Customer Reviews

Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision (Architect Documentary) [VHS]

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This documentary film is a unique experience for which it is difficult to find a comparison. On a basic level, the film discusses several projects of artist/architect Maya Lin, a young Chinese-American woman who unexpectedly won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial while a Yale student. Her design, a departure from conventional expectations, is now famous, and is the most visited memorial in Washington D.C. Some of the strong feelings that the Vietnam War elicits in people, especially its veterans, is touched upon in moving live scenes at the Memorial and in the controversial hearings that were held in the wake of the design's selection. The experience put Maya Lin in a national spotlight and forced the student to mature very quickly addressing the grievances of veterans and others. In the end, with some minor site additions, the Memorial stood as designed, with the names of all the soldiers who gave their lives in Vietnam etched in its simple, polished, reflective granite. Other works of Maya Lin, including the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama; the Yale Women's Table; and others demonstrate a similar simplicity and poetry that is both moving and powerful. There are moments in the film, as simple as when the artist is working at her drafting table, that suggest something both beautiful and spiritual, providing a deep insight into the creative process of this noted public artist.

This videotape is outstanding. Maya Lin was an architecture student at Yale when she won the anonymous competition to design and build the Viet Nam Veteran's Memorial in Washington D.C. The documentary chronicles the controversy over Lin's design and over her as an Asian-American female architect.

The domentary shows Lin facing the challenge of dealing with many angry veterans. The film reveals the racism and sexism that were pervasive in this controversy. Happily, Lin went on to build the memorial. Touching and painful scenes show hundreds of Viet Nam vets visiting the wall.

The film also chronicles other works of Lin including the Civil Rights monument in Alabama and the peace circle at Juniata College in Pennsylvania. This 90 minute documentary takes you into the mind of an intelligent, sensitve artist. I recommend it for high school and college classes dealing with race or gender issues, or any American history class. The film is also excellent viewing for anyone with personal interests in architecture.

Few people may know her name but millions hare been deeply moved and healed by her architectural designs. At age twenty-one she came into the spotlight as the one chosen to design the Viet Nam Memorial. Since that time she has blossomed and grown as the up and coming premiere architect in this country.

A Strong Clear Vision is the story of May Lin and her struggles in bringing forth her vision of "The Wall" and her ten year career following her achievement. View this young college graduate as she receives the news of the acceptance of her design only to later get embroiled in political controversy surrounding her work. Hear a few embittered Vets denounce her design and disgrace themselves with their prejudice because she is Asian. As a young adult May Lin showed great poise, dignity and courage in defending her design. Such majurity at a young age is a testament to her strength and focused vision.

Her work moves beyond "The Wall" as we are showed her other works notably the Civil Rights Memorial, the Yale Women's Table and the Juniata Peace Chapel. In the former she makes use of the elements of water and circles to evoke messages of timelessness and participation within the events depicted. In the latter, she incorporates the rich natural architecture of Mother Earth to complement the chapel. May Lin's structures are bold, simplistic and hit at your soul in its deepest core. Through her art one finds healing and peace. The story of this remarkable woman is a testament to our new generation of women reconfiguring the meaning of architecture in our culture.

This film moved me. Maya Lin is incredibly gifted, articulate, and seems amazingly humble. The Vietnam Memorial, and the hardships of it's creation, show the young woman's strength. It's truely a feat worth the history books. The most striking thing I got out of this film though was the fact that it wasn't a fluke. The rest of her work is just as incredible, even if not as well known. I'm so glad that I saw this film. The DVD is well done, audio is good and the extras, while sparse, are enough. Everyone really should see this film about one of the great artists living in our time.

Maya Lin is a great designer, and this respectful film shows us her well mannered approach to art and architecture. I'll especially note her tactile abilities in her work process, and her perfection and concerns for the built environment in this film. This DVD of Miss Lin is a down to earth inspiration to a self starting person like myself.

Ms. Lin is best know, to those of us in the DC area anyway, for the Vietnam War Memorial.

Those of us familiar with that landmark know that hers was one of many--over 1,400--proposals for the memorial. And she, a 21 year old Yale architecture student, won.

That memorial is the beginning of this film/DVD. In fact, I learned a little more about it. I didn't know, for example, that there was some adamant opposition to it. I did know that some Vietnam vets felt it lacked the symbolism on which they insisted. For that reason, the statue of the three troops was added after "The Wall" was completed.

The film also shows some of Ms. Linn's other designs, e.g., the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama and the peace chapel at a college in Pennsylvania.

I appreciated the film because of the references to these other memorials, and also because Ms. Linn was able to describe her artistic reasoning behind all of them. The Vietnam wall, for example, is to allow the living to meet with the dead; the water that covers many of her memorials is to serve a symbolic purpose.

In short, I rather like all her designs. At the same time, if she hadn't been chosen for the Vietnam War Memorial, I don't know that such a film would have been made.

That's not to discredit her work, which, again, is great. And I'm glad the film describes so much about all of her designs that I wouldn't have otherwise known.

When Maya Lin was just a twenty-one year old architecture student at Yale, the committee for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial chose her proposal (a class assignment, it turns out) from a national competition of 1,441 submissions as the winning design. Then the battle began. Congress people and even Vietnam veterans opposed it, the latter caricaturing it as a "big, black scar in the earth." Others compared it to a boomerang. Lin was vilified as a communist. And a memorial designed by an Asian, woman, college student? In the end, after congressional hearings at which the young Lin testified, her design was built and then dedicated in 1982. I have taken my family to the memorial when we visited Washington and, along with virtually everyone who has visited, can attest to the incredibly evocative power of this public monument. The first half of this documentary covers the VVM; the last half reviews her other prominent works, namely, the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, the Museum of African Art, the Wexner Center at Ohio State University, a fountain commemorating the contributions of women at Yale, an open air Peace Chapel, and her work with the Presidio project in San Francisco. I am always inspired and encouraged to follow the story of a person whose sense of vocation is so strong and crystal clear. This film won an Academy Award as Best Documentary in 1994.

Very interesting documentary about the artist who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Shocking to watch her have to endure racist slurs from people who were presumably fighting for freedom, equality, and democracy in this foreign conflict.

i watched this film after viewing Nathaniel Kahn's more personal depiction of his father. The latter one is an intimate conversation with the dead. This one is asking the viewers to share the growing process of a living person, in parallel to and through events in the recent history of the USA. A leitmotif of time and history running along with personal perception and interpretation of these events.
Maya's architecture, funny to say, is a lot about the sensuality of touch, which goes beyond the visual. Never in any other film about an architect's work does the audience being so moved - by the detail depiction of a hand touching a piece of stone engraved with names; the quiet flow of a thin film of water over a piece of stone being interrupted by the tip of fingers tracing the history of a place....tears....
We see in Kahn's architecture an emptiness of self in order to contain the infinity of the universe in the most cerebral way; while Lin's is an embracement of the past, present and future in the most romantic and sensuous. Sometimes i wonder if it is turning architecture into too much an emotional apparatus?
Anyway, i would recommend such interesting parallel viewing of the two films about these 2 american architects.

This documentary of Maya Lin is very good. She is best known for her
design of the Vietnam Memorial. The bulk of this documentary tells
the story of how she came to design it and the controversy that ensued
as a result of her design; this part is well worth the price of admission.

An overall excellent documentary. Though it concentrates mostly on her
works and her relationship to them, there is a general lack of standard
biographical fare such as personal information and such, I didn't miss
that.

An excellent documentation of the Vietnam War Memorial and the controversy
that developed around it. Less of a true biography.