- [Announcer] Production of "Applause," an Idea Stream Public Media, is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up, an Akron photographer takes a nostalgic journey through the forgotten malls of the Rust Belt.

Plus the construction of this Christmas confection is a holiday tradition in Columbus.

And meet the holly jolly music man behind the beloved TubaChristmas.

It's time for "Applause," ladies and gentlemen.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Thanks for tuning in.

Empty fountains, quiet corridors, shuttered storefronts.

Once bustling centers of a city's social scene, malls are no longer fixtures of everyday life as they were in generations past.

Travel along with one Akron native documenting these once grand structures through photography and capturing a mall's last moments before the buildings are closed for good.

- This photo is of me and I was 18 months old, and my mom had me at a Chapel Hill Mall, and she was approached by a photographer from the Akron Beacon Journal who asked if her child would pose with some tiger cubs, and my mom said yes.

So this picture ran in the Akron Beacon Journal in 1978.

My name is Jessica Anshutz.

I am a documentary photographer and a storyteller.

My dad is a bricklayer, and one of his first jobs was working at Rolling Acres Mall during the building of the mall.

So, quite literally, from the first bricks of that place, my family has been involved.

I basically grew up there.

I've always joked that it was my childhood home because I lived three miles from it.

I went on my first date at that mall, at the movie theater.

I had my very first job at the mall.

So it was always a presence in my life.

I started photographing malls in 2016.

I've wanted to pick my camera back up.

So I did, with the intention of starting a daily creative practice.

Well, I've always been interested in architecture, in buildings, and I drove by Rolling Acres on my way to my mom's house.

And I was like, "Oh, okay.

I think I'm gonna go take pictures of the old Kaufmann's because it was falling apart and it was also on the cover of The Black Keys' "Gold on the Ceiling" album.

So, it was a very familiar, iconic piece of local architecture.

Every season I would go and take different pictures because there were trees growing up in the parking lot and the leaves would change, and it was an interesting juxtaposition of this decay, but also life from plants.

(melancholic music) I really didn't get nostalgic for 'em until I started doing this, until I started photographing 'em.

From there, I started doing more research and I ended up at Canton Centre Mall.

And so, you're in this space that is familiar.

You can look at the storefronts and know from the colors and patterns what store used to be there.

There might be a label scar, but all of the plants were dead, the fountain was empty.

It smelled old and moldy and musty, but it's still, it was a mall.

And that was the one that I was like, "Yes, this is what I need to be doing."

There's clearly something happening and I want to capture this.

With malls now, they've taken all the seating out.

You don't see fountains, even plants are hard to come by, and it's just this big white box that you go in, you shop, and you leave.

Finding places where I can still go sit in a conversation pit by a fountain and enjoy the sights and sounds for 10, 15 minutes, that's my jam.

That's what I wanna do.

(giggling) A lot of times when malls close, they just leave the plants in.

This plant started from a little clipping of the plant that was on the fountain at Chapel Hill Mall.

When I visit malls, I am very immersed in the actual experience of it.

I shop while I'm there if I can.

We'll get a snack, we'll go sit by the fountain if they have one, we engage in the space.

And I think that lends itself to photos that are a little more atmospheric.

And I feel like my photos are a little more intimate.

(mid-tempo music) I've always had a camera.

My parents put one in my hands very young.

I didn't go to school for photography, I went to school for journalism.

So, I think that's where the nonstop curiosity has come from.

Like, I will see something or experience something, and if it's impactful enough, I wanna know everything about it.

I wasn't anticipating this, but I love it, and I've just dug into it and it's endlessly fascinating because people dig into it from so many different aspects.

I'm looking at it from more of wanting to document these places while they're still around, and engaging with people and just enjoying the nostalgia.

But I'm also not a person who is like, "And I think malls should still exist."

In a lot of ways, the time of the mall has passed.

I do think it's important for photos and the folklore of a mall to still exist.

This is my favorite piece of mall ephemera that I have is this "CHAPEL HILL MALL is NOT Closing" sign, because there was this big campaign, probably the year before they closed, where it was just like, "No, we're not closing, we're not going anywhere."

And, the writing was on the wall, everybody knew they were closing, and it was just these optimistic posters just hanging everywhere.

There's definitely an interest and I've noticed, locally, if I post pictures, local people are just like, "Oh, my gosh, I haven't thought about that place in so long."

And, it sparks all of these memories and discussions that reinforce what I'm doing.

I know that the photos I take are important and they are important to people who engaged in those spaces.

And if I can be the person who helps them spark these memories and spark these conversations, then that's fantastic.

I love it.

(gentle music) - [Kabir] Oscar-winning filmmaker, Julia Reichert, dedicated her career to documenting important social issues.

From feminism and communism, to labor unions and childhood cancer.

Earlier this month, after her own battle with cancer, Reichert died at the age of 76 at her home in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

A few years ago, she spoke with WOSU PBS about her 50-year career behind the camera.

- I always say that's what I know how to do is making films.

I don't really know how to do anything else.

Well, I'm a good gardener.

(melancholic music) So I'm a kid from New Jersey, small town, Exit 7 of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Nobody in our circle ever went to college, but I really wanted to go.

- Julia's journey from a working class kid, the daughter of a butcher and a nurse in a working class neighborhood in New Jersey, to becoming one of the great documentarians of our time, it's just an incredible journey.

- You know, when I was a young woman, a young girl, you could either be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary.

Those were basically what you could be.

This is pre-women's movement, 'cause I started college in 1964.

"Growing Up Female" was actually my senior project at Antioch.

- [Narrator] Every young woman in Terry's high school is required to take a six-week course from her guidance counselor on the subject of marriage.

- I would say a young wife should be neat and clean and attractive as possible.

The husband should make the major decisions, the wife should assist.

Maybe if he asks her advice, but the major decisions are his.

The wife should be at least understanding.

Whatever his decision is, she should go along with it.

Also, I believe that a wife should not expect the husband to do any housework, like wash dishes, clean the house, do any of this menial task and leave- - Right, the "Female" is just before the women's movement hit.

"Methadone" is during the heroin crisis of the seventies, which was largely African American and working class people.

- [Narrator] America doesn't have a drug culture.

It is a drug culture.

And if we want something different, we're gonna have to change our society in some fundamental ways.

- They're more than just old films.

They're films that are snapshots of American history and especially Midwest and Ohio history.

- This beautiful thing about "Growing Up Female," but also about so many of Julia's films, is that she evokes real people.

She does portraits of real people and lets us grapple with contemporary issues through the lives of actual human beings who we get to know.

(man speaking in foreign language) - They told me that they had to be here two years away from their family, no extra pay.

I made it their house, they made it my home.

- Julia's films really grappled with questions of how can people have a decent life if they're not rich, if they're not a billionaire?

(man speaking in foreign language) - I'm a working class kid.

Did I ever learn labor history in schools?

Did I ever get it from my parents even?

I didn't really learn about labor history and the importance of it in shaping our country, but I wanted to know it like I wanted to know my history.

All the films come directly out of things I wanted to know for my own life, for my own questions that I faced during the different eras of my life.

Being in a left-wing movement myself, I was really interested in finding out how people in earlier left-wing movements, how they sustained their beliefs, or did they sustain their beliefs even in the hard times.

So we went to people who had joined the American Communist Party.

- Working class.

The Capitalist class has nothing in common.

Nothing.

And you'd ponder that, "Oh, right, some son of a bitch is up there eating the filet mignon, and we're down here eating burnt liver."

- I think what makes for great documentaries is real curiosity, where the filmmaker actually cares.

Weren't you scared, weren't you?

- No, I didn't see anybody around with trench coats and things.

- A lot of the films I've made explore class, race, and gender.

But, "A Lion in the House" is about kids fighting cancer.

But as soon as you really go into depth on what that looks like in the lives of five diverse families, right away, you see racial differences, you see class differences, you see the differences in people who are living with economic hardship.

- In my life, I always been sheltered by my mother and my stepfather, and this is something that my mother couldn't change or take away from me, so it made me stronger.

- It made her stronger and me wiser.

- You could do anything when it comes to your child.

- I really rely on Julia's instincts about people, about story, about which direction to go in.

- Now, "American Factory," it really tries to be fair to all the points of view that we encountered.

The sort of power struggle between China and America has been going on most of the 21st century.

It's one of the big stories of the 21st century, right?

So that we thought the most valuable thing we could do is let you see what that's like for the Chinese, for the blue-collar Americans, for the blue-collar Chinese, for the management, and even for the Chinese owner who's a multi-billionaire.

- Where you sit today used to be a General Motors plant, and now there are over 1,000 employees working here.

(audience applauding) - Is this a union shop?

- It is our desire to not be.

(glass breaking) (man speaking in foreign language) - We have told, generally speaking, Midwestern stories about Midwestern people, and there aren't very many of us doing that.

I'm really proud of those movies, and I think they show that we learned it on our own terms.

We didn't go to a big film school, we didn't live in the New York and L.A. community.

We weren't shaped by that.

We were shaped by the Midwest, by Ohio, and by doing it by our own bootstraps.

And I think that shows in the movies and I'm certainly very proud of that.

- [Kabir] Standing 7'1" in hair and heels, she's the tallest drag queen in Cleveland, but there's a lot more to Veranda L'Ni than that.

On the next "Applause," we meet Northeast Ohio's queen of drag performance and some of her friends.

Plus, we honor the lives lost in Dayton's Oregon District three years ago with art.

And we share a stirring performance by the Cleveland Orchestra inspired by a hike along the California Coast.

All that and more on the next round of "Applause."

(orchestral music) For the last 16 years, Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus has hosted its annual gingerbread house competition.

Let's hear about this holiday tradition from one of the gingerbread judges and its grand champion.

(bright music) - They're beautiful.

I can't imagine the effort that went into these gingerbread houses.

I can't imagine how much time.

Just the thought process of how it, "What kind of a gingerbread house am I gonna make?"

And, they probably threw a bunch of ideas out at the dinner table with their family, and then they say, "Oh, Mom, why don't you make a beach scene?"

- I love bakings.

I love gingerbread houses.

I love all that stuff that they're like, "How did that happen?"

So I think from that standpoint, I was just super excited and honored.

(quirky music) I love people who give a tribute to their dogs.

So what I'm trying not to include on my judging is the heartfelt stories behind why people built what they built.

They were so sweet.

That easily could have swayed me, but I really tried to look for is, did they follow what the theme was supposed to be?

Did they use a variety of medium, I guess, is a great word for it.

There was some folks who used cereal in theirs and some people who used candies.

And, I love to see just the creativity behind what people chose to include.

(bright music) And this is just genius because they clearly built a structure under it, but the saltines are so much lighter.

That's the hardest thing about gingerbread is it's so heavy.

(bright music) - We did this last year for the first time and this year, and my kids are little, so any extra tradition that we start is just really special for our families.

There's a couple different tries, I can tell you that.

There's one previous one that collapsed.

It's in the trash now, but decorating it was fun.

I got to play with isomalt, which I've never used before, and it turns into the glass.

So that was new this year and fun.

We'll be doing it for as long as we can now.

- So, it is something to look forward to every year.

I really like art, and it's something that I can really express myself with, and I love adding the little details, and adding a new little trick or tip to it.

So we started doing marzipan things three years ago, and I love that stuff.

It tastes really good.

I ended up eating half the stuff that I make.

Before I started gingerbread thing, I always like to do a bit of research on the side of looking at other people's gingerbread and other people's art and stuff.

So, before I start, I always draw a picture of what I want it to look like or an idea of the basics of what it should look like, and then I just go from there and cut out all the gingerbread parts and start constructing it.

And then it just sort of turns out.

One of my favorite ones was one of the original ones that I did.

Maybe my first one.

It was a monkey tree house and it was when I was a little, little kid.

I took my hand print and traced it, and those were the branches on the sides.

And I've always loved monkeys.

And I got actual monkey food treats from my grandpa who works at the zoo, and we put them on up on the roof as tiles.

The first one we did was like a family design and it was really bad.

We were little kids and we didn't know what we were doing, and we were kinda gluing things on and just doing whatever the heck we wanted to do.

But then, after a while, we developed the type of gingerbread that we needed to use and the ways that you put it together, and how to make it look professional and good.

We found a really good recipe one year and then we just continued to use it every single year.

Well, it's not actually edible.

It would taste terrible if you ate it.

Tastes like cardboard.

So it's a very structural gingerbread that we use.

And, I mean, if you dropped it, it would shatter.

It doesn't bend.

We dry it out so that it's rock hard and then it stays up.

So I'm just gonna take the gingerbread out and we're gonna form it into a big ball, so that I can roll it out into a flat slab.

But I gotta use these things because it's gotta be the same thickness all around.

(bright music) - To me, it reminds me of my childhood.

The younger, mom making gingerbread houses, which she did.

It was very simple.

There wasn't anything fancy about it, a little white frosting on the roofs, and that, which she did do 'em with the seven kids.

We appreciated that.

And, I think that you look at these things, it's an art, what they've done.

(bright music) - [Kabir] From holiday confections to the sounds of the season, we return to Akron for the annual TubaChristmas celebration.

Longtime University of Akron music professor, Tucker Jolly, began the TubaChristmas concert back in 1980.

Last year, at this time, Ideastream Public Media's, David C. Barnett, welcomed Jolly to "Applause" performances.

- We gotta start with the name.

That is in fact your family name, that is not branding that was devised later?

- That's correct, it's my family name, and people have an image of me as Tucker Jolly, the tuba player, but I'm six feet tall and weigh 140 pounds, so I don't fit their image usually.

But, yeah, it's a family name.

- Talk about, going from 50 people to 600 people, what do you think it is that makes this event so popular over the years, over 40 years?

- Well, I think there are a whole lot of things.

There are a lot of players that come and really enjoy getting together and playing together, and I think, once they do it in the big ensemble, it's really neat.

And once we moved into theaters, not many people get to play for the big crowds that we would have.

The group comes together, and I think that the players themselves begin to enjoy, really enjoy the event for a lot of different reasons.

Now, the audience comes many times, I think, just to see what this is going to look like.

And I think they have a, probably not a great idea, about what it's going to sound like, 'cause they think of tubas and they think of the oompas and the instruments in the marching band and so forth.

I think, when they come and they hear it, they are really pleasantly surprised at how wonderful it sounds.

And then, the event itself, as far as the audience goes, we have them sing along with us for many of the carols.

And I think it becomes a giant community sing-along then, and there's not many places you can do that anymore.

And so, the community really enjoys getting together, singing Christmas carols, having a good time, and just really getting in the spirit of the season.

("Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" by The University of Akron) ("Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" continues) ("Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" continues) ("Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" continues) - [Kabir] TubaChristmas takes place each December on the University of Akron campus.

If you can't make it this year, watch our "Applause Tuba Christmas Special" online via the PBS app.

(orchestral music) That's a wrap, everyone.

Thanks for coming and enjoy the holidays.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

We'll see you in the new year with new episodes of "Applause."

(orchestral music) (bright music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause," an Ideastream Public Media, is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.