2012: Hey Ladies!

A little while ago I remember reading Roger Ebert's posting about the future of film. He was terrified that buying the rights to a toy, say, Slinky the Movie, was the way things were heading are: the more tie ins with products, fast food chains and the like the more likely the subject will be shot on film. Then, recently, Meryl Streep said (was led into) the exact same thing in an interview. Streep was pointing out the shift of production companies trying to foster the teenage boy with disposable income into the theater who will leave to buy the related videogame as opposed to ushering into the seats the thinking adult, or even moreso, the thinking female adult. I also remember when the issue of female friendly films coming out of Hollywood caused an ripple of excitement when Kathryn Bigelow won a few Oscars for her direction of The Hurt Locker followed a few years later by a comedy for women, Bridesmaids, which  shocked the box office. 
 

Even though I agree with the concerns of Ebert, Streep and am proud of the steps toward film world recognition women are making, I do think there are dozens of filmmakers out there who are making thoughtful films for women, by women and who are thinking far beyond product placement. Not to say that those dispelling the Hollywood system are profiting so much, mostly working outside of it in fact, but I do see hope and heart in a lot of cinema being made.

Because of all of these worries, especially the lack of women in the film world (and in the art world too!), I've decided to start a series on the blog interviewing creative women working in these fields. Whether they are gallery workers, film directors, artists, writers or just plain women who I think are vitally contributing to the cultural landscape I want you to hear from them. I want to share the work of women changing the face of creative norms. And by no means am I trying to ghetto-ize women, secluding us off in our own little room away from the efforts of men, I just want to give a platform/make a resource to a specifically underepresented group of people whom I respect and who deserve more places for their voices to be heard. Ok, that was a little heavy. And I only slightly mean it to be heavy. Moreso, I just want people to see some of the things that I see and recognize that women too can be profitable, ingenious, intellectuals and that our successes shouldn't be seen as anamolies! (Here are some unladylike pictures of me right before I stacked a cord of wood, o, and fittingly, some wood!)

Home for the Holidays

We've been completely and utterly boring over here this season...! Mostly it is due to trying to finish up animating for the approaching 2012 edition of Sundance but it is also due to having some home time after a year and a half (!) of spreading Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then all over the globe! I'm not one for recaps but at this point Gravity has been across the country, over three oceans, spanned almost every continent and, along with our varying band line ups, we were often lucky enough to go along with it! As Brent says, making a film is a much better way to see the world than joining the army!

Gravity already has a few events scheduled for 2012, including a rare theatrical screening and live band/lecture in Chicago in March and a possible taping of a live performance of the piece in May for a new film series documenting performance art (which could make the film available to own in some form!), but of course we are also looking to the next feature film project that will be taking over our lives in the coming years, a new film titled...drumroll please...: Anatomical Maps With Battle Plans! (Exclamation point mine!). So bring on the new year already and have a safe & happy one! (Pictures of home, for once!)

Happy Hadacol Christmas!

Pre-Occupied

The Occupy movement is still going strong! After months of encampments, protests, signs and communal understanding, the activists at Zuccotti Park (and all over the place!) are still sitting in in the name of exposing unhappiness with the financial system. The movement, as amorphous as it is, is slowly taking on an underrepresented group of people's voice and, despite what seems like a lack of media coverage and lack of demands/alternatives, they are still trying to bring to the world's attention that not everyone is content in an oligarchy! Filmmakers have slowly been filtering into the cause too, documenting the culture of the camp outs and voicing opinions in a broadcastable medium.


Martha Colburn has steadily been documenting the happenings on Wall Street (and even abroad) for awhile now. Her frenetic style captured on super 8 film and edited with complimentary music show tiny little fast paced slivers of what is happening out there on the streets. (above, Martha's first Occupy film)

Jem Cohen also took on Wall Street as a subject recently producing moving images in his signature slow, dreamy, unhinged style. His films, like many of his portraits, always seem to capture an essence, a deep emotional contemplation of a space or people, which I think is very important in understanding any subject on the other side of the camera. Jem's Occupy shorts capture a real sense of being there and what that means & stands for, a beautiful impression of change. (one of Jem's installments below)


This recent post by filmmaker Michael Galinsky (who I've met a few times and is always the nicest of fellows!) comments on how the Occupy movement gives voice to a group of marginalized people allowing for his epic film, Battle for Brooklyn (that follows a group of people trying to win the right to keep their homes despite the strong arming of corporate and government forces wanting to build a stadium where their homes once stood), to take on a whole new scope & audience as growing numbers of people voice their discontent. (trailer below)



And then their is the media coming out of the movement itself. As my pal Todd pointed out, the Occupy Livestream is an ongoing broadcast of the campaign and citizen journalism in general is on the rise too! Occupiers everywhere are constantly putting out what they see in digital form, showing the good (interviews with those Occupying) and the bad (police brutality) and taking it to the wide reaching platforms available to them. The more corporate and controlled the media is the more we should call upon ourselves to document the world around us, to become the media. Documentary filmmakers are not an elite class, they are a class that almost anyone can belong to nowadays and an important check and balance on society...so, Occupy, keep on broadcasting loudly and proudly what it is that you believe and never forget to articulate change! And also, how is the government policing internet videos that display the protests? Did you know this is happening? I thought it was a hoax but I myself was met with a "The Government has banned this video" message not too long ago and hoax or not, the fact that it is even a possibility makes me want to Occupy somewhere too! Have a Happy Revolutionary Holiday everyone!

Strange Victory, Strange Defeat

Plays turned into movies always make me skeptical. From Rope (man, they even made that one in 3d at some point to try to spice it up!) to Wait Until Dark to the many mutations of Shakespeare  that have come across the screen, these pieces were originally meant to be staged. On an actual theater stage. (Duh.) Which makes one roomed dramas seem like a strange choice for a medium that can pretend to take you anywhere! Then there's the matter of the acting...asides, monologues and all of the overwrought language of the stage is weird, needing to reach the back row of a present audience with a certain language and live emotion is not the same as the distanced, lulled, film going audience, willing, ready & able to dream. So, when a dialogue heavy theater production is altered for a screen it takes a lot for me accept it but with a cast of Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Cristoph Waltz under the direction of Roman Polanski I thought maybe moving from stage to screen could be possible! And it only kind of was...

Carnage, based on the play by Yasmina Reza, opens with a fight between two children. The opening is a beautiful tableau from a distance with timpani pounding & orchestral swell, suggesting a near tragic Greek ballet, an artfully displayed deterioration of human action. The rest of the film shows the deterioration of the parents as they reconcile the actions of their children in a stuffy New York apartment. Drinks, endlessly ringing phones, cobbler, banter, insults and judgments are batted around as societal expectations slowly weather in a short amount of time. The film is a nice allegory of course yet there wasn't a ton of tension or nuance that I've come to expect from Polanski but that the rest of the audience seemed ok without. The audience was wildly pleased with even the tiniest bit of the dismissal of social conventions- maybe they really needed to see the simple removal of heels to feel a release for themselves? A release that they feel comfortable reveling in in the darkness of a movie theater? (Just take of your heels high strung New Yorkers! Nothing bad will happen! Pics of NY seen here!) But, to the films defense, I guess maybe I prefer the extreme versions of these ideas (like Micheal Haneke's bloodthirsty Funny Games)...so maybe this just wasn't for me?

Carnage was an ok film (and I bet a great play!) but when a film hinges on the fact, as Waltz's character says, "Everybody has to save themselves somehow," I kind of don't buy it. What kind of world would we live in if only reactions existed (sideways glance at the films director)? The film closes with a similar scene to the beginning, the children choosing friendship over a big stick and another character living a life of freedom...so, I guess being free and without the pressure of social norms and cultural judgements, without expectation(s) is the answer to a happy world? If it was only that simple (another sideways glance at director)...

Tis The Season

I haven't really done the gift giving thing during the holiday season in awhile but I do try to give what I can to charities and organizations that I believe in or that I think are doing something worthwhile! As someone who lives and works in the arts I tend to send some of my (small) donations to orgs whose creative pursuits are above & beyond and to places who are supporting the basic needs of survival/preservation around the globe, both feeding humanity in very different ways! Here are some suggestions on where you can spend some love this holiday season!

The Cinefamily
Starting today, and on into tomorrow, The Cinefamily, a California movie house of awesomeness, is having a 24hr telethon! In the traditional style of bow ties, orversized mics and questionable humor, this org is live streaming the event and selling tickets to those lucky enough to be out in L.A.! Cinefamily programs lost film gems, progressive film events (like hosting Gravity way back when!) and has an overall cinephile summer camp feel that just makes me happy (The Last Unicorn Sleepover party anyone?). Head over to their site to make a donation and to watch as eyes get redder from lack of sleep and glazed from the projection glow into the wee hours of the telethon (Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields sings lullabies at 3am & an Elliott Gould Q&A caps it all off tomorrow!)

Triple Canopy
This online culture magazine is as forward thinking as they come. Each issue is full of new platform art projects, well researched essays (ranging from the trafficking of human hair to the legacy of Mark Rothko) and a general desire to want something more/intellectual out of the new class of culture makers. They have even partnered with the cinematic org Light Industry and the teaching center The Public School to open a utopia for ideas in Brooklyn, expanding into a physical hub of progressive thought! Triple Canopy is trying to move from being a free resource to a donation based one, urging people to value creative ideas as they should, so support them during this transition and beyond!

Heifer International
I remember seeing the Heifer catalogs strewn throughout my house as a kid, urging me to buy a goat. Or a cow. Or a flock of geese. But they weren't for me of course, they were for those in need all over the globe! Heifer seeks to foster agricultural development in countries that need it, giving communities the tools to form a sustainable way of life. There isn't much else to say other than: buy some kids some chickens! Do it!

Your Local Food Bank
Even if you don't see it, and maybe you do, chances are there are people in your own community who are in need. The American economy has been so ravaged lately that the numbers of those without has steadily risen over the last few years. Our local food bank has a great program where children are given a bookbag of food to take home with them, assuring that they will remain healthy and in school regardless of whatever economic turmoil is going on at home. Find your local food bank! See what you can do!

SPCA
Everytime I see a dog shaped piggy bank at any store I throw whatever change I have from my wallet into it! Civilized man has created pets so it is collectively our fault if one is abandoned, abused, or just plain lost! I try to support my rural SPCA (which takes on horses and other farm animals that can no longer be taken care of as well as acting as a no-kill home for dogs & cats) in whatever little way I can and when you encounter that animal shaped piggy bank you should feed him some coins too! (Pics from last winter when we found a petting zoo hidden behind a truck stop. And yes, I did put a quarter into a machine to give them some feed!)

Of course there are tons of other organizations worthy of your attention and support so...give a Merry Christmas to someone else this year! Ho ho! And, if you are feeling particularly generous, I do accept any and all edible presents....! Stay well & warm folks!

Jersey Devil, Was a Rebel

Growing up in New Jersey, with close proximity to New York, gave me a really good look into independent film early on. But, I now realize, New Jersey actually did the same! I also grew up in close proximity to Red Bank, the hometown of independent film pioneer Kevin Smith. As a young kid I remember picking up the book Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes at a local thrift shop, learning what the word dyke meant, and then thumbing through the history of 80s/90s independent cinema, understanding that a film can be made for little money and that making something different can bring you an audience all in the context of the ins and outs of film production/distribution (little did I know!)! The book even had conversations with Kevin Smith about his introduction to filmmaking and how he came to become a superhero in the indie scene.

I remember me & my friends as teenagers with fresh licenses  making our first car pilgrimage to the actual convenience store Kevin Smith filmed the movie Clerks in, maxing out his credit cards to realize his dialogue heavy, character driven portrait of New Jersey dirtbags. I went to Red Bank a lot, breezed through Smith's comic book store often, and even stopped on the sidewalk early on a sunny day as a film PA kept me from accidentally walking into a shot of Ben Affleck bro-ing down with another actor on a stoop as he discussed what he was going to do about falling in love with a lesbian in the modern love story Chasing Amy. These Kevin Smith experiences really left a mark on me, physically seeing someone give all they have to make something creative that they believed in was everlasting. I sometimes wonder if I would have been so willing to drastically enter the film barn world of Brent Green if I hadn't seen first hand at a very young age that there are many, many ways to exist and thrive through filmmaking and just as many ways to make a film.

All of this came up yesterday because I watched Kevin Smith's latest, and he says penultimate, film Red State. I am often internet soapboxing over here saying that I want a little more from my films and art, that I expect a social message or at least some kind of interesting worldview and this film, even with it's high powered guns, blood and horror tendencies, really did have an unexpected agenda at it's core. Focusing on the fictional story of a fanatical religious cult, Red State depicts a showdown between different versions of authority and the nuance in each. Smith who relies on near monologue writing in all of his films used this technique to advance his social message this time around, capping the film off with John Goodman (who plays a government employee sent to a religious compound after news of gunfire) rather simply explaining his reasoning for his actions throughout the film and in turn what Smith wanted to say with it: people do strange things (like go to war) for what they want or believe to be right, but it is no ones place to judge, harm and take away human rights in any belief system.

Kevin Smith, even in his laziest of filmmaking moments, consistently has tried to deal with progressive issues in some way. Even if it is in a straight up Hollywood love story focused on the topic of gender or the fantasy in faith (Dogma) or, like in his latest film, religious zealotry (pics of strange American church findings during our travels seen here!) and political atrocity, Smith pushed these ideas into a mainstream world. Beginning with barely budgeted ideas and grooming them into bigger budgets with bigger audiences, Smith has made a mark on a widespread group of people, showing on film ways of life he thinks are worth noting. Not to say there is progression in every second of a Kevin Smith film (three boobed psychic in Mallrats I am looking at you...) but like Jane Austen with bathroom humor, he has been able to capture a voice of what it means to be a person now, of the odd, marginalized stereotypes you don't always see a movie about; the New Jerseyian going to the mall, an American terrified of those wanting to take away basic civil rights, of those reading a comic book to escape. So thanks Kevin Smith! Thanks for being an awesome dude making these movies, even if it is just showing a New Jersey kid that comic books exist or changing one person's view of an "outsider" or teaching somebody that indie movies can be a way of life, I am pretty glad you made movies...why stop now? Next up: how Bruce Springsteen changed my life (just kidding, just kidding! Poor New Jersey!)

How To Make an Art

So I saw some art this weekend....a show or two in Chelsea and then a show at the Kutztown University art gallery, two very, very different settings! I don't know how familiar people are with the Chelsea art gallery scene but exhibition spaces of all sizes are tucked into buildings (brownstones next to car garages, skyscrapers hacked into white walled spaces, converted industrial buildings etc.) offering up art for sale to collectors, museums and institutions looking to acquire a piece of the cultural landscape. It is a weird place in that it is a place putting a price on creativity but also in that it is putting a value on what ideas (or lack of ideas) are important in our society. Chelsea is also one of the few places artists can make a living. All of these reasons make seeing art there precarious: you get to see a combination of the birth of new ideas, and valued old ideas, but the commodity aspect of it looms in a weird way sometimes overshadowing message and meaning in favor of a party or spectacle in order to draw in attention, attention that is a necesary evil for a lot of artists survival.  The few supposed ideas I saw in Chelsea this time around were not very good so I won't get into them...but I will say that ideas need to be valued a little more in this place, especially when considering the price, the cultural legacy and the potential movements that places like Chelsea can potentially be the nexus of.

The Marlin and Regina Miller Gallery of Kutztown University (in the hometown of the legendary graffiti artist Keith Haring) , just up the road in our Pennsylvania area, was offering up a show that was almost the opposite of the Chelsea scene. The senior student December show was up so, instead of seeing art up for sale, we saw art by people who are paying to make work in an academic setting. This show cobbled together class projects, individual pieces and a range of skill making it an odd thing to see... I wish I could talk to each student to understand what lies beyond graduation, what they want out of these things they are making, what ideas they want to offer, uphold and explore in society as an extension of art history/history, or if a lot of them are just crossing their fingers to get a nice graphic design internship somewhere...? I am sure people are asking young artists these types of things and, after seeing what is going on in Chelsea, I hope they are really considering their answers!

While at Kutztown I saw these great bulky, wooden, box-like canvases, with stark white, black and pink paintings of cartoonish, banal scenes like defrosting meat and a boring bathroom. The color was applied thickly making you feel the chalky-ness of the bathroom tile on your skin and an etched out ricketyness of the lines & grain in the wood created an uneasy edge, both elements making for a cold textured field of eerie modern life. I thought they were a great mix of folk art, sculpture, a kind of graphic novel/design aesthetic and I hope the artist, Darren Beck (work pictured here),  gets to bigger and better ideas with his already interesting style! I also hope that those being funneled from art school into the gallery world, those paying to be creative and in turn being paid to be creative, are really looking at why they are creating stuff and at the messages they want to send as American artists, if artists are inserting truth into their work than maybe the galleries can too!

Is this Normal for a Horse?

Today we were taking bets on whether this horse was dead or not. I won, with not dead. Thank goodness! A dead horse is no way to be a horse...

Anyway, still animating...hoping to get out of the house some in the coming days! Here is a picture of Brent's piece on display at the Pulse Art Fair in Miami Beach taken by our good pal Richard Herskowitz as his wife Jill, a wonderful curator who screened Gravity out in Eugene Oregon a little while ago, peered into the layered animation we have been working so hard on! Another picture of the piece can be found over here (towards the bottom of the page) at Art Fag City, undeniably the best written site about the art world landscape out there! So proud it was mentioned! Now, back to more animating for the premier of the final piece for New Frontiers at Sundance 2012! Can't wait!

You Can Never Quarantine the Past

Apparently my hammer is a "Professional" one, at least a sticker on the side of it says so...so that would make me a professional hammer user then, right? I discovered this a few days ago when, with hammer in hand, Brent & I set out to ravage a few local fire eaten houses to take away any scrap trims and mouldings laying about but every house we were counting on had been razed! So sad! But, this experience led me on a wild goose chase in search of old pieces of wood, mostly needed to frame out a series of paintings Brent has been working on for a long while in between animating and touring and all of that other stuff we do!

A friend sent me to ebay-the-great which then sent me to Scranton Pennsylvania which then led me to York, PA the home of an amazing salvage yard called Refindings. Not only is this place a giant depot filled to the brim with old doors and windows and bathtubs and antiques of all kinds (ranging from unopened Thanksgiving decorations from the 70s [a 3d crepe paper turkey! Yes please!] to lamps to telegraph pieces) it is all used or discarded materials making it an environmental haven!

I always feel weird helping to produce art, making another thing in a world of things, but when pieces of the new things are repurposing pieces of old I definitely feel a little better about it for sure! Here are a few pictures of my new favorite place...and a special thanks to Lou, the magnificent man who led us through a maze of wooden pieces pointing out the hidden & spectacular along the way (including an enourmous, probably 15ft tall?, intact balcony ornately framed out in a greening metal with elaborate stained glass dragons embedded in the interior wooden frame! Incredible!)!

Share Your Thoughts on Public Sculpture

So I went to college awhile ago. I don't really know what I did there? I know there was lots of reading, a lot of film screenings (1. Go to the first day of as many film classes as possible. 2. Get the syllabus for the class. 3. Compile schedule of all free class screenings for the whole semester. 4. Enjoy!) and pages and pages of writing, all creating a section of my brain that I rarely access nowadays...I mean, when was the last time I needed to know what Deleuze thought about anything? For me though the one thing I did take away from the whole experience was the exposure to entirely new ideas.

I took tons of classes out of my comfort zone (art, science, gender studies) all things that crossed eachother and laid bare connections I would never have seen. One area I grew intensely fond of was that of theater, the precursor to the movie world I already had grown to know and love! I especially favored the Epic Theater of Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright who paved the way for a politically motivated stage and created his own artistic language in the process. So, when I saw Brent Green's short films for the first time my post-college Brechtian-brain started firing in all directions: the meta-ness, the exposing of the hand, the fictionalizing of history, the political tension, even the title cards!  I saw constant parallels between Brent's work and that of Brecht! So many parallels that, years later, I decided to write about it over here at One + One Filmmakers Journal, a budding politically leaning film publication based in Britain! (The rest of the new One + One issue is pretty stellar, including pieces on George Kuchar, Kubrick and the nature of animals on film! Absolutely awesome!)

As I get further away from college I value the academic less and less, thinking that talking in circles in a made up language of theory that only a few can speak is just plain nonsense, but I realize that it is the discussion, the thinking, the hope, that these kinds of writings bring that can inspire change which should be the reason for creating anything at all. But then again, academic essays like mine, the renegade platform Brent has created for himself and the long standing legacy of Brecht can reach the same end too. Using whatever means we have we should all motivate eachother for the better and open our eyes to the world around us regardless of what road we take to get there.