通，和說英語的全體職員共同創造了一個可以通過嚴格審查機構標準的，有可以給觀眾帶來歡樂的飛行員。不久以后，其他的項目有讓我重新回到了繪畫板-也就是說-說明USAID-為和平軍團志愿者工程贊助健康手冊。

在摩洛哥，我作為和平軍團志愿者在完成服務以前，寫了一系列的表演活動，我打算把他們制作成錄象短片或者記錄片來審查自己。在那時，我的目標就是剝削天真的海外美國的、易受騙的志愿者，他們受了委屈也愿意往肚子里吞的人。表面上，電影是以幽默和諷刺來評論美國的價值觀。但是，暑假里長期的對設立、拍攝、展出、評論電視的訓練，讓我找到了我在項目策劃者、演員、評論員的任務。
 
當我完成我在和平軍團的服務，我就到巴黎去上班了。很巧的是，我辦公室和法國的影片儲藏室離的很近。在那里，我花費了大部分的時間和一群年輕的、探索相似問題的同一性的電視制作人混在一起。我開始在帆布上，用35厘米的規格制作了一系列的人物肖像。在1998年，我完成了第一幅有傭金的照片。

從1999年開始，我就在Kafkaesque的郊區工作，工作的內容是寫上訴書和訴狀。同時，我也開始了另一項事業，畫獨一無二、天才的詹姆士-唐納德的肖像。我想以詩歌的風格來制作一個敘述當前嚴重的社會問題的敘述性短片。作為作家，我對我主題的特性和事實做了調查，詹姆士人生和音樂強迫我去面對我技術上的局限性。詹姆士他5歲的時候，目睹了他的父親殘忍的殺害了他的母親，從那以后，他生活在美國青少年孤兒院。13年后，他和他的父親在監獄相見了。他作為一個唱片藝人有很高的知名度，現在，他62歲了，是一個到處打架而無家可歸的人

在這個項目的最后三年的時候，我才可以闡述自己的觀點，知道作為一個作家應該有的責任，無論這個故事是關于城鎮還是人。自從我的童年時代遇到了農場里的家禽和了解愛爾蘭人戲劇性的性格特點，我就開始留意我遇到人的生活。我認為我的素描和照片是我制作電影和電視的初步草圖，它們本質上都是關注事實的。不管是真實還是現實，必要的，這是藝術要表現真理的形式，真理是人類經歷的精髓。在UCLA大學的MFA專業的電影作品中，我會鍛煉我的技術，使我變成一個專業的、有獨特見解的作家。事實上，為了這個，我做了很多的事情。我通過調查社會的統一性來審視社會問題，通過想象把它加在我的生活當中。

我想要在UCLA學習電影的動機來自于我的創造力和社會經驗，包括我在摩洛哥、巴黎、愛爾蘭和美國的旅行。UCLA的藝術作品和記錄片課程，包括了Marina Goldovskaya Documentary Salon Series，它可以增長我的閱歷和視野，當然，作為電影制作者和創造力的思想者也將面臨嚴格的考驗。