Immaculately Restored Film Lets You Revisit Life in New York City in 1911

in Film, History | April 20th, 2018


Oth­er than one or two of the world’s super­cente­nar­i­ans, nobody remem­bers New York in 1911. Plen­ty of liv­ing his­to­ri­ans and enthu­si­asts of the city have paid inten­sive atten­tion to that boom­ing time peri­od when the city’s pop­u­la­tion fast approached five mil­lion, but none expe­ri­enced it first-hand. They, and we, can get no clos­er to it than watch­ing the footage above, orig­i­nal­ly shot by a Swedish doc­u­men­tary team which set out to cap­ture the most cel­e­brat­ed places in the world at the time, a list also includ­ing Nia­gara Falls, Paris, Monte Car­lo, and Venice. The prac­ti­cal­ly immac­u­late con­di­tion of the film high­lights both the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between the street life of New York over a cen­tu­ry ago and of New York today.

Take a look at the tai­lored or tai­lored-look­ing cloth­ing on near­ly every­one, even the one-legged man mak­ing his delib­er­ate way past the Chi­nese gro­cery. Then as now, most New York­ers got around on foot, and since the city’s first sub­way line had opened just sev­en years before, the dom­i­nant pub­lic tran­sit options remained street­cars and ele­vat­ed trains.

In the realm of pri­vate vehi­cles, horse-drawn car­riages had only just begun to give way to motor­cars. (Since 1911 was still the age of silent film, the ambi­ent sound of all this was added lat­er.) “Take note of the sur­pris­ing and remark­ably time­less expres­sion of bore­dom exhib­it­ed by a young girl filmed as she was chauf­feured along Broad­way in the front seat of a con­vert­ible lim­ou­sine,” says the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s notes.

MoMA, which exhib­it­ed the footage last year, also points out famil­iar land­marks: “Open­ing and clos­ing with shots of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the film also includes New York Har­bor; Bat­tery Park and the John Eric­s­son stat­ue; the ele­vat­ed rail­ways at Bow­ery and Worth Streets; Broad­way sights like Grace Church and Mark Cross; the Flat­iron Build­ing on Fifth Avenue; and Madi­son Avenue.” Any mod­ern New York­er halfway inter­est­ed in the city will know all those places, and even if the city has changed in count­less oth­er ways, they’ll sense the very same char­ac­ter­is­tic vital­i­ty in these clips that they feel there today. Will New York­ers of the future have the same reac­tion, to, say, the Japan­ese high-def­i­n­i­tion video demo footage shot on those very same streets in the 1990s? It’ll take about eighty years to find out. We prob­a­bly won’t be here by then, but New York cer­tain­ly will.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1905 Video Shows New York City Sub­way Trav­el­ing From 14th St. to 42nd Street

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Martin Scorsese Teaches His First Online Course on Filmmaking: Features 30 Video Lessons

in Film, Online Courses | April 19th, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Last Sep­tem­ber, online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class announced that they’d soon launch Mar­tin Scors­ese’s very first online course, “Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es Film­mak­ing.” Now it has opened for enroll­ment, at the usu­al Mas­ter­class cost of $180 for an all-access pass to the 85 cours­es on the site, a list that also includes Spike Lee and Wern­er Her­zog’s takes on the same sub­ject. For a com­pa­ny that has quick­ly made its name by enlist­ing famous instruc­tors, they could hard­ly do bet­ter than Scors­ese, whose own name has become a byword for auteurism in late 20th- and ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cin­e­ma.

“If you’re intrigued by moviemak­ing as a career, this isn’t the class for you,” Scors­ese says in the class’ trail­er above. “But if you need to make movies, if you feel like you can’t rest until you’ve told this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry that you’re burn­ing to tell, then I could be speak­ing to you.” Its 30 lessons, which cov­er every­thing from his life and edu­ca­tion to devel­op­ing a style to cast­ing actors to shoot­ing on a low bud­get, might also appeal to those who sim­ply love Scors­ese’s movies.

He illus­trates his instruc­tion­al points by draw­ing on his own for­mi­da­ble fil­mog­ra­phy and the vast expe­ri­ence that has gone into it (includ­ing the phys­i­cal ill­ness that descends upon him before view­ing each rough cut), a process that no doubt pro­vides count­less insights into what makes his work so pow­er­ful.

But the cur­ricu­lum also goes well beyond Scors­ese-on-Scors­ese, as one might expect from a man unabashed­ly dri­ven by a pure love of cin­e­ma — of, seem­ing­ly, all of cin­e­ma. In the final sec­tion of the course, Scors­ese breaks down scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Bar­ry Lyn­don, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, François Truf­faut’s Jules and Jim, Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go, and Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 8 1/2, exam­in­ing the tech­ni­cal ele­ments that fill them with their dis­tinc­tive mag­ic. His enthu­si­asm has sure­ly inspired almost as many of his fans to go into film­mak­ing as has his work itself, but even those who lack the burn­ing desire to tell cin­e­mat­ic sto­ries them­selves know that if there’s any view­ing expe­ri­ence as com­pelling as watch­ing a Scors­ese movie, it’s watch­ing Scors­ese talk about movies. Learn more about Scors­ese’s course here.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Spike Lee to Teach an Online Course on Film­mak­ing; Get Ready By Watch­ing His List of 95 Essen­tial Films

Aaron Sorkin, Cre­ator of The West Wing & The Social Net­work, Teach­es Screen­writ­ing in an Online Class

Great Film­mak­ers Offer Advice to Young Direc­tors: Taran­ti­no, Her­zog, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Ander­son, Felli­ni & More

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Avalanche of Novels, Films and Other Works of Art Will Soon Enter the Public Domain: Virginia Woolf, Charlie Chaplin, William Carlos Williams, Buster Keaton & More

in Art, Books, Film, Literature, Music | April 17th, 2018

There may be no sweet­er sound to the ears of Open Cul­ture writ­ers than the words “pub­lic domain”—you might even go so far as to call it our “cel­lar door.” The phrase may not be as musi­cal, but the fact that many of the world’s cul­tur­al trea­sures can­not be copy­right­ed in per­pe­tu­ity means that we can con­tin­ue to do what we love: curat­ing the best of those trea­sures for read­ers as they appear online. Pub­lic domain means com­pa­nies can sell those works with­out incur­ring any costs, but it also means that any­one can give them away for free. “Any­one can re-pub­lish” pub­lic domain works, notes Life­hack­er, “or chop them up and use them in oth­er projects.” And there­by emerges the remix­ing and repur­pos­ing of old arti­facts into new ones, which will them­selves enter the pub­lic domain of future gen­er­a­tions.

Some of those future works of art may even become the next Great Amer­i­can Nov­el, if such a thing still exists as any­thing more than a hack­neyed cliché. Of course, no one seri­ous­ly goes around say­ing they’re writ­ing the “Great Amer­i­can Nov­el,” unless they’re Philip Roth in the 70s or William Car­los Williams (top right) in the 20s, who both some­how pulled off using the phrase as a title (though Roth’s book does­n’t quite live up to it.) Where Roth casu­al­ly used the con­cept in a light nov­el about base­ball, Williams’ The Great Amer­i­can Nov­el approached it with deep con­cern for the sur­vival of the form itself. His mod­ernist text “engages the tech­niques of what we would now call metafic­tion,” writes lit­er­ary schol­ar April Boone, “to par­o­dy worn out for­mu­las and con­tent and, iron­i­cal­ly, to cre­ate a new type of nov­el that antic­i­pates post­mod­ern fic­tion.”

We will all, as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2019, have free, unfet­tered access to Williams’ metafic­tion­al shake-up of the for­mu­la­ic sta­tus quo, when “hun­dreds of thou­sands of… books, musi­cal scores, and films first pub­lished in the Unit­ed States dur­ing 1923” enter the pub­lic domain, as Glenn Fleish­man writes at The Atlantic. Because of the com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry of U.S. copy­right law—especially the 1998 “Son­ny Bono Act” that suc­cess­ful­ly extend­ed a copy­right law from 50 to 70 years (for the sake, it’s said, of Mick­ey Mouse)—it has been twen­ty years since such a mas­sive trove of mate­r­i­al has become avail­able all at once. But now, and “for sev­er­al decades from 2019 onward,” Fleish­man points out, “each New Year’s Day will unleash a full year’s worth of works pub­lished 95 years ear­li­er.”

In oth­er words, it’ll be Christ­mas all over again in Jan­u­ary every year, and while you can browse the pub­li­ca­tion dates of your favorite works your­self to see what’s com­ing avail­able in com­ing years, you’ll find at The Atlantic a short list of lit­er­ary works includ­ed in next-year’s mass-release, includ­ing books by Aldous Hux­ley, Win­ston Churchill, Carl Sand­burg, Edith Whar­ton, and P.G. Wode­house. Life­hack­er has sev­er­al more exten­sive lists, which we excerpt below:

Movies [see many more at Indiewire]

All these movies, includ­ing:

  • Cecil B. DeMille’s (first, less famous, silent ver­sion of) The Ten Com­mand­ments
  • Harold Lloyd’s Safe­ty Last!, includ­ing that scene where he dan­gles off a clock tow­er, and his Why Wor­ry?
  • A long line-up of fea­ture-length silent films, includ­ing Buster Keaton’s Our Hos­pi­tal­ityand Char­lie Chaplin’s The Pil­grim
  • Short films by Chap­lin, Keaton, Lau­rel and Hardy, and Our Gang (lat­er Lit­tle Ras­cals)
  • Car­toons includ­ing Felix the Cat(the char­ac­ter first appeared in a 1919 car­toon)
  • Mar­lene Dietrich’s film debut, a bit part in the Ger­man silent com­e­dy The Lit­tle Napoleon; also the debuts of Dou­glas Fair­banks Jr. and Fay Wray

Music

All this music, includ­ing these clas­sics:

  • “King Porter Stomp”
  • “Who’s Sor­ry Now?”
  • “Tin Roof Blues”
  • “That Old Gang of Mine”
  • “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
  • “I Cried for You”
  • “The Charleston”—written to accom­pa­ny, and a big fac­tor in the pop­u­lar­i­ty of, the Charleston dance
  • Igor Stravinsky’s “Octet for Wind Instru­ments”

Lit­er­a­ture

All these books, and these books, includ­ing the clas­sics:

  • Mrs. Dal­loway by Vir­ginia Woolf
  • Cane by Jean Toomer
  • The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
  • The Ego and the Id by Sig­mund Freud
  • Towards a New Archi­tec­ture by Le Cor­busier
  • Whose Body?, the first Lord Peter Wim­sey nov­el by Dorothy L. Say­ers
  • Two of Agatha Christie’s Her­cule Poirot nov­els, The Mur­der of Roger Ack­royd and The Mur­der on the Links
  • The Pris­on­er, vol­ume 5 of Mar­cel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (note that Eng­lish trans­la­tions have their own copy­rights)
  • The Com­plete Works of Antho­ny Trol­lope
  • George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan
  • Short sto­ries by Christie, Vir­ginia Woolf, H.P. Love­craft, Kather­ine Mans­field, and Ernest Hem­ing­way
  • Poet­ry by Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay, E.E. Cum­mings, William Car­los Williams, Rain­er Maria Rilke, Wal­lace Stevens, Robert Frost, Suku­mar Ray, and Pablo Neru­da
  • Works by Jane Austen, D.H. Lawrence, Edith Whar­ton, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bul­gakov, Jean Cocteau, Ita­lo Sve­vo, Aldous Hux­ley, Win­ston Churchill, G.K. Chester­ton, Maria Montes­sori, Lu Xun, Joseph Con­rad, Zane Grey, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Bur­roughs

Art

These art­works, includ­ing:

  • Con­stan­tin Brâncuși’s Bird in Space
  • Hen­ri Matisse’s Odal­isque With Raised Arms
  • Mar­cel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bach­e­lors, Even (The Large Glass)
  • Yokoya­ma Taikan’s Metempsy­chosis
  • Work by M. C. Esch­er, Pablo Picas­so, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Max Ernst, and Man Ray

Again, these are only par­tial lists of high­lights, and such high­lights…. Speak­ing for myself, I can­not wait for free access to the very best (and even worst, and weird­est, and who-knows-what-else) of 1923. And of 1924 in 2020, and 1925 and 2021, and so on and so on….

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts Over 1,000,000 Images in the Pub­lic Domain: A Deep­er Dive Into the Col­lec­tion

The Pub­lic Domain Project Makes 10,000 Film Clips, 64,000 Images & 100s of Audio Files Free to Use

List of Great Pub­lic Domain Films 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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What Made Studio Ghibli Animator Isao Takahata (RIP) a Master: Two Video Essays

in Animation, Film | April 17th, 2018

Among the many acclaimed ani­mat­ed films of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li — and indeed among recent Japan­ese ani­mat­ed films in gen­er­al — those direct­ed by the out­spo­ken, oft-retir­ing-and-return­ing Hayao Miyaza­ki tend to get the most atten­tion. But even casu­al view­ers over­look the work of the late Isao Taka­ha­ta (1935–2018), the old­er ani­ma­tor for­mer­ly of Toei with whom Miyaza­ki found­ed the stu­dio in 1985, at their per­il. Though he most often played the role of pro­duc­er at Ghi­b­li, he also direct­ed sev­er­al of its films, first and most mem­o­rably 1988’s Grave of the Fire­flies, the sto­ry of an orphaned broth­er and sis­ter’s strug­gle for sur­vival at the very end of the Sec­ond World War.

“Grave of the Fire­flies is an emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence so pow­er­ful that it forces a rethink­ing of ani­ma­tion,” wrote Roger Ebert in 2000, adding the pic­ture to his “Great Movies” canon. “When ani­me fans say how good the film is, nobody takes them seri­ous­ly. [ … ] Yes, it’s a car­toon, and the kids have eyes like saucers, but it belongs on any list of the great­est war films ever made.”

No West­ern crit­ic would frame it quite the same way now, with the implic­it dis­claimer about the nature of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, thanks in no small part to what ani­ma­tors like Taka­ha­ta have done to show the entire world the true poten­tial of their medi­um since.

The quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after Grave of the Fire­flies saw Taka­ha­ta direct four more fea­tures, Only Yes­ter­day, Pom Poko, My Neigh­bors the Yamadas, and his visu­al­ly uncon­ven­tion­al, long-in-the-mak­ing final work The Tale of Princess Kaguya. You can get a sense of Taka­hata’s dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ties and sen­si­tiv­i­ties as an ani­ma­tion direc­tor in the Roy­al Ocean Film Soci­ety video essay “Isao Taka­ha­ta: The Oth­er Mas­ter” at the top of the post. It gets into the ques­tions of why Taka­ha­ta chose to tell essen­tial­ly real­is­tic, drawn-from-life sto­ries in a form most know for its way with the fan­tas­ti­cal, and how the visu­al exag­ger­a­tions in his films some­how imbue them with a more sol­id feel of real­i­ty.

Just above, “Isao Taka­ha­ta Does­n’t Get Enough Respect (A Ret­ro­spec­tive),” by Youtu­ber Stevem, goes in oth­er direc­tions, explor­ing the direc­tor’s tech­nique as well as his career, life, and per­son­al­i­ty, draw­ing not just from his work with Ghi­b­li but the con­sid­er­able amount he did before the stu­dio’s foun­da­tion as well. Still, Grave of the Fire­flies may well remain most film­go­ers’ gate­way into his fil­mog­ra­phy for the fore­see­able future, not least because of its still-refresh­ing “anti-Hol­ly­wood” qual­i­ties. “Hol­ly­wood will have you believe that heroes are need­ed when times are tough,” says writer on Japan­ese cul­ture Roland Kelts in a recent BBC piece on the movie. “Isao Taka­ha­ta shows us the hum­ble oppo­site, that when times are tough what you need most is humil­i­ty, patience and self-restraint. That’s how one sur­vives.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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When David Bowie Became Nikola Tesla: Watch His Electric Performance in The Prestige (2006)

in Film, Music | April 5th, 2018

Only two major actors have played inven­tor Niko­la Tes­la in pop cul­ture: one is John C. Reil­ly and the oth­er is David Bowie. As much as I love this episode of Drunk His­to­ry, let’s talk about the Star­man him­self, who Christo­pher Nolan cast as Tes­la in his 2006 film The Pres­tige.

By 2005, Bowie was in seclu­sion. As elu­ci­dat­ed in the recent BBC doc, The Last Five Years, the singer was recu­per­at­ing from a heart attack on his Real­i­ty tour, a tour that would turn out to be his last.

Nolan begged Bowie to take the role:

Tes­la was this oth­er-world­ly, ahead-of-his-time fig­ure, and at some point it occurred to me he was the orig­i­nal Man Who Fell to Earth. As some­one who was the biggest Bowie fan in the world, once I made that con­nec­tion, he seemed to be the only actor capa­ble of play­ing the part…It took me a while to con­vince him, though—he turned down the part the first time. It was the only time I can ever remem­ber try­ing again with an actor who passed on me.

Bowie relent­ed and above you can see his best moment in the film (or *the* best moment in the film)–where Tes­la enters through a show­er of elec­tric­i­ty to greet Robert (Hugh Jack­man) and Alley (Andy Serkis). It’s a rock star entrance, for sure.

Nolan con­tin­ues:

The expe­ri­ence of hav­ing him on set was won­der­ful. Daunt­ing, at first. He had a lev­el of charis­ma beyond what you nor­mal­ly expe­ri­ence, and every­one real­ly respond­ed to it. I’ve nev­er seen a crew respond to any movie star that way, no mat­ter how big. But he was very gra­cious and under­stood the effect he had on peo­ple. Every­one has fond mem­o­ries of get­ting to spend time with him or speak to him for a lit­tle bit. I only worked with him briefly—four or five days—but I did man­age to sneak a cou­ple moments to chat with him, which are very trea­sured mem­o­ries of mine. Nor­mal­ly when you meet stars, no mat­ter how star­ry they are, when you see them as peo­ple, some of that mys­tique goes away. But not with David Bowie. I came away from the expe­ri­ence being able to say I was still his biggest fan, and a fan who had the very mirac­u­lous oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with him for a moment. I loved the fact that after hav­ing worked with him, I had just the same fas­ci­na­tion with his tal­ent and his charis­ma. I thought that was quite mag­i­cal.

Despite a very brief role in a film called August and an appear­ance around the same year on Ricky Ger­vais’ Extras, this would be Bowie’s last major film role, and real­ly his last filmed appear­ance until 2013, when he shot pro­mos for The Next Day.

A look at the YouTube com­ments sug­gest that many view­ers watched The Pres­tige and had no idea who was play­ing Tes­la. And that might have just tick­led the man, play­ing a magi­cian in recluse high up in the moun­tains, more in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the invis­i­ble gods than the mor­tals.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie Star in His First Film Role, a Short Hor­ror Flick Called The Image (1967)

Ricky Ger­vais Cre­ates Out­landish Com­e­dy with David Bowie

David Bowie Sings in a Won­der­ful M.C. Esch­er-Inspired Set in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

The Peri­od­ic Table of David Bowie: A Visu­al­iza­tion of the Sem­i­nal Artist’s Influ­ence and Influ­ences

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Martin Scorsese Creates a List of 38 Essential Films About American Democracy

in Film, History, Politics | March 29th, 2018

Image by “Sieb­bi,” Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

So many of us, through­out so much of the 20th cen­tu­ry, saw the nature of Amer­i­can-style democ­ra­cy as more or less etched in stone. But the events of recent years, cer­tain­ly on the nation­al lev­el but also on the glob­al one, have thrown our assump­tions about a polit­i­cal sys­tem that once looked des­tined for uni­ver­sal­i­ty — indeed, the much-dis­cussed “end” toward which his­to­ry itself has been work­ing — into ques­tion. What­ev­er our per­son­al views, we’ve all had to remem­ber that the Unit­ed States, approach­ing a quar­ter-mil­len­ni­um of his­to­ry, remains an exper­i­men­tal coun­try, one more sub­ject to re-eval­u­a­tion and revi­sion than we might have thought.

The same holds true for the art form that has done more than any oth­er to spread visions of Amer­i­ca: the movies. Mar­tin Scors­ese sure­ly knows this, just as deeply as he knows that a full under­stand­ing of any soci­ety demands immer­sion into that soci­ety’s dreams of itself. The fact that so many of Amer­i­ca’s dreams have tak­en cin­e­mat­ic form makes Scors­ese well-placed to approach the sub­ject, giv­en that he’s dreamed a fair few of them him­self. Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, Good­fel­las, Gangs of New York, The Wolf of Wall Street: most of his best-known films tell thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can sto­ries, root­ed in not just his coun­try’s dis­tinc­tive his­to­ry but the equal­ly dis­tinc­tive pol­i­tics, soci­ety, and cul­ture that have result­ed from it.


Now, along with his non­prof­it The Film Foun­da­tion, Scors­ese pass­es his under­stand­ing of Amer­i­ca along to all of us with their cur­ricu­lum, “Por­traits of Amer­i­ca: Democ­ra­cy on Film.” It comes as part of their larg­er project “The Sto­ry of Film,” described by its offi­cial site as “an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary cur­ricu­lum intro­duc­ing stu­dents to clas­sic cin­e­ma and the cul­tur­al, his­tor­i­cal, and artis­tic sig­nif­i­cance of film.” Scors­ese and The Film Foun­da­tion offer its mate­ri­als free to schools, but stu­dents of all ages and nation­al­i­ties can learn a great deal about Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy from the pic­tures it includes, the sequence of which runs as fol­lows:

Mod­ule 1: The Immi­grant Expe­ri­ence
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: From Pen­ny Clap­trap to Movie Palaces—the First Three Decades
Chap­ter 1: “The Immi­grant” (1917, d. Char­lie Chap­lin)
Chap­ter 2: “The God­fa­ther, Part II” (1974, d. Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la)
Chap­ter 3: “Amer­i­ca, Amer­i­ca” (1963, d. Elia Kazan)
Chap­ter 4: “El Norte” (1983, d. Gre­go­ry Nava)
Chap­ter 5: “The Name­sake” (2006, d. Mira Nair)

Mod­ule 2: The Amer­i­can Labor­er
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: The Com­mon Good
Chap­ter 1: “Black Fury” (1935, d. Michael Cur­tiz)
Chap­ter 2: “Har­lan Coun­ty U.S.A.” (1976, d. Bar­bara Kop­ple)
Chap­ter 3: “At the Riv­er I Stand” (1993, d. David Apple­by, Alli­son Gra­ham and Steven Ross)
Chap­ter 4: “Salt of the Earth” (1954, d. Her­bert J. Biber­man)
Chap­ter 5: “Nor­ma Rae” (1979, d. Mar­tin Ritt)

Mod­ule 3: Civ­il Rights
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: The Cam­era as Wit­ness
Chap­ter 1: King: A Filmed Record…Montgomery to Mem­phis (1970, con­ceived & cre­at­ed by
Ely Lan­dau; guest appear­ances filmed by Sid­ney Lumet and Joseph L.
Mankiewicz)
Chap­ter 2: “Intrud­er in the Dust” (1949, d. Clarence Brown)
Chap­ter 3: “The Times of Har­vey Milk” (1984, d. Robert Epstein)
Chap­ter 4: “Smoke Sig­nals” (1998, d. Chris Eyre)

Mod­ule 4: The Amer­i­can Woman
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: Ways of See­ing Women
Chap­ter 1: Through a Woman’s Lens: Direc­tors Lois Weber (focus­ing on “Sus­pense,” 1913 and
“Where Are My Chil­dren,” 1916) and Dorothy Arzn­er (“Dance, Girl, Dance,” 1940)
Chap­ter 2: “Imi­ta­tion of Life” (1934, d. John M. Stahl)
Chap­ter 3: “Woman of the Year” (1942, d. George Stevens)
Chap­ter 4: “Alien” (1979, d. Rid­ley Scott)
Chap­ter 5: “The Age of Inno­cence” (1993, d. Mar­tin Scors­ese)

Mod­ule 5: Politi­cians and Dem­a­gogues
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: Checks and Bal­ances
Chap­ter 1: “Gabriel Over the White House” (1933, d. Gre­go­ry La Cava)
Chap­ter 2: “A Lion is in the Streets” (1953, d. Raoul Walsh)
Chap­ter 3: “Advise and Con­sent” (1962, d. Otto Pre­minger)
Chap­ter 4: “A Face in the Crowd” (1957, d. Elia Kazan)

Mod­ule 6: Sol­diers and Patri­ots
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: Movies and Home­front Morale
Chap­ter 1: “Sergeant York (1941, d. Howard Hawks)
Chap­ter 2: Pri­vate Snafu’s Pri­vate War—three Sna­fu Shorts from WWII
Chap­ter 3: “Three Came Home” (1950, d. Jean Neg­ule­sco)
Chap­ter 4: “Glo­ry” (1989, Edward Zwick)
Chap­ter 5: “Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan” (1998, d. Steven Spiel­berg)

Mod­ule 7: The Press
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: Degrees of Truth
Chap­ter 1: “Meet John Doe” (1941, d. Frank Capra)
Chap­ter 2: “All the President’s Men” (1976, d. Alan J. Paku­la)
Chap­ter 3: “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005, d. George Clooney)
Chap­ter 4: “An Incon­ve­nient Truth” (2006, d. Davis Guggen­heim)
Chap­ter 5: “Ace in the Hole” (1951, d. Bil­ly Wilder)

Mod­ule 8: The Auteurs
Intro­duc­to­ry Les­son: Film as an Art Form
Chap­ter 1: “Mod­ern Times” (1936, Char­lie Chap­lin)
Chap­ter 2: “The Grapes of Wrath”(1940, d. John Ford)
Chap­ter 3: “Cit­i­zen Kane” (1941, d. Orson Welles)
Chap­ter 4: “An Amer­i­can in Paris” (1951, d. Vin­cente Min­nel­li)
Chap­ter 5: “The Avi­a­tor” (2004, d. Mar­tin Scors­ese)

“Divi­sion, con­flict and anger seem to be defin­ing this moment in cul­ture,” says Scors­ese, quot­ed in a Film Jour­nal Inter­na­tion­al arti­cle about the cur­ricu­lum. “I learned a lot about cit­i­zen­ship and Amer­i­can ideals from the movies I saw. Movies that look square­ly at the strug­gles, vio­lent dis­agree­ments and the tragedies in his­to­ry, not to men­tion hypocrisies, false promis­es. But they also embody the best in Amer­i­ca, our great hopes and ideals.” Few could watch all 38 of the films on his cur­ricu­lum with­out feel­ing that the exper­i­ments of democ­ra­cy and cin­e­ma are still on to some­thing – and hold out the promise of more pos­si­bil­i­ties than we’d imag­ined before.

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese to Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Mar­tin Scors­ese on How “Diver­si­ty Guar­an­tees Our Cul­tur­al Sur­vival,” in Film and Every­thing Else

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Alex­is De Tocqueville’s Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Insight­ful Study of Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Spike Lee Teaching an Online Course on Independent Filmmaking: The Course Is Now Officially Live

in Film, Online Courses | March 23rd, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

When Spike Lee makes a movie, peo­ple talk about it. Peo­ple talked in 1986 when he made the black-and-white indie com­e­dy She’s Got­ta Have It; they talked even more when he came out with Do the Right Thing a few years lat­er; they talked, with sharply divid­ed opin­ion, about his most recent pic­ture, the crime-themed musi­cal Chi-Raq; and they’re already talk­ing about his upcom­ing Black Klans­man, and not just because of the title. Lee has man­aged to remain cul­tur­al­ly and artis­ti­cal­ly rel­e­vant through­out a career of more than thir­ty years and count­ing, and his new online course at Mas­ter­class just might let us in on how he’s done it.

“When you’re an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er, and mak­ing films out­side Hol­ly­wood, that’s hard,” says the long Brook­lyn-based Lee in the trail­er for the course above. “You have to pray on bend­ed knee at the church of cin­e­ma.” But even as an aspir­ing auteur with a pock­et-change bud­get — Lee remem­bers well when he “was a cater­er, the pro­duc­er, the direc­tor, the screen­writer, act­ed in it, and I was the first AD” on his first fea­ture — you already pos­sess “tools that can help you tell a sto­ry”: height­en­ing dynam­ic cam­er­a­work to height­en the emo­tions, for instance, or writ­ing char­ac­ters with strong beliefs to inten­si­fy the con­flicts of the sto­ry. He used such tech­niques when he start­ed out, and he still uses them today.

Though Lee seems more than will­ing to talk about his meth­ods, you can’t ful­ly under­stand any film­mak­er unless you under­stand that film­mak­er’s influ­ences. And so we offer you Lee’s list of 95 essen­tial movies every aspir­ing direc­tor should see, expand­ed from his orig­i­nal list of 87, drawn up to hand out to the grad­u­ate-school class­es he’s taught. Fea­tur­ing mul­ti­ple works from direc­tors like Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Alfred Hitch­cock, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, John Hus­ton, and Stan­ley Kubrick, the first ver­sion of the list runs as fol­lows:

Tak­en to task for that list’s lack of female film­mak­ers, Lee came up with these addi­tions:

  • The Piano — Jane Cam­pi­on (1993)
  • Daugh­ters of the Dust — Julie Dash (1991)
  • The Hurt Lock­er — Kathryn Bigelow (2008)
  • Sug­ar Cane Alley - Euzhan Pal­cy (1983)
  • The Seduc­tion of Mimi — Lina Wert­muller (1972)
  • Love and Anar­chy - Lina Wert­muller (1973)
  • Swept Away - Lina Wert­muller (1974)
  • Sev­en Beau­ties — Lina Wert­muller (1975)

Lee’s Mas­ter­class on film­mak­ing joins the site’s oth­er offer­ings on the same sub­ject from auteurs no less dis­tinc­tive than Mar­tin Scors­ese and Wern­er Her­zog. Though all three became major film­mak­ers at dif­fer­ent times and under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances — and end­ed up with very dif­fer­ent cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties — they all, as Lee might put it, pray at the same church.

And just as it takes the per­spec­tive of many the­ol­o­gists to get a sense of the inef­fa­ble essence of the divine, so it takes the per­spec­tive of many film­mak­ers to get an inef­fa­ble essence of cin­e­ma. You could take all three cours­es with Mas­ter­class’ $180 all-access pass, or you could pay $90 for just Lee’s. Either way, you’ll learn how he made She’s Got­ta Have It for a then-dirt-cheap $175,000, but these days you could sure­ly go out and shoot your own film after­ward for not much more than the cost of the Mas­ter­class itself. It’s still hard out there for an indie film­mak­er, mind you; just not quite as hard as it was.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

Spike Lee’s List of 95 Essen­tial Movies – Now with Women Film­mak­ers

Mar­tin Scors­ese to Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch a Marathon Streaming of All 856 Episodes of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and the Moving Trailer for the New Documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

in Film, Television | March 22nd, 2018

The bom­bast, arro­gance and bloviation–maybe you need a break from it all. You may need exact­ly the opposite–a lit­tle Fred Rogers. If so, we’ve got two things for you. First, head over to Twitch.TV where they’re cur­rent­ly livestream­ing all 856 episodes of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood (for a lim­it­ed time). It’s a grand way of cel­e­brat­ing what would have been Fred’s 90th birth­day this week. And then, above, watch the brand new trail­er for Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor?, the upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary by Oscar-win­ning direc­tor Mor­gan Neville (20 Feet from Star­dom). Due out in June, the film “takes us beyond the zip-up cardi­gans and the land of make-believe, and into the heart of a cre­ative genius who inspired gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren with com­pas­sion and lim­it­less imag­i­na­tion.” As you watch the trail­er, you’ll be remind­ed that Rogers worked his mag­ic dur­ing oth­er peri­ods of chaos and dis­con­tent, and how sore­ly his calm­ing pres­ence is miss­ing today.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Watch Mr. Rogers Per­suade Con­gress to Stop Cut­ting PBS Bud­get in 1969 : Would It Stop Trump from Defund­ing PBS & NEA Today?

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

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