Roddy Bogawa
New York, NY
New York Filmmaker Roddy Bogawa completed his Master of Fine Arts at the University of California at San Diego in 1989 and then attended the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His filmography includes the features Junk and Some Divine Wind and the shorts If Andy Warhol’s Super-8 Camera Could Talk, Four or Five Accidents, One June…, and The Imagined, The Longed-For, The Conquered, and The Sublime. His films have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, the Mannheim International Film Festival, and the Asian American International Film Festival among others, as well as the Biennial Exhibitions of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1993 and 1995, the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, and Wexner Center for the Arts. His awards and grants include the Jerome Foundation Independent Filmmaker Grant, New York State Council on the Arts, American Center Foundation, and The Russell Foundation.
I Was Born, But…
Roddy Bogawa
Artist BioI Was Born, But… is a 16mm experimental narrative film exploring the abstract notion of assimilation and the inherent contradictions of those born into the ‘melting pot’ culture of America. Appropriating the title from a film by the Japanese Director Yasujiro Ozu, the project examines many of the themes to which Ozu dedicated his life’s work–tradition and change, the shifting of family structures, and the impact of history and memory. The structure of I Was Born, But… reflects these contradictions and complexities through narrative elements embedded into the documentary; re-collections and photos of the Punk music scene in Los Angeles in the late seventies/early eighties contrasted with landscape imagery of the non-existing clubs in the present; portraits of Asians and Asian Americans; performances by the Korean American rock band SEAM, Joe Strummer (formerly of The Clash), and the Mescaleros; and autobiographic details layered with fiction.