One Day Occupy L.A.: A Film by Alessandro Cima

by Cimaxion

I went down to the demonstration to make a film. I liked the people there. They were very focused and happy. They were talking, explaining, arguing, educating, dancing, singing, playing, making signs, painting, photographing. Some of them made speeches at the microphone. Some read poems. There were lots of cameras.

The music and words in this film are by Tom Morello (http://nightwatchmanmusic.com), former Rage Against the Machine guitarist. He sings his own ‘Maximum Firepower’ and Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land.’

The mood at City Hall was high energy and cheerful. The underlying anger and frustration of the movement seemed to be moving through a positive channel. It was exciting but also comfortable there because of the people and their open attitudes.

The Los Angeles police headquarters is directly across the street from the protest grounds. That’s where I began shooting my film – right into the windows of police headquarters. Several squad cars drove up First Street, but there was not a single cop anywhere near the protest area. The crowd is organized and respectful, but also very serious about its messages which are various and multifaceted.

The city has taken a protective stance over its protesters. I’m very proud of Los Angeles for this.

Occupy Los Angeles is one of the spreading protests coming out of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York. Hopefully, the incredible momentum of the movement will continue and be heard very clearly across the country and the world.

The simple messages that I get from the protests are that government cannot function while it is under the control and influence of corporations. The economy cannot function properly while corporations and their extremely wealthy owners are allowed to operate without oversight and control. The country cannot pave its roads or build its schools or house its people while corporations and the wealthy play with money that is nearly tax-free, removing it entirely from the real world economy. The country cannot function as a democracy while its politicians and Supreme Court justices are working for corporations. The country cannot be free while racism and bigotry are increasingly seen as legitimate reactions to change. The country cannot be secure while corporations are given the power to run wars and people’s basic privacy rights are removed.

That’s what I see in the Occupy movement.

If every city in the U.S. could have as fine an Occupy movement as Los Angeles, they would be very lucky indeed.

Pacific Standard Time: Anthony Kiedis Celebrates Ed Ruscha

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Red Hot Chili Pepper, Anthony Kiedis rides along with L.A. artist, Ed Ruscha. They talk about using words for art and how that inspires them. I like shooting L.A. this way. The film uses the car and the streets well. I think I even see some duct tape holding Kiedis’ passenger door mirror together.

Pacific Standard Time web site.

VSV Taos to Topanga: A Film Visit with Artists George Herms and Dean Stockwell

by Cimaxion

George Herms is one of Los Angeles’ great artists, having been a founder of the ‘assemblage’ or found object kind of art. Actor Dean Stockwell has been making art for many decades and apparently lives out in the desert somewhere.  I think he’s one of those fake grumpy guys.  I’m familiar with them.  They try to set you off balance by pretending to be asses. The filmmaker, Paul Hasegawa-Overcracker takes his friends to visit both artists at home. Watch for Herms’ personal definition of High Definition.

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall Street): A Film by Alex Mallis

by Cimaxion

This film shows how the protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement organize themselves in lower Manhattan. They seem to be forming something like a little community with food services, minor first aid, a library, battery charging and even video editing services for all the people covering the action. These people are working hard and have an uncommon seriousness about them. This is something new. These are mainly young people. They are waking up from iPod oblivion and showing the world that they can make a difference in a democracy decayed by a corporate stranglehold over the government. These are people who can see that corporate management structures have totally occupied and taken over the United States government all the way up to and including its Supreme Court. In fact, there is no other way to dismantle this criminal structure. It can only be broken up by massive groups of angry protesters who simply never stop coming.

The film was shot and edited by Alex Mallis.

Here’s a simple and clear opinion piece about the reform movement represented by Occupy Wall Street.

Nova Express: Epic Online Film Adaptation of the William S. Burroughs Novel by Andre Perkowski

by Cimaxion

Filmmaker Andre Perkowski is working on a huge 3 hour plus adaptation of the novel ‘Nova Express‘ by William S. Burroughs. It’s a wild, ragged, disjointed, warped, damaged, serious and funny mashup of found footage, original film and Burroughs’ reading voice along with others. It’s got those incoherently combined sci-fi and thriller elements that Burroughs so easily manipulated as if in a delirium. The film is itself a kind of cutup, mirroring the technique Burroughs used that involved gathering unrelated bits and pieces of other books and newspaper articles to formulate sentences that somehow ramble on without necessarily leading anywhere specific. The novel is about exposing the secrets of those who attempt to control all thought and life with virus-like ideas, machines and drugs.

Perkowski is a filmic oddball who delights in making things that are messy. He draws and collages to create new images, purposely ruining his images to create the unexpected. I think his mental immersion into Burroughs is leading him through his wonderful film with great assurance. Apparently, Perkowski is constantly adding to the film and changing it. He has at least six different ‘drafts’ of the film. As he goes, he posts chunks of the film on his YouTube channel which I happen to think is a fantastic idea. There are similarities between the way he works and the way I work on films like my ‘Yellow Plastic Raygun.’ I have often told people that I suspect the video scrubber button in non-linear video editors that allows a filmmaker to fly through a full length feature film in seconds is perhaps the single most important cinematic tool of the last thirty years. It is this little tool that allows for the searching and matching of cinematic elements that could never have been found in a human lifetime before the non-linear editor. So it leads to entirely new form of cinema. That’s what you are watching here with Perkowski’s film. It is a powerful work of new cinema and may well be the best adaptation of a Burroughs work that I have ever seen.

Here’s a great interview with the filmmaker that focuses on this film.

Part 2

 
Parts 3 – 10 after the jump…
Continue reading …

Unions and Students Join the Occupy Wall Street Protests

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Powerful unions have joined with the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. The movement is exploding across the nation, taking root in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The protests are a direct reaction to the inability of the government to fairly tax its people even in the face of a major worldwide financial catastrophe. With the shrill and irrational assertions of Republicans and their Tea Party people sounding like some sort of majority opinion, people are getting out in the streets to show what the real majority really thinks.

 

La Tentation de Saint Antoine: 1898 Special Effects Film by Georges Méliès

by Cimaxion

Oh that lucky fellow, Saint Antoine! To find myself in his shoes as he is ‘tormented’ by the temptations popping in and out of his little cave! My oh my! What a lucky guy! This is Georges Méliès experimenting with making people appear and disappear magically.

 

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity: A Film by Guy Maddin

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin made this short film which is inspired by an 1882 illustration by Odilon Redon that was in turn inspired by the writing of Edgar Allan Poe.  It has a kind of wild sinister fantasy about it that fascinates me.  I like the way Maddin builds little sets that end up looking almost like illustrations.  He also does a quick visual quote of a great old French film called L’Atalante by Jean Vigo.  This is a frightening and beautiful dream film.

 

Pacific Standard Time Celebrates Artist John Baldessari

by Cimaxion

Pacific Standard Time, the roaringly cheerful celebration by Southern California of its own art from the late 40s through the early 80s is releasing short videos to pump everyone up for its brand of art. I should be horrified by this silly video, but I’m not. I kind of like Baldessari’s big ass head on the wall. It works all the way up until he says ‘Art should be fun.’ Yeah, really? I dunno. Sounds like the kind of thing you say to an idiot.

But whatever. I’m going to see a lot of the exhibitions that are part of this festival. Should be really great.
 

Welcome to Hoxford: A Fan Film That’s Creepy and Awesome

by Cimaxion

ADULT CONTENT

Here’s an awesome horror short that’s a very professional grade fan film based on Ben Templesmith’s ‘Welcome to Hoxford’ comic book. It’s bloody impressive and has a nice creepy psychotic edge to it.  The film was directed by Julien Mokrani.  Just what the warden ordered for Halloween’s month of October!

Here’s the fan film web site.
 

Occupy Wall Street Protest Video by Django’s Ghost

by Cimaxion

Django’s Ghost has posted a stirring and rather enthralling video compilation of the ongoing and exploding phenomenon known as Occupy Wall Street. The film is set to several rock & roll protest songs and it gets across the feelings of rising anger and the public’s growing awareness that it can in fact stop the corporate takeover of the United States.

The protesters seem to me to be a rather intelligent and well-behaved crowd. Some of the New York police however appear to be overeager. Cops always end up on the wrong side of these things. They never get it right. Many of them seem to be pretty easy-going, but there are always the brutes that come stomping in and make a mess of things.

I love the way the crowd is so heavily armed with photographic equipment. The protesters are their own journalists!

This movement is spreading quickly. It’s come to Los Angeles at City Hall and is springing up in other cities as well. People are angry about the corporate takeover of their country and their Supreme Court. Losing a President to corporate interests is one thing. That is rather expected. Obama jerked us all around and then turned into a cheeseball from General Motors. But when our Supreme Court gets bought out and turns into a boardroom… well, that is a terrifying problem. That is just about the end of the line. A democracy cannot survive the corruption of the judicial branch.

Thanks to Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds.
 

Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 28 – Conclusion)

by Cimaxion

DOWNLOAD MP3 AUDIO

A Princess of Mars

This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.

Chapter 28 (Conclusion): We reach the final chapter of our story in which John Carter finds himself on a strange new world.

You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.

You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.

Duration: 00:04:28
Read by Alessandro Cima

All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
 

Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 27)

by Cimaxion

DOWNLOAD MP3 AUDIO

A Princess of Mars

This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.

Chapter 27: The martian atmosphere begins to die and John Carter struggles to save an entire planet.

You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.

You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.

Duration: 00:11:29
Read by Alessandro Cima

All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.