1992-03-12 Messenger - “Mindwalk: A Film for Passionate Thinkers!” by Sonya Burres

“Mindwalk: A Film for Passionate Thinkers!”

 

by Sonya Burres

 

"Mindwalk is a conversation between three people who [try] to make sense of their lives and relate where we are going as a civilization. It is something that a lot of people have to deal with and are very sensitive to."

—From Topanga's Bernt Capra

 

I arrived in Topanga on a Saturday afternoon for an interview with film director Bernt Capra, having come to talk about his recently released feature debut, Mindwalk.

 

Capra met me at the Thrifty gas station at the base of Topanga Canyon and Pacific Coast Highway. We drove a short distance on a dirt road then went the rest of the way on foot. My car didn’t seem to be up to the rough terrain ahead. We walked through some woods to a wooden bridge.

 

Capra told me he had built the bridge ten years ago when he first came to Topanga. His wife was pregnant at the time he says, and it was becoming difficult to wade across the small river. Wading had been the customary route of the residents of this secluded artist community on the riverbed near the bottom of Topanga Canyon before Capra’s arrival. All the residents made donations for materials and Capra designed and built the bridge.

 

A few minutes later we arrived at his home just in time for an unplanned (on my part at least) lunch. “Lunch please before we start,” Capra said, “if you have the time.” It was, I must say, a pleasant way to start an interview. After lunch we went out back to Capra’s sometimes study and other times kids-Nintendo room to talk about his movie.

 

Mindwalk is a film about ideas. It is a conversation between a physicist, a poet and a politician who meet by chance at Mont-Saint-Michel. The three, a woman and two men, talk about a new way of perceiving the world, that the world must be viewed as a whole, not as separate pieces. Problems such as homelessness, the shrinking of the ozone layer or starving children cannot be singled out and solved individually because a decision about one affects all the others; everything is related.

 

“It’s three people who tried to make sense of their lives and tried to relate what they are doing with their lives to where we are going as a civilization, to what we are doing to the planet. It is something that a lot of people have to deal with and are very sensitive to.”

 

Mindwalk is a low-budget independent film that attracted an international cast of high-profile actors. Liv Ullmann plays the physicist; Sam Waterston (who Ullmann suggested for the part) plays the politician; and John Heard plays the poet. Capra, who cast all of the parts himself, believes the actors were attracted to the caliber of the material. He attributes their decision to do the film to the challenges the script presented artistically as well as his personal persistence.

CLASS ACT—Liv Ullmann, John Heard and Sam Waterston on location at Mont-Saint-Michel in Brittany, France in Mindwalk, a Triton release.

 

Full of Don’ts

 

Still, Mindwalk was an interesting choice for a debut feature film. It’s full of Hollywood don’ts. There is no action, no sex, no violence. No spectacular sets a la Batman. No Scorsese-esque camera movements. No wild costumes. It’s just three people talking. Not the kind of film studios go out bidding for.

 

Bernt Capra came to feature film directing as a second career. After success in Austria as an architect he moved to California ten years ago to pursue film making. He had always been interested in making films and as to giving up his career as an architect; “tearing down little old houses and replacing them with big condominiums hurts me; it doesn’t give me pleasure. As an architect this would be part of my job, I would have to be enthusiastic about growth and building. My enthusiasm has vanished. I am only interested in architecture that does less damage to the earth.”

 

Capra joined the ranks of all the other aspiring filmmakers and says he worked at various jobs within the industry. From production assistant to actor to set decorator and eventually production designer on such highly regarded funs as Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap and Percy Adlon’s Bagdad Cafe.

 

Always planning to direct, he started showing a few scripts around town but got no offers. Capra had no agent, no track record and no money. In these circumstances, he decided to collaborate with his older brother Fritjof.

 

Fritjof Capra, the scientist, author and philosopher, is a bankable name in Austria. Fritjof Capra founded the Elmwood Institute in Berkeley in 1984. He is also author of three books: The Tao of Physics (1975) a study of the relationship between modern physics and Eastern mysticism, a bestseller translated into fifteen languages; Green Politics (1984) (co-written with Charlene Spretnak); and The Turning Point (1982) on the revolution in modern physics that foresees an imminent change in all sciences and a transformation of our world views and values.

 

The Turning Point is an international bestseller and the book on which Mindwalk is based. Fritjof did not charge Bernt for the rights to The Turning Point, and in Austria, Bernt met an investor who wanted to get into the movie business. The investor had four criteria. The film must be shot in color (Bernt had considered shooting it in black and white); it must be an Austrian project (Bernt and Fritjof were both born in Austria); it must be a “classy” script (the investor considered Mindwalk to be just that); and it must be under two hours in length. If he would comply with these conditions, the investor said Brent Capra would be left on his own.

 

It took a long time to get from the planning stages to a finished film; three years. There were always obstacles to overcome. Mont-Saint-Michel, an unusual location, had to be used in the off-tourist season. In the winter the weather was too bad, and because of all the holidays there were only two months during the year that could be used successfully for filming; one in the spring and one in the fall. Capra had to wait an entire year for his three actors to all be available at the same time.

 

Got it Made?

 

Bernt Capra thought that now the hard part must be over. Then he realized he had no distribution. What good is a finished movie if no one ever gets to see it? Distribution is often a hard thing for an independent film to come by. One has to find a company which is willing to invest (money) in the already (in this case) completed film by advertising and promoting it.

 

Capra decided to take his film to festivals to get some recognition. He took it to some of the larger festivals like Sundance in Utah, and Toronto and to some of the smaller festivals like Cleveland.

 

It got some very good reviews, and as a consequence screenings had waiting lines around the corner. Capra was soon offered a distribution deal with Los Angeles-based Triton Pictures, which opened Mindwalk first in Seattle in November, ’91 where it is still running after six months. It then moved to Los Angeles and is now in its fifth month here.

 

Tomorrow, March 13, Mindwalk opens to a new venue in Los Angeles—at the Los Feliz Theatre, at 1822 North Vermont, (213/664-2169) in Hollywood. And beginning last week, Capra’s film commenced a progressive opening in some 40 cities across the nation beginning in Milwaukee and Baton Rouge March 6. It will open in New York April 8.

 

What’s Next?

 

So what’s next for Bernt Capra? I asked him if the film had generated any offers. Capra says he has gotten lots of calls from people who want him to do for them what he

did for his brother: make their theories on the world into film. He still hasn’t gotten an agent.

 

So... if Hollywood won’t court him just yet... he is writing a continuation of the story that began at Mont-Saint-Michel: what happens when the senator goes back to Washington with some new views; his friend the poet decides to go with him and renew his job as his speechwriter.

 

It will be Washington seen through the poet’s eyes. It is an interesting idea; now these theories are presented to a politician’s peers and constituency instead of in a vacuum. How do people react? Capra deems it a political film. He is also planning to publish the script of Mindwalk along with his production notes.

 

“Do you think you would like to do a Hollywood movie?” I ask. “You know, one with sex and violence and action?” “Oh yes,” he says, “if I had an opportunity to do one of those... I think I would like that.”

***

Sonya Burres is an other coast transplant who came West in 1988 to attend graduate school at the American Film Institute. She is currently a free-lance film producer, production manager and writer.

 

*

 

“The Challenge of the Nineties”

 

by Fritjof Capra

There is a widespread agreement today that the nineties are going to be a critical decade. The survival of humanity and of the planet are at stake. The nineties will be a decade of the environment, not because we say so but because of events almost beyond our control. Concern with the environment is no longer one of many “single issues”; it is the context of everything else—of our lives, our business, our politics.

 

Today we are faced with a whole series of global problems, which are harming the biosphere and human life in alarming ways that may become irreversible.

 

Every year, the Earth’s forests are receding, while its deserts are expanding.

 

Topsoil on our croplands is diminishing, and the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation, is being depleted.

 

Concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere are rising, while the numbers of plant and animal species are shrinking. World population continues to grow, and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

 

The more we study these critical problems, the more we come to realize that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems—interconnected and interdependent.

 

Ultimately, all these problems are just different facets of one single crisis, which is essentially a crisis of perception. It derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated world view, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world.

 

At the same time, researchers at the leading edge of science, various social movements, and numerous alternative networks are developing a new vision of reality that will form the basis of our future technologies, economic systems, and social institutions. So we are at the beginning of a fundamental change of world view in science and society, as radical as the Copernican Revolution.

 

The emerging new world view may be called an “ecological” view, using the term in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness is the awareness of the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena; the awareness that, as individuals and as societies, we are embedded in the cyclical processes of nature. In science, the theory of living systems, which originated it the 1940s but emerged fully only during the last two decades, provides the most appropriate formulation of the new ecological vision of reality.

 

The global interconnectedness and interdependence of all life not only stretches across space but also reaches across time. Every attempt to solve our global problems will affect future generations. From the systemic, or ecological, point of view, the only viable solutions are those that are “sustainable,” i.e. solutions that allow us to fulfill our needs without diminishing the chances of future generations.

 

To find sustainable solutions for the major problems of our time is the great challenge of the nineties. We will succeed only if we are able to make a radical shift in our thinking and our values. This is the central message of Mindwalk.