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what? My name is Richard Old War and I am considered to be one of the founders of the KQED film. You know, there are two films with the photographer Dorothea Lange and for those of you who you know, wonderful. Who's Dorothy? A lion. Almost everyone seems

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to know the migrant mother. It was even on the U. S. Stamp on Dorothy Line is the great photographer who took that particular portrait. Um, she's one of the more thoughtful, uh, and general feeling immediate feeling in the sense of connection with one scene among the

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photographers. Um, there was a man named Robert Cats at KQED in the sixties who started a film, a Siris of films. He wanted to do a film on Edward Western. He wanted to do a Siris of film on Ansel Adams, and we did those films. But

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ah, third film are actually two films Aziz, part of that project where films with Dorothy Align And fortunately Dorothea Lange lived at that time in Berkeley, and eso and Philip Green, the photographer for the film. You know, one of the photographers, the other was serving sarraff.

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Um was not only a close personal friend of Dorothy is, but he had been Dorothy is dark room assistant. And she was, in a sense, his teacher in men, Tra as in the in, she became mine by way of her example. But But I was not

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a photographer. Uh, and so film spent hours and hours and hours with Dorothy A just the two of them, in effect, was an occasional sound man. And occasionally he did filled it to sound himself. And so he amassed this, you know, hours and hours of extraordinary

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film with this extraordinary artists. But then came the question. Well, what do you do with? And at that point, I was invited to join the, you know, since it was a film that I was in a sense, it was being produced under my aegis. But it

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would fill Green was the filmmaker and the producer. I became involved with the Dorothy lying films because, uh, Phil Green had shot hours and hours of very close personal, uh, imagery of Dorothy. Um, um he realized, as did Dorothy a that they could have, you know,

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150 hours of very important film footage if you were interested in photography. Uh, but they didn't have a film and and And they had agreed to make a film about Northey A in this case. And so they brought me in because it was my province to

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put things together. Um, in almost all many and many of these films that I would not necessarily be involved in the photography sometimes, uh, and not directing on the scene. But then looking at the film for the shot and then putting it together under the trees

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became it was just evident. And I think Dorothy A has several rather eloquent lines about what it's like to live in that place. And so under the trees was a simple way to get into the film. We then and and here I'm talking about one. The

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first film under the trees, um, Dorsia, who had, you know, terminal cancer and very limited energy. But an intensity of spirit, which was incandescent, um, was had agreed to do a A show, a retrospective for the Museum of Modern Art and John Zarkov, ski, the director

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of photography, the director of I guess photographic activities at moment was coming out. And so this was an occasion to look at. They're trying to put together an exhibition, and they're they're wonderful scenes in there of saying this for no. Yes. No, Yes. No. Is they

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go down the line of some of these extraordinary images on I was brought into, in a sense, direct that and to ask a couple of questions because I could ask you simple minded. They're called framing questions. Uh, which Phil couldn't because it just would never have

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occurred to him. Um and so I played it, you know, a fairly valuable role in that sense. And under the trees was my title. And I wrote the narration for the film and and in the sense put it together. Well, I could describe the scene. Having

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seen it on film, I can't describe having shot it. That was the result of the close relationship between and the trust between, uh, Phil Green and Dorothy Align. And both, from my perspective, are, you know, superb photographers. They have great eyes for framing and and forgetting

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the if it is where the human essence out of the image, all of the filmmaking, every every frame took place in her house in Berkeley, and she was just resting at the end of the day, and and I think there was. And then she's I think

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it's voiceover where she's talking about the diagnosis of terminal cancer. I don't remember exactly what was going on in that scene, but I do remember the image and it is an exceptional one, you know. But certainly she was not asked. Would you please lie down on

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the floor? We never filmed with the exception of losing just the same. And he never asked whoever we were filming to do this, That or the other thing, she was exhausted, and she also had a great problem with her back. She had, uh, osteoporosis, I think.

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And she was lying flat on the ground on a carpeted floor, uh, trying to get her back straight down and a moment of hopeful, hopefully of no pain. Of course, the pain persisted, but she the pain persisted, and she resisted in Triumphed over. Yeah, her son,

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Dan Dixon, is in the film. Heard her granddaughter me on Knick. Your name is, uh, and and and and in particular, you know, that was the project that Dorothy was never able to complete, which is the product of a film essay on a steep ravine. The

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cabin in Marin County with her family. And that was her private place. She and Paul got away from everything by going there, and that was a family place. And it's an example of how, at the core of everything that she saw, she tried to fund that

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what I call that human moment that expresses, uh, you know, our relationship with other individuals who may not look like us. But to the degree that you can capture that human moment, we realized that there is that the humanity is universal. You know, people ask about

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the immediacy of the many of the images in, In in the Dorothy aligning film. Um, close ups. That's that's the product of Dorothy A and film just spending so much time to get him. And it's in this sense, it Zaha. It's an insight into the almost

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into the inner life of another human being, which is very rare for film, because these were people to people who are friends, a great respect for each other. And Phil, um, you know, they absolutely venerated or CIA and for good reason. I never directed a single

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frame of that film that I may have a few, but I don't That was insignificant. Um, I, in a sense, didn't come into the film until they've been filming for months and months and months. And then it was my job to bring some kind of order

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or storyline into this film. And the storyline became the great photographer with this background, doing a diagnosed with terminal cancer, putting together with John Szarkowski, a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which she did Then it was a great success, and

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they showed the film at that time, which, and, as I recall, the film was, well, very well received, still showing them well, um, the two Dorsia lying films air different from each other in a rather fundamental way, for example, under the trees is the story of

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this photographer preparing for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art under and under great physical stress. The second film is really an essay on photography. Aesthetics on a View of Life is aware of l Tianxiang almost, uh, and and it summed up in in the

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No, not so much in the titles of the films, but the first one has a narrative structure. The second one doesn't second one, which was made up of footage that was shot very early on primarily, uh, the interview with Peter Odegard, for example, in which Peter

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never says the word other than, uh, a few words while Dorothy A goes on and on and on. Uh, you know, if you can if you can realize that this isn't a niego trip on the part of Dorothy A, which is a bit of a problem

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in relation to the second film. But the forms of very different the first one has a coherent form. The second one has a more difficult form, which is, ah, form constructed simply of themes and ideas. I think one of the remarkable things about the Dorothea Lange

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films consists in the relationship between Dorothy A and film, because Phil understands Dorothy and Dorothy a tolerates Phil, um, and with with astonishing results in the second film, which is a film devoted to ideas and aesthetics. And as I said earlier worldview, um, Dorothy A comes

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up with the concept of the visual life, how difficult it is to live and accomplish the visual life and that it's almost impossible. Phil was trying to do the same thing with Dorothy, Um, but when you're concentrating on the visual life, among other things, that means

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you're not constructing a story or a finished film. You're not doing a narrative or ah, thematic film. Um and and that's the sole reason that Phil couldn't finish The film is because he was working in the visual life. Every moment of the time was visual. There

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it is, But that's not a film that's a shot. And so somebody had to come in and take thes parts together and and and be ignorant as it were or are ruthless and saying, Well, I don't want this, but I do want that And that was

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my role in the film. But Phil and Dorothy A. We're so close together in the making of that film, and I think it's one of the extraordinary human documents as well as an A and on exceptional example of the visual. I don't what else to say

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about it on that. Phil got involved in other films of the long walk, which he ended up with the same problem of How can I visualize Nava Whole life? He's he. He and Irving were exceptional on our exceptional artists, from my point of view in terms

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of what they managed to do with the camera. And they're also not bad editors. But in terms of framing stories, I'm probably a little better than they are. But think of what I'm not all of those beautiful images that this morning with my