Category Archives: Education

Undersea ABC: Alphabet Learning Game for Kids

by Cimaxion

UnderseaImage

 

This is a learning game I programmed quite a few years ago. I’ve rewritten the code so that it should play more smoothly and perhaps be a little easier to read in the test results area.

The game is very simple: Larry Lobster tells you what to do. You just click on the letter bubbles to pick the right ones. A perfect score frees the trapped submarine from the bottom of the ocean.

Next up – an iPad version!

CLICK HERE TO PLAY UNDERSEA ABC

The Moon: 1965 Soviet Film by Pavel Klushantsev

by Cimaxion

Luna

In 1965 Pavel Klushantsev made this Soviet film about how a voyage to the moon might happen. I’ve seen and posted other footage from this great science fiction director, but this is interesting because its color has been restored to saturated magnificence. Don’t worry that you can’t understand the Russian language. Just watch and enjoy the 60s communist enthusiasm! You will be treated to astronauts cavorting on the lunar surface while wearing space suits that look to me like nearly perfect adaptations from popular speculative illustrations of the time. The technical detail of this film is really quite amazing. NASA might want to refer to it while trying to re-acquire its lost Apollo knowledge.

It is apparent that Kubrick had his eye on this director’s work as he prepared to make 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you know that film, you will catch the shots I’m talking about.

 

Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? 1970 Disney Driver Education Film

by Cimaxion

 
 
Disney produced this amazingly good drivers education film in 1970. It is one of those cheerfully playful experiments with common avant-garde techniques that were so much a part of seventies culture because of shows like Sesame Street. The filmmaking is generally quite good and sometimes even approaches brilliance. I've been working vaguely and lazily on a new film about cars and Los Angeles and I'm quite prepared to lift some things right out of this film or at least use it as a template for commenting on car culture in this great throbbing fast lane metropolis.
 
Kurt Russell of ham acting fame gives the narration and he's actually good, playing the young man in school who is about to go for his driving test and qualify for the license to kill that will get him lots of action as long as he looks out for little girls chasing big red balls into the street.
 
Enjoy a trip through Los Angeles of yesteryear and remember that cars just work better out here.
 
 

The Life of an Agent: Hungarian Secret Police Training Films From 1958 – 1988

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment


This is a 2004 film compilation by Gábor Zsigmond Papp that presents a ‘best of’ series of clips from thirty years of Hungarian secret police training films geared toward protecting the socialist regime. Subjects covered include: how to place a bug, how to film people from handbag cameras, how to follow someone, how to secretly search a home, how to recruit agents, and how to effectively network for information gathering. These are all marvelous skills for finding a job in today’s high-tech world of modern American surveillance. But I view the film from an artistic perspective and find it fascinating in its easy ability to create mood and tension with the bare minimum of cinematic effort.

Carl Jung’s Anima Projection

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment


Here’s a short film made by YouTube user VioletPsychofluid. It features narration taken from an audiobook version of Carl Jung’s book, ‘Man and His Symbols,’ overlaid with various feature film and documentary clips that seem to illustrate the points made by Jung on the ‘anima,’ which is the feminine aspect of the male personality or psyche. I particularly like the inclusion of clips from Jean Cocteau’s film, ‘Orpheus,’ which is one of the greatest depictions of the underworld ever put on film. This is really magnificent work done by someone willing to upload into the wilds of YouTube, potentially unnoticed. The filmmaker is deeply connected to the subtleties of Jung’s thought and seeks out images that illustrate and compliment the very difficult to grasp ideas and theories about the anima. When I read Jung I experience great excitement about his ideas. But when I put the books down I have difficulty keeping it all straight and remembering what an anima or a projection represents. For me, it’s almost as if Jung’s work itself exists in a hazy dreamworld that only intermittently connects with logic, rationality or memory.