What is the truth of poetry? Does anybody really know? Casey Smith, a poet from Washington, DC, sets out to explore these questions in a short film made by Mick Williams, a troubled artist who now earns his living as a commercial video-editor. The “Truth of Poetry” charts the dissolution of their friendship over the course of the film’s production, while never quite answering the ambitious promise of the film’s title.
Tag: film
apexart :: Film Screening :: The Truth of Poetry
What is the truth of poetry? Does anybody really know? Casey Smith, a poet from Washington, DC, sets out to explore these questions in a short film made by Mick Williams, a troubled artist who now earns his living as a commercial video-editor. The “Truth of Poetry” charts the dissolution of their friendship over the course of the film’s production, while never quite answering the ambitious promise of the film’s title.
What Do Lord Bertrand Russell and Samantha Fox Have in Common?
That’s right. They’ve both appeared in Bollywood movies. Go Bollywood.
Alas not the same movie but as cultural connections go it’s a pretty wonderful one.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/wat…
What Do Lord Bertrand Russell and Samantha Fox Have in Common?
That’s right. They’ve both appeared in Bollywood movies. Go Bollywood.
Alas not the same movie but as cultural connections go it’s a pretty wonderful one.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/wat…
Culture of Illusion – What Do Lord Bertrand Russell and Samantha Fox Have in Common?
That’s right. They’ve both appeared in Bollywood movies. Go Bollywood.
Alas not the same movie but as cultural connections go it’s a pretty wonderful one.
Lord Russell is wearing amazing red slippers.
Also a stark reflection on how men are portrayed and how women are portrayed in film. Not just in Bollywood movies of course but clearly
Men = subject
Women = object.
Not even sure why I’m writing that as it’s so obvious and would that things were better today but alas, as we all know, they’re not really are they?
No, no they’re not.
US Filmmaker on the Trail of Soviet Black Americans
As a young girl growing up in the Soviet Union, New York–based filmmaker Yelena Demikovsky was captivated by “The Circus,” a 1936 Stalin-era musical about a white American circus performer and her illegitimate black son who find racial harmony and acceptance in the Soviet Union.
US Filmmaker on the Trail of Soviet Black Americans
As a young girl growing up in the Soviet Union, New York–based filmmaker Yelena Demikovsky was captivated by “The Circus,” a 1936 Stalin-era musical about a white American circus performer and her illegitimate black son who find racial harmony and acceptance in the Soviet Union.
From the maker of the incomprehensible but wonderful film Primer comes another incomprehensible but wonderful looking film.
Primer is a good film.
You should go and see it.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
From the maker of the incomprehensible but wonderful film Primer comes another incomprehensible but wonderful looking film.
Primer is a good film.
You should go and see it.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Michaelangelo Antonioni’s 1947 documentary short on the people of the Po valley
From the tiniest acorns mighty and surreal oak trees do grow.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Michaelangelo Antonioni’s 1947 documentary short on the people of the Po valley
From the tiniest acorns mighty and surreal oak trees do grow.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Culture of Illusion – Then The Ghosts Leave.
If you have seen Skyfall then you will be familiar with the approach to the island in this short documentary.
In reality the island is not the base of a Bond villain but was, for many years a coal mining facility run and maintained by Mitsubishi.
For a time it was the most densely populated place on the planet.
I’m not going to add any more facts.
Just watch this poetic short documentary.
(source: youtube)
Maybe our ancestors will walk through our own cities, in a similar manner to this gentleman, wondering at the devices that we left behind.
More about the film maker, Thomas Nordanstad, can be found by clicking here or on his name.
Shameless Plug – Beyond The Mountains.
My brother is currently making a feature documentary.
This is the trailer:
(source: Beyond The Mountains)
I just think it looks pretty wonderful and it is going to be amazing so I felt that I would share it. If I didn’t like it I would have probably pretended that the internet had broken or my blog didn’t work any more.
I hope you all enjoy it.
Give him money by clicking on the words below and then he will give you things in return:
I told you it was a Shameless Plug.
I told you in the title of the post.
You should not have been so surprised.
Appetite for Distraction – C is the Magic Number.
I just watched this and wanted to share it because I think that it’s rather good. That’s how social media work doesn’t it?
It’s fifteen minutes long which, I know, is equivalent to 3 years in web time but commit to it and you won’t be disappointed.
Hard science fiction with all effects filmed in camera with some fine performances to boot.
What could be so wrong with that?
Nothing could be so wrong with that.
More older ladies as heroes in science fiction please.
Culture of Illusion – Splendid Cameos #2
If ever there was a thing that deserved the title Splendid Cameos then it is this thing.
Appetite for Distraction – The Final Moments after the Door to the End has been Opened.
Hear me knocking at the door
Soft shoed footfalls on the floor
Blinding angels distant seen
The sun, through clouds, spears out between.
Appetite for Distraction – The Endless Shore.
The Totem lashed upon the shore,
By lapping Sea of Evermore.
The glinting sun did sparkle bright
On lonely shore
Of Never Night.
Appetite for Distraction – The Swan Guard.
The swan hiss echoed.
The dead eyes burrowed.
The thick river flowed.
The empty boat rocked
For numberless lonely days.
Escape. from The SleepCoat League on Vimeo.
You may not be as trapped as you think you are.
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
Escape. from The SleepCoat League on Vimeo.
You may not be as trapped as you think you are.
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
Culture of Illusion – The Lorax crushes Idealism.
EVEN THE LORAX
ON HIS SMALL YELLOW STUMP
FELT A THICKENING FEELING
GROW WITH A LUMP AND A BUMP
AS HE SAW MONEY PILE HIGH
RIGHT UP PAST HIS THROAT.
THE ONCELER WAS RIGHT,
HE THOUGHT WITH A SIGH.
EVERYONE HAS A PRICE
AND NOW SO DO I.
I wrote this when The Lorax was first released because I was irritated that the characters from the film were being used to sell cars:
Admittedly they were hybrid cars but it seemed to fly in the face of everything that Dr. Seuss, his friend Theodor Geisel and the whole meaning of the original Lorax story stood for.
I have updated this post with the above comment because I am still fucking irritated by the whole concept. For those who have not had the pleasure of reading The Lorax the message is pretty clear. It is a moral warning against the excesses of Industrial Capitalism. So it fills my throat with bile, bile that has flowed up from my stomach, to see the characters for a story that is explicitly warning against the kind of rampant consumerist capitalism, that car companies have been instrumental in creating and perpetrating, are used to hawk their products.
The only way I can express my fucking irritation is in my tiny little blog.
So here I am Fighting the Power.
I am definitely still fucking irritated but I cannot deny that The Lorax commercial is beautifully animated and I am a sucker for fine animation.
Oh how hilarious The Real World is. I don’t understand one moment of it.
I must go for a drive in my air conditioned car to calm down.
Will his Mazda SUV keep the lorax warm at night? It probably will.
Will his Mazda SUV keep the lorax warm at night? It probably will.
Culture of Illusion – 1970s movie aesthetic and the phosphorescent tube.
I was talking with a friend about how much we love the way that American movies from the 1970s look. We rattled off a few of the macho gritty films that we loved; The French Connection, Black Sunday, Klute,Prime Cut; as much to show off our knowledge as to make our point about a particular film aesthetic. The washed out colours, the use in genre pictures of the new wave hand held camera that would become so derigeur, the location shooting outside on the cold streets of whatever city they happened to be in at the time; Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. This is how I came to know and love America before I moved here. The overwhelming of the senses through big architecture, big emotion, big human interaction. All of this, as it turns out, artificial and created for the films that I watched – but I was not to know this at the time. I had not yet experienced the boredom of America, it’s long empty roads of meaninglessness. I had not experienced it’s tired citizens and it’s angry indecision. I was ignorant of the simmering cauldron of anger that boiled below the surface; acting as threat and fuel to all the fine people of this nation. Recollecting the manner in which I watched these films I realised that I had seen most of these works, not at the cinema, with pristine new prints, but late night on British television with the volume down so as not to wake the rest of the house on a tiny set with poor colour correction, little contrast and the glow from the tubes that gave any hope of showing the directors vision short shrift. My understanding of the aesthetic had been totally false, filtered, by chance and the limitations of 1980s technology, into washed out pastels that had never been the intention of the filmmakers. It was not an America that had ever supposed to exist or an America that, now with the advent of Blu-ray and online movie stores, would ever exist again. Yet, even now, I recall with nostalgia, the hunched shoulders of Popeye Doyle as he swaggers down the street to save America from Europe’s heroine barons, the relentless stride of Lee Marvin as he tries to save Sissy Spacek from Gene Hackman, the obsessional drive of Robert Shaw to stop a terrorist attack on a football stadium. It just makes me realise that what we want others to see is not necessarily the thing that they will see and what we ourselves observe can be filtered through any manner of myriad devices, experiences, dreams and nightmares. Will anyone say the same of Transformers: Dark of the Moon? I suspect not. Then my mind wanders to a deeper problem, beyond aesthetics and something that still exists, albeit in a more subtle way today. I was watching films where white men get things done, white men strive and fail; everyone else is a backdrop to their drama, their hopes and dreams. It is not the America I live in. It is not really an America that has ever existed. The America I live in is a kaleidoscope, shifting, pulsing and alive; archetype free with a story constantly in flux pushing relentlessly on into a future it knows, deep down, it has no control over. It is a country with no easy answers and absent heroes. That is why I love America. That is why America terrifies me.
http://www.sponsume.com/widget.js?project_id=4248
Shameless Plug of my Brother’s wonderful film project.
(Source: http://www.sponsume.com/)
http://www.sponsume.com/widget.js?project_id=4248
Shameless Plug of my Brother’s wonderful film project.
(Source: http://www.sponsume.com/)
