AWAKENING IN TAOS

 Many of you have asked about the completion and release of Awakening in Taos the biopic of Mabel Dodge Luhan. Well, here it is. This film and the process of its creation has been an important part of our lives for five years. We have made friends that are like family over this time and it is hard to believe that completion of the goal is so near. Here is the information that will be in the press release. It may be edited a bit more for The Santa Fe New Mexican-- Pasatiempo but this is the essential information.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Awakening in Taos World Premiere at LensicTheator

Date: November 18, 2015

Pre-Screening Party at Blue Rain Gallery 5-6:30 PM

World Premiere Screening at Lensic 7:00 PM

Tickets: $25 for Premier

               $75 for Premiere and Pre-Screening Party at Blue Rain Gallery

Screening will be attended by Mayor Javier Gonzales, actors Ali MacGraw and Marsha Mason. Awakening in Taos is narrated by actor Ali MacGraw and features Marsha Mason as the voice of Mabel. Taos actor and photographer Zoe Zimmerman portrays young Mabel in historic re-enactment sequences. Project producer Awakening in Taos, LLC, has a mission to make meaningful films about extraordinary people who live or have lived in New Mexico. This film was created in partnership with New Mexico PBS.  Heading the project are producers Katie Peters, Pat Hall, Jill Drinkwater and writer-director Mark J. Gordon. Support comes from a unique consortium of creative independent women, actors, film professionals and volunteers who believe in this story about one of New Mexico’s most remarkable women: Mabel Dodge Luhan.

Awakening in Taos is a documentary about the extraordinary life of Mabel Dodge Luhan, influential writer, solon hostess, patroness of the arts and catalyst for cultural change.  Inspired by the native culture and distinctive landscape of Taos, New Mexico she promoted a vision of social transformation. She broadcast this ideal by inviting to Taos many famous and iconoclastic artists, writers and social activists, in her words, “the movers and shakers” of the early 20^th century. Her list of guests included D.H Lawrence, Georgia O’Keefe, Willa Cather, John Collier, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Carl Jung among a host of many.

Mabel was born to a wealthy family in Buffalo New York at the height of the Victorian era. As a child and young woman, she experienced little warmth and no sense of meaning within the confining social conventions of the age. The role of women was passive and secondary in a world ruled by men. Literally tricked into her first marriage, she became a widowed mother when her husband died from a hunting accident. Confused and depressed, her mother sent her to Europe, the customary cure for emotional distress among the Victorian upper class.

 In Paris, she met architect Edwin Dodge who became her second husband, and in her quest to experience aliveness, she acquired a villa in Florence Italy and soon launched a salon. She met Gertrude Stein and hosted many now famous modern artists, musicians and poets on the cutting edge of social change in pre-World War One Europe.  In this heady milieu, Mabel charged into the complexities of self-discovery.  In the ensuing phase of her life, she experienced several failed marriages and disappointing love affairs before eventually taking responsibility for her own happiness. Producer Kathleen Peters notes, “Mabel grew up a tormented young woman. For her to expand from repressed Victorian into a leading exponent of the modern age was a huge character arc. She did so using the tools of Modernism—art, psychiatry, travel, marriage and divorce.” 

Intuition and a sense of adventure were the impetus that first brought Mabel to the remote New Mexico town of Taos. While visiting third husband Maurice Sterne in Santa Fe, at that time beyond the outer edge of civilization by east coast standards, Mabel made up her mind to take the 17-hour trip to Taos. She found the stark natural, almost supernatural purity of the place in exquisite contrast to anything she had previously known.  To her, Taos seemed a harsh mirror exposing all that was false strained and without heart in the world from which she came. She soon rented a house in Taos and before long began visiting the Red Willow (Tiwa) People in nearby Taos Pueblo. 

It is hard to overemphasize the impact that this ancient pyramid of rectangular mud homes had on the new visitor. Soon after discovering the Pueblo, Mabel met her last husband, Antonio Luhan a full-blooded member of Taos Pueblo. Their marriage lasted 40 years ending with her death. Tony passed the following year.  Such a pairing was almost inconceivable for their time.  Tony especially sacrificed his considerable tribal powers to be with Mabel and share her vision. 

With Tony she campaigned to defeat the Bursum Bill of 1924 that had it passed would have taken hundreds of thousands of acres away from the 19 New Mexico tribes.  This campaign set into motion the events eventually resulting in the return of 45,000 acres including their sacred Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo.  Mabel also made many contributions to the Town of Taos including the donation of a building once constructed for her son to the Town for Holy Cross Hospital.  Her greater vision of the intuitive, earth based spirituality of Taos Pueblo as a model of wholeness for a civilization that had lost its perspective and humanity remained beyond her reach in time.

PRINCIPAL PARTICIPANTS:

Kathleen (Katie) Peters, Filmmaker—Producer

Mark J Gordon, Filmmaker—Director, Screenwriter

Michael Kamins: Executive Producer at New Mexico PBS

Marsha Mason, Actor—Voice of Mabel Dodge Luhan
Ali MacGraw, Actor/Activist—Narrator

Zoe Zimmerman, Actor/Artist—Appearing as Mabel in re-enactment scenes

Blue Spruce Standing Deer, Voice of Tony Luhan--Taos Pueblo Consultant

Bob Willis: Cinematographer
Pat Hall, Filmmaker—Producer
Jill Drinkwater, Financial Advisor—Producer and Story Consultant

Nancy Kenney, Filmmaker—Producer, Sound Track Supervisor
Jennifer Schiffmacher, Grant Writer—Script Consultant
Ellen Bradbury, Executive Director of Recursos de Santa Fe, a Non-Profit Fiscal Agent
Kathryn M Davis, Art Historian—Writer, Editor, Script Consultant

Beth Kennedy-Jones, Script Consultant, Actor, Dramatic Coach

Lois Palken Rudnick: Script Consultant, Biographer

Flannery Burke: Biographer

Suzanne Campbell, Art Historian—Script Consultant
Cindra Kline, Writer/Editor—Script Consultant
Martha Corder, Pharmaceutical Sales Manager—Funding Development Director

Carole Baker, Internet Consultant—Social Media Director

Marti Fenton, Artist and Blogger—Story Advisor

I wish that all of you could come to the premier, but hope that those of you who live near by can make it.

RENEGADE MONTH

Our neighbors probably think we have a new car.

We hoped for another visit to our Arizona retreat before the weather changed, but it wasn’t to be.  Yet, if we have learned something, it is not to invest much in expectations.  Two weeks ago, we were T-boned by a big Ford SUV. Now we are driving a cute Jeep Renegade rental until the Subaru gets out of the hospital.  I like the way it looks but it is shorter than our Forester, with a rougher ride and smaller gas tank. The electronic gadgets on it are fun though.

Summer came to an abrupt end this week. I suppose it’s the tail end of the tropical storms but the rain was very welcome. So while the hurricanes are too much weather for those at landfall, we benefited. On the downside, I’m afraid that coffee on the patio is over for 2015. To compensate, the turning trees have been especially colorful this year.  As the warm weather fades, the film project, Awakening in Taos is drawing to completion. We have been involved in this story for five years and its producers for longer. Everyone involved is like family and I hope we can stay in touch even after this movie launches into the larger world as a young bird flies from its nest. The premier showing will be at Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe (http://awakeningintaos.com/premiere/) on November  18,  7p.m.  There is a pre-screening party from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Blue Rain Gallery.

PQ and Brazilian Guitarist Zooga Malaga

This weekend we were in Santa Fe for a recording session for the movie. The first day was rehearsal with guitar, violin, drum and flute. The second day was serious recording. Nancy Kinney, our music person was in charge and I was impressed by her choice of musicians and the way she created and wove certain musical themes in and out throughout the entire movie score altering them to the mood, location and time period. 

On an entirely different theme, we just learned that PQ’s oxygen delivery company is now restricted to delivery once a month and he must choose either large tanks or small.  They are no longer allowed to deliver both sizes. This is apparently a limitation newly imposed by Medicare. Once again, poor people are cut back so that the wealthy won’t be impacted by economic shortfall.  PQ had to go with the larger  tanks because we often have power outages in Taos, sometimes lasting all night or all day when he can’t use the electric concentrator and small tanks don’t last long. However, it is so much easier to handle a small tank when out and about.  

Although the oxygen tank cutback was a surprise, I’ve been feeling subdued about our country and for that matter, the state of the world.  I don’t really want to let my imagination go beyond the present,  because the thought of the political, money obsessed global economy driven by human nature in its current state of un-development suggests a looming catastrophe greater than the results of global warming.  However, sometimes humans find their better qualities in the most challenging times. Nevertheless, I’m glad I’m not a young person as of now. I know this rings of cowardice, but I’d like to ride out a few centuries (maybe more) before returning. Perhaps next week I’ll feel more courageous.

Beautiful Cottonwoods along the Rio Grande

Mabel Dodge Luhan and husband Tony had a vision for cultural soul retrieval. It didn’t happen in their time and it may still be far in the future but I’m glad that it is coming back for another review  in our time. After all, it was a vision that didn’t belong just to them. It was for the world. Perhaps, four years shy of a Century it is time for the vision to reincarnate.