Actually Anna Bing is two people – Anna and Bing – who form a video production company called Video Mutants in the Netherlands. This piece is based on a poem by Ibrahim Selman. I don’t understand the language but the sounds of the poem as read by the narrator are just beautiful. I could listen all day. Check out how the film is a cheerful nod to Bob Dylan’s particular poetry film technique. I love watching the crowds move back and forth. They look like happy people.
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Still 3 From Detective City Angel
The Fabulous Fox: Documentary About the Destruction of a Movie Palace
These are excerpts from a 1988 documentary made by Bartel Thomsen. It chronicles the demolition of the Fox movie theater in San Francisco which happened in 1963. Apparently, the old organ is now in Disney’s El Capitan theater in Hollywood.
Venice Biennale 2011: Thomas Hirschhorn
I like this little clip because the guy presenting the art tries to grasp the meaning of the artist’s installation and apparently doesn’t get it right. But the artist himself doesn’t really know what the meaning is either. It is not the job of an artist to understand or articulate meaning.
Mater Susperia Vision – Seduction of the Armageddon Witches: A Short Film by Diego Barrera
Spanish filmmaker Diego Barrera uses Christian symbolism and New Age crystals to mount a mystical vision trip the takes inspiration from the film works of Alejandro Jodorowski. I believe it is a music video for a group called ‘Mater Susperia Vision.’
Ultimate Dog Tease
Write Like a Pretentious Artist! The Arty Bollocks Generator!
German film director, Werner Herzog.
If you simply must hang your work in a gallery, then here is the tool you’ll need to make just the right impression on your viewing public: The Arty Bollocks Generator.
It’ll flawlessly create your entire artist’s statement for any truly serious and irreproachably artistic endeavor.
Some samples: ‘My work explores the relationship between the tyranny of ageing and skateboard ethics.’
‘As shifting phenomena become frozen through emergent and personal practice, the viewer is left with a statement of the limits of our world.’
Please be serious, donate to a charity, write a manifesto, and for god’s sake go to a gallery for some bloody education! Then take yourself to see a fine German movie… film, I meant ‘film.’ Okay?
Now get going.
And for further sublime examples of pretentious statement-making, try Werner Herzog’s film school!
Warhol and Maciunas: A Film by Jonas Mekas
This is a film by Jonas Mekas that features Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and George Maciunas who founded the New York art movement known as Fluxus. The film shows a Whitney Museum art opening in 1971 and an artists’ party in New York. Home movies become an artform in Mekas’ hands.
Those Dreams That On the Silent Night Intrude; The Secret Cinema of Jerzy Treblinka: A Film by Luca Gennari
This is a Super 8 film made on a single cartridge without post-production effects by Italian filmmaker Luca Gennari for the Straight Eight Festival at Cannes 2010. There’s a great reference to the brilliant Super 8 filmmaker Derek Jarman buried in here. This film glories in the history of abstract, surreal and neorealist cinema. But it fuses those things with a documentary realism. It ties the artistic workings and ramblings of a mysterious filmmaker to the darkness, horror and murder of the Twentieth Century. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again… Italy is involved in a cinema movement that is just as profound as the movements there in the 1940s, 50s, and sixties. The filmmakers in Italy who are today using the Web for their expression are the equals of Fellini and Rossellini.
One Winter’s Night: Animation by Emlyn Boyle
Emlyn Boyle of Ireland made this beautiful Gothic horror animation about a girl who has a late night encounter with a young vampire.
NYPD Moron Gives Bicyclist Ticket for Not Riding in Bike Lane
Casey Neistat is a New York bicyclist who got a ticket from some moronic New York City police officer who felt that Casey should ride in the bike lane… no matter what. So the camera-wielding rider made a video about the whole affair and why the cop was totally wrong. But look at this drooling goober hired by New York to wear a uniform. If this is the standard of police intelligence in good old NY, then god help those poor island dwellers! A bicyclist can be killed by staying in a bike lane, as this video so clearly illustrates. You do not have to stay inside a bike lane. Bikes are legally entitled to occupy traffic lanes if the rider determines that to be the safest course.
Still 2 From Detective City Angel
Another still from my film, ‘Detective City Angel.’
Still From Detective City Angel
A shot from the film I’m working on, ‘Detective City Angel.’
Winning Short Films From Cannes à la Flip
Cannes à la Flip is a contest held at the Cannes Film Festival for short films made with Flip cameras.
The 2011 first place winner is ‘Kiteling’, by Romanian filmmaker Eva Pervolovici.
The second place winner is ‘One Night Avec La Mer’ by Colin L. Racicot:
The third place winner is ‘Youth’ by Ayse Altinok:
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Throws Idiot Texter Out of Theater
MATURE CONTENT AND LANGUAGE:
Oh yeah! Go Alamo Drafthouse Cinema! I’m totally with ya! Listen to this nattering twit with snot for brains as she expresses her outrage over being tossed out of a movie theater minus refund for texting. Sometimes, don’t you wish you could drive a coat hanger through the head of one of these people? I recommend throwing these boneheads out onto the sidewalk face-first. Who gives a fart about a jackoff who needs to text in a movie theater? I’ve actually heard a-holes sitting in movies while engaging in loud telephone conversations. They can become very belligerent and downright dangerous if confronted about their rudeness. It would be nice to see mob reactions in these cases where cell phone users in movie theaters are actually ejected by the audience. They should be thrown into traffic so they can be run over. Cell phones are the great IQ test of our time. To loosely quote an old movie: The more you text, the stupider you are.