Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision

this won an oscar for best documentary and it truly deserved it. i saw the movie on PBS and wanted to see it again. if you don't know the story here it is. maya lin was a 17 year old at yale when she entered the competition for the vietnam vets memorial. the competition was 'blind' in that none of the judges knew who had done it. she beat out world famous architects, this 17 year old!in the film she explains what the concept is and why she designed what she did. maya lin redefined what a war memorial was all about. as she said it was for the living as well as the dead. by being able to touch the names of their lost loved ones the living got more out of this than a statue with a few unknown soldiers.many veterans opposed the monument but when you hear them praise her and show her interaction with veterans groups you almost cry. a few still wanted the horse or hill and soldiers so she added one near the entrance but far enough away to not detract from the actual memorial.the film goes onto other memorials she has done and in their own way they tell a story and her concepts for the design are as significant. but none, to my mind, embody such emotion as she put into the vietnam vets memorial.

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.

This is a documentary of an amazing young woman. I saw one of her landscape installations at U Michigan but didn't really know much about her. A friend of mine suggested that I watch this video. The first half of the video shows how she was selected for the Vietnam War Memorial and her vision for honoring fallen soldiers and visualizing the suffering involved when she was only in her early 20's. The second half shows her work on the Civil Rights Memorial in Alabama and her more recent works. This should be a MUST view video for young girls. It demonstrates courage, hardships, perseverance and belief in one's own vision despite ridicule from others and racial discrimination. My three children (16, 14, and 11) watched it with me and they really enjoyed learning about her.

I discovered this film several years ago in a public library. I am a middle school teacher who is always looking for relevant ideas and concepts to teach my students. I have used this tape in the past for Women's History Month as well as celebrating the joys of art. It is wonderful! The students enjoyed it and were surprised to learn that such a young woman made a strong impact on our interpretation of the human experience.I would suggest this to individuals who are interested in art, and learning about people that we rarely hear about!

Good

An extraordinarily talented artist, Maya Lin, is a visionary who was instrumental in helping heal a nation after the Vietnam War with "The Wall" memorial in Washington, D.C. This film places the viewer inside history at a time when the United States needed "a black scar in the ground" to walk its length in its mirrored reflection through a personal grief and rise above on the other side into the light of remembrance. This documentary examines Maya Lin's artistic journey through several decades and how it takes courage to be an artist.

I don't know about the DVD edition... but this is one of the least interesting documentaries I've ever seen. Maya Lin herself is clearly a gifted artist, but this is a standard paint-by-numbers documentary. You don't learn anything you couldn't have learned in a magazine article, it doesn't exploit the film medium at all, there's nothing in the form of this documentary that couldn't be used in a documentary about any successful person.The fact that it won an oscar just shows how screwed up the Oscar selection process was at that time for documentaries.

While I don't find the rest of her work nearly as interesting as the Vietnam Memorial, this video provides a lot of insight into her methodology. Great information for art students and art courses.