Living and Looking at Life: Bruce Webber Interviewed

A Letter to True takes the form of a letter Bruce Webber writes to one of his five golden retriever dogs, a pup named True. Webber begins his voice over narration of the film by telling the viewer the letter was prompted by his loneliness while travelling on assignment. The letter is a means to connect to his animals and say how much he loves and misses them. Webber explains also that his need to acknowledge these feelings has been intensified since September 11, 2001, the event making him more keenly aware of the fragility of daily life and human existence itself. A Letter to True is very much a love letter from an animal owner to the object(s) of his affection and it features numerous shots of Webber's beautiful dogs playing and enjoying themselves. However, the film functions simultaneously as a meditation on both the transience of human life and its complexity--the notion that living is about pleasure and loss, humanity and inhumanity, memory and the present day. In Webber's schema, his dogs represent a kind of innocence in their loyalty and love. But the film also indicates through various sources, including extracts from Courage of Lassie (1946) an immediate post-war film featuring a young Elizabeth Taylor [the actress is also a dog lover], that dogs (and other animals) are susceptible, like human beings, to experiencing emotional trauma when exposed to hardship or loss of a loved one. And it is us, as Webber's narration states and his images show, who create the racism and war the world experiences. A Letter to True contains elegiac moments but it maintains a commitment to the potential life offers in the form of love and friendship, creativity and beauty. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As the above-mentioned comments indicate, A Letter to True is, like the director's recent Chop Suey (2001), an unconventional and highly personal work. Webber's willingness to express his feelings, perceptions and thoughts in a direct and open way is found in his photographs and these films continue this approach. Unlike many filmmakers working in the documentary tradition, he is refreshingly honest about the subjective nature of his films, foregrounding his world and interests. Webber doesn't impose on the viewer a rigid interpretation of the film's content; instead, working primarily on an intuitive level, he produces, as he says in the interview, a collage. The effect allows the viewer a more open-ended relationship with the material but it is also a high risk-taking form of filmmaking. Its success depends in part on the viewer's rapport with the filmmaker and a responsiveness to the frequently audacious image-sound, emotional-mental juxtapositions he constructs. On the other hand, there is no denying that Webber displays consistently an imaginative use of image and sound and that in itself is a pleasure to behold. Bruce Webber, like Anges Varda, another photographer who became a filmmaker, makes films that have their own character and vision. Both are artists interested in exploring the potenital of the film medium. (Varda's most recent work, Cinevardaphoto, also screened in the festival, contains three short films she made between 1964 and 2004; each of the films deals fascinatingly with the photographic image(s), considering such concerns as the context of production, possible usages and readings). The interview was conducted during the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival and took place on 12 September at the Intercontinental Toronto Hotel. I want to thank Mia Farrell of dda public relations ltd, Los Angeles, CA for making the interview possible and Bruce Webber who, despite a tight schedule, was generous with his time and willing to discuss freely his ideas and work. Richard Lippe: I was told I have twenty minutes. Bruce Webber: I'll try to talk fast for you. (Laughter). Take your time. Lippe: I wanted to ask you about the idea of the personal film or the essay film which you have moved into with Chop Suey and now A Letter to True. …

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