Charlie Chaplin Mini Film Festival

in Film | April 21st, 2011

A few things to know about Char­lie Chap­lin. He starred in over 80 films, reel­ing off most dur­ing the silent film era. In 1914 alone, he act­ed in 40 films, then anoth­er 15 in 1915. By the 1920s, Chap­lin had emerged as the first larg­er-than-life movie star, if not the most rec­og­niz­able per­son on the plan­et.

The actor still holds enough cul­tur­al sway that Google gave him a spe­cial doo­dle for his birth­day last week. And now we give you a 4‑in‑1 col­lec­tion of Chap­lin films. Cre­at­ed in 1938, this mini film fes­ti­val, run­ning 46 min­utes, presents The Adven­tur­er, The Cure, Easy Street and The Immi­grant, all filmed in 1917. (Find an alter­nate ver­sion here.) Plus if you head into our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, you will find anoth­er 10 Chap­lin films, all free. Just scroll down to the Silent Film sec­tion, and you’ll be on your way…

via Curios­i­ty Counts

Diary: The Last Short Film by Tim Hetherington

in Current Affairs, Film, Life | April 20th, 2011

Ear­li­er today, Tim Het­her­ing­ton, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who pro­duced and direct­ed the award-win­ning film Restre­po, was killed in the Libyan city of Mis­ura­ta. Although inter­est­ed in diverse art forms, Het­her­ing­ton spent more than a decade work­ing in war zones. He was a cam­era­man on Liberia: An Unciv­il War (2004) and The Dev­il Came on Horse­back (2007), then direct­ed Restre­po, a film about a pla­toon of sol­diers in Afghanistan. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. And, that same year, Het­her­ing­ton also shot a short film, Diary, which he sum­ma­rized in this fash­ion:

‘Diary’ is a high­ly per­son­al and exper­i­men­tal film that express­es the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of report­ing. It’s a kalei­do­scope of images that link our west­ern real­i­ty to the seem­ing­ly dis­tant worlds we see in the media.”

You can watch Diary above and also vis­it a slideshow of Het­her­ing­ton’s pho­to­graph­ic work here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

The Symmetry of Life

in Radio, Video - Science | April 20th, 2011

Last year, film­mak­ers Will Hoff­man, Daniel Mer­cadante, and Julius Metoy­er III pro­duced their first con­cep­tu­al video based on a Radi­o­Lab episode called “Words.” Now the trio is back, play­ing on ideas explored in a new Radi­o­Lab episode, Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Sym­me­try, which med­i­tates on how “sym­me­try shapes our very existence–from the ori­gins of the uni­verse, to what we see when we look in the mir­ror.” You can watch their lat­est video above, and stream below the radio episode upon which it is based. And if you’re not famil­iar with Radi­o­Lab, a pro­gram that’s chang­ing the medi­um, then def­i­nite­ly check out this pro­file in The New York Times.

via Brain­Pick­ings

The Physics of the Bike

in Physics | April 20th, 2011

Please give this video a sec­ond to get going.

We have all seen or expe­ri­enced it. When trav­el­ing at the right speeds, bikes can prac­ti­cal­ly steer them­selves, remain­ing upright and defy­ing the pull of grav­i­ty. Physi­cists thought they fig­ured out this minor mys­tery long ago. But a new paper (read the PDF here) by Andy Ruina (Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty) and Jim Papadopou­los (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin — Stout) chal­lenges the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. This video, which comes to us cour­tesy of Sci­ence Fri­day, explains…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Physics: Free Cours­es

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

The Bay of Pigs: 50 Years Later

in History, Video - Politics/Society | April 18th, 2011

50 years ago (April 17, 1961), the CIA launched one of its famous­ly botched oper­a­tions. On that day, 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles stormed the beach­es of south­ern Cuba, begin­ning an inva­sion meant to top­ple Fidel Cas­tro and his Sovi­et-aligned gov­ern­ment.

The plan called for airstrikes to soft­en up Cas­tro’s defens­es, then for troops to land on the beach­es along the Bahía de cochi­nos. But things went quick­ly awry. Ships got stuck in shal­low Cuban waters. Bombers missed tar­gets. Fur­ther airstrikes were called off. And ground forces were even­tu­al­ly left with­out sup­port — as good as dead in the water.

The bun­gled affair, a sting­ing embar­rass­ment for the young Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion, gets revis­it­ed in a new book by Jim Rasen­berg­er, The Bril­liant Dis­as­ter: JFK, Cas­tro, and Amer­i­ca’s Doomed Inva­sion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. The video above suc­cinct­ly recaps the events at the Bay of Pigs with the help of his­tor­i­cal footage and inter­views with his­tor­i­cal actors…

via NPR

El Teide in Time Lapse

in Art, Video - Science | April 16th, 2011

It’s the sec­ond time we have Spain in time lapse video this week. First, the his­tor­i­cal land­scape of Cen­tral Spain. Now El Tei­de, Spain’s high­est moun­tain, and the home to one of the world’s best obser­va­to­ries. This drop-dead gor­geous footage (click here to watch expand­ed ver­sion) was cap­tured just days ago by Ter­je Sorgjerd, whose work can be fol­lowed on Face­book here. And, don’t miss our Face­book page, where you can get our dai­ly posts and share intel­li­gent media with fam­i­ly and friends…

via Metafil­ter

American Philosophy on Film: Pragmatism, Richard Rorty and More

in Philosophy, Video - Politics/Society | April 15th, 2011

In his online bio, Penn State lec­tur­er Phillip McReynolds con­fess­es his “unhealthy fas­ci­na­tion with movies.”  McReynolds chan­nels that obses­sion to healthy effect in his doc­u­men­tary “Amer­i­can Philoso­pher.” The film — which is real­ly a series of 8 shorts — fea­tures inter­views with Richard Rorty, Hilary Put­nam, Joseph Mar­go­lis, Crispin Sartwell, Richard Bern­stein, and many oth­er promi­nent philoso­phers. The con­ver­sa­tion gen­er­al­ly turns around prag­ma­tism, the nation­al char­ac­ter, and the cen­tral ques­tion: Is there such a thing as a native Amer­i­can Phi­los­o­phy?

Our favorite sec­tion is prob­a­bly Part 6, “Progress:” It fea­tures a live­ly 2002 debate between Rorty and Put­nam which (the film argues) was large­ly respon­si­ble for the revival of prag­ma­tism as a viable school of thought.

(Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Mr. McReynolds did his dis­ser­ta­tion on John Dewey.)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Inventing the Digital Camera: A Short Portrait of Steven Sasson

in Technology, Video - Science | April 14th, 2011

Work­ing for East­man Kodak back in 1975, Steven Sas­son, an elec­tri­cal engi­neer by train­ing, was tasked with build­ing a cam­era that used sol­id state elec­tron­ics and sol­id state imagers to cap­ture opti­cal infor­ma­tion. Or, put very sim­ply, he was asked to build the first dig­i­tal cam­era. And he did just that.

In the lat­est of a series of short doc­u­men­taries on con­tem­po­rary inven­tors, pho­tog­ra­ph­er David Fried­man sat down with Sas­son at Kodak’s head­quar­ters in Rochester, NY and revis­it­ed the tech­ni­cal and cul­tur­al chal­lenges faced by the inven­tor. So far, Fried­man has pro­duced 32 por­traits of inven­tors, and, for the most part, you’ll rec­og­nize the inven­tors’ cre­ations soon­er than their names. You can access the full col­lec­tion of por­traits here.

via Fast Co Design and Brain­Pick­ings

Historic Spain in Time Lapse Film

in History, Video - Arts & Culture | April 13th, 2011

Cen­tral Spain – The Goths, Romans, and Moors left their mark on the region. Don Qui­jote fought against the wind­mills here, and El Gre­co, Velasquez and Fran­cis­co de Goya made their homes in this his­tor­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly rich region. Now, a tourist, armed with a Nikon D90, brings that his­to­ry to life with two quick min­utes of time lapse film…

via Holykaw

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann at 50

in History | April 11th, 2011

50 years ago today, Adolf Eich­mann, a key archi­tect of the Holo­caust, went on tri­al before an Israeli tri­bunal in Jerusalem. Dur­ing the war, Eich­mann served as the Trans­porta­tion Admin­is­tra­tor of the “Final Solu­tion to the Jew­ish Ques­tion,” mean­ing he coor­di­nat­ed all the trains that trans­port­ed Jews to their deaths in East Euro­pean exter­mi­na­tion camps. When the Nazis fell, Eich­mann fled to Argenti­na where he hoped to live out his days in com­fort­able anonymi­ty, work­ing as a fore­man for Mer­cedes Benz.

The Mossad spent most of the 1950s track­ing him down, then famous­ly got their man in May, 1960. Back in Israel, the philoso­pher Han­nah Arendt cov­ered the Eich­mann tri­al for The New York­er and lat­er reduced the essence of the for­mer SS colonel to a sim­ple phrase: “the banal­i­ty of evil.” Elab­o­rat­ing she said, “The deeds were mon­strous, but the doer—at least, the very effec­tive one now on trial—was quite ordi­nary, com­mon­place, and nei­ther mon­strous nor demon­ic.”

Tak­en from The Spiel­berg Jew­ish Film Archive, the footage above shows you the open­ing moments of the tri­al and tes­ti­mo­ny from Holo­caust sur­vivors. Eich­mann is there too, encased in glass, look­ing as banal as Arendt sug­gest­ed. After 14 weeks of tes­ti­mo­ny, Eich­mann was found guilty of 15 crim­i­nal counts, includ­ing crimes against human­i­ty, and he was hanged in May, 1962 – the only civ­il exe­cu­tion ever car­ried out by the state of Israel.

A new book by Emory his­to­ri­an Deb­o­rah Lip­stadt revis­its the tri­al with the ben­e­fit of some his­tor­i­cal dis­tance. In this video, Lip­stadt reminds us why the tri­al held such impor­tance for the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.