In the Short Film Gisbert: Paradisola a Man Goes on Holiday, Digs a Cave, Turns it into Life

in Life | October 18th, 2012

Ours is a cul­ture dri­ven by, and to, extremes, and by ours I mean West­ern Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cap­i­tal­ism broadly—Euro-America, one might say. But much of the world also resem­bles this mod­el. Extremes of wealth and pover­ty. Extreme amounts of work and extreme amounts of unem­ploy­ment. Even the word most asso­ci­at­ed with the cri­sis of mar­kets con­jures an extrem­ism of an ear­li­er, medieval age: Aus­ter­i­ties. To get away from it all, we take vaca­tions (more often these days stay­ca­tions). Vaca­tions from our lives. Or as the Euro­peans call it, hol­i­day. And who hasn’t once asked them­selves, why isn’t life the hol­i­day? And the painful “aus­ter­i­ties” tem­po­rary incon­ve­niences? I sup­pose it’s a naïve ques­tion, or just a thought exper­i­ment. Every­one seems to have some sophis­ti­cat­ed answer or oth­er. But every­one still feels the need to escape the exhaus­tion.

Gis­bert, the man in the short film above, felt such a need. So 42 years ago he trav­eled to the town of Fil­icu­di in the Aeo­lian Islands, Sici­ly. He dug a cave into the hill­side with his bare hands, rein­forced it with cement and lime, and he’s been liv­ing there ever since in what he calls, in his coinage, Par­adis­o­la, or, most­ly just Par­adis­e­land.  Gis­bert is a stu­dent of his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, physics… he’s no Rousseauean noble sav­age, igno­rant of the ways of mod­ern man. Maybe Thore­au in his Walden, but even Thore­au was an anx­ious char­ac­ter, always eager to explain him­self. No, Gis­bert has sim­ply found peace where he is, and he offers no elab­o­rate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it. In his own words: “When you start a career, you have to respect every­thing, because you are respon­si­ble. So I thought I could enjoy a vaca­tion, to do what­ev­er I like. And I keep doing so.” Is he “irre­spon­si­ble” for choos­ing a life of what­ev­er he likes over a career? This is one ques­tion film com­pa­ny We Cross the Line asks us to pon­der. Gis­bert: Par­adis­o­la makes no judg­ments and offers no answers. It sim­ply shows us the life of a man who made his own choic­es and lives with them con­tent­ed­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Man Who Quit Mon­ey — and Lived to Tell About It

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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Clouds Over Cuba: Interactive Documentary Revisits the Cuban Missile Crisis on Its 50th Anniversary

in History | October 18th, 2012

50 years ago, the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis put the US and the USSR on a seem­ing­ly cat­a­stroph­ic col­li­sion course. As the cri­sis played out, both sides feared the worst — that the long-sim­mer­ing Cold War might sud­den­ly turn hot, nuclear hot. Mer­ci­ful­ly, after 13 days, cool­er heads pre­vailed.

Now, on the 50th anniver­sary of the cri­sis, the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library & Muse­um has released an inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary called Clouds Over Cuba. Nar­rat­ed by actor Matthew Modine, the film vivid­ly explains the events before, dur­ing and after the his­toric cri­sis. As the sto­ry unfolds, the doc­u­men­tary prompts view­ers to access an impres­sive amount of his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments (pho­tos, doc­u­ments, audio record­ings, etc.) that add real tex­ture to the sto­ry. Clouds Over Cuba is edu­ca­tion­al. It’s impres­sive­ly put togeth­er. You can watch the trail­er above, or start watch­ing the com­plete film right here.

via Kot­tke & Kirstin But­ler

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and share the cul­tur­al good­ness with your friends!

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Google Brings History to Life with 42 New Online Exhibitions

in Google | October 17th, 2012

Ear­li­er this year, Google expand­ed Art Project, a vast col­lec­tion of art­work curat­ed into exhibits by real muse­ums around the world and by reg­u­lar folks like you and me. (See our orig­i­nal post here.) Not much lat­er the Nel­son Man­dela Archive went online, fea­tur­ing rare pho­tos, man­u­scripts and videos relat­ed to the civ­il rights leader. And, more recent­ly we brought you news about Google’s World Won­ders Project, which includes amaz­ing panoram­ic shots of coral reefs pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a major ocean­ic study.

Turns out that these projects were just a taste of what was to come. With 17 dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions as part­ners, Google has built a robust, umbrel­la Cul­tur­al Insti­tute to house 42 new online exhi­bi­tions. Each exhib­it fea­tures, in Google’s words, “a nar­ra­tive which links the archive mate­r­i­al togeth­er to unlock the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, nuances and tales behind these events.” The exhibits also ben­e­fit from an abun­dance of poignant human sto­ries.

The Auschwitz-Birke­neau State Muse­um, for exam­ple, pro­vid­ed mate­ri­als for the exhib­it Trag­ic Love at Auschwitz, which fol­lows the rela­tion­ship between a Jew­ish woman and a Pol­ish man, both pris­on­ers of the Nazis. You can also watch the only exist­ing film images of Anne Frank, part of the thought­ful and touch­ing Anne Frank exhib­it. Or expe­ri­ence an entire­ly dif­fer­ent exhib­it, Years of Dolce Vita, which rev­els in the sen­su­al­i­ty of Ital­ian film from the mid-cen­tu­ry. Cre­at­ed in part­ner­ship with an Ital­ian gov­ern­ment film insti­tute, Google’s exhib­it is a sun­ny romp through the archi­tec­ture, fash­ion and food of post-Cold War Italy.

Oth­er exhibits focus on Steve Biko, The Coro­na­tion of Queen Eliz­a­beth II, and D‑Day. Enter the full col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Releas­es “Course Builder,” an Open Source Plat­form for Build­ing Your Own Big Online Cours­es

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture, teach­ing and high­er edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work online at .

 

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Visit the World of Little Nemo Artist Winsor McCay: Three Classic Animations

in Animation, Film | October 17th, 2012

If you stopped by Google’s home­page Mon­day, even for a moment, you sure­ly caught the incred­i­ble, ani­mat­ed doo­dle above, made in homage to car­toon­ist and ani­ma­tor Win­sor McCay (1869–1934). The occa­sion was the 107th anniver­sary of what has proved to be McCay’s most loved and endur­ing com­ic strip, Lit­tle Nemo in Slum­ber­land. Some­thing of a god­fa­ther to the philo­soph­i­cal whim­sy of car­toon­ists like Bill Wat­ter­son and Chris Ware, McCay’s com­ic art dom­i­nat­ed the car­toon genre in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry with strips like Nemo, Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, and Lit­tle Sam­my Sneezes.

Google’s approach was to bring him into the 21st cen­tu­ry with a doo­dle that adapt­ed his style for the web. Chief doo­dler Jen­nifer Hom says, “we want­ed his style def­i­nite­ly… and his col­or palettes, but we also want­ed to take it from the per­spec­tive of how it would look if he designed it for the inter­net.” That’s all very well, but it became clear to me when perus­ing the online com­men­tary that many, many peo­ple do not know McCay’s work at all, nei­ther his style nor his col­or palettes. And after see­ing this doo­dle, many peo­ple want­ed to. I couldn’t rec­om­mend enough pick­ing up an edi­tion of McCay’s com­ic art. Below is a brief sur­vey of some of McCay’s finest work as an ani­ma­tor.

McCay got his start work­ing a “Dime Museum”—part amuse­ment park, part vaudeville—in Detroit, draw­ing por­traits of cus­tomers for 25 cents a piece. Dur­ing this time, he devel­oped his abil­i­ty to draw amaz­ing­ly fast, which served him well as a car­toon­ist but also played an impor­tant role in his work as an ani­ma­tor. Ear­ly-20th cen­tu­ry ani­ma­tion was, of course, drawn entire­ly by hand; unlike large stu­dios like Dis­ney, McCay did almost of the draw­ing him­self with occa­sion­al assis­tance. For the very pop­u­lar 1914 short film, “Ger­tie the Dinosaur” (below), McCay cre­at­ed 10,000 draw­ings in six months. Watch McCay him­self act the vaude­vil­lian impre­sario as he presents the mis­chie­vous Ger­tie, a very ear­ly exam­ple of live-action com­bined with ani­ma­tion.


As you can see above, McCay had a knack for show­man­ship. He went on vaude­ville tours with his short films, pre­sent­ing lec­tures on ani­ma­tion. While Ger­tie was a cre­ation made specif­i­cal­ly for film, much of McCay’s oth­er ani­ma­tions fea­tured char­ac­ters from his beloved com­ic strips. One of those comics, Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend began the theme McCay would take up in Lit­tle Nemo, the strange, unset­tling, unpre­dictable world of dreams. This strip, how­ev­er, had no recur­ring char­ac­ters. In each “episode,” dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters expe­ri­enced some sort of bizarre or night­mar­ish fan­ta­sy after eat­ing Welsh rarebit, a cheese-on-toast dish. The strip catered to adults, express­ing grown-up anx­i­eties and fan­tasies, and spawned a live-action film in 1906 by Edwin S. Porter. McCay him­self ani­mat­ed four “Rarebit” dreams: How a Mos­qui­to Oper­ates in 1912 and The Pet, Bug Vaude­ville, and The Fly­ing House (below) in 1921. For con­trac­tu­al rea­sons, McCay drew the strip under the name “Silas,” hence the cred­it to “Silas” Win­sor McCay in the film.


The short film below brings togeth­er char­ac­ters from McCay’s beloved Lit­tle Nemo strip. One com­menter writes, the Google doo­dle “brought me here, and I am so hap­py it did.” McCay’s work tends to have that effect; his play­ful style, his elas­tic imag­i­na­tion and rev­er­ence for dream-log­ic, are irre­sistible (despite some dat­ed, stereo­typ­i­cal depic­tions). In this short film, the Nemo char­ac­ters per­form a num­ber of strange feats. Miss­ing only here is Nemo him­self, the boy-dream­er. Per­haps we, the audi­ence, are him, watch­ing our sub­con­scious dance on the screen.


Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Strange Tale of Rodriguez: Detroit Musician Becomes a Star in South Africa … Without Knowing It

in Film, Music | October 17th, 2012

Rock and pop musi­cians, as we all remem­ber from the end of This is Spinal Tap, some­times find fame in the least expect­ed coun­tries. Tufnel, St. Hub­bins, and Smalls found them­selves embraced in Japan, a coun­try that has since become the go-to cliché for the final rest­ing place of fan enthu­si­asm for Amer­i­can and Eng­lish has-beens and nev­er-weres. But what to say about a per­former who becomes famous specif­i­cal­ly in South Africa? It hap­pened to the singer-song­writer Rodriguez, the Detroit-bred son of Amer­i­can immi­grants whose 1970 and 1971 albums Cold Fact and Com­ing from Real­i­ty pro­vid­ed the sound­tracks for thou­sands upon thou­sands of South African ado­les­cences. His poet­ic protest songs seemed to hit home with a gen­er­a­tion fed up with apartheid soci­ety, and you can only imag­ine what a loss they must have felt upon hear­ing that their bard of choice had fatal­ly set him­self aflame onstage.

Both the South African pop­u­lar­i­ty and the rumors of self-immo­la­tion came as a sur­prise to the man him­self, who had remained liv­ing in Detroit as a stu­dent and demo­li­tion labor­er since the sev­en­ties. He’s since enjoyed occa­sion­al bursts of redis­cov­ery, like the one that sent him on his first South African tour in 1998, but only now, at age sev­en­ty, has he attained the kind of recog­ni­tion that his ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­ers would insist he deserved long ago. This owes to the efforts of the young Swedish film­mak­er Malik Bend­jel­loul, whose iPhone-shot doc­u­men­tary Search­ing for Sug­ar Man opened the 2012 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val with Rodriguez’s sto­ry. You can watch its trail­er at the top of this post, and a recent 60 Min­utes seg­ment fea­tur­ing Bend­jel­loul and Rodriguez him­self just above. YouTube also hosts many Rodriguez per­for­mances, includ­ing this ren­di­tion of his sig­na­ture song “Sug­ar Man” per­formed at the Triple Door in Seat­tle.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hunter S. Thompson Calls Tech Support, Unleashes a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

in Literature, Random, Technology | October 17th, 2012

It has been said that “the true voice of [Hunter S.] Thomp­son is revealed to be that of Amer­i­can moral­ist … one who often makes him­self ugly to expose the ugli­ness he sees around him.” That ugli­ness served its lit­er­ary and jour­nal­is­tic pur­pose, no doubt. As for the pur­pose it served in his pri­vate life, in the realm of get­ting nit­ty-grit­ty, mun­dane things done, that’s a whole oth­er ques­tion. Not much is known about this clip oth­er than it fea­tures a NSFW voice­mail that the gonzo jour­nal­ist left for his local AV guy in Woody Creek, Col­orado. The poor man.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

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Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebastian Bach (1962)

in Music, Television | October 16th, 2012

The Cana­di­an pianist Glenn Gould was one of the most bril­liant and idio­syn­crat­ic inter­preters of the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. In this 1962 spe­cial for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, Gould reveals the same bril­liance and idio­syn­crasy in his under­stand­ing of Bach’s place in his­to­ry.

Bach, says Gould, was not so much ahead of his time as out­side it. “For Bach, you see, was music’s great­est non-con­formist, and one of the supreme exam­ples of that inde­pen­dence of the artis­tic con­science that stands quite out­side the col­lec­tive his­tor­i­cal process.”

“Glenn Gould on Bach,” was first broad­cast in Cana­da on April 8, 1962, two years before Gould’s retire­ment from per­form­ing and only two days fol­low­ing his con­tro­ver­sial Carnegie Hall con­cert with the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, in which Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bra­hams D‑minor piano con­cer­to was so eccen­tric that Leonard Bern­stein felt com­pelled to make a dis­claimer to the audi­ence. The cen­ter­piece of the Bach broad­cast is a per­for­mance of the Can­ta­ta BWV 54 fea­tur­ing the Amer­i­can coun­tertenor Rus­sell Ober­lin. “Glenn Gould on Bach” is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enter­tain­ing half hour–essential view­ing for lovers of Baroque and Clas­si­cal music.

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Free Bach Music:

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

A Big Bach Down­load: The Com­plete Organ Works for Free

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Amazing Fact: Spaghetti and Ukulele Strings Actually Grow on Trees

in Comedy, Television | October 16th, 2012

Back in 1957, on April Fools Day, the British tele­vi­sion pro­gram Panora­ma report­ed on “a bumper spaghet­ti har­vest” in south­ern Switzer­land. The boun­ti­ful crop could be attrib­uted to the mild pre­ced­ing win­ter and the dis­ap­pear­ance of the nasty spaghet­ti wee­vil. After the broad­cast, hun­dreds of peo­ple called the BBC, want­i­ng to know how they could grow their own spaghet­ti trees. The BBC replied, “Place a sprig of spaghet­ti in a tin of toma­to sauce and hope for the best.”

If spaghet­ti can grow on trees, then why can’t ukulele strings do the same? In North­ern Italy, they’ve appar­ent­ly been grow­ing uke strings on “string wil­lows” since at least the 16th cen­tu­ry. It all comes down to find­ing the right bal­ance between sun and rain. That’s what ensures that the strings are nei­ther too soft nor too brit­tle, pro­duc­ing the fine tone that lets Jake Shimabukuro play his uke ever so beau­ti­ful­ly.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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