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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Watch “Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on The 405,” the New Oscar-Winning Portrait of an Artist

in Film | March 15th, 2018

A quick fyi: IndieWire has made avail­able on its YouTube chan­nel “Heav­en Is a Traf­fic Jam on The 405,” a 40-minute doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by Frank Stiefel. A por­trait of a bril­liant 56 year old artist, the film won the Oscar for Best Doc­u­men­tary (Short Sub­ject) at the recent Acad­e­my Awards. Here’s the gist of what it’s about:

Mindy Alper is a tor­tured and bril­liant 56 year old artist who is rep­re­sent­ed by one of Los Ange­les’ top gal­leries. Acute anx­i­ety, men­tal dis­or­der and dev­as­tat­ing depres­sion have caused her to be com­mit­ted to men­tal insti­tu­tions under­go elec­tro shock ther­a­py and sur­vive a 10 year peri­od with­out the abil­i­ty to speak. Her hyper self aware­ness has allowed her to pro­duce a life­long body of work that express­es her emo­tion­al state with pow­er­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal pre­ci­sion. Through inter­views, reen­act­ments, the build­ing of an eight and a half foot papi­er-mache’ bust of her beloved psy­chi­a­trist, and exam­in­ing draw­ings made from the time she was a child, we learn how she has emerged from dark­ness and iso­la­tion to a life that includes love, trust and sup­port.

You can watch the com­plete film online. It will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Depres­sion & Melan­choly: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the Cru­cial Dif­fer­ence Between Every­day Sad­ness and Clin­i­cal Depres­sion

Watch Edith+Eddie, an Intense, Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film About America’s Old­est Inter­ra­cial New­ly­weds

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An Archive of 20,000 Movie Posters from Czechoslovakia (1930–1989)

in Art, Film | March 14th, 2018

We could­n’t pos­si­bly ignore, here at Open Cul­ture, the glo­ry of movie posters: from the film noir era, from Mar­tin Scors­ese’s pre­dictably siz­able col­lec­tion, and even the deeply askew inter­pre­ta­tions seen out­side the the­aters of Ghana. But some­how, the visu­al art-inclined cinephile’s atten­tion returns again and again to one region of the world: East­ern Europe, espe­cial­ly in the Cold War era. Poland’s movie posters have long since accrued a fan­dom around the world, but we should­n’t neglect the equal pro­mo­tion­al won­ders of its neigh­bor­ing Czecho­slo­va­kia.

Or rather, as the even mild­ly geo­graph­i­cal­ly astute will note, the neigh­bor­ing Czech Repub­lic and Slo­va­kia. But in this case, we real­ly do mean Czecho­slo­va­kia, the movie posters fea­tured here hav­ing hung in its movie hous­es between 1930 and 1989.

Ter­ry Posters offers a col­lec­tion of more than 20,000 such works of cap­ti­vat­ing com­mer­cial art to browse (with some avail­able to buy), most of them inter­pret­ing for­eign motion pic­tures for the pre­sumed sen­si­bil­i­ties of the local audi­ence: the films of  auteurs like Alfred Hitch­cock, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Andrei Tarkovsky (then, of course, a fel­low Sovi­et), Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, and many more besides.

You can also browse Ter­ry’s Czecho­slo­va­kian col­lec­tion by year, by artist, by genre, by actor, and by the film’s coun­try of ori­gin. How­ev­er you explore them, these posters offer a reminder of the way that cin­e­ma cul­ture used to vary most stark­ly from region to region, even when deal­ing with the exact same movies. The “glob­al­iza­tion” process in effect over the past thir­ty years has done much to make seri­ous cinephil­ia pos­si­ble every­where (not least by defeat­ing var­i­ous once-for­mi­da­ble forms of cen­sor­ship and sup­pres­sion) but it may have brought an end to the mul­ti­plic­i­ty and vari­ety of images on dis­play here, all espe­cial­ly vivid pieces of a fad­ed cul­ture — and of a dis­man­tled coun­try. Enter the dig­i­tal archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Strange and Won­der­ful Movie Posters from Ghana: The Matrix, Alien & More

Design­er Reimag­ines Icon­ic Movie Posters With Min­i­mal­ist Designs: Reser­voir Dogs, The Matrix & More

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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David Lynch Teaches Typing: A New Interactive Comedy Game

in Comedy, Computer Science, Film, Games, How to Learn for Free, Technology, Television | March 2nd, 2018

Typ­ing pro­grams demand some patience on the part of the stu­dent, and David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is no excep­tion.

You’ve got 90 sec­onds to get accli­mat­ed to the crud­dy flop­py disc-era graph­ics and the cacoph­o­nous voice of your instruc­tor, a dead ringer for FBI Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing char­ac­ter direc­tor David Lynch played on his sem­i­nal ear­ly 90s series, Twin Peaks.

Things perk up about a minute and a half in, when stu­dents are instruct­ed to place their left ring fin­gers in an undu­lat­ing bug to the left of their key­boards.

That sec­ond “in”? Not a typo (though you’ll notice plen­ty of no doubt inten­tion­al boo-boos in the teacher’s pre-pro­grammed respons­es…)

The bug in ques­tion may well put you in mind of the mys­te­ri­ous baby in Lynch’s first fea­ture length film, 1977’s Eraser­head.

On the oth­er hand, it might not.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is actu­al­ly a short inter­ac­tive com­e­dy game, and many of the mil­len­ni­al review­ers cov­er­ing that beat have had to play catch-up in order to catch the many nods to the director’s work con­tained there­in.

One of our favorites is the Apple-esque name of the program’s retro com­put­er, and we’ll wager that fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor, actor Kyle MacLach­lan, would agree.

Anoth­er ref­er­ence that has thus far elud­ed online gam­ing enthu­si­asts in their 20s is Mavis Bea­con Teach­es Typ­ing. Take a peek below at what the vir­tu­al typ­ing tutor’s graph­ics looked like around the time the orig­i­nal Twin Peaks aired to dis­cov­er the cre­ators of David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing’s oth­er inspi­ra­tion.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is avail­able for free down­load here. If you’re anx­ious that doing so might open you up to a tech­ni­cal bug of night­mar­ish pro­por­tions, stick with watch­ing the play through at the top of the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her March 20 in New York City for the sec­ond edi­tion of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a low bud­get vari­ety show born of a 1920 man­u­al for Girl Scout Camp Direc­tors. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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