The Echo Park Film Center tipped me off to this amazing short film by Guy Maddin. He made it in 2000 for the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s got the frenetic, montage energy of Sergei Eisenstein mixed with some of the fantastic elements of George Melies. Just beautiful and wild.
The Discipline of DE: Short Film by Gus Van Sant
Here’s a 1982 16mm film by Gus Van Sant that’s based on a William S. Burroughs short story from his collection, ‘Exterminator!’ The film perfectly captures the dry Burroughs humor that’s actually dead serious. There’s no advice in this film that one shouldn’t take. Thanks to Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds for posting this. You can read more about the film there.
Facebook Appears to Delete Photos and Pages Related to Gay Men Kissing
If this photo upsets you or offends you, then kiss my ass. Facebook appears to have deleted a page set up to organize a protest over two gay men who were thrown out of a British pub for kissing at their table. (Update: It turns out that the protest organizer made the page private. But it still looks as though Facebook removed some other posts and pics related to this issue.) Over the course of my life I have observed many men and women kissing in restaurants, bars, taxis, airplanes, streets, theaters, Ferris wheels, boats, beaches and on television. It’s a simple act of affection that is practiced by all cultures worldwide.
If a man and a woman feel something for one another, they kiss. If two men feel something for one another, they kiss. If two women feel something for one another, they kiss.
Facebook doesn’t seem to see it that way. They appear to consider it offensive. Objectionable. Perverse.
This is what’s wrong behind the scenes with corporate control of major communications tools. You get some unevolved, intellectually limited, vapid, sexually repressed jackasses running the show and suddenly no one is really allowed to communicate freely anymore. This is a sure indicator that we need to move off of services like Facebook and into fully open-source social networking tools.
Mark Zuckerberg may be one of these mental midgets (Don’t be fooled by the movie. It doesn’t take much to code Facebook really. It’s just MySpace with a white background.) with problems in the sexual arena. Those dull watery eyes might be a dead giveaway. At any rate, he presides over a company that is apparently banning photos of men kissing while fully clothed.
Candlelight Stories supports the rights of all gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual persons. Those rights include the right to kiss and the right to marry and the right to carry on in any way they see fit.
It does not escape me that some of Candlelight’s slower readers will find this post surprising and perhaps offensive. To those readers I say, get the hell out of here, take your kids with you and don’t let the door hit your expanding ass on the way out. I don’t publish for you. Never have. Never will. I consider you monkey people. Unattractive, limp, unschooled, unappealing and quite frankly disgusting. If you were to read another word of my writing, I think I would vomit.
For those others of you who understand that we all have the same right to kiss, go onto Facebook and share this photo.
100 Year Old Little Nemo Animation by Winsor McCay
The Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex blog has a post about Winsor McCay’s early animation efforts from 100 years ago. This is a film that features the cartoonist impressing his skeptical artist friends with moving characters from his great comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland.
The actual Nemo animation starts at the 8:15 mark. Enjoy!
Thanks to Short of the Week for the tip.
TED Film From Arrested Chinese Artist
This is a film presented at the TED conference from the famous Chinese artist who was recently kidnapped by Chinese authorities. He has completely vanished along with thousands of other artists, journalists, writers, intellectuals and human rights workers who have been taken in the past several months. This artist speaks very simply and clearly about the situation in his country where his government watches him all day long and sees nothing wrong with bulldozing his studio to the ground because he expresses some criticism of what he sees around him.
What I do not respect about this video is the simpering nitwit from TED who introduces the film by stating that the TED conference takes no position on China. He then goes on to bend over for China and mentions how many people have been lifted from poverty in China. How far up China’s ass can this guy fit his head, I wonder? How can any organization not take a position on China? I’m sure if Hitler were around today and rambling across the land on an extermination campaign, this bunch from TED would take no position on that.
Look at this little notice on TED’s YouTube page where the film is hosted:
TED is a non-partisan, nonpolitical organization and we understand the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest. But for anyone who believes in the power of ideas, of human imagination, it is heartbreaking to see one of the world’s great artists shackled in this way. We will be tracking developments carefully. Here is the film.
TED ‘understands the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest!’
Oh my god! Yes indeed. They understand this concern of a totalitarian murdering government that is more than happy to make people vanish into prison because they want to complain about being beaten by a policeman.
Hey TED, here I come with my ticket! Gosh, I wouldn’t want you to be concerned that I might boo one of your presentations. Wouldn’t want that, would we?
Lifting people out of poverty in China is not what we need to be doing. We need to be shutting these people out entirely. We need companies that do not fill their computers with Chinese parts. We need toys that do not come painted with Chinese lead poison. We need to treat this totalitarian country the way it deserves to be treated. A rich China doing business with every company on the planet is not going to advance freedom for anyone. China needs to be pushed into abject and brutal poverty. Only then will the conditions exist for a revolution.
I opened up my Dell computer the other day to blow some dust out. The first things I saw were multiple ‘Made in China’ stickers on various components. Screw Dell. Screw every Western company that buys a single circuit board from China. Screw China.
Photo: Contact Manager
British Telecom’s Picture-Phone Future
British Telecom made these predictions of a picture-phone future. Check out how you will one day make copies of images sent to your phone!
Ford Magic Skyway Film from 1964
At the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, Walt Disney built the Ford Magic Skyway ride which took visitors on a ride in Ford cars through history and into the future. It makes me realize that all we are really doing when we visit Disney theme parks is celebrating nostalgia for the 1950s and 60s. Were we ever naive enough to actually attend a World’s Fair?
Harold Smith – Visual Artist
More artists should do this. Make their own documentary about themselves. Great idea. I like the jazz paintings. Harold Smith is a visual artist who just likes painting.
The Great Wave: Documentary On the Image by Hokusai
Here’s a BBC documentary about one of the most famous images in the world, the Japanese woodblock print of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by 18th century artist Hokusai.
Part 2:
Parts 3 – 5 after the jump
Five Artists: 1971 Documentary Film
Here’s a 1971 art documentary featuring five black artists. Compare this to a bloodless piece of work like the NOVA documentary I posted yesterday where artists are posed on a red pillow in front of a blue wall to spout off about their ‘brands’ and the business of art while a DSLR camera puts them either to the right or the left of frame because that’s what good composition looks like in 2011.
The artists featured are:
Barbara Chase-Riboud, a sculptor living in Paris
Charles White, a painter in Los Angeles
Betty Blayton, a painter-collage artist and director of the Moma Art School In Harlem
Richard Hunt, a sculptor in Chicago
Romare Bearden, a New York painter who uses collages and cut-outs
Enjoy these five artists who actually sound like artists.
NOVA: An Art Documentary That Entirely Excludes Black Artists
I wanted to like this film. I tried really hard. It was filmed during the Nova Contemporary Culture which happened in July and August 2010, at the MIS-Museum of Image and Sound, and SESC Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil.
It put me off with a few too many artist comments about art being a business and branding. There are a few real pretentious twits running through this art documentary. There’s also a lot of very nice, clean, well-behaved, pleasant, comfortable, easygoing, precise, smooth, color-balanced art going on here. I’ll be clear and remind my hesitant readers that I’m really quite the shining example of a creep. When I walk into a gallery I’m looking for the artist who is capable of throwing dirt into my eyes and laughing at me while I wipe it off. Most of the art in this film looks like it has been pre-approved for use by IBM in their next commercial.
I’m not looking for an artist who can tape off their lines straight and make them intersect at the farthest corner of the room. Draw crooked why don’t they? There’s so much goddam masking tape in this film it could wrap the Empire State Building six times over.
But if you watch this thing all the way through you just have to notice that out of all these young up-and-comers there’s apparently not a single black artist involved. I couldn’t find one. Maybe I missed something. But I went back and checked. How do you achieve something like that in 2011? Seriously? Don’t you have to work overtime hours to purposely exclude black artists from a documentary or a major art show like this? Can it be true that there are no black artists capable of sticking masking tape to a museum wall and painting inside the lines? Don’t black artists travel to Brazil?
It may not be director Isaac Niemand’s or producer ROJO‘s fault that the cast excludes black artists, but then perhaps they should have filmed a different art show. Maybe it’s Brazil’s fault.
I feel a little bad about criticizing a documentary film on Vimeo because their service is so based on mutual support and respect between artists. But that kind of thing has severe limits in the world of grownups and serious people.
Art is not preschool. It’s not about support and encouragement of creativity. Self-help bullshit doesn’t have a place in art. Art is about beauty, ugliness and thought that gets up in front of you and is willing to knock you unconscious without apology, willing to scare you, horrify you, enrage you, enrapture you, unsettle you, save you, uplift you, insult you, smash you, whither you, confuse you, ennoble you, or destroy you. But it does not ever want to please you.
Keep the pleasant art in Brazil thank you.
Justus 2: A Film by Ryan Spring Dooley
Ryan Spring Dooley (aka MarvinTiberious on YouTube) and Juppy Nash made a catchy little tune and played it on an Italian rooftop where they could enjoy the place they were in and become infected with art. Dooley’s films are a constant stream of creativity and artistic perception unlike anything else. He combines old and new and creates works so easily expressive that you wonder why anyone needs anything more than paper, paint and a camera to do anything. Watch this film and wonder at just how good it really is. Masterful.
The filmmaker is also using Kickstarter to fund a bigscreen project:
Woodpecker: A Film by Rouzbeh Rashidi
Rouzbeh Rashidi is an Iranian filmmaker living in Dublin, Ireland. This film is a portrait of a day in the life of a man who works at a convenience store. Rashidi doesn’t want to show you the things you might want to see in a person’s normal day. He is interested in minute and detailed impressions. He focuses closely on things and lets them speak for themselves. The film conveys an unsettling mystery through its calm observation and beautiful black and white photography. One of the most interesting things about this film for me is simply how happy the film’s subject looks while he is working.
The filmmaker has a website.
A Chinese Fairytale
I’m going to be somewhat cryptic in this post because I’m attempting to get in underneath China’s diligent web checking people.
China has been kidnapping large numbers of artists and intellectuals who completely disappear. They recently took the artist in this photo. While he was being taken away he snapped the photo of his reflection inside an elevator. He’s very famous. He has been totally vanished by the Chinese.
Many others have too. They are being taken and vanished because China is very afraid of something.
They are afraid of something big. Something that was to be peaceful – the way it has been in some other countries recently. But in China you cannot do it peacefully. You will be murdered if you try to do it peacefully.
You must do it with an explosion.
You must do it quickly.
The Chinese can eliminate their problem. The problem is usually to be found wearing a uniform. It must be eliminated quickly and by any means at hand. If you are in China, you are living in a massive slave camp that provides slave labor to Western corporations. You might decide that you want to end your slavery.
That is my message to the people of China.