The Armored-Knight “Robot” Designed by Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1495)

in History, Technology | February 28th, 2024

Image by Erik Möller, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Those of us who were play­ing video games in the nine­teen-nineties may remem­ber a fun lit­tle plat­former, not tech­ni­cal­ly unim­pres­sive for its time, called Clock­work Knight. The con­cept of a clock­work knight turns out to have had some his­tor­i­cal valid­i­ty, or at least it could poten­tial­ly have been jus­ti­fied by the then-cur­rent state of Leonar­do da Vin­ci stud­ies. Back in the fifties, writes Roy­al Mont­gomery at Unchained Robot­ics, “a team of schol­ars at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia were por­ing over a num­ber of Leonar­do da Vinci’s note­books, specif­i­cal­ly the Codices Atlanti­cus and Madrid.” There they found plans for what turned out to be “a life-size mechan­i­cal knight inside a fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man suit of armor.”

More than one gen­er­a­tion of enthu­si­asts and robot­ics spe­cial­ists have since set about re-cre­at­ing Leonar­do’s “automa­ton.” Before 2007, writes Mont­gomery, “most recon­struct­ed plans includ­ed a mechan­i­cal device in the bel­ly of the knight. It was lat­er deter­mined that this device had noth­ing to do with the knight at all — it was actu­al­ly part of a clock!”

Even if it did­n’t run on lit­er­al clock­work, Leonar­do’s knight would’ve made quite a spec­ta­cle. It “appears to have been assem­bled and dis­played for the first time at a cer­e­mo­ny held by the Prince of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza in 1495,” and in this sole appear­ance “could sit and stand, lift its own visor, and move its arms. It was stiff, sure, but you try mov­ing grace­ful­ly in 15th cen­tu­ry armor.”

How­ev­er much it amused its aris­to­crat­ic audi­ence, Leonar­do’s sur­rep­ti­tious­ly pul­ley-and-cable-oper­at­ed “robot” would also have offered work­ing, inte­grat­ed proof of the kind of mechan­i­cal sys­tems to which he’d long put his for­mi­da­ble engi­neer­ing mind. And today, as point­ed out at the site of the Robot­ic Online Short Film Fes­ti­val, “we are fas­ci­nat­ed and ter­ri­fied in equal parts by humanoid robots for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es like Atlas, cre­at­ed by the com­pa­ny Boston Dynam­ics for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Unit­ed States). They are all heirs, with twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy, to the robot­ic sol­dier designed by Leonar­do.” The ques­tion of whether he also did any pio­neer­ing work on robot ani­mals who could dance remains a mat­ter of inquiry for future Leonar­do schol­ars.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Explore the Largest Online Archive Explor­ing the Genius of Leonard da Vin­ci

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ele­gant Design for a Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of Gauntlets (Armored Gloves) from the 16th Cen­tu­ry

200-Year-Old Robots That Play Music, Shoot Arrows & Even Write Poems: Watch Automa­tons in Action

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

The Life & Work of Richard Feynman Explored in a Three-Part Freakonomics Radio Miniseries

in Physics, Science | February 27th, 2024

Here at Open Cul­ture, Richard Feyn­man is nev­er far from our minds. Though he dis­tin­guished him­self with his work on the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic bomb and his Nobel Prize-win­ning research on quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, you need no spe­cial inter­est in either World War II or the­o­ret­i­cal physics to look to him as an intel­lec­tu­al mod­el. In the years after his death in 1988, his leg­end grew as not just a sci­en­tif­ic mind but even more so as a ver­i­ta­ble per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of curios­i­ty, sur­round­ed by sto­ries (delib­er­ate­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by him in his life­time) of safe-crack­ing, bon­go-play­ing, and nude mod­el-draw­ing, to the point that Feyn­man the man became some­what hard to dis­cern.

In the view of Freako­nom­ics Radio host Stephen Dub­n­er, Feyn­man’s pub­lic pro­file has late­ly fall­en into an unfor­tu­nate desue­tude. It seems that peo­ple just don’t talk about him the way they used to, hard though that is to imag­ine for any of us who grew up read­ing col­lec­tions of anec­dotes like Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man!.

Oper­at­ing on the sup­po­si­tion that we could all use more Feyn­man in our lives, Freako­nom­ics Radio has, over the past month, put out a three-part series cov­er­ing his life and work, from his recruit­ment to the Man­hat­tan Project and lat­er pub­lic analy­sis of the Chal­lenger dis­as­ter to his years teach­ing at Cal­tech to his late-in-life exper­i­men­ta­tion with psy­che­del­ic sub­stances (fur­ther explored in a fourth, bonus episode).

“The Curi­ous, Bril­liant, Van­ish­ing Mr. Feyn­man” (also avail­able on Apple and Spo­ti­fy) includes a vari­ety of inter­views with its sub­jec­t’s friends, rel­a­tives, col­lab­o­ra­tors, and suc­ces­sors. All speak high­ly of him, though some com­pli­cate the leg­end by look­ing at the down­sides of his idio­syn­crat­ic atti­tudes toward both sci­ence and the social world: his insis­tence on under­stand­ing every­thing by fig­ur­ing it out him­self from scratch may have led to him mak­ing few­er dis­cov­er­ies than he would have, had he made more use of the research of oth­ers, and his enthu­si­asm for wom­ankind, shall we say, man­i­fest­ed in ways that would prob­a­bly gen­er­ate calls for “can­cel­la­tion” today. But just as Feyn­man eschewed the label of “genius,” he nev­er claimed to be a per­fect human being. And besides, it isn’t his social incli­na­tions or even his bon­go skills we should admire, but his ded­i­ca­tion to defeat­ing “lousy ideas” — which, as he no doubt expect­ed, have only pro­lif­er­at­ed since he left us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Made Richard Feyn­man One of the Most Admired Edu­ca­tors in the World

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

How Richard Feynman’s Dia­grams Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Physics

Watch a New Ani­ma­tion of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Won­der of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

“The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law”: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

A Preview of Sora, the New OpenAI Tool That Creates Remarkable AI-Generated Videos

in Artificial Intelligence, Film, Technology | February 26th, 2024

A lit­tle over four years ago, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture a set of real­is­tic images of peo­ple who don’t actu­al­ly exist. They were, as we would now assume, whol­ly gen­er­at­ed by an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tem, but back in 2018, there were still those who doubt­ed that such a thing could be done with­out furtive human inter­ven­tion. Now, after the release of tools like Ope­nAI’s Chat­G­PT and DALL‑E, few such doubters remain. In recent weeks, anoth­er Ope­nAI prod­uct has caused quite a stir despite hav­ing yet to be prop­er­ly released: Sora, which can use text prompts to cre­ate not just replies in kind or still images, but minute-long video clips.

“This is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly real­ly impres­sive and real­ly fright­en­ing,” says Youtu­ber Mar­ques Brown­lee in his intro­duc­tion to Sora above. He exam­ines some of the demo videos released so far by Ope­nAI, high­light­ing both their strengths and weak­ness­es.

It would be dif­fi­cult not to feel at least a lit­tle aston­ish­ment at the result Sora has pro­duced from the fol­low­ing prompt: “A styl­ish woman walks down a Tokyo street filled with warm glow­ing neon and ani­mat­ed city sig­nage. She wears a black leather jack­et, a long red dress, and black boots, and car­ries a black purse. She wears sun­glass­es and red lip­stick. She walks con­fi­dent­ly and casu­al­ly. The street is damp and reflec­tive, cre­at­ing a mir­ror effect of the col­or­ful lights. Many pedes­tri­ans walk about.”

There’s some­thing Blade Run­ner going on here, in more sens­es than one.  The not-quite-human qual­i­ties about this “footage” do stand out on clos­er inspec­tion, and in any case make the whole thing feel, as Bown­lee puts it, “a lit­tle bit… off.” But as he also empha­sizes, repeat­ed­ly, it was just a year ago that the bizarre AI-gen­er­at­ed Will Smith eat­ing spaghet­ti made the social-media rounds as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the state of the art. The under­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy has clear­ly come a long, long way since then, and though the mate­r­i­al so far released by Ope­nAI may feel faint­ly awk­ward and “video-gamey,” they clear­ly show Sora’s capa­bil­i­ty to cre­ate videos plau­si­ble at first and even sec­ond glance.

This may spell trou­ble not just for those cur­rent­ly in the stock-footage busi­ness, but also for those who hap­pen to believe every­thing they watch. Brown­lee calls the impli­ca­tions “insane­ly sketchy dur­ing an elec­tion year in the US,” but he may take some com­fort in the fact that Sora is not, at the moment, avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic. There are also explain­ers, like the one from the Wall Street Jour­nal video above, in which AI-indus­try pro­fes­sion­al Stephen Mess­er points out the tell­tale glitch­es of AI-gen­er­at­ed video, many of which have to do with the fin­er details of physics and anato­my. And if you find your­self pay­ing unusu­al atten­tion to the con­sis­ten­cy of the num­ber dig­its on Mess­ner’s hands, just tell your­self that this is how it feels to live in the future.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Will AI Change the World?: A Cap­ti­vat­ing Ani­ma­tion Explores the Promise & Per­ils of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Real­is­tic Pho­tos of Peo­ple, None of Whom Actu­al­ly Exist

A New Course Teach­es You How to Tap the Pow­ers of Chat­G­PT and Put It to Work for You

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Art & the Future of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Watch the Final Chap­ter of the “Every­thing is a Remix” Series

DALL‑E, the New AI Art Gen­er­a­tor, Is Now Open for Every­one to Use

How Peter Jack­son Used Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Restore the Video & Audio Fea­tured in The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

Hear Grace Slick’s Hair-Raising Vocals in the Isolated Track for “White Rabbit” (1967)

in Music | February 22nd, 2024

“One pill makes you larg­er and one pill makes you small…”

Some­time in the sum­mer of 2016, this iso­lat­ed track of Grace Slick’s vocals for “White Rab­bit”–prob­a­bly the most famous Jef­fer­son Air­plane song and def­i­nite­ly one of the top ten psy­che­del­ic songs of the late ‘60s–popped up YouTube. As these things go, nobody took cred­it, but every­body on the Inter­net was thank­ful.

Drenched in echo, Slick sings with mar­tial pre­ci­sion, com­plete­ly in com­mand of her vibra­to and dip­ping and ris­ing all through the Phry­gian scale (also known as the Span­ish or Gyp­sy scale.) And no won­der, the song was writ­ten in 1965 after an LSD trip at her Marin coun­ty home where Slick had lis­tened to Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain over and over again for 24 hours. Com­pare the orig­i­nal ver­sion to Davis’ track “Solea” to hear what I mean.

Bob Irwin, who was in charge of remas­ter­ing Jef­fer­son Airplane’s cat­a­log in 2003, was the first to hear Slick’s iso­lat­ed vocals after many, many years:

When you put up the mul­ti- tracks of the per­for­mances to some­thing like “White Rab­bit” and iso­late Grace’s vocal…you can’t believe the inten­si­ty in that vocal. It’s hair-rais­ing, and absolute­ly unbe­liev­able. I was telling Bill Thomp­son about that. It’s not that I’m so well-sea­soned that noth­ing sur­pris­es me, but boy oh boy, when I put that mul­ti up and I heard Grace’s vocal solo-ed—and it’s absolute­ly whis­per-qui­et, there’s not an ounce of leak­age in there at all—-you can hear every breath drawn and the inten­si­ty and the con­cen­tra­tion…

Inter­est­ing­ly, when Slick wrote the song, Air­plane hadn’t start­ed. Instead she was in a band called The Great Soci­ety, and the orig­i­nal jam ver­sion doesn’t do jus­tice to the com­po­si­tion.

Rhythm gui­tarist David Minor recalled that the song came out of a song­writ­ing request to the oth­er mem­bers of the band.

“When we start­ed work­ing, nobody had any­thing because I couldn’t write any more,” he recalls. “I was too busy keep­ing up with my var­i­ous jobs. So Grace’s hus­band Jer­ry chal­lenged them: ‘What are you gonna do? Let David write all the songs?’ Y’know, ‘Do some­thing!’. So Dar­by came back with a cou­ple of songs and Grace came back with White Rab­bit.”

When the Great Soci­ety fell apart, Jef­fer­son Air­plane chose Slick as their singer in 1966 and she brought with her “White Rab­bit.” The rest is rock his­to­ry, and a large part of the now-retired Slick’s income.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017. It’s a favorite, and today we’re bring­ing it back for an encore.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Grace Slick Wrote “White Rab­bit”: The 1960s Clas­sic Inspired by LSD, Lewis Car­roll, Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain, and Hyp­o­crit­i­cal Par­ents

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Dick Clark Intro­duces Jef­fer­son Air­plane & the Sounds of Psy­che­del­ic San Fran­cis­co to Amer­i­ca: Yes Par­ents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

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.

The Cover of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Censored with Wear & Tear

in Design | February 14th, 2024

In 2013, Pen­guin released in the UK a series of new cov­ers for five works by George Orwell, includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bold cov­er design for Orwell’s best-known work, 1984. Accord­ing to Cre­ative Review, the design­er, David Pear­son, made it so that the book’s title and Orwell’s name were debossed, then almost com­plete­ly obscured by black foil­ing, leav­ing just “enough of a dent for the title to be deter­mined.” No doubt, the design plays on the whole idea of cen­sor­ship, “ref­er­enc­ing the rewrit­ing of his­to­ry car­ried out by the novel’s Min­istry of Truth.”

Years lat­er, you’ll have dif­fi­cul­ty buy­ing new copies of Pear­son­’s design. They’re in pret­ty short sup­ply. But any­one with a well-worn copy of the book might dis­cov­er what one Red­di­tor has also observed–that the cov­er design “becomes less cen­sored with wear.” Com­pare the “before” image above to the “after” image down below. Was this all part of Pear­son­’s long-range mas­ter plan? Or some­thing of a design flaw? We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know. But if you’re look­ing for a book that gets bet­ter with age, then this is one to add to your list.

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:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Free Down­load: A Knit­ting Pat­tern for a Sweater Depict­ing an Icon­ic Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

10 Biggest Threats to the World in 2024, Ranked by Ian Bremmer

in Current Affairs | February 13th, 2024

At the start of each year, Ian Brem­mer, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and pres­i­dent of Eura­sia Group, cre­ates a list that ranks the great­est threats to our world. In 2024, Brem­mer puts his fin­ger on Ungoverned AI, a Par­ti­tioned Ukraine, a volatile Mid­dle East, and a sput­ter­ing Chi­nese econ­o­my. But the biggest threat? A divid­ed Unit­ed States where the right and left con­sid­er each oth­er an exis­ten­tial threat, where polit­i­cal can­di­dates threat­en their rivals, where pow­er does­n’t get tran­si­tioned peace­ful­ly, and where for­eign nations look to fur­ther sow the seeds of inter­nal divi­sion. You can read Brem­mer’s full report here.

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!

Beethoven’s 5th: Watch an Animated Graphical Score

in Animation, Music | February 8th, 2024

Stephen Mali­nows­ki is a self-described “Music Ani­ma­tion Machine,” with a pen­chant for cre­at­ing ani­mat­ed graph­i­cal scores. Above, he does his thing with the first move­ment of Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny 5.

How does he make this mag­ic? Mali­nows­ki writes: “There were a lot of steps; here’s a short sum­ma­ry. I found a record­ing I could license and made the arrange­ments to use it. I found a MIDI file that was fair­ly com­plete, and import­ed that into the nota­tion pro­gram Sibelius. I com­pared it to a print­ed copy of the score from my library and fixed things that were wrong… Then, I lis­tened to the record­ing and com­pared that to the score, and mod­i­fied the score so that the tim­ings were more like what the orches­tra was actu­al­ly play­ing. I export­ed this as a MIDI file and ran it through my cus­tom frame-ren­der­ing soft­ware. Then, I made a “reduc­tion” of the score and col­ored it to match the col­ors I was plan­ning to use in the bar-graph score. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when I squished the bar-graph score enough to make room for the nota­tion score, too much detail was lost, so I end­ed up decid­ing not to use the nota­tion. Then I put all the pieces (ren­dered frames, audio, titles) togeth­er in Adobe Pre­miere and export­ed the movie as a Quick­Time file. Then, I used On2 Flix to con­vert the final file into Flash for­mat (so that YouTube’s con­ver­sion to their Flash for­mat would­n’t change it in unpre­dictable ways), and uploaded the result.”

Enjoy!

Watch Dziga Vertov’s Soviet Toys: The First Soviet Animated Movie Ever (1924)

in Animation, History | February 7th, 2024

Dzi­ga Ver­tov is best known for his daz­zling city sym­pho­ny A Man with a Movie Cam­era, which was ranked by Sight and Sound mag­a­zine as the 8th best movie ever made. Yet what you might not know is that Ver­tov also made the Sovi­et Union’s first ever ani­mat­ed movie, Sovi­et Toys.

Con­sist­ing large­ly of sim­ple line draw­ings, the film might lack the verve and visu­al sophis­ti­ca­tion that marked A Man with a Movie Cam­era, but Ver­tov still dis­plays his knack for mak­ing strik­ing, pun­gent images. Yet those who don’t have an inti­mate knowl­edge of Sovi­et pol­i­cy of the 1920s might find the movie — which is laden with Marx­ist alle­gories — real­ly odd.

Sovi­et Toys came out in 1924, dur­ing Lenin’s New Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy (NEP), which gave some mar­ket incen­tives to small farm­ers. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the farm­ers start­ed pro­duc­ing a lot more food than before, and soon a whole new class of mid­dle­man traders formed — the reviled “NEP­men.”

The movie opens with a NEP­man — a bloat­ed car­i­ca­ture of a Cap­i­tal­ist (who coin­ci­den­tal­ly looks vague­ly like Niki­ta Khrushchev) — devour­ing a mas­sive heap of food. He’s so stuffed that he spends much of the rest of the movie sprawled out on the floor, much in the same way one might imag­ine Jamie Dimon after Thanks­giv­ing din­ner. Then he belch­es rich­es at a woman who is can-can­ning on his dis­tend­ed bel­ly. I said this film is odd.

Lat­er, as a cou­ple of squab­bling Russ­ian Ortho­dox priests look on, a work­er tries to extract mon­ey from the NEP­man by cut­ting his gut with a huge pair of scis­sors. When that fails, the work­er and a pass­ing peas­ant fuse bod­ies to cre­ate a two-head­ed being that stomps on the Capitalist’s bel­ly, which pops open like a piña­ta filled with cash. Then mem­bers of the Red Army pile togeth­er and form a sort of human pyra­mid before turn­ing into a giant tree. They hang the Cap­i­tal­ist along with the priests. The end.

Some of the ref­er­ences in this movie are clear: The work­er’s use of scis­sors points to the “Scis­sors Cri­sis” – an attempt by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to cor­rect the price imbal­ance between agri­cul­ture and indus­tri­al goods. And the phys­i­cal meld­ing of the peas­antry and the pro­le­tari­at is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the nev­er quite real­ized dream of the Bol­she­viks. Oth­er images are as obscure as they are weird — the leer­ing close ups of the Cap­i­tal­ist, the NEP­man’s girl­friend who dis­ap­pears into his stom­ach, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary film­mak­er who has the eyes of a cam­era lens and the mouth of a cam­era shut­ter. They feel like some­thing out of a Marx­ist fever dream.

Sovi­et Toys can be found in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, Named the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

A Sovi­et Ani­ma­tion of Stephen King’s Short Sto­ry “Bat­tle­ground” (1986)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

How French Cinema Works

in Film | February 5th, 2024

Evan Puschak, the video essay­ist bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, has seen a lot of movies. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his analy­ses of a range of pic­tures includ­ing Blade Run­ner, Reser­voir Dogs, Par­a­site, La Dolce Vita, Nos­tal­ghia, and You’ve Got Mail. When he notices some­thing spe­cial about the films com­ing out of one coun­try in par­tic­u­lar, we’d do well to lis­ten to him address why. He once devot­ed a video essay to Jean-Luc Godard­’s Breath­less, which he frames as hav­ing set off the nou­velle vague, the first move­ment most of us think of when we think of French cin­e­ma — which many of us around the world regard as occu­py­ing une classe à part. Puschak finds one rea­son we do so in his new video essay above.

That rea­son is the Cen­tre nation­al du ciné­ma et de l’image, or CNC, the gov­ern­men­tal agency tasked with pro­mot­ing not just French film but French audio­vi­su­al arts in gen­er­al. “For decades, it sat at the cen­ter of cin­e­ma in France, affect­ing every lay­er of the indus­try there,” says Puschak. Fund­ed by tax­es on cin­e­ma admis­sions, tele­vi­sion providers, and media both phys­i­cal and stream­ing, it redis­trib­utes mon­ey to the pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and exhi­bi­tion of films, tele­vi­sion shows, video games, and oth­er forms of art (as well as to the preser­va­tion of exist­ing art). As far as movies in par­tic­u­lar, the declared idea is to “sup­port an inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma that is bold in terms of mar­ket stan­dards and that can­not find its finan­cial bal­ance with­out pub­lic assis­tance.”

“In the US film indus­try, there’s only one met­ric to judge movies: com­mer­cial suc­cess,” Puschak says. “With­out par­tic­i­pa­tion by the state, there can be no oth­er met­ric. The mar­ket deter­mines every­thing,” and that holds as true for indie films as it does for broad Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cles. The CNC also invests heav­i­ly in “the main­te­nance and ren­o­va­tion of the­aters, espe­cial­ly those that show art-house films,” all across France, and even in cin­e­ma edu­ca­tion for school­child­ren meant to encour­age an appre­ci­a­tion for “all kinds of movies, not just those that giant cor­po­ra­tions have mil­lions of dol­lars to pro­mote.” This in con­trast to the many Amer­i­cans “con­di­tioned from an ear­ly age to see only cer­tain kinds of movies in the the­ater.”

Of course, how well a CNC-style agency would work in Amer­i­ca, a world apart from the dirigiste cul­ture of France, is a mat­ter of debate. So, in fact, is the ques­tion of how well it works in France. It has “all the prob­lems you’d expect from a large bureau­cra­cy: slug­gish­ness, red tape, waste, con­tro­ver­sies over who gets to choose what films get mon­ey.” But the CNC has evolved in fits and starts with changes in tech­nol­o­gy and cul­ture, and the US has late­ly direct­ed no small amount of finan­cial sup­port to film pro­duc­tion in the form of state-lev­el tax cred­its. As any­one who vis­its the cin­e­mas of Paris will notice, France has a “pub­lic of devot­ed film­go­ers, peo­ple who want to go out to the movie the­ater and have a wide range of expe­ri­ences there.” Cinephiles the world over would sure­ly agree that any mon­ey spent to cul­ti­vate that is mon­ey well spent.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

How Anna Kari­na (RIP) Became the Mes­mer­iz­ing Face of the French New Wave

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Paris, As Seen Through the Lens of Leg­endary Film­mak­er Éric Rohmer: Watch Rohmer in Paris

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

RIP Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do: The Actor Who Went from the French New Wave to Action Super­star­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

A 500-Page Book Explores the Ghosts & Monsters from Japanese Folklore

in Art, Books, History | February 1st, 2024

West­ern­ers tend to think of Japan as a land of high-speed trains, expert­ly pre­pared sushi and ramen, auteur films, bril­liant ani­ma­tion, ele­gant wood­block prints, glo­ri­ous old hotels, sought-after jazz-records, cat islands, and ghost towns. The last of those has, of course, not been shown to har­bor lit­er­al wraiths and spir­its. But if that sort of thing hap­pens to be what you’re look­ing for, Japan’s long his­to­ry offers up a wealth of mytho­log­i­cal chimeras whose form, behav­ior, and sheer num­bers exceed any of our expec­ta­tions. Wel­come to the super­nat­ur­al realm of the shapeshift­ing, good- and bad-luck-bring­ing, trick-play­ing yōkai.

“Trans­lat­ing to ‘strange appari­tion,’ the Japan­ese word yōkai refers to super­nat­ur­al beings, mutant mon­sters, and spir­its,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert. “Mis­chie­vous, gen­er­ous, and some­times venge­ful, the crea­tures are root­ed in folk­lore and expe­ri­enced a boom dur­ing the Edo peri­od when artists would ascribe inex­plic­a­ble phe­nom­e­na to the unearth­ly char­ac­ters.”

Hiroshi­ma Pre­fec­ture’s Miyoshi Mononoke Muse­um, whose open­ing we announced here on Open Cul­ture in 2019, “hous­es the largest yōkai col­lec­tion in the world with more than 5,000 works, and a book recent­ly pub­lished by PIE Inter­na­tion­al show­cas­es some of the most icon­ic and bizarre pieces from the insti­tu­tion.”

Writ­ten by eth­nol­o­gist Yumo­to Koichi, a yōkai expert whose dona­tions con­sti­tute most of the Miyoshi Mononoke Muse­um’s col­lec­tion, the 500-page YOKAI offers “the rare expe­ri­ence of see­ing the brush­work of Edo-era painters like Tsukio­ka Yoshi­toshi,” whom we’ve fea­tured here as Japan’s last great wood­block artist. Poised between the human and ani­mal king­doms, reflect­ing the ways of the past as well as the forces of nature, yōkai would seem to belong entire­ly to the tales of a bygone age. But in fact, many of them have joined the canon since Tsukioka’s time, hav­ing emerged from haunt­ed-school rumors, the fer­tile imag­i­na­tions of man­ga artists, and even video games. Whether to accept these “mod­ern yōkai” has been a mat­ter of some debate, but as Japan­ese pop­u­lar cul­ture has long shown us, every age needs its own mon­sters.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Japan­ese Folk­lore Mon­sters Is Now Open

The Ghosts and Mon­sters of Hoku­sai: See the Famed Wood­block Artist’s Fear­some & Amus­ing Visions of Strange Appari­tions

When a UFO Came to Japan in 1803: Dis­cov­er the Leg­end of Utsuro-bune

Behold the Mas­ter­piece by Japan’s Last Great Wood­block Artist: View Online Tsukio­ka Yoshitoshi’s One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan — Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.