Documentary:A Missing Self29 min. essayistic documentaryon identity, transculture, cultural boundaries and ways to transcend them Starring a Japanese artist calling herself "A Passenger" (trailer) |
 A still from the film. |
| It is a companion to "The Phenomenology of Truth".
Both titles feature the same performer (in this one she
chose to be anonymous.) Both marvel about the ways we seek the truth. While "The
Phenomenology..." deals with our perception of the
outside world, "A Missing Self" attempts to address the way we
see our own selves. The project brings together two activities that share concern about how we construct our cultural identities. One does it through performance art, another through a philosophical discourse (recorded at the International Society for Universal Dialogue Conference in Hiroshima.) I combined the two in a highly selective an arbitrary fashion, taking snippets of the speeches and the performance out of their contexts. Any conceptual shortcomings in either material are solely mine. At the same time the film's value is overwhelmingly due to the performer, the philosophers and the people I met during the production. Thank you all. (More in the blog)  A still from the film. With the editing finished, I am looking for ways to on-line and audio sweeten the project. It will be fully mastered by January 2010. |
“Each culture is insufficient rather than sufficient,
and looks for dialog with other cultures”, “so it’s a very important
right for a person to live beyond one's own culture.” (the clip) Mikhail Epstein,
Ph.D.
Emory University “The freedom to create oneself requires a range of socially transmitted options from which to invent what we have come to call our identities.” Albert Anderson,
Ph.D.
Babson College “Any society which calls itself free has to give its member possibility to get outside of its regular framework.” Werner Krieglstein,
Ph.D.
DuPage University “Why not pose the possibility that dialog is the activity that can now make possible further human evolution.” John Rensenbrink,
Ph.D.
Bowdoin College
also with Soho Machida, Ph.D. Hiroshima University Graduate School Richard Parker, Ph.D. Hiroshima Shudo University John Sanbonmatsu, Ph.D. Worchester Polytechnic Institute Ellen Hansen, Ph.D. Emporia State University and others written/directed by Pawel Kuczynski music by Andrzej Dudek-Durer |