Because he is 100% truthful, he drives the show’s host a little bit crazy.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
The Angry Red Planet
“Cinemagic is not being shown to you now! But…”
Culture Shock, Level One – A Film by Bill Mousoulis
Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film posted a film by Bill Mousoulis called The Experimenting Angel. I liked it. So I’ve posted another of Mousoulis’ films. It features Jennifer Levy who returns from a long absence to Australia and feels dislocated while visiting a city. She wonders why the people seem so ‘deflated’ as they wander through various public/corporate spaces like malls. The film captures something increasingly common worldwide which is that quiet, blank, but seemingly normal behavior encouraged by any structure designed and erected with a corporate idea behind it. We all know how we are expected to behave when we walk past a row of Gaps, Starbucks, Banana Republics and Wetzle’s Pretzels. We obey. We perform the routine and go about our business making sure that we are perceived as correctly normal. We are guests in someone else’s house, even in our public spaces. We behave like new guests, ingratiating ourselves to the dome camera in the ceiling. The cell phone is the absolute symbol of complete obeisance to the corporate superstructure looming above us. We are told to engage in meaningless chatter while we walk, drive, breathe, eat, date, watch movies, run, bike, and work. We are told to do this until it seems like normal and seems to make perfect sense. It is as logical as being told to drop a penny on the ground every third step for every day of your life. Steve Jobs tells you to leave him a penny on the ground every third step of every day of your life… and you damn well do it. You know how many times Steve Jobs uses a cell phone during an average day? None. Why? Because he’s much smarter than you are.
It is Not the Same Thing – A Film by Kathy Choi
The Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles is posting films made in its youth film class structured around the concept of work. The students made films about how they view jobs and work. It’s a great idea for a film class and throws the students into a very mature thought process. I really like this very fine film by Kathy Choi, Ce N’est Pas La Meme Chose (It Is Not The Same Thing). She lets a woman from France compare the working life there to the life in America. There are fascinating and sharp observations made about how the French worker simply wants to be efficient and get the job done within the regular day contrasted with how the American worker is expected to show a willingness to stay longer and ‘look’ more busy or dedicated.
Having closely observed American corporate office life I can attest to the phenomenon that is the actual ruling principal behind the entire American economy: at all costs one must always look busy.
The sad fact of our current jobless recovery is that an enormous percentage – probably in the 50% range – of all corporate American jobs are totally and completely unnecessary and should not exist. In other words, those jobs should not come back because they are fake. They are occupied by people spending the vast majority of their time looking busy, talking busy, pretending, and doing next to nothing.
The French view which holds a job to be something limited and something to do efficiently and well, while not allowing it to overwhelm one’s life strikes me as a very mature and reasonable view.
This little film is exceedingly good and reminds me of Godard.
10-Minute Film School with El Mariachi Director Robert Rodriguez
Director Robert Rodriquez shows how he put several sequences together for his low-budget first feature, El Mariachi. His solutions for working with a single camera and extremely limited resources are ingenious. His consistent recommendation to young low-budget filmmakers is to simply refuse to spend any money on anything. After watching this film it becomes very apparent that the only thing really preventing people from making films is a simple lack of ability.
For further study, Mubi.com has nice in-depth article called 30 Minute Film School that covers all the shot types and lighting setups one needs in order to make a narrative film.
Here’s a fascinating continuation of the 10-minute film school in which Rodriguez shows how he filmed a complex shootout for Desperado with Antonio Banderas by using a video camera to pre-plan the entire sequence.
Garuda – An Animation by Gobelins Students
A Gobelins production of a film by Nicolas Athane, Meryl Franck, Alexis Liddell, Andres Salaff, and Maïlys Vallade.
Impressions Gothenburg – A Film by Anders Weberg
Shot with a Nokia N8 mobile phone, Anders Weberg’s film is multi-layered trip through a night dreamscape. He seems to form landscapes of diffused glowing light.
Digital Underground in the People’s Republic of China
Rachel Tejada shot and edited this film about independent and underground film in China. It was produced by dGenerate Films. It’s in six short parts and covers the basics of independent film festivals and efforts to make films that will somehow survive the oversight of the repressive government. I post this out of a measured interest, but I cannot overlook the depressingly passive sadness of everyone who so much as glances into the camera. They consistently refer to themselves as independent filmmakers or underground filmmakers. Underground they may be out of necessity, but they are most certainly not independent. They are comfortably passive and have an absolute zero level of confrontation or rebellion in them.
I cannot muster significant respect for billions of people who want to express themselves and flourish but do not ever make the decision to pick up their totalitarian government leaders and drown them in the sea. You can talk to me until you are blue in the face about your independent cinema, but until your cameras shoot something I’m not listening.
Parts 2 – 6 after the jump
The Future of Art
How is technology changing the way we make, view and distribute art? Gabriel Shalom made this film by interviewing artists at the Transmediale festival 2011 in Berlin, Germany. It was produced by KS12.
Facts About Projection – A Film by Temujin Doran
Filmmaker and projectionist Temujin Doran made a film about his love of his work in a small London movie theater.
Via Brain Pickings.
Rising to High Places – 1963 Documentary On Office Buildings
A great example of mid-twentieth century English pride in… office buildings! This is a 1963 production of the Rank Organization. My depressing view on modern city skylines, regardless of how beautiful they may be at night, is that all those magnificent towers are simple stacks of flimsy cubicles and low ceilings with ugly lighting. Modern cities are nothing more than support structures for desks.
The Secret Identity of Author B. Traven
B. Traven was the mysterious best-selling author of the novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was made into a classic film by director John Huston in the 1940s. But who was B. Traven? The mystery surrounding his identity remains fascinating to this day. There have been many theories about who he was, whether he was several people, whether he was an expatriate German or perhaps even the President of Mexico. People in the film world apparently thought they would have meetings with him, but were then informed that a representative would show up. But was the representative actually B. Traven?
When an artist hides his or her identity many theories develop. Modern figures who have cribbed from Traven’s playbook are the novelist Thomas Pynchon and the painter Banksy who really have no reasons for remaining anonymous beyond the artistic jolt that a secret identity personally gives them. It’s not the crooks that interest Batman after all – it’s the secret identity. A secret identity makes you better in every way because it turns you immediately into a work of art. All artists should be mysteries. At the very least, they should tell lots of lies.
I present this post and its excellent documentary as part of my preparations for an upcoming film. Getting the right mood.
Part 2
Parts 3 – 6 after the jump.
Get Down With Hamlet in a Graveyard
From Shake, Mr. Shakespeare (1936).
Robert Mapplethorpe’s Life Work Given to Los Angeles Museums
As I was driving yesterday, I was thinking about my latest film work and muddling through half-formed thoughts about how, whether anyone likes it or not, Los Angeles is the center of art in the United States. New York has become too much associated with the 20th century’s industrial approach to art. Los Angeles, it seemed to me inside my comfortable car, is where it’s at.
Well, there you have it.
Enjoy the gift, Los Angeles, because you’ve earned it.
If you want to learn a lot more about Mapplethorpe and an incredible drive for artistic expression, read the National Book Award winning memoir by Patti Smith, Just Kids.
Tokyo Night Trip – A Film by Luciana Botelho
Luciana Botelho turns cab rides in Tokyo into a gorgeous abstraction that maintains its romantic atmosphere flawlessly. What I like about these films is how the filmmaker seems able to surrender herself to a particular time and place over the extended period of time necessary for making the film. Not an easy thing to do. I’ve posted about this filmmaker’s work before.