Murals Olga 3/14 Inter RL #3

Transcript (Download)

So try to think back what it was really like coming to this country, your initial impressions of it.

The contrast, a lot of my reminiscence or nostalgic memories have to do with places at this point in my life.

So the contrast, I'll try to illustrate it.

The region where I spent my childhood, Ayutthaya was a small town.

I think at the time there was around 2 ,000 people spread over a pretty wide valley area.

It was surrounded by mountains and there was two rivers, major rivers passing through.

I spent some of my time with my father's parents and there was even more in the rural section, more isolated, less people.

And what I recall is again the feeling of the mountains, the air in the morning, what the morning do, and we usually had fog.

There was like clouds, I remember enjoying so much.

What appeared like the heaven had come down to the mountains, so we had this fog covering the top of the mountains and the sun coming through, so there was this silvery glow to the mornings.

The other things I recall are the smell after rain.

Streets were dirt roads and just that smell was something that I enjoyed.

Until this day I enjoyed especially being around the parks or the smell of grass and the earth after rain.

The other thing was the clearness of the environment.

There was no fog, there was no smell of smoke.

One of my earliest memories of Chicago was when we drove into Chicago coming by way of the Skyway and seeing this reddish -blackish glow covering the city, which is something, a premonition of something, a premonition of some kind of doom or gloom.

I was a pollution of Chicago, but it had again these other meanings for me.

The neighborhood where we did live in a different house for a while, but I don't recall that time.

The apartment where we lived, the one that I recall was the one where we didn't have any space.

It was the alley was concrete and garbage and the sidewalk all concrete, so everything was concrete.

We had a tree, which I love, that tree next door, the only thing that I could connect to.

Different architecture.

My grandmother on my father's side, her house was built of adobe, so also that memory of the smell of the house after rain was pretty much a smell of earth.

Here was the concrete that cement would, different way of designing.

These were one family homes with usually a space for a garden and very open.

Lots of windows in our apartment didn't have that.

It faced the back, so there was very little light coming into our house as well.

I guess probably we need to sum up what that meant to you.

Emotionally, the memories just clashed and elicited a sense of homesickness that at this point I even resist eliciting in myself.

I think that this was an experience that my parents as well as other family friends had.

As a result of that, we had little processions to Grand Park and to the Lake, because these were places where a little bit fragments of home could be nurtured and carried within ourselves.

Okay, thank you.

Scene 11, take one.

I'll wait for my cue.

Okay, whenever you're ready.

To give you a sense of what it felt like to a young girl or teenager living in the neighborhood that I did, just a few years, I think it was three or four years after I'd come into the United States, one of my...

Let's do that at speed.

Scene 12, take one.

This is something I wrote...

Okay, wait, now, okay.

This is something I wrote when I was, I think, 16 or 17, which expresses some of the feelings about growing in that neighborhood.

It's in September, and it starts, Today we celebrate Mexican Independence Day.

Who is independent? Who is free? The city is so noisy.

There are so many sounds.

Car wheels screeching, horns blowing, sirens wailing, radios blaring, loud TVs, spearing out meaningless sounds that sound like human talk.

I hear my neighbors arguing or celebrating, preachers preaching, Jesus people out, saving people, crying, repent.

This is the way.

Everybody's talking.

No one says anything.

Let there be silence.

I can't hear myself with all this noise.

Everybody's afraid in the city.

We fear ourselves.

We cannot face what we are.

We fear each other.

We hide behind a dial.

Our doors are securely locked to keep intruders out and keep our wealth within.

We cannot walk about the city streets freely.

There are certain areas that cannot be trespassed.

White does not live in Black Street.

Black cannot live in White Street.

Birds of a feather must flock together.

They're out to get you.

Don't go there alone.

Always look behind you when you walk the streets at night.

Somebody was raped.

Somebody was killed.

There are worse fates.

To live and be afraid.

We all wear some type of armor to defend ourselves because we are afraid.

We surround ourselves with walls to keep intruders out and keep ourselves within.

We are feathered by fear.

But today we will celebrate our independence.

Scene 14, take one.

Okay, we're ready.

Thinking back, my exposure to the murals, which opened the rest of the world, for me, they were a source of inspiration for me.

I had the curiosity that I had anyway that I could trust it.

In college, I was exposed to different cultures, different peoples.

All of that continued to nurture.

I don't know if it's an urgency, but the desire to, as an individual, be more open to my experiences, break loose from the sense of isolation that I experienced as an immigrant.

Identifier

F.2021-10-0053

Date Of Production

March 14 1989

Abstract

Sync sound footage of psychiatrist Olga Nuño discussing her childhood, her initial impressions of coming to America, and growing up in Chicago.

This footage was shot for an unfinished documentary about the visual language of murals in Chicago's Hispanic communities.

Format

16mm

Color

Color

Sound

Silent

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Notes

The digital representation attached to this record consists of a 16mm negative picture element (F.2021-10-0053) synced with portions of a separate ¼" magnetic audio reel (Dobinsky 088).

Language Of Materials

English

Element

Negatives

Genre

Documentary

Form

Unedited
Interviews

Subject

Art
Street art
Hispanic Americans

Related Collections

Susan Dobinsky Collection

Main Credits

Dobinsky, Susan (is co-producer)

Dobinsky, Susan (is filmmaker)

Bayly, Ronn (is co-producer)

Regele, Susan (is co-producer)

Kurtz, Julia (is co-producer)

Participants And Performers

Nuño, Olga (is interviewee)

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