Document the World’s Story on 10.10.10.

Aspir­ing (or even casu­al) film­mak­ers, get ready for One Day on Earth. On Octo­ber 10th, 2010, thou­sands of peo­ple world­wide will shoot film and pro­duce a crowd­sourced doc­u­men­tary show­cas­ing “the diver­si­ty, con­flict, tragedy, and tri­umph that can occur in one 24-hour peri­od on Earth.” You’re invit­ed to take part in poten­tial­ly the largest glob­al media event ever. The video above spells out the con­cept, and you can learn how to take part here.

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Kubrick vs. Scorsese Montage

Ear­li­er this year, Lean­dro Cop­per­field spent days re-watch­ing the films of Quentin Taran­ti­no and the Coen broth­ers. Then, using 500+ scenes from 17 movies, he devel­oped a mon­tage trib­ute sim­ply called Taran­ti­no vs Coen Broth­ers. This pair­ing makes a cer­tain amount of sense. Both have a won­der­ful knack for aes­theti­ciz­ing vio­lence. But what’s the thread that runs through Cop­per­field­’s lat­est short trib­ute, Kubrick vs Scors­ese? Per­haps it’s quite sim­ply the grandeur of their film­mak­ing. About Kubrick­’s artistry Scors­ese said, “Watch­ing a Kubrick film is like gaz­ing up at a moun­tain­top. You look up and won­der, how could any­one have climbed that high? There are emo­tion­al pas­sages and images and spaces in his films that have an inex­plic­a­ble pow­er…” And, you can’t help but think that Kubrick looked at Scors­ese’s work with a sim­i­lar sense of awe.

Scors­ese offers more thoughts on Kubrick in this 2001 episode of Char­lie Rose. It’s worth a watch. For more great films, please see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @BrainPicker and Kot­tke

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!

Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man

In 1900, L. Frank Baum wrote The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, which went on to become one of the most beloved chil­dren’s books of all time, reprint­ed and rein­vent­ed in a myr­i­ad stage plays, films, TV series, musi­cals and oth­er adap­ta­tions. But Baum’s orig­i­nal tale fea­tured a lit­tle-known back­sto­ry about the Tin Woods­man – a moral­i­ty tale about a man who gets so caught up in his work that he los­es sight of what real­ly mat­ters in life.

Direc­tor Bri­an McCormick decid­ed to cap­ture this poet­ic tale and the hid­den love sto­ry about a sim­ple woods­man and a beau­ti­ful maid­en in Heart­less: The Sto­ry of the Tin Man — an art­ful­ly shot short film, view­able for free online.

Addi­tion­al behind-the-scenes footage reveals the pro­duc­tion process and metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship of the film’s art direc­tion, sound design and cin­e­matog­ra­phy.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends too much time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

Andrei Tarkovsky: Two Free Films & Some Polaroids Too

A quick fyi: Film Annex is now mak­ing avail­able two films by the great Sovi­et film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalk­er and Andrei Rublev (Part 1 and Part 2). You can also find them list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. When not mak­ing movies, Tarkovsky snapped some polaroids too…

Plato’s Cave Allegory Brought to Life with Claymation

In Book VII of The Repub­lic, Pla­to paints a dark scene for read­ers. Imag­ine pris­on­ers shack­led in a cave, their heads chained in such a way they can’t look out into the world itself. They can only see manip­u­lat­ed shad­ows on walls, and that’s about all. Known as the “alle­go­ry of the cave,” this pas­sage lets Pla­to offer com­men­tary about the nature of real­i­ty and human under­stand­ing. In an episode of Phi­los­o­phy Bites, Simon Black­burn (Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty) talks with Nigel War­bur­ton and David Edmonds about what Pla­to real­ly wants to say here. And, above, some clever artists pro­vide an award-win­ning ani­ma­tion of the cave scene using noth­ing oth­er than clay. Big thanks to Eren at Fil­mAn­nex for send­ing this one our way.

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:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Hear John Malkovich Read Plato’s “Alle­go­ry of the Cave,” Set to Music Mixed by Ric Ocasek, Yoko Ono & Sean Lennon, OMD & More

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry

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For Neda: The New HBO Documentary Now Online

Almost a year ago, the Green Rev­o­lu­tion was ignit­ed in Iran when Ahmadine­jad and the rul­ing cler­ics stole an elec­tion from Mir-Hos­sein Mousavi and his mil­lions of sup­port­ers. A young gen­er­a­tion, intent upon putting Mousavi in office, took to the streets en masse. Protests broke out across the nation … until the holy men decid­ed they had had enough. Ulti­mate­ly, bul­lets put an end to the nascent demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment (at least for now), and the bru­tal­i­ty of the regime was cap­tured in mov­ing images watched world­wide: they showed us a young woman, Neda, get­ting indis­crim­i­nate­ly gunned down by a sniper, her eyes star­ing at us as she lay dying in the streets. Above, we’re fea­tur­ing a new­ly released HBO doc­u­men­tary that intro­duces you to Neda Agha-Soltan and her life sto­ry. Writ­ten and direct­ed by the award win­ning film­mak­er Antony Thomas, the 70 minute film was cre­at­ed with a fair amount of risk, and it includes inter­views with Neda’s fam­i­ly in Iran. The Iran­ian regime, nat­u­ral­ly doing its best to stop cit­i­zens from see­ing the film, plans to release its own doc­u­men­tary, putting the offi­cial spin on the mur­der.

For Neda has been added to our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. You can learn more about the film on the HBO web­site.

via 3quarksdaily. H/T to Mike.

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Traveling Denim: The Global Fade

A four minute film, fea­tur­ing an Amer­i­can pair of Levis trav­el­ing the globe for two years, all shot by a Japan­ese direc­tor Takayu­ki Akachi. Nice find by Ian in El Sal­vador or … is it now Brazil?

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Dennis Hopper Reads Rudyard Kipling on Johnny Cash Show

The poem is “If” by Rud­yard Kipling (1899). The scene is The John­ny Cash Show, 1970. Hard to beat this…

via @caitlinroper

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