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January 19, 2007 Vol. 77,
no. 2S
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| ARTIST AND ENGINEER: Ken Goldberg, who has exhibited his artwork in galleries and museums from New York to Tokyo, compares screenwriting to engineering.
MARTIN SUNDBERG PHOTO
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Add ‘filmmaker’ to his resume
IEOR/EECS professor co-authors documentary on
Jewish identity
Remember that widely circulated e-mail a few years
ago? “If the world were reduced to a village of 100 people, 60
would be Asians, 14 would be Africans, 12 would be Europeans, eight
would be Latin Americans, five would be North Americans, and one would
be Australian or New Zealander,” and so on…
The e-mail got EECS/IEOR professor Ken Goldberg thinking. In a village
of 100 people, one-quarter of one person would be Jewish. “My
wife and I started thinking about the question of our identity in a
broader context,” he says. “We looked inward at our own
Jewish culture, how fragmented and complex it is, and wanted to understand
it better and then find out how that understanding could be applied
more broadly.”
Goldberg is a professor of robotics and automation, but he’s
also a longtime artist, and this question of identity seemed to provide
fodder for art. Together with his wife, Tiffany Shlain, an independent
filmmaker, Goldberg embarked on a three-year creative exploration of
what it means to be Jewish and, by extension, what it means to be a
member of any culture. The result is their documentary film, “The
Tribe, an unauthorized, unorthodox history of the Jewish people and
the Barbie doll in about 15 minutes.”
The Barbie doll? It turns out that Barbie, the world’s most popular
doll, was created by a Jewish woman in 1959. Barbie doesn’t look
Jewish, and that’s where the discussion begins, all part of the
filmmakers’ plan.
“Barbie is the ‘magnet’ to draw people in,” explains
Goldberg. “People love her or hate her. For us, Barbie is a metaphor about
identity.”
“The Tribe” has generated plenty of excitement on the indie film
circuit, earning screenings at the Sundance, Tribeca and upcoming Rotterdam Film
Festivals.
Goldberg and Shlain also screened it in Soda Hall on December 4 to a full house.
In spring 2005, the pair co-wrote “The Tribe” during Goldberg’s
sabbatical from the College. They jotted down ideas in notebooks and bantered
thoughts back and forth over dinner. With a rough script in place, they met with
friends and advisors to go over rough cuts of video sequences.
Goldberg believes you don’t have to be Jewish to understand the film. “It
applies not only to Jews but to all immigrants and all outsiders,” he says. “Engineers
are sometimes viewed as nerds or eggheads, so they understand the outsider mentality.
They appreciate social and political questions.”
“The Tribe” is Goldberg’s first film, and he says he found
it both
rewarding and challenging. “Making a film is like building a complex system,” he
says. “There are many parts, and if there is something that doesn’t
fit, it won’t work smoothly, so you’re always trying to fine tune.
I think art-making is very much like engineering.”
Filmmaking does have its advantages. “About 100,000 people have seen this
film,” he adds. “Nowhere near that many have read my research papers.”
For more information, go to www.tribethefilm.com.
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