One’s first impression of filmmaker Allie Humenuk is that she has always been an explorer. Whether it was digging in her Philadelphia backyard as a child, learning Spanish in Guatemala as a post grad or sailing down the Limpopo River in South Africa as a cinematographer, Humenuk has always been attracted to the quest, the search, the journey. Even her website declares that she is “ready to travel.” But while Humenuk agrees she’s been an adventurer, working on shoots in exotic and foreign lands, she’s also emphatic about what really matters most in creating her art. “The trips have all been very rewarding,” she says. “I’ve met wonderful people and made some amazing images. But what’s most important to me in wanting to make movies is not about exploring some far-flung destination. It’s about exploring the human heart.”
Humenuk started out on her journey as a filmmaker when she signed up as a freshman at Harvard for the school’s “Introduction to the History of Non-Fiction Film” course, taught by legendary filmmaking professor Alfred Guzzetti. The course opened up Humenuk to a whole new appreciation for film. “I had never been particularly interested in film, but after just a few sessions of this course, I was spellbound,” she says.” I realized what I wanted to do with my life.” As Guzzetti himself says of Humenuk, “Allie was a person who was intuitively visual instead of verbal. She found her element and never looked back.”
Humenuk’s quest these last few years has focused on her documentary feature OUT OF PLACE about photographer Abelardo Morell and his own journey back to Cuba in search of family left behind during that country’s Communist Revolution of the 1950’s. Morell, a professor of photography at Mass College of Art, is an internationally known artist acclaimed for the images he creates using the centuries old “camera obscura” photographic techniques. The term, which literally means, “darkened room” creates a photograph from a projected image that’s turned upside down and reversed. Morell works with a large format camera and must expose the image for a full eight hours to get the photograph he wants. The resulting images are an unusual and often haunting coming together of the world outside and the world inside. In OUT OF PLACE, filmmaker Humenuk weaves together old family photographs, 16 mm black and white footage of 1950’s Cuba, together with Morell’s 8mm film he shot as an adolescent emigrant, and her own recently shot footage, to give us a nuanced portrait of how Morell uses his art to explore his life, to make sense of his world and to translate his inner experience for all of us.
Humenuk first became aware of Morell and his photographic techniques during a lecture he gave at Harvard’s Carpenter Center in the early nineties. The talk had a profound effect on the young Humenuk. “I had been traveling throughout Ecuador on a George Peabody Gardner Fellowship, taking photographs and learning more about that country’s culture. But I came back to Cambridge feeling daunted and frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how to make filmmaking my life. Abe Morell spoke to that place of being down and discouraged and how you can find your way back into the world again through your work.” Morell’s presentation and discussion of his art that night re-energized and re-focused the questioning Humenuk. “After Abe’s talk, I knew the answer about my filmmaking was to look into my own life for inspiration.”
Feeling newly confident, Humenuk gave up the idea of going to graduate school after a pivotal phone call with her mother. “She told me that since I knew I wanted to make films, why not buy myself the equipment I would need instead of spending all this money on a graduate program I wasn’t truly interested in attending anyway.” It was advice well taken. Humenuk bought the equipment and shortly thereafter hung out her shingle as a freelance director of photography. She was soon in demand as a creative professional with a steady list of clients.
In a twist of fate that can only be called serendipitous, Humenuk got a phone call one day to come in and interview for a full-time producing position at Vida Health Communications, a Cambridge based health communications company that produces innovative documentaries on topics like Parenting, Labor and Delivery, and Breastfeeding. She had been recommended by Robb Moss (see IMAGINE cover story February 2003), a professor and filmmaking mentor of her’s at Harvard. Humenuk was familiar with Vida, having worked on several of their films as a DP, but she had never spent any real time at their office. But sitting in the company’s reception area that day, Humenuk noticed a series of black and white photographs hanging on the wall. She thought they looked vaguely familiar. As she moved closer to get a better look, someone on Vida’s staff told her that company president Lisa McElaney, was married to a photographer and those were his pictures. His name was Abelardo Morell. Even now, ten years later, one can still hear the amazement in Humenuk’s voice thinking back at the memory. “It felt like I was somehow pre-destined to do all of this.”
Humenuk’s been at Vida wearing a variety of production hats including writer, producer, director, and editor, ever since. “It was sometime in 1993,” recalls Vida’s president, Lisa McElaney. “That I made a deliberate decision to have women shooters for our films.” When McElaney asked her friend Moss for the names of women who were not only good behind the camera but also possessed the social skills necessary for handling such sensitive material, he gave her a name right away. “Robb was very clear that Allie was the person I was looking for,” she says. “And he was right. I knew from the start, that she was an exceptional combination of art and heart. She’s also smart, resourceful and true to herself.” Humenuk has been fortunate to find stability in the workplace in a supportive environment in which she can use her skills. “Allie’s done a beautiful job at Vida,” says McElaney. “And she’s become a real advocate for public health issues. It’s not just a job that supports the other part of her life.”
In 1998, San Diego’s Museum of Photographic Art organized a mid-career retrospective of Abe Morell’s work. Among the stops of this traveling exhibition was the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The MFA decided to add an educational component to the show and approached Morell about producing a video that would explain his unusual photographic techniques. Morell recommended Allie Humenuk as the producer and she was commissioned by the MFA to make a short film. Though they had yet to officially work together, Morell and Humenuk had developed a friendship based on their shared paths to becoming artists. And Morell clearly admired her earlier work as a filmmaker. It would turn out to be a wonderful creative partnership for both of them.
The finished film, IN CAMERA: THE MAKING OF A CAMERA OBSCURA PHOTOGRAPH not only shows us the labor-intensive process involved in creating one of Morell’s signature works of art, it also provides us with an intriguing glimpse of the Cuban born artist himself. After that first successful filmmaking collaboration, Humenuk knew she wanted to continue. “I knew there was something else there,” she says. “Abe was finding magic in places that most people overlooked. He was making us see the ordinary as something extraordinary.” Humenuk decided to start shooting Morell again several years ago, not really quite sure where the process would take her. She says simply, “While I’m quite happy with how IN CAMERA turned out, it was quite expository,” says Humenuk. “I knew I wanted my next film to be somehow more lyrical.”
An artist making a film about another artist poses its own set of challenges. In Humenuk’s case, the process has actually been quite rewarding. “Abe really respects me as an artist,” she says. “He hasn’t interfered with what I’m trying to say.” And with good reason, it would appear. After having just viewed OUT OF PLACE, Robb Moss had this to say about the film, “As a filmmaker, and perhaps as a person, Allie seems most drawn to beauty and complexity. Her new film about Abelardo Morell wants to imbed the artist - and his photographs - firmly in the beauty and complexity of the artist’s life. From what I have seen of her work-in-progress, she is well on her way to making a wonderful film about seeing and being seen.”
It’s been an unusual and fruitful collaboration with Morell thus far. But Humenuk knows her approach wouldn’t work for everyone. “It’s a risky way to make a film. I know that. It’s not like someone working with a script or having a group of images you can set up and shoot. But I truly love letting the images speak for themselves.”
South End gallery owner Bernie Toale and Arts Consultant Lucy Aptekar will host a fundraiser/reception for Allie Humenuk’s OUT OF PLACE on November 13th. For more information on the fundraiser or the film, go to alliehum@mac.com or ahp-productions.com