
Vera Brunner-Sung
2021Bella Vista
Vera Brunner-Sung
Kathleen Wise, Hiroka Matsushima
Bella Vista is a fiction/documentary hybrid that tells the story of a woman at a crossroads. In the dead of winter in the mountain valley of Missoula, Montana, Doris has just returned to the U.S. after years teaching English abroad. At the local university, she forms a small community with her class of international students. But outside she is alienated, unable to form meaningful connections. Doris explores the town, coming across clues to a recent legacy of displaced persons: an old photograph of an Indian camp, a row of Japanese graves in the local cemetery. And she is haunted by a strange encounter with a boy, who lives in a motel on the edge of town. As winter begins to thaw, she and her students must consider the complexities of adapting and belonging. What if home is no longer a place, but just an idea? Could you lose yourself completely? The next decision they make will redefine not only their lives, but their very identities.
Bella Vista
Fallen Star: Finding Home
Vera Brunner-Sung, Valerie Stadler
Perched atop the seventh floor of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, Do Ho Suh’s “Fallen Star” has become a beloved landmark. Its planning, however, required years of effort and innovations in architecture, construction, and engineering. Why did so many people get behind such an improbable idea, and work so hard to make it a reality? A story of collaboration and the ways that art can surprise you, Fallen Star: Finding Home takes us behind the scenes in the creation of the 18th public artwork in the Stuart Collection.
Fallen Star: Finding Home