The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Broadcast Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Early Bob Dylan

in Music, Television | February 21st, 2012

In ear­ly 1964, Bob Dylan was at the apex of his jour­ney as a social­ly con­scious folk singer. The fleet­ing moment is pre­served in this rare half-hour TV pro­gram, record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 1 of that year. With­in a week the Bea­t­les would land in Amer­i­ca. In a lit­tle over a month, Dylan would rent an elec­tric gui­tar.

The tele­vi­sion per­for­mance is from Quest, a Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion series that ran between 1961 and 1964 and show­cased a wide range of lit­er­ary and per­form­ing arts. It was pro­duced in Toron­to by Daryl Duke, who went on to direct Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­grams and fea­ture films.

Dylan appears in his clas­sic Woody Guthrie mode on a set made to look like a west­ern bunkhouse. He plays six songs–half from The Times They Are a‑Changin’, his third album released just a few weeks before, and half from his pre­vi­ous album, The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan. In order of appear­ance:

1. The Times They Are A Changin’
2. Talkin’ World War III Blues
3. Lone­some Death of Hat­tie Car­roll
4. Girl From the North Coun­try
5. A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall
6. Rest­less Farewell

“The Times They Are a‑Changin’,” as the pro­gram is titled, offers a unique glimpse of the ear­ly Bob Dylan, just before his music turned from social issues to per­son­al ones, just before he put away the blue jeans and work shirts and began wear­ing Bea­t­le boots and sun­glass­es. “Dylan’s appear­ance on Quest,” says writer and film­mak­er Erek Barsczews­ki, “pro­vides the clos­est approx­i­ma­tion avail­able of what his ear­ly per­for­mances in Green­wich Vil­lage would have looked and sound­ed like.”

Peter Greenaway Looks at the Day Cinema Died — and What Comes Next

in Film | February 21st, 2012

Cin­e­ma went into its death throes on Sep­tem­ber 31, 1983. The instru­ment of its demise? The video remote con­trol. When the “zap­per” endowed the view­er with the abil­i­ty to play, pause, stop, fast-for­ward, and rewind at will, the medi­um’s artists lost their absolute con­trol over the rhythm, dura­tion, and oth­er chrono­log­i­cal sub­tleties of the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. Or so film­mak­er Peter Green­away claims in this lec­ture at UC Berke­ley. Any­one fan enough to read all the inter­views the direc­tor has grant­ed — and I count myself in the group — will by now be famil­iar with, even weary of, Green­away’s ideas about cin­e­ma’s tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic strait­jack­et­ing, its arbi­trary aes­thet­ic bound­aries, and its squan­dered poten­tial as a free­stand­ing art form. Nowhere else, though, does he explain and elab­o­rate upon these ideas in such detail, or in such an enter­tain­ing­ly ora­tor­i­cal man­ner.

“The death of cin­e­ma,” though? Real­ly? Know­ing how dra­mat­ic that sounds, Green­away frames what’s hap­pened in anoth­er way: per­haps cin­e­ma has yet to be born. What if the last cen­tu­ry or so has offered only the pro­logue to cin­e­ma, and mod­ern film­mak­ers must take it upon them­selves to bring the real thing into the world? These may strike you as the thoughts of a crack­pot, and maybe they are, but watch and lis­ten as Green­away recounts the stunt­ed devel­op­ment of the art form in which he works. We’ve grown so accus­tomed to the lim­i­ta­tions of cin­e­ma, so his argu­ment goes, that we don’t even feel the pres­sure of the “four tyran­nies” that have lord­ed over it since the begin­ning: the frame, the text, the actor, and the cam­era. Even if you loathe Green­away’s films, can you help ask­ing your­self whether the rarely ques­tioned dom­i­nance of an elite class of essen­tial­ly the­atri­cal per­form­ers, fol­low­ing tex­tu­al­ly con­ceived instruc­tions, viewed from one per­spec­tive at a time through a sim­ple rec­tan­gle, holds the movies back?

Since his fea­ture-length debut The Falls in 1980, Green­away has strug­gled against what he sees as the bar­ri­ers put up by cin­e­ma’s unhealthy entan­gle­ment with the nar­ra­tive-dri­ven forms of the­ater and lit­er­a­ture. Trained orig­i­nal­ly as a painter, he won­ders explic­it­ly in pub­lic and implic­it­ly through his work why films can’t enjoy the same free­dom to explore the cre­ative space at their dis­pos­al that paint­ings do. All his pic­tures, even the best-known like The Draughts­man­’s Con­tract; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; and 8½ Women, use set­tings, actors, images, words, and sounds like col­ors on a palette, apply­ing them with infini­tude of strokes, cre­at­ing a whole from which no one ele­ment can be eas­i­ly sep­a­rat­ed. In this lec­ture, Green­away mar­shals footage from his projects con­duct­ed even far­ther out at the medi­um’s edge: his trans­for­ma­tion of an actu­al Ital­ian palace into one big non-nar­ra­tive film, his col­lab­o­ra­tions with avant-garde com­pos­er David Lang, and, of course, his VJ-ing ses­sions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dar­win, A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Remembering John Glenn’s Historic Space Flight, 50 Years Ago Today

in History | February 20th, 2012

On this day a half cen­tu­ry ago, Mer­cury Astro­naut John Glenn became the first Amer­i­can to orbit the Earth. On the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 20, 1962, an anx­ious nation watched as Glenn climbed into his cramped Friend­ship 7 space cap­sule and was pro­pelled by an Atlas 6 rock­et high above the atmos­phere. He cir­cled the Earth three times before re-enter­ing the atmos­phere and splash­ing down in the Atlantic Ocean. As the vet­er­an space pro­gram reporter John Noble Wil­ford wrote last week in The New York Times, “Per­haps no oth­er spaceflight–all 4 hours, 55 min­utes and 23 sec­onds of it–has been fol­lowed by so many with such par­a­lyz­ing appre­hen­sion.”

You can get a sense of the dra­ma and excite­ment of that day by watch­ing the news­reel above, and by read­ing Wil­ford’s inter­est­ing piece in the Times. Also, NASA has put togeth­er an inter­ac­tive online fea­ture on the mis­sion. At a time when Amer­i­ca’s manned space pro­gram depends on Russ­ian space­craft to car­ry astro­nauts to and from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, it’s all the more poignant to look back on the day 50 years ago when Glenn became, as writer Tom Wolfe put it, “the last true nation­al hero Amer­i­ca has ever had.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

Alfred Hitchcock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Creative Mind

in Film, Television | February 17th, 2012

Note: Appar­ent­ly this video is geo-restrict­ed by YouTube, and we had no way of know­ing this before pub­li­ca­tion. Our apolo­gies. To make it up to you, we have pulled togeth­er 21 Hitch­cock films that are freely avail­able online.

Alfred Hitch­cock takes us inside his cre­ative process in this fas­ci­nat­ing 1964 pro­gram from the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. “A Talk with Alfred Hitch­cock” is part inter­view, part mas­ter class in the craft of telling sto­ries on film.

The pro­gram was pro­duced in two seg­ments for the doc­u­men­tary series Tele­scope. It fea­tures scenes from Hitch­cock­’s movies, inter­views with his long-time col­lab­o­ra­tors, and glimpses of Hitch­cock at work on the set of his 1964 film Marnie. The inter­view, con­duct­ed by Fletch­er Markle, cov­ers a lot of ground. In episode one (above), Hitch­cock talks about the nature of art and the meth­ods he uses as a film­mak­er to manip­u­late the audi­ence’s emo­tions. The dis­cus­sion con­tin­ues in episode two (below) with more on Hitch­cock­’s career, along with insights into his rela­tion­ship with the pub­lic and his out­look on life. “A Talk with Alfred Hitch­cock” is a must-see for cin­e­ma lovers.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock: The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

François Truf­faut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Everything is a Remix: An Exploration of Remixing as a Form of Creativity

in Film, Literature, Technology | February 16th, 2012

In a series of short films, direc­tor Kir­by Fer­gu­son has been grad­u­al­ly mak­ing the case that “Every­thing is a Remix” — that great art does­n’t come out of nowhere. Artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw­ing on past ideas and con­ven­tions, then turn­ing these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. The first film high­light­ed the role of remix­ing in lit­er­a­ture and music. The sec­ond install­ment shift­ed the focus to film­mak­ing, while the third turned to tech­nol­o­gy, com­put­ers and user inter­faces. Today, Fer­gu­son released the fourth and final install­ment — “Sys­tem Fail­ure” — which makes the argu­ment that ever-expand­ing copy­right laws, despite what our Found­ing Fathers intend­ed, now tilt in favor of cor­po­rate inter­ests rather than the social good. And, more omi­nous­ly, they threat­en to put the brakes on an essen­tial part of the cre­ative process. If you’ve enjoyed this series, which you can watch in full above, you can sup­port Fer­gu­son’s next project, This is Not a Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, on Kick­Starter.

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!

The Weird World of Vintage Sports

in Film, History | February 15th, 2012

British Pathé has released an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of vin­tage news­reel clips high­light­ing ear­ly exper­i­ments in hybrid sports. Some of the feats are dar­ing, oth­ers mere­ly sil­ly. All are fun to watch.

News­reels of this type were an impor­tant part of the movie-going expe­ri­ence in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, often fea­tur­ing cov­er­age of news, enter­tain­ment, cul­ture and sports. Some reels were pack­aged into reg­u­lar­ly appear­ing “cin­emagazines” like Pathé Pic­to­r­i­al, a mov­ing-pic­ture ana­logue of the illus­trat­ed mag­a­zines of the day.

The reel above, shot in Bavaria in 1955, expos­es the “Most Dan­ger­ous Sport in the World.” Motor ski­ing, also known as “motor­ized ski­jor­ing,” involves ski­iers being pulled at high speeds over ice and snow by cars or motor­cy­cles. You can scroll down to watch a few more of our favorites, or access the whole col­lec­tion on YouTube, at the British Pathé Sport­ing His­to­ry chan­nel.

Cycle Skat­ing, Paris, 1923:

Ten­nis on Ice, Amer­i­ca, 1931:

Sum­mer Ski­ing on the Boule­vards, Paris, 1930:

Blimp Water Ski­ing, 1932:

Mr. Happy Man

in Film, Life | February 14th, 2012

Matt Mor­ris, an award-win­ning film­mak­er liv­ing in Win­ter Park, Flori­da, came across John­ny Barnes in the same way he has dis­cov­ered all of his film sub­jects — by com­plete acci­dent. One day, while flip­ping through images on Flickr, Mor­ris stum­bled upon a tourist’s pho­to of the 88-year-old Bermu­di­an. He then read the cap­tion attached to the pho­to and knew he had to make a film about Barnes. “Aside from the fact that I tend to make films about elder­ly folks,” Mor­ris told us, “I’m fas­ci­nat­ed with peo­ple who have cho­sen unique ways of liv­ing their lives and as a result are irre­press­ibly hap­py.” “I want to make films about them in part so that I can learn from them.” And so, Matt head­ed to Bermu­da to cap­ture “Mr. Hap­py Man” work­ing his mag­ic on Crow Lane each day.

In Decem­ber, we fea­tured a 2008 film by Mr. Mor­ris — Pickin’ & Trim­min’, an ele­gant doc­u­men­tary that show­cas­es the blue­grass music made in a down-home North Car­oli­na bar­ber­shop. It’s not to be missed. Mor­ris’ next film, Mark & Lor­na, will take as its sub­ject a lounge singing duo based out of Orlan­do, Flori­da.

David Lynch Falls in Love: A Classic Scene From Twin Peaks

in Comedy, Television | February 14th, 2012

They say a man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her ears. In this scene from Twin Peaks, David Lynch pours on the ear-shat­ter­ing charm. The scene is from episode 25 of the sec­ond and final sea­son (1991). Lynch makes a cameo appear­ance as Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing region­al bureau chief of the FBI, who has arrived in town to help agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle MacLach­lan) with an inves­ti­ga­tion. When the two men stop by at the Dou­ble R Din­er for a bite to eat, Cole is instant­ly smit­ten by the pret­ty wait­ress, Shelly John­son (Mäd­chen Amick). “Excuse me, Coop,” he says suave­ly, “while I try my hand in a lit­tle counter Esperan­to.” What hap­pens next is a miracle–or maybe just a phe­nom­e­non.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Eraser­head Remade in Clay

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

The Story Behind Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’

in Art | February 13th, 2012

NOTE: If you are hav­ing prob­lems view­ing the video on our site, you can also watch it here.

With Valen­tine’s Day almost here, we thought it would be an oppor­tune time to bring you the sto­ry of Auguste Rod­in’s erot­i­cal­ly charged mas­ter­piece, The Kiss.

In this video from the Tate muse­ums, Jane Bur­ton explains how The Kiss was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a detail in an ear­ly ver­sion of Rod­in’s The Gates of Hell, a mon­u­men­tal work that pre­oc­cu­pied the artist for the last 37 years of his life. The Kiss depicts the fate­ful embrace of Francesca and Pao­lo, adul­ter­ous lovers from Dan­te’s Infer­no.

Rodin devel­oped the theme of The Kiss in plas­ter and ter­ra­cot­ta before cre­at­ing a mar­ble ver­sion for the French gov­ern­ment in 1888. That piece is now on dis­play at the Musée Rodin in Paris. The ver­sion fea­tured in the video was com­mis­sioned in 1900 by an Amer­i­can art col­lec­tor liv­ing in Eng­land, and is now part of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Tate Mod­ern in Lon­don. It’s cur­rent­ly on loan (through Sep­tem­ber 2) to the Turn­er Con­tem­po­rary in Mar­gate, Kent.

The nudi­ty and frank sen­su­al­i­ty of The Kiss drew scorn from many crit­ics when the sculp­ture was first unveiled in 1889. The poet Paul Claudel, a reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive, wrote:

the man is so to speak attablé [sit­ting down to dine] at the woman. He is sit­ting down in order to make the most of his oppor­tu­ni­ty. He uses both his hands, and she does her best, as the Amer­i­cans say, to “deliv­er the goods.”

Claudel’s con­tempt prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with the fact that his sis­ter, the sculp­tor Camille Claudel, was Rod­in’s lover at the time the work was com­plet­ed. For a more in-depth explo­ration of the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry behind The Kiss, be sure to watch the BBC series, Pri­vate Life of a Mas­ter­piece. The episode fea­tur­ing The Kiss can be seen online in four 12-minute seg­ments here.

Frankenstein: The First Adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Novel to Film (1910)

in Film | February 12th, 2012

102 years ago, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the short, 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shel­ley’s lit­er­ary cre­ation was adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

You can down­load the movie at the Inter­net Archive, or find it per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 725 Free Movies Online. (Also, you can find Mary Shel­ley’s clas­sic nov­el  in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.) To get more infor­ma­tion on Daw­ley’s short film, please vis­it The Franken­stein blog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Birth of Film: 11 Firsts in Cin­e­ma