Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision (Architect Documentary) | 
| Director: Freida Lee Mock
Actor: Maya Lin
Studio: American Film Foundation
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 27588
Format: Color, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 83 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 4.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0967918103
EAN: 9780967918105
ASIN: 0967918103
Theatrical Release Date: November 10, 1995
Release Date: January 1, 1995
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
It was for good reason this film won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Documentary, as it displays, in abundance, the emotional human responses Maya Lin elicits with her architectural designs and sculpture. There was much controversy surrounding her Vietnam War Memorial, not the least of which focused on her Chinese-American origins. Writer/director Freida Lee Mock uses conventional methods (interviews, archival footage) to follow Lin's career in chronological order. It examines her work since winning the contest in which her student model was chosen for the infamous Washington war memorial. The stark emotion evoked by Lin's sensuous and kinetic creations promises to bring tears to your eyes. Unfortunately, we learn more about her work than about the artist, whose personality is oddly absent from this film. Mock only somewhat reveals the intense focus and powerful vision that drives Lin. --Rochelle O'Gorman
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
A talented at the right place at the right time July 20, 2008
Timothy P. Scanlon (Hyattsville, MDUSA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
 Maya Lin April 28, 2008
Thomas Brian Minns (UAE)
Courage and focus at such an young age. Reinforces the concept of the individual vision developing beyond what would otherwise be ordinary.
Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision July 13, 2007
John Farr
A compelling portrait of a brilliant artist and a surprisingly unassuming person, Freida Lee Mock's fascinating documentary takes us inside this brilliant young artist's unique process, but also lets us get to know her. What emerges is an inspiring visual document about what can be achieved when a gifted youth is given every encouragement and opportunity to pursue her muse. Must-viewing.
asian architect, american icon January 25, 2007
Daniel B. Clendenin (www.journeywithjesus.net)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
 3 X longer than it ought to have been May 3, 2006
Jonathan Lapin (Brooklyn, NY USA)
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
why do documentarians need to pad their movies? this wouldve been a nice half-hour film about the building of the vietnam veterans memorial, but it gets lost in far less compelling side tales. truth be told: ms lin is just not a very compelling personality.
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