If Films Could Smell

by Roddy Bogawa

If Films Could Smell is at once an assemblage of interviews and writings by Roddy Bogawa (born 1962) from his nearly 30 years as a filmmaker and artist, and a time capsule of the independent film scene and art world of the 1990s as told through artifacts, diary entries, letters, emails, photographs, script notes and assorted bric-a-brac from Bogawa's archives. As with many of Bogawa's films, it's a collage that doesn't try to hide its seams, a jumble of ideas both realized and unrealized, an exploded diagram and a manifesto. The title conveys his interests in personal and cultural memory, and how these intersect with one's identity. Bogawa's work has been variously described as "experimental," "Asian American" and "independent cinema." This volume lays out these labels and dissects them, sometimes humorously. Straddling genres, If Films Could Smell is a document of possibility and provocation.