“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.
"Venice Reading Celebrates Lower Topanga"
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