Collision: Award-Winning Film Explores Politics Through Shapes

The Ger­man mul­ti-media artist Max Hat­tler describes his award-win­ning short film “Col­li­sion” (2005) as “Islam­ic pat­terns and Amer­i­can quilts and the col­ors and geom­e­try of flags as an abstract field of reflec­tion,” which will make no sense what­so­ev­er until you watch the video. It’s bare­ly over two min­utes long, so just give it a shot and let the images do their own explain­ing. Be sure to wear head­phones, or at least keep the vol­ume low … but not off. The expe­ri­ence is def­i­nite­ly equal parts sound and sight.

via @matthiasrascher

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Wild Kingdom: Brought to You by Mutual of Omaha (and It’s Now on YouTube)

If you’re a Gen-X’er or old­er, this will like­ly dust off some old mem­o­ries, unleash­ing one of those “Yes, I remem­ber that” moments.

From 1963 through 1988, Mar­lin Perkins and Jim Fowler host­ed Mutu­al of Oma­ha’s Wild King­dom, a 30 minute pro­gram that aired Sun­day nights on NBC. An ear­ly pre­cur­sor to Ani­mal Plan­et and The Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, Wild King­dom let Amer­i­can audi­ences trav­el (at least vir­tu­al­ly) to exot­ic des­ti­na­tions and observe wild ani­mals in their nat­ur­al habi­tats. It all hap­pened dur­ing prime time with mil­lions watch­ing. And the show, oth­er­wise cred­it­ed with rais­ing eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, won 41 major awards, includ­ing four Emmys.

There are two ways to revis­it Wild King­dom. One is to pur­chase The Defin­i­tive 50 Episode Col­lec­tion on DVD. The cheap­er option (actu­al­ly, it’s free) is to vis­it Wild King­dom’s Chan­nel on YouTube, which hosts hours and hours of free pro­gram­ming. The episode above takes you into the mys­ter­ies of the Ama­zon. Enjoy…

via metafil­ter

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How TV Ruined Your Life

The world is in sham­bles. Civ­i­liza­tion is in free fall. And it’s all because of that ubiq­ui­tous elec­tron­ic box spew­ing Snoo­ki and Ozzy and The Don­ald into the homes of inno­cent peo­ple, pol­lut­ing their minds and cor­rupt­ing their souls. Or any­way, that’s what British come­di­an Char­lie Brook­er thinks.

Brook­er is in a posi­tion to know. He makes his liv­ing off the offend­ing medi­um, writ­ing and appear­ing on such caus­tic pro­grams as Char­lie Brooker’s Screen­wipe, his hilar­i­ous and mer­ci­less bit­ing of the hand that feeds. Ear­li­er this year BBC Two pre­sent­ed its fol­low-up to Screen­wipe, a six-part series titled How TV Ruined Your Life. The result is one part social satire, two parts rav­ing luna­cy, as the mis­an­throp­ic Brooker—remote con­trol clenched furi­ous­ly in hand—takes us on a man­ic chan­nel-surf­ing tour of the deprav­i­ty.

In the win­dow above we fea­ture Episode 3: “Aspi­ra­tion.” The oth­er five install­ments can be accessed through the links below. Warn­ing: How TV Ruined Your Life con­tains harsh lan­guage that would not be safe for work. (But then, if you’re watch­ing half-hour com­e­dy shows at the office you’re prob­a­bly skat­ing on thin ice any­way.)

Episode 1: “Fear”
Episode 2: “The Life­cy­cle”
Episode 4: “Love”
Episode 5: “Progress”
Episode 6: “Knowl­edge”

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