The 50 Greatest Arts Videos on YouTube

in Art, Literature, Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | September 1st, 2008

One of our British read­ers turned us on to this post by the Guardian, not­ing that they took a page from our gen­er­al play­book. The post fea­tures 50 of the best YouTube clips from across the arts, some of which we’ve fea­tured here in the past. Among the videos, you’ll find vin­tage per­for­mances by John Coltrane and Bil­lie Hol­i­day, read­ings by Jack Ker­ouac, an inter­view with Eugène Ionesco, clips of Nir­vana rehears­ing in a garage, Vladimir Nabokov talk­ing about Loli­ta, Jack­son Pol­lock drip­ping paint out­side his home, and Mar­lon Bran­do doing a screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause. We have post­ed the Bran­do clip below. There are some def­i­nite gems here. Now dive in. And don’t for­get to work through our YouTube playlist and our piece 70 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube, where you’ll find enrich­ing video col­lec­tions.

Thanks Stephen for the tip. And read­ers, keep the good rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing!

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An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

in YouTube | August 5th, 2008

Michael Wesch, a pro­fes­sor of cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy, has become some­thing of an inter­net phe­nom­e­non, hav­ing pro­duced two won­der­ful videos that help demys­ti­fy the world of Web 2.0. (Def­i­nite­ly check them out here and here). Now he has a new video get­ting some play. Below you can watch a talk he recent­ly gave at The Library of Con­gress, where he uses video to dis­sect the new medi­as­cape that we’re liv­ing in, and how it’s chang­ing our rela­tion­ships … for bet­ter or for worse.

via John Bat­telle Search­blog

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School of Life: An Award-Winning Short Indie Film

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | July 15th, 2008

Now fea­tured in The YouTube Screen­ing Room: Jake Polon­sky’s School of Life. “The film may be set in an ele­men­tary school, but it tells a poignant­ly iron­ic sto­ry that any adult will relate to. School of Life won the 2004 British Inde­pen­dent Film Award for Best Short.” A high­er qual­i­ty ver­sion can be watched here. But make sure you have a high speed con­nec­tion.

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70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

in Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | July 11th, 2008

Smart video col­lec­tions keep appear­ing on YouTube. But rather anti­thet­i­cal to the ethos of its par­ent com­pa­ny (Google), YouTube unfor­tu­nate­ly makes these col­lec­tions dif­fi­cult to find. So we’ve decid­ed to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media out­lets, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and non-prof­its. There are about 70 col­lec­tions in total, and the list will grow over time. If we’re miss­ing any­thing good, feel free to let us know, and we’ll hap­pi­ly add them. You can find the com­plete list below the jump.

Also, feel free to check out our YouTube playlist.

Gen­er­al

  • @GoogleTalks
    • Google has lots of famous vis­i­tors speak­ing at its head­quar­ters, and they’re all record­ed and neat­ly pre­sent­ed here.
  • Al Jazeera Eng­lish
    • The Mid­dle East­ern news ser­vice, which has gen­er­at­ed its share of con­tro­ver­sy, now airs broad­casts in Eng­lish and presents them here.
  • Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al
    • The lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion brings you var­i­ous videos out­lin­ing human rights con­cerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve con­di­tions.
  • BBC
    • A series of videos pro­mot­ing pro­grams com­ing out of Britain’s main media out­let. Unfor­tu­nate­ly many of these videos are short and not entire­ly sub­stan­tive. A missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.
  • BBC World­wide
    • Dit­to.
  • Big Think
    • This col­lec­tion brings you videos fea­tur­ing some of today’s lead­ing thinkers, movers and shak­ers.
  • Boing­Bo­ingTV
  • Brook­lyn Muse­um
    • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
  • Char­lie Rose
    • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
  • Cit­i­zen Tube
    • YouTube’s own chan­nel presents videos deal­ing with the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and the 2008 elec­tion.
  • Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um
    • A good num­ber of videos that delve into com­put­ers, net­work­ing, and semi­con­duc­tors.
  • Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions
    • A resource designed to pro­vide insight into the com­plex inter­na­tion­al issues chal­leng­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers and cit­i­zens alike. (more…)

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How’s This for a Book Trailer?

in Video - Arts & Culture, Web/Tech, YouTube | June 25th, 2008

A cou­ple weeks ago we talked about a new trend in the book pub­lish­ing world — cre­at­ing pro­mo­tion­al videos for new books and let­ting them go viral on YouTube and oth­er social video sites. Here’s one of the bet­ter exam­ples I’ve seen. 12 books by Lemo­ny Snick­et get pro­mot­ed at once. Lots of bang for the mar­ket­ing buck:

via JermiahTolbert.com

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The Danish Poet: The Oscar-Winning Animated Film Narrated by Liv Ullmann

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | June 23rd, 2008

Above, watch the 2006 acad­e­my award-win­ning ani­mat­ed film, The Dan­ish Poet, direct­ed by Torill Kove and nar­rat­ed by Liv Ull­mann. Here’s the premise:

Can we trace the chain of events that leads to our own birth? Is our exis­tence just coin­ci­dence? Do lit­tle things mat­ter? The nar­ra­tor (Liv Ull­mann) of The Dan­ish Poet con­sid­ers these ques­tions as we fol­low Kasper, a poet whose cre­ative well has run dry, on a hol­i­day to Nor­way to meet the famous writer, Sigrid Und­set. As Kasper’s quest for inspi­ra­tion unfolds, it appears that a spell of bad weath­er, an angry dog, slip­pery barn planks, a care­less post­man, hun­gry goats and oth­er seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed fac­tors might play impor­tant roles in the big scheme of things after all.

The Dan­ish Poet will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Zurich Chamber Orchestra Animated on YouTube

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | June 22nd, 2008

The Roller Coast­er…

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YouTube’s New Screening Room (Free Indie Films)

in Film, YouTube | June 20th, 2008

YouTube just launched its new “Screen­ing Room,” and there’s a good chance that the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val will nev­er quite be the same again.

The Screen­ing Room presents high qual­i­ty, inde­pen­dent films to YouTube users and promis­es to roll out four new films every two weeks. Giv­en YouTube’s immense reach, these indies will imme­di­ate­ly find a vast inter­na­tion­al audi­ence. Then, to sweet­en the deal even fur­ther, YouTube will offer film­mak­ers a major cut of the adver­tis­ing rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by the view­ing of each video. Plus, hard and dig­i­tal copies of the films can be sold as well. If this new ven­ture gains trac­tion (and you have to think it will), YouTube could sud­den­ly find itself the cen­ter of grav­i­ty for the indie world, dis­plac­ing Sun­dance along the way.

The first four films fea­tured in The Screen­ing Room are hard­ly duds. The Dan­ish Poet won the 2007 Oscar for best ani­mat­ed short; Love and War won the same award at the Los Ange­les Film Fes­ti­val; Our Time Is Up got an Oscar nom­i­na­tion in 2006; and then there’s Miran­da July’s “Are You the Favorite Per­son of Any­body?. The next batch of films comes out July 4. For more info, see this piece in the LA Times.

Adden­dum: I have since stum­bled upon this video that promotes/tells you more about the Screen­ing Room.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.