Who’s Afraid of Ai Weiwei: A Short Documentary

in Art, Current Affairs, Film | July 30th, 2012

The work of dis­si­dent Chi­nese artist Ai Wei­wei is mon­u­men­tal, as is the man’s fear­less and out­spo­ken per­son­al­i­ty. Recent­ly, while stand­ing under the cir­cu­lar dis­play of mas­sive bronze ani­mal heads in Ai’s Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at Wash­ing­ton, DC’s Hir­sh­horn Muse­um, I found myself wish­ing I could meet him. The next best thing, I guess, is to see can­did footage of his life and work, which is what you find in Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei, the short doc­u­men­tary (above) from PBS’s Front­line.

Begun in 2008 by 24-year-old film­mak­er Ali­son Klay­man, Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei cap­tures the artist imme­di­ate­ly before his prin­ci­pled and cost­ly stand against the Bei­jing Olympics (which he helped to design) and the oppres­sive police state he claimed it rep­re­sent­ed. Klay­man fol­lowed Ai for two years and shot 200 hours of footage, some of which became the short film above. The rest has been edit­ed and released as a fea­ture-length film called Ai Wei­wei: Nev­er Sor­ry, which has picked up prizes at Sun­dance, the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the Human Rights Watch Film Fes­ti­val.

Ai is unique among his con­tem­po­raries in the art world for his will­ing­ness to con­front social issues not only through visu­al media but also through media com­men­tary. As Klay­man puts it, “Wei­wei the artist had become as provoca­tive with his key­board, typ­ing out a dai­ly dia­tribe against local cor­rup­tion and gov­ern­ment abus­es” on his blog. Ai claims his polit­i­cal involve­ment is “very per­son­al.” “If you don’t speak out,” he says above, “if you don’t clear your mind, then who are you?” He has writ­ten edi­to­ri­als for Eng­lish-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions on why he with­drew his sup­port from the Bei­jing Games and what he thought of last Friday’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don (he liked it). And, of course, he’s become a bit of a star on Twit­ter, using it to relent­less­ly cri­tique China’s deep eco­nom­ic divides and sup­pres­sion of free speech.

But for all his noto­ri­ety as an activist and his well-known inter­net per­sona, Ai’s sculp­ture and pho­tog­ra­phy speaks for itself. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to his arrest and impris­on­ment by Chi­nese author­i­ties in 2011, he was unable to attend the open­ing of Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in LA, and he is still under con­stant sur­veil­lance and not per­mit­ted to leave the coun­try. But, true to form, none of these set­backs have kept him from speak­ing out, about his pol­i­tics and his art. In the short video below, he dis­cuss­es the sig­nif­i­cance of Zodi­ac Heads, his most recent mon­u­men­tal vision.

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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Andrei Tarkovsky’s Voyage in Time: A Portrait of the Filmmaker in Exile

in Film | July 30th, 2012

By 1982 Andrei Tarkovsky’s bat­tles with Sovi­et cen­sors had reached the point where he could no longer work in his native coun­try. This rarely seen doc­u­men­tary shows the great Russ­ian film­mak­er tread­ing unfa­mil­iar ground as he trav­els across south­ern Italy in search of loca­tions for his first film in exile, Nos­tal­ghia.

Voy­age in Time (Tiem­po di Viag­gio) is less about the Ital­ian coun­try­side than Tarkovsky’s inner land­scape, as he strug­gles to express his views on film­mak­ing and art to Toni­no Guer­ra, his co-writer on Nos­tal­ghia. Guer­ra, who died ear­li­er this year, was a leg­endary Ital­ian screen­writer. He col­lab­o­rat­ed with Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni on many of his great­est films, includ­ing L’Avven­tu­ra, La Notte, and Blow-Up, and with Fed­eri­co Felli­ni on sev­er­al of his lat­er films, includ­ing Amar­cord. The 63-minute film was pro­duced for Ital­ian tele­vi­sion and com­plet­ed in 1983, the same year as Nos­tal­ghia, with Tarkovsky and Guer­ra shar­ing the direct­ing cred­it. Voy­age in Time has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Tarkovsky Films Online.

Note: If you don’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly see sub­ti­tles, click CC at the bot­tom of the YouTube win­dow.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revis­it­ed

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

 

 

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Wim Wenders Creates Ads to Sell Beer (Stella Artois), Pasta (Barilla), and More Beer (Carling)

in Film, Television | July 30th, 2012

Few would call Wim Wen­ders, the auteur behind Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, The Bue­na Vista Social Club, and last year’s doc­u­men­tary Pina, a “com­mer­cial” direc­tor. Yet he has, now and again, put in time as a direc­tor of com­mer­cials — adver­tise­ments, that is, for beer, food, and cam­eras. His per­son­al hymn to Leica’s crafts­man­ship aside (“As a boy,” he nar­rates, “I looked at my father’s Leica like a sacred object”), these spots don’t imme­di­ate­ly betray the iden­ti­ty of the man at the helm. Even if you’ve seen many of Wen­ders’ fea­ture films, you might not guess that he made these com­mer­cials if you just hap­pened upon them; you would, though, feel their dif­fer­ence in sen­si­bil­i­ty from the ads sur­round­ing them. The Stel­la Artois clip above includes sev­er­al atten­tion-draw­ing tele­vi­sion tropes like a pic­turesque Euro­pean coast, fast cars and motor­cy­cles, vin­tage musi­cal instru­ments, alco­hol, and fem­i­nin­i­ty, but it approach­es them in a non­stan­dard way — one that, con­se­quen­tial­ly, actu­al­ly stands a chance of draw­ing your atten­tion.

“There’s a cer­tain amount of objects that men like a lot,” says Wen­ders in a short doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of the com­mer­cial, “and they like them so much that they give them their girl­friends’ names.” We see first a motor­cy­cle named Sophie, then a con­vert­ible named Vic­to­ria, then a gui­tar named Valerie, then a beer — Stel­la. We nev­er see any actu­al women, or, for that mat­ter, any men; just places and things. Wen­ders imbues the sequence with human­i­ty through the cam­er­a’s gaze, and the behind-the-scenes footage shows it as no easy task, requir­ing take after pre­cise­ly lit take shot with cam­eras mount­ed on elab­o­rate mechan­i­cal arms that look more expen­sive than the trea­sured objects them­selves. (It also requires the direc­tor to issue instruc­tions in no few­er than three lan­guages, though I under­stand that as busi­ness as usu­al on a Wen­ders set.) For an entire­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on beer, watch his spot for Car­ling that involves bicy­cling over a water­fall. For a more epic take on the rela­tion­ship between mankind and machin­ery, watch what he put togeth­er for food con­glom­er­ate Bar­il­la’s 125th anniver­sary.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

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

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Celebrate Harry Potter’s Birthday with Song. Daniel Radcliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Elements.

in Comedy, Film, Music, Science | July 27th, 2012

Some child actors are unen­dear­ing, snarky types (think Sele­na Gomez or a young Dako­ta Fan­ning). Oth­ers, you root for because even if they’re cloy­ing they seem real (Haley Joel Osment comes to mind).

Daniel Rad­cliffe, who was most cer­tain­ly a child when he was cast as Har­ry Pot­ter at 11, may fall more into the sec­ond camp. He’s as hap­less and earnest as Har­ry, and it turns out that he’s endear­ing­ly nerdier in real life than Har­ry him­self could ever be.

Rad­cliffe, who cel­e­brat­ed his 23rd birth­day this week, sealed his fate as a bit of an anorak when he appeared on the BBC’s Gra­ham Nor­ton Show and ner­vous­ly sang Tom Lehrer’s song The Ele­ments.

Maybe Radcliffe’s best sub­ject at Hog­warts would have been potions. On tele­vi­sion he admits to being a lit­tle ner­vous before launch­ing into the homage to Lehrer, explain­ing that he’d stayed up all night try­ing to mem­o­rize the song. One of Lehrer’s clas­sics, it actu­al­ly sets the peri­od­ic table of ele­ments to music. In the best ver­sions, Lehrer accom­pa­nies him­self on piano while recit­ing all of the chem­i­cal ele­ments known at the time of writ­ing (1959) to the tune of a Gilbert and Sul­li­van melody.

Har­ry Potter’s birth­day is next week (July 31), the same day author J.K. Rowl­ing cel­e­brates hers. Per­haps Pot­ter fans could cook up a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion for Pot­ter involv­ing a song about lawren­ci­um, which was added to the peri­od­ic table two years after Lehrer wrote his song. As he clev­er­ly not­ed him­self at the end of the tune,

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha’­vard,

And there may be many oth­ers, but they haven’t been dis­cav­ard

Good stuff. Wor­thy of the boy who sur­vived.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

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Miracle Mushrooms Power the Slums of Mumbai

in Film, Sci Fi | July 27th, 2012

If you want to see rough-and-ready exper­i­ments in res­i­den­tial archi­tec­ture and neigh­bor­hood con­struc­tion, look no fur­ther than the world’s largest slums. Every day, strait­ened con­di­tions and high den­si­ty force the mil­lions upon mil­lions who live in them to impro­vise cre­ative solu­tions to the chal­lenges of urban sur­vival using what­ev­er mate­ri­als and pow­er — both terms broad­ly defined — hap­pen to lay at hand. In his short New Mum­bai, film­mak­er Tobias Rev­ell turns his lens toward India, host to some of the most vast and com­plex slums around, and dis­cov­ers a high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al mate­r­i­al, a sort of organ­ic infra­struc­ture, in use in the knocked-togeth­er neigh­bor­hoods of Dhar­avi: giant mush­rooms.

Actu­al­ly, Rev­ell doesn’t dis­cov­er the mush­rooms; he invents them, telling a sci­ence-fic­tion sto­ry, if not a ter­ri­bly far-fetched one, in the plain­spo­ken, street-lev­el style of a devel­op­ing-world doc­u­men­tary. He even comes up with a semi-plau­si­ble expla­na­tion for how each of these mir­a­cle mush­rooms gen­er­ates enough pow­er to run an entire build­ing: bio­log­i­cal sam­ples leak from Ams­ter­dam into the Mum­bai gang­land, and a few shad­owy types strug­gle to engi­neer them into a new kind of nar­cot­ic. When that doesn’t work, Dharavi’s sci­ence-savvy res­i­dents — refugees from a reli­gious war — get to work on adapt­ing them to a vari­ety of life-improv­ing uses. Rev­ell, no stranger to spec­u­la­tive projects that tap into mod­ern cur­rents of thought, has tak­en the zeitgeist’s notions of a new part­ner­ship between the city and nature, but run them to an intrigu­ing extreme. And you can’t deny how cool those mush­rooms look sprout­ing from the rooftops.

via @cinnamon_carter

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

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Martin Scorsese Appears in New Apple Ad with Siri, Plays on His Chilling Cameo in Taxi Driver

in Business, Film, Television | July 25th, 2012

In 1976, Mar­tin Scors­ese made a chill­ing cameo appear­ance in his thriller, Taxi Dri­ver. Per­haps you remem­ber the scene: Play­ing a beard­ed, name­less char­ac­ter, Scors­ese enters a cab, boss­es the dri­ver around for a while, then pro­ceeds to explain, in an uncom­fort­ably mat­ter of fact way, how he plans to kill his wife. It’ll make your hair stand on end. In a new com­mer­cial for Apple, Scors­ese plays a bossy back-seat rid­er again. But this time, there’s no killing involved, just shilling. It’s an ad for Apple’s iPhone, and it’s the lat­est in a new series of ads fea­tur­ing celebs like Zooey Deschan­nel, Samuel Jack­son and John Malkovich.

Of course, the par­al­lel between the Siri ad and the 1976 film was spot­ted by Roger Ebert. All props to him.

P.S.: In case you think we’re see­ing a par­al­lel that does­n’t actu­al­ly exist, it’s worth not­ing that both cabs have the same num­ber. Great spot by @sinyc.

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The Cowboy and the Frenchman: French Culture Through the American Eyes of David Lynch (1988)

in Film | July 24th, 2012

Some­times, to clear­ly see the cul­ture you come from, you need an out­sider to look at it for you. The French news­pa­per Le Figaro seems to have oper­at­ed on that the­o­ry when, in 1988, they cel­e­brat­ed the tenth anniver­sary of their mag­a­zine sec­tion by com­mis­sion­ing five short films from famous for­eign direc­tors — famous direc­tors for­eign to France, that is. The result­ing series, enti­tled France As Seen By…, com­pris­es Fran­co­cen­tric works by David Lynch, Wern­er Her­zog, Andrzej Wad­j­da, Lui­gi Comenci­ni, and Jean-Luc Godard, who, born in Paris but gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as “Fran­co-Swiss,” pre­sum­ably qual­i­fied as just for­eign enough. You can now watch Lynch’s short, a half-hour bit of inter­na­tion­al slap­stick called The Cow­boy and the French­man, free on Youtube.

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton stars as Slim, a chaps-wear­ing ranch fore­man “almost stone cold deaf on account of two rounds of 30.06 going off a lit­tle too close when he was thir­teen and a half.” Lynch wastes no time putting this old cow­boy of the title into an encounter with the stray French­man of same. When Slim spots him wan­der­ing across the prairie, he sends his crew (which includes Eraser­head star Jack Nance) over to las­so him. From their hap­less cap­tive, dressed in a three-piece suit and a beret, going on in French so sim­ple as not to require trans­la­tion about the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, they seize a bas­ket con­tain­ing not only wine, and not only baguettes, but a mod­el of the Eif­fel Tow­er and an end­less sup­ply of escar­got. Lynch finds a way to merge the world of the dream­ing French­man with that of the anachro­nis­tic cow­boy, bring­ing them togeth­er through sur­re­al musi­cal per­for­mances under the glow­ing­ly opti­mistic yet faint­ly sin­is­ter sheen of mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana. As is his way.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly David Lynch Short Films

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

David Lynch Debuts Lady Blue Shang­hai

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

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Hours of Classic Crime and Mystery Movies. Discover Our Film Noir and Alfred Hitchcock Collections

in Film | July 19th, 2012

Above you’ll find Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Num­ber Sev­en­teen, free to watch in its entire­ty. Released in 1932, the film finds a gang of jew­el thieves des­per­ate to hide their lat­est boun­ty, a dia­mond neck­lace. Just when they think they’ve found the per­fect house in which to stash it — the Num­ber Sev­en­teen of the title — their plans begin to unrav­el when var­i­ous out­siders (includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to a sneaky police detec­tive) turn up there. Hitch­cock deliv­ers this sto­ry with an odd mix of sus­pense and com­e­dy, and, per­haps as a result, it has­n’t been one of his most wide­ly seen pic­tures. But you can watch it with a click of a mouse, just as you can any of the films in our col­lec­tion of 21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online. There you can expe­ri­ence many evenings of enter­tain­ment from the Eng­lish-turned-Amer­i­can mas­ter of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry cin­e­mat­ic sus­pense. From his Daphne du Mau­ri­er adap­ta­tion Jamaica Inn to his ear­ly hit The 39 Steps to his British ver­sion of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitch­cock deliv­ers ship­wrecks, con­spir­a­cies, para­noia, and uneasy roman­tic intrigue — all at no charge.

And if you watch all 21 free Hitch­cock pic­tures, don’t wor­ry; we’ve got more crime and mys­tery in store for you. Look no fur­ther than our col­lec­tion of Free Film Noir Movies. Just above, we’ve embed­ded He Walked by Night, a grit­ty tale of post­war Los Ange­les star­ring Drag­net’s Jack Webb. The film would go on to pro­vide the basis for Drag­net itself. Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to watch The Lady from Shang­hai, star­ring and direct­ed by Orson Welles, which mix­es film noir tra­di­tions with Welles’ own idio­syn­crat­ic, some­times per­fec­tion­ist and some­times down­right anti-per­fec­tion ten­den­cies; “the weird­est great movie ever made,” crit­ic Dave Kehr called it. If you’re look­ing for more noir Welles, our col­lec­tion also con­tains The Stranger, his pre­vi­ous film. Star­ring Edward G. Robin­son as a Nazi hunter, it came out as the first film after the Sec­ond World War to actu­al­ly include footage of con­cen­tra­tion camps. Both our noir and Hitch­cock col­lec­tions con­tain a great deal of his­to­ry as well as a great deal of craft. They may not make movies like these any­more, but now it’s eas­i­er than ever to watch the ones they made back then.

Relat­ed con­tent:

500 Free Movies Online

Alfred Hitch­cock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Cre­ative Mind

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was the Genius Behind Cit­i­zen Kane

100 Great­est Posters of Film Noir

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

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