People of Nowhere: Short, Powerful Film Captures the Human Dimension of the Syrian Refugee Crisis

in Current Affairs | November 30th, 2015

“The pro­pa­gan­dis­t’s pur­pose is to make one set of peo­ple for­get that cer­tain oth­er sets of peo­ple are human.”
–Aldous Hux­ley (1936)

Lior Speran­deo, who has pre­vi­ous­ly direct­ed short films called Peo­ple of Mum­bai, Peo­ple of Nepal, and Peo­ple of Sene­gal, returns with a film that resists focus­ing on a sense of place. Peo­ple of Nowhere cap­tures the plight of Syr­i­an refugees, flee­ing their worn-torn coun­try for a safer life in Europe. Explain­ing how he came to make the dra­mat­ic film, Speran­deo writes:

I have heard and read dif­fer­ent opin­ions about the wave of Syr­i­an refugees who try to make their way in to the EU. Then I went to Lesvos. 7 days on the Greek Island gave me a health­i­er, human per­spec­tive on the sit­u­a­tion.  See­ing the peo­ple behind the head­lines with my own eyes, and feel­ing their deep strug­gle, broke my heart.  Are they the ‘threat’ peo­ple talk about? All I saw were coura­geous peo­ple in a time of cri­sis, look­ing for hope.  I also got to meet brave vol­un­teers from all over the world who reach out to help all peo­ple regard­less of their reli­gion, race or back­ground. That inspired me.  My hope is that this video might tear down some of the walls of bad ideas and opin­ions we have built around our­selves.

You can watch Lior’s film, a reminder that real lives are stake in the slow-mov­ing geno­cide in Syr­ia, on Vimeo here. And vis­it his Vimeo Chan­nel here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tantalizing Animation

in Animation, Sci Fi | November 23rd, 2015

Last year we fea­tured art­work from the Dune movie that nev­er was, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, the mys­ti­cism-mind­ed Chilean direc­tor of such oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing pic­tures as El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain, and the artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Mœbius, cre­ator of oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing comics as Arzach, Blue­ber­ry, and The Air­tight Garage. If ever a meet­ing of two cre­ative minds made more sense, I haven’t heard about it. Alas, Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ work did­n’t lead to their own Dune movie, but it did­n’t mark the end of their artis­tic part­ner­ship, as any­one who’s read The Incal knows full well.

Telling a meta­phys­i­cal, satir­i­cal, space-oper­at­ic sto­ry in the form of com­ic books orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished through­out the 1980s (with sequel and pre­quel series to come over the fol­low­ing 25 years), The Incal on the page became the fullest real­iza­tion of Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ com­bined vision.

Its suc­cess made it a log­i­cal can­di­date for film adap­ta­tion, and so direc­tor Pas­cal Blais brought togeth­er artists from Heavy Met­al mag­a­zine (in which Mœbius first pub­lished some of his best known work) to make it hap­pen. It result­ed in noth­ing more than a trail­er, but what a trail­er; you can watch a recent­ly revamped edi­tion of the one Blais and his col­lab­o­ra­tors put togeth­er in the 1980s at the top of the post.

Any Incal fan who watch­es this spruced-up trail­er will imme­di­ate­ly want noth­ing more in this life than to see a fea­ture-film ver­sion of dis­solute pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor John DiFool, his con­crete seag­ull Deepo, and the tit­u­lar all-pow­er­ful crys­tal that sets the sto­ry in motion. And any­one not yet ini­ti­at­ed into the sci­ence-fic­tion “Jodoverse” for which The Incal forms the basis will want to plunge into the com­ic books at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty. Per­haps Blais will one day ful­ly revive the project; until then, we’ll have to con­tent our­selves with Luc Besson’s The Fifth Ele­ment (with its Mœbius-devel­oped pro­duc­tion design, sim­i­lar enough to The Incal’s to have sparked a law­suit) and maybe, just maybe, a live-action adap­ta­tion from Dri­ve direc­tor Nicholas Wind­ing Refn.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Mœbius Illus­trates Paulo Coelho’s Inspi­ra­tional Nov­el The Alchemist (1998)

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a Free eBook & Audio Book

in | November 19th, 2015

“All mod­ern Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huck­le­ber­ry Finn. Amer­i­can writ­ing comes from that. There was noth­ing before. There has been noth­ing as good since.” That’s what Ernest Hem­ing­way, had to say about Mark Twain’s 1885 nov­el, The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn. The book, now in the pub­lic domain, can be down­load for free in ebook and audio­books for­mats. Find them here:

eBooks: iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now

Audio Books: Free MP3 — Free MP3 Zip File — Free iTunes — Spo­ti­fy ver­sion

Find many more great clas­sics in our twin col­lec­tions: 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. And if you are look­ing for a pro­fes­sion­al­ly read ver­sion of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, you might also want to explore down­load­ing one for free from Audible.com. They have a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’s Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1996)

Nor­man Rock­well Illus­trates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1936–1940)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

An Interactive Timeline Covering 14 Billion Years of History: From The Big Bang to 2015

in History | November 18th, 2015

For his final project in Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Matan Stauber cre­at­ed His­tog­ra­phy, an inter­ac­tive time­line that cov­ers 14 bil­lion years of his­to­ry. The time­line, writes Stauber, “draws his­tor­i­cal events from Wikipedia, and it self-updates dai­ly with new record­ed events.” And the inter­face lets users see his­to­ry in small­er chunks (decades at a time) or big­ger ones (mil­lions of years at a time). To get a vague feel for how His­tog­ra­phy works, you can watch the video above. But real­ly the best way to expe­ri­ence things is to dive right in here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6,000 Years of His­to­ry Visu­al­ized in a 23-Foot-Long Time­line of World His­to­ry, Cre­at­ed in 1871

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Big His­to­ry: David Chris­t­ian Cov­ers 13.7 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry in 18 Min­utes

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Free Entertainment for Cats and Dogs: Videos of Birds, Squirrels & Other Thrills

in Uncategorized | November 16th, 2015

Before Fri­day, we had nev­er man­aged to cov­er NASCAR, but we crossed that off the list when we fea­tured Ter­ry Gilliam’s mock­u­men­tary The Leg­end of Hal­lowde­ga. And now today we have anoth­er Open Cul­ture first: yes, an archive of free, enter­tain­ing videos for cats and dogs.

Over the past 6 years, Paul Din­ning has cre­at­ed a YouTube chan­nel packed with over 400 videos fea­tur­ing the wildlife of Corn­wall, Eng­land. And, from that footage, he has cob­bled togeth­er playlists designed to delight all cats and dogs with access to the inter­net. And, appar­ent­ly cats and dogs are watch­ing. The first video above, called “Squir­rel and Bird Fun,” has clocked some 863,000 views over the past year. And the next video, “The Ulti­mate Videos of Birds for Cats To Watch,” has 946,000 views since Jan­u­ary. I showed the videos to my cat Coc­co [sic] and, I kid you not, he was trans­fixed.

A longer playlist of videos for cats and dogs can be viewed here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Now Streaming Free: The Best of The Grateful Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” Concerts in Chicago

in Music | November 13th, 2015

A quick note: Thanks to NPR’s First Lis­ten site, you can now stream for free (but only for a lim­it­ed time) The Best Of Fare Thee Well: Cel­e­brat­ing 50 Years Of The Grate­ful Dead. This new dou­ble record, fea­tur­ing 16 tracks record­ed dur­ing the Dead­’s farewell shows in Chica­go this sum­mer, will be offi­cial­ly released on Novem­ber 20th. But you can get a sneak peek right here, right now by click­ing the play but­ton on the audio play­er below.

Tracks includes “Box Of Rain,” “Shake­down Street,” “Truckin’,” “Scar­let Bego­nias,” “Fire On The Moun­tain,” “Not Fade Away,” “Touch of Grey” and oth­er fan favorites.

As with all Dead shows, you can also find raw record­ings of the entire three Chica­go con­certs on the web. Just revis­it our July 7th post to stream those too.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grate­ful Dead’s Final Farewell Con­certs Now Stream­ing Online

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

Every Grate­ful Dead Song Anno­tat­ed in Hyper­text: Web Project Reveals the Deep Lit­er­ary Foun­da­tions of the Dead’s Lyrics      

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

10,173 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

The Power of Pessimism: Science Reveals the Hidden Virtues in Negative Thinking

in Health, Psychology | November 12th, 2015

These days, you don’t real­ly hear many peo­ple mak­ing the case for pes­simism. Quite the con­trary, pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy is now en vogue. And its founder, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Selig­man, has writ­ten best­sellers with titles like Learned Opti­mism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. But maybe, as Alain de Bot­ton sug­gests above, there’s an argu­ment to be made for pes­simism – for hav­ing a sober, if not neg­a­tive, out­look on life. And maybe there’s sci­ence that val­i­dates that point of view.

This sec­ond video, cre­at­ed by New York Mag­a­zine, sum­ma­rizes the research of NYU pro­fes­sor Gabriele Oet­tin­gen, attribut­ing to her the belief that “pes­simism can be a bet­ter moti­va­tor for achiev­ing goals than opti­mism,” see­ing that opti­mism tends to lull us into com­pla­cen­cy and slack­en our desire to achieve impor­tant per­son­al goals, like los­ing weight.

Cou­ple that with this: a 2013 study released in Psy­chol­o­gy and Aging, a jour­nal pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion (APA), con­clud­ed that “Old­er peo­ple who have low expec­ta­tions for a sat­is­fy­ing future may be more like­ly to live longer, health­i­er lives than those who see brighter days ahead.” The lead author of the study Frieder R. Lang, PhD, added: “Our find­ings revealed that being over­ly opti­mistic in pre­dict­ing a bet­ter future was asso­ci­at­ed with a greater risk of dis­abil­i­ty and death with­in the fol­low­ing decade.” “Pes­simism about the future,” it seems, “may encour­age peo­ple to live more care­ful­ly, tak­ing health and safe­ty pre­cau­tions” that sun­ny opti­mists might not oth­er­wise take.

I should add this caveat: sci­en­tists don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly find virtue in pure, unadul­ter­at­ed pes­simism. Rather, they find ben­e­fits in what they call “defen­sive pes­simism.” This is a strat­e­gy, as sum­ma­rized by The Wall Street Jour­nal, where peo­ple “low­er their expec­ta­tions and think through all the pos­si­ble neg­a­tives that could hap­pen in order to avoid them.” Frieder R. Lang, author of the Psy­chol­o­gy & Aging study men­tioned above, told WSJ, “Those who are defen­sive­ly pes­simistic about their future may be more like­ly to invest in prepara­to­ry or pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures, where­as we expect that opti­mists will not be think­ing about those things.” Sim­i­lar virtues might be attrib­uted to “defen­sive opti­mism,” but we’ll have to wait and see what the inevitable sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies have to say about that.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

John Cleese Explores the Health Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter

Poignant and Unsettling Post-Mortem Family Portraits from the 19th Century

in Life, Photography | November 5th, 2015

The 19th cen­tu­ry wit­nessed the birth of pho­tog­ra­phy. And, before too long, Vic­to­ri­an soci­ety found impor­tant appli­ca­tions for the new medi­um — like memo­ri­al­iz­ing the dead. A recent post on a Dutch ver­sion of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic notes that “Pho­tograph­ing deceased fam­i­ly mem­bers just before their bur­ial was enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar in cer­tain Vic­to­ri­an cir­cles in Europe and the Unit­ed States. Although adults were also pho­tographed, it was main­ly chil­dren who were com­mem­o­rat­ed in this way. In a peri­od plagued by unprece­dent­ed lev­els of infant mor­tal­i­ty, post-mortem pic­tures often pro­vid­ed the only tan­gi­ble mem­o­ry of the deceased child.”

Though unusu­al by mod­ern stan­dards, the pic­tures played an impor­tant role in a fam­i­ly’s griev­ing process and often became one of its cher­ished pos­ses­sions — cher­ished because it was like­ly the only pho­to of the deceased child that fam­i­lies had. Dur­ing the ear­ly days of pho­tog­ra­phy, por­traits were expen­sive, which meant that most fam­i­lies did­n’t take pic­tures dur­ing the course of every­day life. It was only death that gave them a prompt.

The prac­tice of tak­ing post mortem pic­tures peaked in the 19th cen­tu­ry, right around the time when “snap­shot” pho­tog­ra­phy became more preva­lent, allow­ing fam­i­lies to take por­traits at a low­er cost, when every­one was in the full swing of life. Hence obvi­at­ing the need for post-mortem pho­tos. You can learn more about this bygone prac­tice by vis­it­ing the Burns Archive or get­ting the book, Sleep­ing Beau­ty: Memo­r­i­al Pho­tog­ra­phy in Amer­i­ca.

via Dutch Nat Geo/ Sci­ence Dump

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Read the Entire Comic Book Adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

in Comics/Cartoons, Poetry | November 4th, 2015

Two years ago, we high­light­ed for you the begin­ning of a promis­ing project — Julian Peters’ com­ic book adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s 1910 poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At the time of our post, Peters had only com­plet­ed the first nine pages of his adap­ta­tion. And, about those first pages, our Josh Jones had this to say:

Dante is where “Prufrock” begins, with an epi­graph from the Infer­no. Peters’ first page illus­trates the ago­nized speak­er of Dante’s lines, Gui­do da Mon­te­fel­tro, a soul con­fined to the eighth cir­cle, whom you can see at the top of the title page shown above. Peters’ visu­al choic­es place us firm­ly in the hell­ish emo­tion­al realm of “Prufrock,” a seem­ing cat­a­logue of the mun­dane that har­bors a dark­er import. Peters gives us no hint of when we might expect new pages, but I for one am eager to see more.

Hap­pi­ly for Josh … and the rest of us … we can now find out where Peters took the rest of the project. The adap­ta­tion is now com­plete. 24 pages in total. All now on dis­play on Peters’ web­site here.

If you’re not famil­iar with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I’d strong­ly encour­age you to revis­it a post in our archive where you can hear “Prufrock” being read by T.S. Eliot him­self and also Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins. There you can learn more about Eliot’s mod­ernist mas­ter­piece.

Note: Julian is look­ing for a pub­lish­er to help put his com­ic book in print. If any pub­lish­ers want to chat with him, you can find his con­tact info on his web site.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot’s Rad­i­cal Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Read by Antho­ny Hop­kins and Eliot Him­self

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

iTunes Terms & Conditions Adapted into a Graphic Novel: Read It Free Online

in Comics/Cartoons, Technology | November 4th, 2015

In the past, we’ve brought you the cre­ative work of R. Siko­ryak. An illus­tra­tor who teach­es at the Par­sons School of Design in NYC, Siko­ryak has a pen­chant for cre­at­ing com­ic book adap­ta­tions of lit­er­ary clas­sics. Take for exam­ple Dos­toyevsky Comics where Bat­man stars in a com­ic book ver­sion of Crime & Pun­ish­ment. Or Wait­ing to Go, which mar­ries Wait­ing for Godot with Beav­is and Butt-Head. 

In his lat­est project, Siko­ryak veers sharply away from lit­er­a­ture toward lan­guage that is much more tech­ni­cal. Now, on his tum­blr, you can find iTunes Terms & Con­di­tions: The Graph­ic Nov­el.

Adding a new page every day, Siko­ryak is cre­at­ing an illus­trat­ed ver­sion of the “com­plete, unabridged legal agree­ment.” You can cur­rent­ly view the first 49 pages. Click here. Go to the bot­tom of the page. Then start scrolling up as you read.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Comics Inspired by Wait­ing For Godot, Fea­tur­ing Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beav­is & Butthead