Too bad Pi‘s Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) didn’t see “Nature By Numbers” (the first embedded video). Maybe he wouldn’t have gone insane! But then again, seeing the beauty and perfection of the cosmos’ sacred geometry has blow many a mind before. Including this one.
Can “life” keep up with the creeping cycle of desensitization? This trailer for the Discovery Channel’s new series Life offers an excellent example of how current cinematic time and space differs from unmediated experiences. But then again, editing is all a matter of framing and choice, and the Discovery Channel tends to gear itself towards a theme-park thrill ride aesthetic. A film like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker would certainly offer a more meditative encounter, as do other more nuanced nature documentaries that can heighten awareness of that which we have become unaware. It is very difficult for us modern folk to enter into the animal’s “umwelt” (selfworld), so cinema has the potential to help in that process (barring, of course, that we actually re-learn how to communicate with animals).
I have a feeling, though, that the action movie style of this promo will be vastly different than the actual show, which is narrated by Oprah Winfrey. African American women have long been a trope for ancient Earth wisdom (the quintessential example would be Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan character on Star Trek: Next Generation). Moreover, the program’s marketing claims it’s made by the same folks who produced Planet Earth. It’s hard to imagine they would go in the direction of Roland Emmerich (of Day After Tomorrow and 2012 fame). It would be a truly strange mash-up to have Oprah’s reassuring voice overlaying high-intensity action sequences, or the narrator of the above trailer on top of a Tarkovsky clip.
Ever had an idea that someone else executes better than you imagined it? Well, here is one of those situations. The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal is one of my favorite short films. For years I have photographed the ephemeral state of street art as if it were an unconscious process of spontaneous creation. This film plays with this idea and does much more with it. Please watch and enjoy!
Though I haven’t seen Food, Inc., this looks to be another promising documentary about our monocultural food system. The film’s trailer starts off with a quick lesson in media literacy by juxtaposing the images of food market/ing with the reality food production. It should be noted, however, that the top PR and propaganda spinners know that people only remember pictures, and not words. So though the narration does a good job of deconstructing the images of the supermarket, one is still left with the pastoral image of an artificially abundant the food system (I say “artificial” because the high yield monocultural crops we are accustomed to are produced on borrowed time by depending on petroleum-based fertilizer that destroys biodiverse soil– a temporary fix that has long-lasting and destructive consequences on the food chain).
Nonetheless, I really like this sequence and hope the film is as compelling. The montage alludes to a deeper suspicion I have that supermarkets are more effective tools of food system propaganda than media. I urge people to consider the psychological conditioning of the market as one of the primary forms of system architecture.
I’m not going to argue against green tech– it needs all the energy the economy can muster right now. But I want to caution against technological optimism as the solution for our current ecological crisis. It’s a cultural problem, and I hope that people are not blinded by one-sided change in which tech solutions supplant cultural creativity. Both are necessary, but let’s be sure to reign in the technological mindset that sees all solutions as a matter of switching out machines. We have to move from mechanistic to holistic thinking, from centralized energy production to decentralized network distribution, from international trade to local production, from finance to sweat equity, and so on.
You might want to take some Prozac after watching this. More on the documentary here.
I think a good dose of nature is in order.
Frontline has a new explosive documentary, Heat, about global warming. You can watch it online here.
Link: 
A little documentary about Johannes Kreidler‘s “Product Placements” performance: 72,000 samples in 33 seconds. He’s doing the artistic equivalent of a denial of service attack on Germany’s copyright agency, GEMA.
Here is a video of the performance:
I think this video does a better job of explaining the Pirate’s Dilemma than the book. The material lends itself to an audiovisual medium, and can spread more rapidly via the net. I’m for the ideas in the book, but I found it a little too superficial and lacking in some good, wholesome theory. But I’m down with the concept, so let the video proliferate and multiply!
No doubt, Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi wasn’t the final word on cinematography’s powerful capacity to depict the environmental consequences of our modern world. With Manufactured Landscapes comes Jennifer Baichwal’s depiction of photographer Edward Burtynsky‘s stunning images of industry in China. If it’s true that what is not mediated doesn’t exist, we can say now that at least one frightening slice of the world, albeit a pretty massive slice, is here for us to behold. Blink at your own risk.
This clip is from the Candian documentary, The World According to Monsanto. Since most people in the US will likely not see this, I recommend sharing and passing along the links. This is one of the scariest companies in the world and people need to know what is happening, in particular regarding genetically engineered foods. Incidentally, if you want to read a great book that deals with GMOs and why they are so dangerous to the web of life, I highly recommend Fritjaf Capra’s Hidden Connections.
Via TreeHugger.
An exciting new documentary project that highlights an emergent global culture and its core values for change. You can get involved by visiting the site and sharing the video.
Looks like a very interesting doc on virtual worlds, Second Skin. I love the title. It reminds me that human cultures going back to ancient times have always donned “second skins,” literally those of animals, and more recently synthetics we call clothing. My only quibble with the trailer is that it claims that that these virtual worlds are worlds that don’t exist. I beg to differ. I think they are very real, they just occupy space differently.
Technorati Tags: Second Skin
MPAA thinks the above poster is inappropriate for all audiences because hoods are scary.
Unlike these.
Taxi to the Dark Side is a documentary, these bottom three are horror films whose graphic images are apparently agreeable to the general public, including the necons. The good news is that the documentarians got some free publicity out of this.
Alex Gibney’s new critically-acclaimed documentary Taxi to the Dark Side follows the path of Afghan taxi driver Dilawar, who was innocent of any terrorist ties but still “tortured to death by interrogators in the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base.” It also examines the Bush administration’s torture practices at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has rejected Taxi’s poster, displayed to the right, as being “not suitable for all audiences.” The poster for the film simply shows two soldiers walking away from the camera, holding a hooded detainee between them.
If you haven’t read McLuhan’s The Guttenberg Galaxy, then you may get a lot out of this great video clip (click on the link below to view it) on the significance of the printing press and its relevance today as a way of explaining the explosive changes communications technology can have on a society.
The alphabet has been called the mother of all inventions. It dispensed its benefits and blessings unevenly – particularly when the entrance of the printing press industrialized its reach. This narrative around a collection of 15th century printed pages is a time stamp and reminder that information overload is nothing so new that a glance back 500 years may dimly reveal the dynamics of the digital road ahead.
Bridging media literacy with ecoliteracy, this blog features various meditations and musings by Antonio Lopez, an old school dharma punk and media educator. He is the author of:
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Feb 10
I want to preface my comments by saying that I support the work of Doctors without Borders, and they were the first organization I donated to after the earthquake in Haiti. With that said, I was struck by the above poster I received in my email. It advertises a documentary about their work that will screen worldwide (click her for locations and more information). At first I thought it was just cheeky sales pitch for donations, framing the work of the organization within the narrative structure of an action film. The image reminded me a little of the Constant Gardener, in which Africa becomes the backdrop for purification of the white man’s soul (as is the case of the Western genre of film).
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