Department of Visual & Dramatic ArtsFilm Alumni Spotlight
Mark BriceFilm Producer, Director, and CinematographerDallas, TX BA, Psychology and Art & Art History, Rice University, 1980 Mark Brice, who graduated from Rice in 1980, was awarded an Emmy for cinematography for the Carrier series produced by Mel Gibson. Mark was one of Professor Brian Huberman's first students at Rice and has worked on many documentary productions including National Geographic's Doctors Without Borders and Paramedics. Brice said, "The Emmy is for Outstanding Cinematography for a Reality Series, for the Carrier series, which was shown on PBS. Carrier is a 10-hour series following a six-month deployment of the U.S.S. Nimitz aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf. The Award was given at the Creative Arts Emmys at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday, September 13. [Mark Brice] gave the acceptance speech! The show will be broadcast on the E! Entertainment Network on Saturday, September 20." When James Blue, the then-director of Rice Media Center, walked into a Texas classroom some 30 years ago, a self-described regular kid took his first step toward an extraordinary career that has taken him around the world, quite literally. Mark Brice ‘80 has spent time sleeping under the stars in Africa, crossing through war zones in Burundi, trailing an anti-kidnapping unit in Brazil, and living aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. It’s that last experience that led Brice, a documentary filmmaker, to the strangest place of all: Hollywood. Brice was awarded the Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography for a Reality Series for his work on the PBS film “Carrier.” Produced by Mel Gibson, “Carrier” is a 10-hour series that follows a six-month deployment of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier during the Iraq War. “The Media Center at Rice was my launching pad,” Brice said. “When James Blue came into my high school and showed us a 16-millimeter film he shot in Africa and talked about what he did, I thought, ‘I want to do that.’” Though Brice discovered his passion that day, he couldn’t convince himself to pursue it fully. A wannabe marine biologist, he came to Rice as a biology major, th inking he would only dable in film in his spare time. “I took film classes as electives,” Brice said. “It seemed like a nice break from the academic pressures of Rice. But then I realized it was because my heart wasn’t in the hard sciences.” Spending hours and hours synching audio and video wasn’t without pressure, but Brice loved it. He still laughs fondly when he talks about the late nights he spent at the Media Center fine-tuning picture and sound while hearing Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” play in the screening room. “I remember Mark as a student very well,” said Brian Huberman, chair of Visual and Dramatic Arts. “I would see him late at night in the editing room focused on his work. It was clear early on that he was committed to filmmaking.” The commitment sometimes took extreme forms. In making a film about racial violence spurred by an incident on the Texas coast, Brice ended up with Huberman and a cameraman driving around back roads at night, unarmed, to film a Ku Klux Klan induction rally. Upon arriving, they were immediately surrounded by men with rifles. It’s one of the most memorable experiences Huberman has had as a teacher. “I had a really good chance to see him in action,” Huberman said with a laugh. As for the physical strains throughout his career. Brice explains that the documentary medium rarely allows for posh conditions. “The challenge of making a documentary is always finding a way to do your best work and be open to discovery when you are uncomfortable, when you’re not eating right, when it’s 110 degrees and you have no shade in sight, when the weather is fogging up your goggles on an aircraft carrier and you have no way of knowing exactly what kind of picture you’re shooting.” But Brice doesn’t complain. Instead he talks about the awe he’s felt and the privileges he has had. “If you really like what you’re doing, those trying conditions are all worth it. Anything for the chance for the best pictures ever,” Brice said. “You try to capture things that no one has ever seen before. I’ve had the chance to see the Pacific Ocean where it’s seven miles deep – it’s a color blue you can’t describe.”
Tariq TapaIndependent FilmmakerLos Angeles, CA BA, Rice University, 2003MFA, California Institute of the Arts Tariq Tapa was born in New York City. He made his debut feature Zero Bridge in Kashmir over nine months with a cast of only non-professionals and no crew. It premiered at the 2008 Venice Film Festival. The L.A.-based Tapa, who graduated from Rice University with a BA in 2003, then went to CalArts to earn his MFA, and whose short films have screened at the Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art, received a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Kashmir to make Zero Bridge. The film tells the story of a teenage pickpocket, Dilawar, who plans to escape from both Kashmir and his strict uncle but whose plans are complicated when he forms a bond with a woman whose passport he has stolen. Tapa says that his first job when arriving in Srinagar was to convince the community there that he “was on their side.” He says, “Tempers could flare very quickly because of cultural and political issues [having to do with] traditional and conservative Muslim. We were often mistaken for doing something illicit. Or, they didn‘t understand the kind of movie we were making. They‘d say, ‘Where are all the tiger and the dancing women?‘ I‘d say, ‘Well, it‘s a story about people‘s lives,‘ but the concept of this kind of movie doesn‘t exist over there.” In order to teach the community, including the non-actors who star in the film, about his kind of filmmaking, Tapa showed them DVDs of such movies as The Tree of Wooden Clogs, The Bicycle Thief, and Il Posto. Tapa's film, Zero Bridge, has premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, The 8th Festival International du Film de Marrakech, and the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. More about Tariq Tapa and Zero Bridge >>
Cesar WrightIndependent FilmmakerPresident, Kino-Eye Center for Visual InnovationHoneoye Fall, NY and Houston, TX BA, BFA, Cultural Anthropology & Art & Art History, Rice University, 2002MFA, Cinema & Television Production, University of Southern CaliforniaMA Candidate, Columbia UniversityPh.D. Candidate, University of Rochester As a visual anthropologist and filmmaker, I am dedicated to exploring visual cultural representation. My work includes research, methodological development, and applied film and media production, with an emphasis in documentary and ethnographic film. Through non-profit Arts and Education outreach incentives and projects, I also work to promote informed discourse regarding the potential and problematics of film as a tool for documenting, representing, and generating culture. As an undergraduate at Rice University, Cesare completed degrees in Anthropology, Art & Art History, and Visual Arts, before completing the prestigious MFA program in Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He now teaches occasional seminars on such topics as documentary production, sound, and cinematography. Cesare is presently completing his Ph.D. dissertation in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. His research interests include the cinematic sublime, rhetoric of the frame, globalization and mass media, ethnographic film, documentary theory and methodologies, and the cinema of Werner Herzog. In this capacity, he has conducted independent cultural study and research in more than thirty countries. Working as an independent filmmaker, Cesare has produced and directed several award winning films, including Back to the Primitive (2003), an exploration of "modern primitivism" in contemporary sub-cultures, and The Crocodile and the Kinkajou (2001). Border Wars (2005), which documents paramilitary civilian activity along the U.S./Mexico border, premiered at an industry screening at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Goals (2007), a film which explores issues of immigration and assimilation vicariously through sports, premiered on The Documentary Channel and NYC TV in January 2007, as part of the DocU Series. Material from his films has aired on numerous national and international broadcasts and networks, including Fox News, Telemundo, Spiegel TV, and French TV 2. Cesar currently serves as president of the Kino-Eye Center for Visual Innovation, a 501(c)3 Arts and Education non-profit foundation, which he co-founded in 2004, and is directing two feature documentary films: Don't Tell Me What to Think, which explores the controversial world of talk radio, and Cherry's Jubilee: The Don Cherry Story, which documents the life of professional golfer and singer Don Cherry.
More about Cesar and Kino-eye Center for Visual Innovation >>