Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
HYETAL
Video edited based on old footage from an institutional promo for a portuguese theme park called "OndaParque"
SUMMER WIND
MUBI se ha asociado con La Semaine de la Critique del Festival de Cannes para celebrar 50 años de programación mostrando una retrospectiva de la historia del festival. Gracias a la 4+1 Film Festival, ofrecemos los 1000 primeros visionados de cada película gratuitamente hasta el 30 de Junio.
JON BROOKS
A mini-album. A study on limited resources. The space between a second. A dedication to one of the most important figures in modern domestic design - Dieter Rams. No more, no less. Less and More.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
WOMEN IN THE CITIES
"Men were easy for me to work with this way, but taking photos and doing drawings of women was diffcult at first. They couldn't present the same degree of violence that the men's actions had or they would look too much like victims. The breakthrough came when I started living with Gretchen Bender, who was also an artist. She became a real erchetype in the drawings and brought an extraordinary power to the image. She is very athletic and at the same time has a highly sensous shape. Her image was capable of being various kinds of females, she could shift types easily. I understood how movie directors could use the same actor over and over and see someone else each time" Robert Longo
Saturday, May 14, 2011
KLAUS WYBORNY
In Wyborny's 'musical film', every new sound triggers a new image: 6,299 shots, all directly edited within his Super-8 camera. An intoxicating, stroboscopic trip to industrial, natural and urban landscapes in East Africa, New York, the Ruhr district and Rimini.
This experimental music film refers to Oswald Spengler’s world-famous philosophical work Der Untergang des Abendslandes (The Decay of the West, 1918). Culture pessimist Spengler argues that progress is an illusion and that the modern era brings little good. People are no longer able to understand the rationality of the world. Wyborny did not set out to make a film version of Spengler's theories, but rather a visual reflection on the modern age; a stroboscopic journey in five parts to industrial, natural and urban landscapes. He uses 6,299 shots, edited directly in a Super8 camera. Each piano note and violin vibrato evokes a new image: demolished buildings, rubble, destruction and nature, all shot between 1979 and 2010 in locations such as New York, the Ruhr, Hamburg, East Africa and Rimini. This film forms a counterpart to Wyborny’s previous films series Eine andere Welt. Lieder der Erde II (2004/2005).
Friday, May 13, 2011
BOMBIN'
This documentary was created sometime around 1987 and aired on channel 4. It is a follow up of sorts to the 1984 BBC documentary 'Beat This' which served as an outsiders view of Hip Hop as a new New York sub-cultural phenomenon. Here Director Dick Fontaine returns to focus on the UK adoption of this Hip Hop culture and some of the conflicts created therein. To achieve this, the production chose to focus on Graffiti Art, no doubt because this element had the biggest conflict and issues to explore with its high presence, intrusion and illegality. In those days Break dancing took centre stage in the UK but wouldn't have provided nearly as interesting debates to explore. After providing such a strong argumentative presence in 'Beat This', Brim Fuentes (TAT) is brought over to the UK as a sort of cultural ambassador of New York graffiti in a string of workshops and informal seminars. He is also put squarely in front of international main stream media's scrutiny. To which they responded in a manner of ways that at best was condescending and at worst was a down right personal attack for being a catalyst to the vandalising of Britain's culture and heritage. From here the documentary alludes to the social implications of ethnicity and poverty, and their relationship with the Hip Hop subculture. This is where Goldie (of later Drum n Bass fame) as one of the UK premier graffiti artists makes a strong presence in his most notable early television appearance. It's his relationship and 'parallels' with Brim that really play out the rest of the documentary as the two exchange visits to each others home environments in Wolverhampton and the Bronx respectively. The film incidentally captures some of the earliest footage of significant UK protagonists such as Goldie and a pre Massive Attack 3D (not his finest hour here), as well as a noticeably limited Mode 2 and the Chrome Angels appearance at the Birmingham wall commission. However it is debatable that the producers pushed their own inclinations towards ethnicity and Graffiti here, with their focus on Goldie and Brim. It makes for interesting viewing but considering the well documented fact that the culture transcended ethnic barriers in New York and beyond, it can be held up as a particular flaw. You decide.
BEST OF HOUSE MUSIC
"The cassette version of this comp was my first introduction to house. I bought it in 1990. At that time in bum-fuck Northern California it was nearly impossible to find house. I used to order anything that might be possibly considered house from my local record shop. That tape definitely got worn out. I played that thing for years. There isn't one cut on here that couldn't be called a classic. Back then house was fun and it had a much harder edge then it does now. This crap they call house now is a whole lot of easy listening bullshit, produced by many European producers who are so far removed from the source they wouldn't know soul if it bit them in the ass. Now I'm not saying all Euro producers produce crap, but a lot do." Lady Blacktronika
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)