The John Lennon Sketchbook, a Short Animation Made of Lennon’s Drawings

in Animation, Music | June 9th, 2015

In 1986, Yoko Ono com­mis­sioned the Oscar-win­ning ani­ma­tor John Cane­mak­er to bring to life the draw­ings and doo­dles of John Lennon (1940–1980), cul­mi­nat­ing in the release of a short film called The John Lennon Sketch­book. Almost 30 years lat­er, that film has now been offi­cial­ly released on YouTube.

A prod­uct of Liv­er­pool’s art schools, John Lennon drew through­out his life, illus­trat­ing two of his books with play­ful draw­ings, and draw­ing Christ­mas Cards for Oxfam, just to cite two exam­ples. You can see Lennon’s visu­al tal­ents on full dis­play in The John Lennon Sketch­book, a short ani­ma­tion that is pret­ty whim­si­cal and fun — until the very end, when Lennon seem­ing­ly pre­dicts his own vio­lent death in the audio record­ing that serves as the film’s sound­track.

The John Lennon Sketch­book will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. 

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!

via Car­toon Brew

Relat­ed Con­tent:

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Film Revis­it­ing a Teenager’s 1969 Inter­view with John Lennon

The Bea­t­les: Why Music Mat­ters in Two Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

John Lennon Illus­trates Two of His Books with Play­ful Draw­ings (1964–1965)

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

An Animated Ayn Rand Dispenses Terrible Love Advice to Mike Wallace (1959)

in Animation, Philosophy | June 9th, 2015

In the past, the good folks over at Blank on Blank have turned rarely-seen inter­views with the likes of Ray Brad­bury and John Coltrane into bril­liant lit­tle ani­mat­ed shorts. This week, their lat­est install­ment is on Ayn Rand.

Rand, of course, is the mind behind Objec­tivism, the patron saint of lais­sez faire cap­i­tal­ism, and the author of such unwieldy tomes as The Foun­tain­head and Atlas Shrugged. Among Wall Street bankers, Wash­ing­ton con­ser­v­a­tives and insuf­fer­able col­lege sopho­mores, Rand is a revered fig­ure. For­mer vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Paul Ryan and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rand Paul are both acknowl­edged fol­low­ers. For­mer Fed­er­al Reserve head Alan Greenspan was Rand’s pro­tégé. To a lot of oth­er peo­ple, of course, her the­o­ries are lit­tle more than a shrill jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of sociopa­thy, an empa­thy-chal­lenged vision of social inter­ac­tion that flies in the face of basic ideas of human decen­cy.

The inter­view dates back to a 1959 inter­view by Mike Wal­lace (see the orig­i­nal here) who grills Rand on her con­cept of love and hap­pi­ness, which leads to this exchange:

Ayn Rand: I say that man is enti­tled to his own hap­pi­ness. And that he must achieve it him­self. But that he can­not demand that oth­ers give up their lives to make him hap­py. And nor should he wish to sac­ri­fice him­self for the hap­pi­ness of oth­ers. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

Mike Wal­lace: And can­not man have self-esteem if he loves his fel­low man? Christ, every impor­tant moral leader in man’s his­to­ry, has taught us that we should love one anoth­er. Why then is this kind of love in your mind immoral?

Ayn Rand: It is immoral if it is a love placed above one­self. It is more than immoral, it’s impos­si­ble. Because when you are asked to love every­body indis­crim­i­nate­ly. That is to love peo­ple with­out any stan­dard. To love them regard­less of whether they have any val­ue or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.

Watch­ing the piece, I kept hear­ing the title of Ray­mond Carver’s bril­liant short sto­ry run through my mind, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” (Hear Carv­er read that sto­ry here.) My sense is that her ver­sion of love is very dif­fer­ent from mine. Watch the full ani­mat­ed video above.

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

The Out­spo­ken Ayn Rand Inter­viewed by Mike Wal­lace (1959)

Ayn Rand Trash­es C.S. Lewis in Her Mar­gin­a­lia: He’s an “Abysmal Bas­tard”

The Animated Franz Kafka Rock Opera

in Literature, Music, Random | June 3rd, 2015

“The Franz Kaf­ka Rock Opera” comes from Sea­son 1 of a 1999 video series called Home Movies. In this episode, we find the char­ac­ter Dwayne writ­ing a rock opera based on Kafka’s famous novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis. It’s not Tom­my or Quadrophe­nia — two of the great­est rock operas ever made. But it does, true to form, fea­ture lyrics and song. You can watch a seg­ment of the rock opera above.

· Kaf­ka Song #1: Intro­duc­tion
He is Franz Kaf­ka!
Franz Kaf­ka!
Be care­ful if you get him pissed…
Franz! Franz Kaf­ka!
He’ll smite you with metaphor fists!
Writ­ing all he can, he’s just a man
A war­rior of words tak­ing a stand
He is Franz Kaf­ka!
Spo­ken: Oh look, but there he is, what will he say?
I’m a lone­ly German…a lone­ly Ger­man from Prague!
Kaf­ka! Kaf­ka! Kaf­ka!

· Kaf­ka Song #2: Turn­ing into a bug
I don’t know what’s wrong with me I think I’m turn­ing into a bug
I see dou­ble what I see I think I’m turn­ing into a bug
I ain’t got no self-esteem I think I’m turn­ing into a bug
Bet you fifty dol­lars I’m a man, I’m a schol­ar and I’m turn­ing into a bug
Mom­ma like a dad­dy like a baby like a baby like I’ll turn into a bug
Yeah! Yeah!
He is Franz Kaf­ka!

· Kaf­ka Song #3: Liv­ing like a bug ain’t easy
Liv­ing like a bug ain’t easy
My old clothes don’t seem to fit me
I got lit­tle tiny bug feet
I don’t real­ly know what bugs eat
Don’t want no one step­ping on me
Now I’m sym­pa­thiz­ing with fleas
Liv­ing like a bug ain’t easy…

· Kaf­ka Song #4: End­ing
Spo­ken: Wel­come to heav­en Franz! My name is God! I think you’re going to like it here!
He is Franz Kaf­ka!

· Louis, Louis End Rap
Well, I’m, cur­ing dis­ease
Help­ing blind peo­ple read
Don’t drink that milk with­out talk­ing to me (Oh yeah!)
I’m sav­ing those who can’t see with their eyes
Don’t mess with me you’ll get pas­teur­ized!
Yeah! Come on! Come on! Louis Louis in the house! Break it down!
(Jason does a human beat­box)

· Kaf­ka End Song
Right now he can
He’s just a man
A war­rior of words
Tak­ing a stand
He grew up very poor
He’s steel, it’s to the core
Born in 1883 died in 1924
He is Franz Kaf­ka!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Watch War and Peace: The Splendid, Epic Film Adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Grand Novel (1969)

in Film, Literature | June 2nd, 2015

There’s an old axiom that mediocre books make great movies and great books make for lousy movies. Mario Puzo’s best­seller The God­fa­ther is a straight­for­ward pot­boil­er but Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la spun it into one of the best films ever made. In con­trast, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gats­by has beguiled mul­ti­ple ambi­tious, mis­guid­ed film­mak­ers into mak­ing cin­e­mat­ic duds.

Hollywood’s 1956 adap­ta­tion of Leo Tolstoy’s famous­ly mas­sive tome War and Peace proved that axiom to be true. Direc­tor King Vidor, who gen­er­al­ly speak­ing is no slouch when it comes to direct­ing epics, just couldn’t trans­late the novel’s sweep and depth. More­over, the film’s leads, Audrey Hep­burn and Hen­ry Fon­da, just seemed mis­cast. New York Times crit­ic Bosley Crowther described the movie as “odd­ly mechan­i­cal and emo­tion­al­ly ster­ile.”

The movie was also an affront to Russ­ian nation­al­ism. After all, Tolstoy’s nov­el is not just anoth­er his­tor­i­cal epic; it is a cul­tur­al lode­stone for what is “Russ­ian-ness.” It is, as Rose­mary Edmonds, a trans­la­tor of the 1963 edi­tion of the book called, the “Ili­ad and the Odyssey of Rus­sia.” The Sovi­et film indus­try couldn’t let some half-baked Hol­ly­wood flick end up being the sole cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of the book. Mak­ing an adap­ta­tion was, as a bunch of Sovi­et film­mak­ers wrote in an open let­ter, “a mat­ter of hon­or for the Sovi­et cin­e­ma indus­try.”

After decades of mak­ing stol­id pro­pa­gan­da pieces that more often than not involved trac­tors, the Sovi­et film indus­try was fired up to make a work that was faith­ful to Tol­stoy and yet have artis­tic mer­it as a movie – a tall order. As the direc­tor and star of the Russ­ian ver­sion of War and Peace, Sergei Bon­darchuk, put it: “Our duty is to intro­duce the future view­er to the ori­gins of sub­lime art, to make the inner­most mys­ter­ies of the nov­el, War and Peace, visu­al­ly tan­gi­ble, to inform a feel­ing of full­ness of life, of the joy of human expe­ri­ence.”

The Sovi­et gov­ern­ment mar­shaled a stag­ger­ing amount of effort and expense to real­ize this film. Nev­er under­es­ti­mate the will of a total­i­tar­i­an dic­ta­tor­ship with an axe to grind. Pro­duc­tion start­ed in 1961 and last­ed six years. More than forty dif­fer­ent muse­ums con­tributed cos­tumes and set dress­ing to the pro­duc­tion, includ­ing things like chan­de­liers, sil­ver­ware and fur­ni­ture. The Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture con­tributed 900 hors­es. The Red Army had 12,000 troops play as extras dur­ing the cli­mac­tic Bat­tle of Borodi­no sequence. Bon­darchuk suf­fered two near-fatal heart attacks dur­ing pro­duc­tion.

All that mon­ey and effort paid off. The result­ing movie was one of the most lav­ish, spec­tac­u­lar films ever made. And at 451 min­utes, it’s also one of the longest. (It was released in the USSR as four sep­a­rate movies.)

Along the way, Bon­darchuk pulled off the impos­si­ble – the movie is actu­al­ly good, mir­ror­ing the breadth and depth of the nov­el. War and Peace won all sorts of awards includ­ing an Oscar for Best For­eign lan­guage movie. As a young Roger Ebert raved back in 1969:

“War and Peace” is the defin­i­tive epic of all time. It is hard to imag­ine that cir­cum­stances will ever again com­bine to make a more spec­tac­u­lar, expen­sive, and — yes — splen­did movie. Per­haps that’s just as well; epics seem to be going out of favor, replaced instead by small­er, more per­son­al films. Per­haps this great­est of the epics will be one of the last, bring­ing the epic form to its ulti­mate state­ment and at the same time sup­ply­ing the epi­taph.

You can watch the film above, thanks to Mos­film. It comes com­plete with sub­ti­tles.

Bon­darchuk’s War and Peace, which you can also pur­chase online, is list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

The Well-Tempered Clavier: Download an Open Version of J.S. Bach’s Masterpiece

in Music | June 2nd, 2015

In 2012, the Japan­ese-Ger­man clas­si­cal musi­cian Kimiko Ishiza­ka made avail­able to the world an open ver­sion of J.S. Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions per­formed on a Bösendor­fer 290 Impe­r­i­al piano in Berlin. Fund­ed by a Kick­starter cam­paign, the record­ing was released under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, which essen­tial­ly put the music straight into the pub­lic domain.

Yes­ter­day we dis­cov­ered, thanks to one of our read­ers, Ishiza­ka’s fol­low-up to The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions — The Open Well-Tem­pered Clavier, Book 1.  Also Kick­starter-fund­ed and released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, her new pro­duc­tion puts 48 Pre­ludes and Fugues into the com­mons. Explain­ing the impor­tance of The Well-Tem­pered Clavier, Alexan­dre Prok­ou­dine writes over at Libre Graph­ics World:

Among clas­si­cal music con­nois­seurs, the Well-Tem­pered Clavier Book 1 (WTC, or “the 48” for short) is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most influ­en­tial works by J.S. Bach. Here is why.

For a long time instru­ments used to be tuned in such inter­vals between notes that trans­po­si­tion (play­ing a melody in a key dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed one) usu­al­ly pro­duced a melody that was clear­ly out of tune. Find­ing the right inter­vals was an inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lem to solve, and it was done in the 17th cen­tu­ry by Andreas Wer­ck­meis­ter.

So while J.S. Bach did­n’t invent well-tem­pered tun­ing, the 48 was his major, if not defin­ing con­tri­bu­tion to mak­ing it pop­u­lar, as the 48 was pret­ty much The Music The­o­ry Bible for gen­er­a­tions of com­posers…

His­tor­i­cal val­ue aside, the 48 is sim­ply beau­ti­ful and ele­gant­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed music (with score laid out in up to four voic­es, yet played by a sin­gle musi­cian). If this is the first time you are lis­ten­ing to WTC, I offi­cial­ly envy you, because are about to dis­cov­er some­thing very spe­cial.

You can get the Open Well-Tem­pered Clavier as a free down­load here (please read the instruc­tions on the page), or stream it above. You can also sup­port the artist and pur­chase the down­load for a fee of your choice, or buy a CD ver­sion over on Ama­zon.

As for what you can expect from Kimiko Ishiza­ka next, look out for a record­ing of the Chopin Préludes on a Pleyel piano — the same piano Chopin played him­self all those years ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

JS Bach’s The Well-Tem­pered Clavier Artis­ti­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed with Puls­ing Neon Lights

Download the Complete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

in Music | June 1st, 2015

“The best proof we have that life is good is that to each of us, on the day we are born, comes the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach,” writes J.M. Coet­zee in Diary of a Bad Year. “It comes as a gift, unearned, unmer­it­ed, for free.” While the respect­ed nov­el­ist voiced that thought, as he often does, through a high­ly opin­ion­at­ed pro­tag­o­nist, I can’t help but sus­pect that author and char­ac­ter to some extent agree on this. Some of us dis­cov­er Bach right away, in child­hood; oth­ers do it much lat­er. And whether or not we’ve earned or mer­it­ed his music, it now comes to us more freely than ever.

Take, for exam­ple, Bach’s com­plete organ works, which you can down­load at no cost from Block M Records. Per­form­ing them all, we have Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan’s Dr. James Kib­bie — “on orig­i­nal baroque organs in Ger­many,” no less.

They’ve orga­nized the col­lec­tions, released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, into a com­plete cat­a­log (that you can also search)—with down­load­able groups (from trio sonatas and con­cer­ti to the Schübler Chorales and the Orgel­büch­lein), as well as a list of ever­green famil­iar mas­ter­works (such as the Toc­ca­ta and Fugue in D Minor and the Pas­sacaglia in C Minor). They’ve made it easy to access and enjoy an impor­tant part of Bach’s wide, huge­ly influ­en­tial, and end­less­ly endur­ing body of work. The ques­tion of whether life is ulti­mate­ly good you’ll have to set­tle for your­self, but you can eas­i­ly start gath­er­ing the evi­dence right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

High School Teacher Reads Allen Ginsberg’s Explicit Poem “Please Master” and Loses His Job

in Current Affairs, Education, Poetry | June 1st, 2015

Image by Michiel Hendryckx.

Although the bound­aries of what should pass for free speech in high school Eng­lish class­rooms will be for­ev­er in debate, most every­one would agree some bound­aries must exist. But what of the speech of famous authors? Of tow­er­ing fig­ures of 20th cen­tu­ry poet­ry? Should their speech be sub­ject to review? What of an Eng­lish teacher who allows the most risqué Beat poem you’ve ever heard to be read aloud in class by the poet him­self, Allen Gins­berg, via an online video (per­haps this one)? Award-win­ning Eng­lish teacher David Olio, a beloved 19-year vet­er­an, did just that when a stu­dent asked to share Ginsberg’s ecsta­t­ic, and very explic­it, poem “Please Mas­ter” with the class.

After com­plaints from sev­er­al stu­dents, the school admin­is­tra­tion sus­pend­ed Olio, then forced him to resign. Whether or not this deci­sion was just is a debate that extends beyond the scope of this post. The vari­ables are many, as Slate’s sym­pa­thet­ic Mark Joseph Stern admits, includ­ing the fact that Olio did not exact­ly pre­pare his stu­dents for what was to come, nor give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opt out. The high school seniors—on the thresh­old of adult­hood and some already with one foot in college—may not have had their “emo­tion­al health” endan­gered, as Olio’s ter­mi­na­tion let­ter alleged, but it’s lit­tle won­der some of them found the mate­r­i­al shock­ing.

Ginsberg’s poem, which you can hear him read above, describes a “fan­ta­sized sex­u­al encounter between Gins­berg and Neal Cas­sady, the inspi­ra­tion for the Dean Mori­ar­ty char­ac­ter in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” It is graph­ic, writes Stern, but “not obscene.” Instead—in its allu­sions to St. Teresa’s angel­ic vis­i­ta­tion in a “pro­fane descrip­tion of anal sex as a near­ly divine act”—Ginsberg’s poem is “dan­ger­ous because it jux­ta­pos­es ten­der­ness with masochism; dan­ger­ous because it rap­tur­ous­ly cel­e­brates a vision of same-sex inti­ma­cy we are only sup­posed to whis­per about.” Read the poem, lis­ten to Gins­berg read it, and judge for your­self.

Of course, this is hard­ly the first time Ginsberg’s work has caused con­tro­ver­sy. His Beat epic “Howl” (1955), with its sex­u­al­ly charged lines, irked the U.S. gov­ern­ment, who seized copies of the poem and put its pub­lish­er, poet and City Lights’ book­seller Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. Well over six­ty years lat­er, Fer­linghet­ti has writ­ten in defense of David Olio. We can safe­ly assume that Gins­berg, who died in 1997, also would approve. And while we have every right to be shocked by Ginsberg’s poem, or not, and find the deci­sion to fire Olio war­rant­ed, or not, I tend to agree with Stern when he writes “if every Eng­lish teacher were that enthu­si­as­tic about his sub­ject, Amer­i­ca would be a much more lit­er­ate, edu­cat­ed and inter­est­ing place.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Allen Gins­berg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buck­ley

Allen Gins­berg Talks About Com­ing Out to His Fam­i­ly & Fel­low Poets on 1978 Radio Show (NSFW)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

MIT Creates Amazing Self-Folding Origami Robots & Leaping Cheetah Robots

in MIT, Technology | June 1st, 2015

Last Thurs­day, MIT released two stag­ger­ing­ly cool videos. And I don’t think I’m being hyper­bol­ic in say­ing that. Above we have a robot­ic chee­tah that’s “trained” to “see and jump over hur­dles as it runs — mak­ing this the first four-legged robot to run and jump over obsta­cles autonomous­ly.” The chee­tah knows when to jump by using LIDAR — “a visu­al sys­tem that uses reflec­tions from a laser to map ter­rain.” MIT News has more on the tech behind this cre­ation.

Mak­ing almost equal­ly big news is anoth­er MIT inven­tion — a minia­ture origa­mi robot that self-folds, walks, swims, and degrades. As the elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing web­site IEEE Spec­trum explains:

The unfold­ed robot, which is made of a mag­net and PVC sand­wiched between laser-cut struc­tur­al lay­ers (poly­styrene or paper), weighs just 0.31 g and mea­sures 1.7 cm on a side. Once placed on a heat­ing ele­ment, the PVC con­tracts, and where the struc­tur­al lay­ers have been cut, it cre­ates folds.…

Once you’re done mess­ing around, you can dri­ve the robot into a tank of ace­tone and it will entire­ly dis­solve.

One day, if things go accord­ing to plan, these crea­tures will become small enough to per­form impor­tant med­ical tasks with­in your body, and then when they’re done, poof, they’ll be gone. And you’ll have an MIT researcher part­ly to thank.

via Men­tal Floss

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:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

Free Online Engi­neer­ing Cours­es

Watch Alfred Hitchcock Make Cameo Appearances in 37 of His Films

in Film | May 29th, 2015

It may sound redun­dant, but to many peo­ple a Hitch­cock film would not be a Hitch­cock film with­out Hitch­cock. By this I mean not only Hitchcock’s mas­ter­ful com­mand of light and shad­ow, cam­era move­ment, and edit­ing, but also the brief, wit­ty appear­ances of the man him­self, in front of the cam­era.

Of course we have the droll intro of the great direc­tor’s own TV show, with his sil­hou­ette slid­ing into a car­toon of his jow­ly pro­file. We also have the chance to spot him near­ly every­where else in his body of work since he appears—as a bystander or as some form of com­ic relief—in 37 of his films: from 1927’s The Lodger to 1976’s Fam­i­ly Plot. In this last cameo, as you can see below, he appears again in sil­hou­ette.

At the top of the post, you can watch a super­cut of all 37 of these cameos. And see a com­plete list, with descrip­tions, at Wikipedia. AMC’s Tim Dirks tells us of “two recur­ring themes” in Hitchcock’s film appear­ances: “(1) Hitch­cock often car­ried a musi­cal instru­ment, and (2) Hitch­cock often used pub­lic trans­porta­tion (bus­es, trains, etc.), and was seen as a casu­al pass­er-by in the crowd in the pub­lic place (train sta­tions, at an air­port, etc.). Most of the cameos appeared ear­ly in the film, and often there was a bit of mild humor in the appear­ance.” Though they may seem nar­cis­sis­tic, Hitch­cock promised the cameos were for the sake of his fans, who cer­tain­ly appre­ci­at­ed the recur­ring trade­mark. “I always give a lit­tle thought to my appear­ances,” said the direc­tor in a 1966 inter­view, “and come on as ear­ly as possible—don’t want to hold them in sus­pense!”

The Hitch­cock cameos began by acci­dent, writes Mys­teryNet, when, “short an actor in one of his first films, Hitch­cock took it upon him­self to play the small part.” In this movie, The Lodger (watch it online), Hitch­cock actu­al­ly appears twice—as a news­room clerk and again lat­er in a crowd. He would make two appear­ances in three more films: Sus­pi­cion, Rope, and Under Capri­corn. Most of his cameos are very brief, some shot at a dis­tance, and oth­ers with his back to the cam­era. To spot Hitch­cock in your favorite of his films [you can watch 23 for free in our col­lec­tion of Free Hitch­cock films], see AMC’s com­plete list, which fea­tures thumb­nails and approx­i­ma­tions of how many min­utes into the film he appears. Also don’t miss The Tele­graph’s com­pre­hen­sive gallery of stills of Hitchcock’s cameos, like that of his Rear Win­dow appear­ance above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online 

1000 Frames of Hitch­cock: See Each of Alfred Hitchcock’s 52 Films Reduced to 1,000 Artis­tic Frames

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Parvati Saves the World: Watch a Remix of Bollywood Films That Combats Rape in India

in Current Affairs, Film | May 27th, 2015

Sex­u­al vio­lence in India has been in the spot­light ever since a 23-year-old med­ical stu­dent was gang raped and mur­dered on a bus in New Del­hi in 2012. The crime was so fla­grant and so bru­tal that the coun­try recoiled in shock. Stu­dents and activists descend­ed into the streets of Del­hi to protest.

Film­mak­er Ram Devi­neni real­ized just how entrenched the prob­lem is in Indi­an cul­ture when he spoke with a cop dur­ing one of those protests. As he told the BBC,“I was talk­ing to a police offi­cer when he said some­thing that I found very sur­pris­ing. He said ‘no good girl walks alone at night.’

The Indi­an gov­ern­ment rushed leg­is­la­tion that would increase the prison term for rape along with crim­i­nal­iz­ing oth­er crimes against women like stalk­ing. Yet, a string of oth­er high-pro­file rapes, includ­ing a few against for­eign tourists, show that this is a con­tin­u­ing prob­lem, one that wasn’t going to be solved with a few laws.

“I real­ized that rape and sex­u­al vio­lence in India was a cul­tur­al issue,” said Devi­neni. “And that it was backed by patri­archy, misog­y­ny and peo­ple’s per­cep­tions.”

So Devi­neni decid­ed to try and change India’s cul­ture with one of the most pow­er­ful weapons out there: art.

Inspired by Hin­du mythol­o­gy, Devi­neni and a cou­ple col­lab­o­ra­tors cre­at­ed a graph­ic nov­el about Priya, a rape sur­vivor who appeals for help to Par­vati, the God­dess of pow­er and beau­ty. By the end of the com­ic, Priya con­fronts her attack­ers while rid­ing a tiger.

As a con­tin­u­a­tion of the project, Devi­neni cre­at­ed Par­vati Saves the World, a sim­i­lar sto­ry pieced togeth­er from some amaz­ing­ly kitschy Bol­ly­wood epics from the 1970s. He described the project as being “like DJ Spooky’s remix of Birth of a Nation but this focus­es on sex­u­al vio­lence.”

In the film, Priya once again appeals to Par­vati after get­ting attacked, this time by the friend of a pride­ful king. When Par­vati con­fronts the king, he tries to assault her. This is a bad move. Her hus­band is the God Shi­va, AKA “the Destroy­er,” AKA some­one you real­ly don’t want to tick off. As pun­ish­ment, he brings fire and death on heav­en and earth. Real­iz­ing that vio­lence isn’t the answer, Par­vati goes to Earth to become “a bea­con of hope for oppressed women every­where.”

You can watch Par­vati Saves the World in three parts above. You can learn more about Devi­neni’s mis­sion at The Cre­ator’s Project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Improb­a­ble Appear­ance in a Bol­ly­wood Film (1967)

Ravi Shankar Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

George Harrison’s Mys­ti­cal, Fish­eye Self-Por­traits Tak­en in India (1966)

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.