How a Virus Invades Your Body: An Eye-Popping, Animated Look

in Biology | October 4th, 2015

It’s get­ting close to that time of the year again, when the flu starts to wreak hav­oc. And so, with the help of NPR’s Robert Krul­wich and med­ical ani­ma­tor David Bolin­sky, we’re tak­ing an ani­mat­ed look at what actu­al­ly hap­pens when a virus invades your body and tricks a sin­gle cell into mak­ing a mil­lion more virus­es, and how your immune sys­tem even­tu­al­ly deals with the whole mess. It’s a nice demys­ti­fi­ca­tion of phe­nom­e­na that affects our every­day lives. If you feel inclined to get a flu shot after watch­ing this clip, I can’t say that I blame you.

Fol­low us 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 Biol­o­gy Cours­es

What Makes Us Tick? Free Stan­ford Biol­o­gy Course by Robert Sapol­sky Offers Answers

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Akira Kurosawa Painted the Storyboards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Compare Canvas to Celluloid

in Art, Film | October 2nd, 2015

Appre­ci­a­tors of the finest works in cin­e­ma his­to­ry often liken their images to paint­ings. In the case of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, mak­er of quite a few entries on that grand list of the finest works in cin­e­ma his­to­ry, that makes pro­fes­sion­al sense: he began as a painter, only lat­er turn­ing film­mak­er. “When I changed careers,” he writes, “I burnt all the pic­tures that I had paint­ed up until then. I intend­ed to for­get paint­ing once and for all. As a well-known Japan­ese proverb says, ‘If you chase two rab­bits, you may not catch even one.’ I did no art work at all once I began to work in cin­e­ma. But since becom­ing a film direc­tor, I have found that draw­ing rough sketch­es was often a use­ful means of explain­ing ideas to my staff.”

That comes quot­ed on “Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: From Art to Film,” a roundup of such paint­ings by the Emper­or (a nick­name Kuro­sawa earned through his on-set man­ner), set beside the result­ing frames from his movies. “As a painter and film­mak­er, Kuro­sawa stuck to his own style,” writes Pop­mat­ters’ Ian Chant in an exam­i­na­tion of this facet of his career, “informed heav­i­ly by tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese paint­ing as well as Euro­pean impres­sion­ists and expres­sion­ists, anoth­er are­na of art where he answered to both east­ern and west­ern influ­ences. These painstak­ing­ly craft­ed paint­ings formed the visu­al back­bone of some of Kurosawa’s most last­ing achieve­ments.”

The most vivid exam­ples of can­vas-turned-cel­lu­loid come from Kuro­sawa’s lat­er works, such as 1980’s Kage­musha, 1985’s Ran, 1990’s Dreams, and 1993’s Mada­dayo, selec­tions from each of which you see in this post. “I can­not help but be fas­ci­nat­ed by the fact that when I tried to paint well, I could only pro­duce mediocre pic­tures,” con­tin­ues the Emper­or him­self. “But when I con­cen­trat­ed on delin­eat­ing the ideas for my films, I uncon­scious­ly pro­duced works that peo­ple find inter­est­ing.” Hold­ing the paint­ed work up against his film work, only the strictest cin­e­ma purist could deny that, ulti­mate­ly, Kuro­sawa caught both rab­bits.

Jux­ta­pose more paint­ed sto­ry­boards and frames from films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paint­ings of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s 80-Minute Mas­ter Class on Mak­ing “Beau­ti­ful Movies” (2000)

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. 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.

The Guggenheim Puts Online 1700 Great Works of Modern Art from 625 Artists

in Art | October 2nd, 2015

If you were to ask me in my cal­low years as a young art stu­dent to name my favorite painter, I would have answered with­out a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky. His the­o­ret­i­cal bent, his mys­ti­cism, his seem­ing­ly near total cre­ative inde­pen­dence…. There were times when Kandin­sky the thinker, writer, and teacher appealed to me even more than Kandin­sky the painter. This may go a ways toward explain­ing why I left art school after my first year to pur­sue writ­ing and teach­ing. But nowa­days, hav­ing seen a tiny bit more of the world and its boun­ti­ful artis­tic trea­sures, I might pause for just a moment if asked about my favorite painter… then I’d answer: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky.

If you want to see the pio­neer­ing abstract expressionist’s art in the Unit­ed States, your best bet is to get your­self to New York’s famed Guggen­heim, which has a ver­i­ta­ble trea­sure chest of Kandinsky’s work that doc­u­ments his tran­si­tion from paint­ings and wood­cuts inspired by Russ­ian folk art and French fau­vism to com­plete­ly non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al can­vas­es made entire­ly of inter­sect­ing lines, shapes, and colors—his own pri­vate sym­bol­o­gy.

But if you can’t make it to New York, then just head on over to the Guggenheim’s online col­lec­tion, where the muse­um has dig­i­tized “near­ly 1600 art­works by more than 575 artists.” This is the most sweep­ing move toward greater acces­si­bil­i­ty since the pri­vate col­lec­tion went pub­lic in 1937. You’ll find ear­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al Kandin­skys; tran­si­tion­al Kandin­skys like Sketch for Com­po­si­tion II from 1909-10 (top)—with still rec­og­niz­able favorite motifs of his, like the horse and rid­er embed­ded in them; and you’ll find much more abstract Kandin­skys like 1913’s Light Pic­ture, above, show­ing his move even far­ther away from Matisse and Russ­ian folks and clos­er to an inim­itable indi­vid­ual aes­thet­ic like that of Joan Miró or Paul Klee.

Speak­ing of Klee, anoth­er of my favorites, you’ll also find the sketch above, from 1895, before he began his for­mal train­ing in Munich. It’s a far cry from his mature style—a prim­i­tive min­i­mal­ism that drew inspi­ra­tion from children’s art. If you know any­one who looks at abstract art and says, “I could do that,” show them the draw­ing above and ask if they could do this. Painters like Kandin­sky and Klee, who worked and exhib­it­ed togeth­er, first learned to ren­der in more rig­or­ous­ly for­mal styles before they broke every rule and made their own. It’s a nec­es­sary part of the dis­ci­pline of art.

Of the three artists I’ve men­tioned thus far, it is per­haps Miró who moved far­thest away from any sem­blance of clas­si­cal train­ing. In works like Per­son­age (above), the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist achieved his “assas­si­na­tion of paint­ing” and the real­ist bour­geois val­ues he detest­ed in Euro­pean art. Piet Mon­dri­an, anoth­er artist who com­plete­ly rad­i­cal­ized paint­ing, did so by mov­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion, towards a for­mal­ism so exact­ing as to be almost chill­ing. But like all mod­ern artists, Mon­dri­an learned the clas­si­cal rules before he tore them up for good, as evi­denced by his draw­ing below, Chrysan­the­mum, from 1908-09.

Of course you won’t only find artists from the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry in the Guggenheim’s online col­lec­tion. This just hap­pens to be one of my favorite peri­ods, and the Guggen­heim is most famous for its mod­ernist col­lec­tion. But you’ll also find work from more con­tem­po­rary provo­ca­teurs like Mari­na Abramović and Ai Wei­wei, as well as from ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry pro­to-impres­sion­ists like Camille Pis­sar­ro. (See Pis­sar­ro’s 1867 The Her­mitage at Pon­toise below.)  And if you find your­self want­i­ng more con­text, the Guggen­heim has made it easy to give your­self a thor­ough edu­ca­tion in mod­ern art. As we’ve not­ed before, between 2012 and 2014, the muse­um placed over 100 art cat­a­logues online, includ­ing a col­lec­tion called “The Syl­labus,” fea­tur­ing books by the museum’s first cura­tor. Look­ing for a way of under­stand­ing that weird phe­nom­e­non known as mod­ern art? Look no fur­ther, the Guggenheim’s got you cov­ered.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Guggen­heim Puts 109 Free Mod­ern Art Books Online

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

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

A Short, Powerful Animation on Addiction: Watch Andreas Hykade’s Nuggets

in Animation, Life, Psychology | October 2nd, 2015

From Andreas Hykade, the Direc­tor of the Ani­ma­tion and Visu­al Effects pro­gram at Germany’s Fil­makademie Baden-Würt­tem­berg, comes a short ani­mat­ed film called Nuggets. Things start off innocu­ous­ly, with a kiwi tak­ing a casu­al stroll down a road, even­tu­al­ly encoun­ter­ing and tast­ing some gold­en nuggets. The nuggets are deli­cious, it turns out, too deli­cious to resist. Then [spoil­er alert!] things take a dark turn, as we watch our friend­ly kiwi sink into addic­tion and despair. In an inter­view con­duct­ed by the Ani­ma­tion World Net­work, Hykade says that he cre­at­ed the film for young teenagers who might be tempt­ed one day (pre­sum­ably by drugs). And when that day comes, he hopes they’ll think about Nuggets and its strik­ing, stripped-down mes­sage about addic­tion and the life it brings.

You can watch more ani­ma­tions by Hykade on his web site. And find more thought-pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions in our 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 io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

The Falling Water: A Rube Goldberg Machine That Makes a Fine Cocktail

in Creativity, Food & Drink, Random | October 2nd, 2015

Joseph Her­sch­er, a kinet­ic artist from New Zealand, has a knack for mak­ing some pret­ty imag­i­na­tive Rube Gold­berg machines. Back in 2012, we showed you The Page Turn­er, a device that gives cre­ative assis­tance to any­one still read­ing news­pa­pers in a print for­mat. Next week, we’ll hope­ful­ly get a chance to fea­ture his most recent con­trap­tion. (Stay tuned for more on that.) But for now, as we head into the week­end, let’s admire The Falling Water, Her­scher’s cock­tail-mak­ing machine that plays on the name of a famous Frank Lloyd Wright cre­ation. You can watch it go above. And for those who want to play along at home, here is the recipe for the drink:

- 30mls (1Oz) 42BELOW Fei­joa Vod­ka
— Ch’i or Lemon­ade
— Long slice of seed­less cucum­ber
— Ice

Cut a long thin piece of cucum­ber on a diag­o­nal.
Rest it against the inside of a High­ball glass.
Fill the glass with ice, add 42BELOW Fei­joa.
Top with Ch’i or Lemon­ade.

Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Tour of Falling­wa­ter, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Cre­ations

The Page Turn­er: A Fab­u­lous Rube Gold­berg Machine for Read­ers

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Con­ju­gates “to Cock­tail,” the Ulti­mate Jazz-Age Verb (1928)

The Complete Star Wars “Filmumentary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Documentary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Commentary

in Film | October 2nd, 2015

Who owns Star Wars, George Lucas or the fans?

The short answer now, of course, is… Dis­ney… and maybe J.J. Abrams. Giv­en the explo­sion of fran­chis­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing begun by the com­ing tidal wave of new Star Wars films under Disney’s aegis, it will some­day be dif­fi­cult to con­vince young­sters that things were ever oth­er­wise.

But in my day [insert old man wag­ging fin­ger here] the crit­i­cal debate was between Lucas and the fans. I’m pret­ty sure the fans won. The world-build­ing of Star Wars will out­last its cre­ator and its first cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of devot­ed view­ers, and the grand tra­di­tion of Star Wars fan films—begun almost imme­di­ate­ly after the first Star Wars’ release with the fond par­o­dy “Hard­ware Wars”—will live on. Star Wars fan films even have their own annu­al awards pro­gram.

There are many micro-gen­res of Star Wars fan film: Ani­me, Silent, Crowd-sourced, Action Fig­ure, etc. Today we bring you per­haps the best exam­ple in the Doc­u­men­tary cat­e­go­ry, a “Com­plete Fil­mu­men­tary” by film­mak­er Jamie Ben­ning. Although pre­sent­ed here in order of the first three Star Wars movies, this stel­lar exam­ple of fan craft and devo­tion actu­al­ly began in 2006 with the film right above, Build­ing Empire, which offers over two hours of “video clips, audio from cast and crew, alter­nate angles, recon­struct­ed scenes, text facts and insights into the devel­op­ment and cre­ation of The Empire Strikes Back.

Next, in 2007, came Return­ing to Jedi, anoth­er exhaus­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of out­takes, behind-the-scenes moments, audio com­men­tary, tech­ni­cal details, and triv­ia from the first trilogy’s final film. Final­ly, in 2011, Ben­ning com­plet­ed his fan doc­u­men­tary tril­o­gy with Star Wars Begins at the top. “If you’ve nev­er seen the delet­ed scenes of Jab­ba the Hutt or Big­gs Dark­lighter on Tatooine, or heard David Prowse say­ing Vader’s dia­logue,” says the film’s press release, “then you will get a real kick out of this. Many reviews and com­ments have cen­tered on the fact that it’s like watch­ing your favourite movie but from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.”

It’s also at times like watch­ing what Star Wars might look like in an alter­nate uni­verse. Some delet­ed scenes and ear­ly demo footage show us plot points and char­ac­ters we nev­er knew exist­ed. In Star Wars Begins, for exam­ple, we see an ear­ly black and white silent edit, known as the “Lost Cut,” and fea­tur­ing a droid named “Tread­well” who resem­bles Short Circuit’s John­ny 5. As fan films demon­strate, again and again into seem­ing eter­ni­ty, the Star Wars uni­verse is infi­nite­ly malleable—despite con­stant bick­er­ing over canon—and offers end­less rich­es for imag­i­na­tive plun­der. And for that we’ll always have the films’ orig­i­nal cre­ators to thank. Benning’s painstak­ing­ly-edit­ed doc­u­men­taries show us the incred­i­ble amount of work that went into build­ing the world of Star Wars, a world that shows no signs of ever com­ing to an end.

Jen­ning’s fil­mu­men­taries will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of The Empire Strikes Back Show­cased on Long-Lost Dutch TV Doc­u­men­tary

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Frei­heit, George Lucas’ Short Stu­dent Film About a Fatal Run from Com­mu­nism (1966)

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

As Benevolent Dictator, Vladimir Nabokov Would Abolish Muzak & Bidets: What Would Make Your List?

in Literature, Random | October 1st, 2015

In 1969, the BBC’s James Moss­man con­duct­ed an exten­sive inter­view with Vladimir Nabokov, which was first pub­lished in a mag­a­zine called The Lis­ten­er, and lat­er in a book enti­tled Strong Opin­ions. Some of Moss­man­’s ques­tions were seri­ous: “You’ve said that you’ve explored time’s prison and have found no way out. Are you still explor­ing…? Some were lighter: “Why do you live in hotels?” (Answer here.) And still oth­er ques­tions fell some­where in between, like: “If you ruled any mod­ern indus­tri­al state absolute­ly, what would you abol­ish?” It turns out that loud nois­es, muzak, bidets, and insec­ti­cides made the great nov­el­ist and lep­i­dopter­ist’s list.

Which rais­es the ques­tion, if allowed to play benev­o­lent dic­ta­tor for a day, what would you oblit­er­ate? Me? I’d prob­a­bly start with almost any­thing like­ly to appear in today’s Bill­board Top 5 — dreck that’s not too far from muzak.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

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

Hear 150 Tracks Highlighting Brian Eno’s Career as a Musician, Composer & Producer & Stream His 2015 John Peel Lecture

in Art, Music, Radio | October 1st, 2015

How does “non-musi­cian” musi­cian, for­mer Roxy Music mem­ber, Talk­ing Heads, U2, and Cold­play pro­duc­er, and visu­al artist Bri­an Eno define art itself? “Every­thing that you don’t have to do.” He has expand­ed elo­quent­ly on that sim­ple but high­ly clar­i­fy­ing notion in speech and writ­ing many times over the past cou­ple of decades, and this past Sun­day he made it the intel­lec­tu­al cen­ter­piece of the fifth annu­al John Peel Lec­ture, a series named for the influ­en­tial BBC DJ and whose past speak­ers have includ­ed Pete Town­shend, Bil­ly Bragg, Char­lotte Church, and Iggy Pop.

You can hear Eno’s intro­duc­tion to his talk at the top of the post, stream the talk itself with­in the next 25 days at the BBC’s site, and read a tran­script here. All of the John Peel Lec­tur­ers so far have dis­cussed the rela­tion­ship between music and wider human cul­ture, and Eno has plen­ty of sto­ries to tell about his own career in both music and the wider cul­tur­al realm: the impor­tance of his time in art school, how he fell into per­form­ing with Roxy Music, how a relax­ation of the band’s “strict non-drug” pol­i­cy result­ed in one “hilar­i­ous­ly chaot­ic” per­for­mance, and how John Peel him­self pre­miered his first album with Robert Fripp on the radio — by acci­den­tal­ly play­ing it back­ward.

All this will inspire even the most Eno-famil­iar fan to revis­it the man’s cat­a­log of record­ed works, which you can eas­i­ly do with the Spo­ti­fy playlist “Touched by the Hand of Eno,” fea­tur­ing “150 tracks hand­picked from 150 albums/EPs/singles that cred­it Eno as com­pos­er, instru­men­tal­ist, vocal­ist, mix­ing engi­neer, or pro­duc­er, sort­ed in chrono­log­i­cal order.” (If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you’ll find it here.) The playlist includes cuts from Eno’s own albums, of course, but also those of Roxy Music, Gen­e­sis, Ultra­vox, David Bowie, Talk­ing Heads, U2, Depeche Mode, Lau­rie Ander­son, Cold­play, and many more. And after you’ve vir­tu­al­ly flipped through these selec­tions from Eno’s body of work, you can watch Eno flip through phys­i­cal selec­tions from Peel’s library of records just above. Sure, you don’t have to do any of this — if any­one can explain to you why you should, Eno can.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

Revis­it the Radio Ses­sions and Record Col­lec­tion of Ground­break­ing BBC DJ John Peel

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Lis­ten to “Bri­an Eno Day,” a 12-Hour Radio Show Spent With Eno & His Music (Record­ed in 1988)

When Bri­an Eno & Oth­er Artists Peed in Mar­cel Duchamp’s Famous Uri­nal

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. 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.

The Night Ed Sullivan Scared a Nation with the Apocalyptic Animated Short, A Short Vision (1956)

in Film, History, Television | October 1st, 2015

On May 27, 1956, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans tuned in to The Ed Sul­li­van Show, expect­ing the usu­al vari­ety of come­di­ans, tal­ents and musi­cal guests. What they weren’t pre­pared for was a short ani­mat­ed film that Sul­li­van intro­duced thus­ly:

Just last week you read about the H‑bomb being dropped. Now two great Eng­lish writ­ers, two very imag­i­na­tive writ­ers — I’m gonna tell you if you have young­sters in the liv­ing room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fan­ta­sy, the whole thing is ani­mat­ed — but two Eng­lish writ­ers, Joan and Peter Foldes, wrote a thing which they called “A Short Vision” in which they won­dered what might hap­pen to the ani­mal pop­u­la­tion of the world if an H‑bomb were dropped. It’s pro­duced by George K. Arthur and I’d like you to see it. It is grim, but I think we can all stand it to real­ize that in war there is no win­ner.

And with that, he screened the hor­rif­ic bit of ani­ma­tion you can watch above. At the height of the atom­ic age, this film was a short sharp shock. Its vision of a nuclear holo­caust is told in the style of a fable or sto­ry­book, with both ani­mals and humans wit­ness­ing their last moments on earth, and end­ing with the extin­guish­ing of a tiny flame. The most­ly sta­t­ic art work is all the more effec­tive when faces melt into skulls.

Many chil­dren didn’t leave the room of course, and the web­site Conel­rad has a won­der­ful in-depth his­to­ry of that night and col­lect­ed mem­o­ries from peo­ple who were trau­ma­tized by the short as a child. One child’s hair–or rather a small sec­tion of his hair–turned white from fright.

It was as for­ma­tive a moment as The Day After would be to chil­dren of the ‘80s. The papers the next day report­ed on the short in sala­cious detail (“Shock Wave From A‑Bomb Film Rocks Nation’s TV Audi­ence”) and Sul­li­van not only defend­ed his deci­sion, but showed the film again on June 10.

The film was cre­at­ed by mar­ried cou­ple Peter and Joan Foldes, and shot for lit­tle mon­ey in their kitchen on a makeshift ani­ma­tion table. Peter was a Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who had stud­ied at the Slade School of Art and the Court­laud Insti­tute and appren­ticed with John Halas where he learned ani­ma­tion.

(Halas is best known for the ani­mat­ed fea­ture ver­sion of Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm.)

A Short Vision would go on in Sep­tem­ber of that year to win best exper­i­men­tal film at the 17th Venice Film Fes­ti­val. (Peter Foldes would lat­er make anoth­er dis­turb­ing and award-win­ning short called Hunger.)

Once so shock­ing, A Short Vision fell out of cir­cu­la­tion. But a gen­er­a­tion grew up remem­ber­ing that they had seen some­thing hor­rif­ic on tele­vi­sion that night (in black and white, not the col­or ver­sion above.) For a time, it was hard to find a men­tion of the film on IMDB and a dam­aged edu­ca­tion­al print was one of the few copies cir­cu­lat­ing around. For­tu­nate­ly the British Film Insti­tute has made a pris­tine copy avail­able of this impor­tant Cold War doc­u­ment.

What we want to know is this: Did Steven Spiel­berg see this movie that Sun­day night in 1956? He would have been 10 years old.

A Short Vision will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via A Wast­ed Life

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lyn­de & the Orig­i­nal Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sul­li­van Show (1961)

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­men­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

It’s Banned Books Week: Listen to Allen Ginsberg Read His Famously Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Francisco, 1956

in Books, Literature, Poetry | September 30th, 2015

Accord­ing to Ruth Gra­ham in Slate, Banned Books Week is a “crock,” an unnec­es­sary pub­lic   indul­gence since “there is basi­cal­ly no such thing as a ‘banned book’ in the Unit­ed States in 2015.” And though the aware­ness-rais­ing week’s spon­sor, the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, has shift­ed its focus to book cen­sor­ship in class­rooms, most of the chal­lenges posed to books in schools are sil­ly and eas­i­ly dis­missed. Yet, some oth­er cas­es, like that of Perse­po­lis—Mar­jane Satrapi’s graph­ic nov­el mem­oir of her Iran­ian child­hood dur­ing the revolution—are not. The book was pulled from Chica­go Pub­lic School class­rooms (but not from libraries) in 2013.

Even now, teach­ers who wish to use the book in class­es must com­plete “sup­ple­men­tal train­ing.” The osten­si­bly objec­tion­able con­tent in the book is no more graph­ic than that in most his­to­ry text­books, and it’s easy to make the case that Perse­po­lis and oth­er chal­lenged mem­oirs and nov­els that offer per­spec­tives from oth­er coun­tries, cul­tures, or polit­i­cal points of view have inher­ent edu­ca­tion­al val­ue. One might be tempt­ed to think that school offi­cials pulled the book for oth­er rea­sons. Per­haps we need Banned Books Week after all.

Anoth­er, per­haps fuzzi­er, case of a “banned” book—or poem—from this year involves a high school teacher’s fir­ing over his class­room read­ing of Allen Gins­berg’s porno­graph­ic poem “Please Mas­ter.” The case of “Please Mas­ter” should put us in mind of a once banned book writ­ten by Gins­berg: epic Beat jere­mi­ad “Howl.” When the poem’s pub­lish­er, Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, attempt­ed to import British copies of the poem in 1957, the books were seized by cus­toms, then he and his busi­ness part­ner were arrest­ed and put on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. After writ­ers and aca­d­e­mics tes­ti­fied to the poem’s cul­tur­al val­ue, the judge vin­di­cat­ed Fer­linghet­ti, and “Howl.”

But the tri­al demon­strat­ed at the time that the gov­ern­ment reserved the right to seize books, stop their pub­li­ca­tion and sale, and keep mate­r­i­al from the read­ing pub­lic if it so chose. As with this year’s dust-up over “Please Mas­ter,” the agents who con­fis­cat­ed “Howl” sup­pos­ed­ly object­ed to the sex­u­al con­tent of Gins­berg’s poem (and like­ly the homo­sex­u­al con­tent espe­cial­ly). But that rea­son­ing could also have been cov­er for oth­er objec­tions to the poem’s polit­i­cal con­tent. “Howl,” after all, was very sub­ver­sive in its day, and in a way served as a kind of man­i­festo against the sta­tus quo. It had a “cat­a­clysmic impact,” writes Fred Kaplan, “not just on the lit­er­ary world but on the broad­er soci­ety and cul­ture.”

We’ve fea­tured var­i­ous read­ings of “Howl” in the past, and if you’ve some­how missed hear­ing those, nev­er heard the poem read at all, or nev­er read the poem your­self, then con­sid­er dur­ing this Banned Books Week tak­ing the time to read it and hear it read—by the poet him­self. You can hear the first record­ed read­ing by Gins­berg, in 1956 at Port­land’s Reed Col­lege. You can hear anoth­er impas­sioned Gins­berg read­ing from 1959. And above, hear Gins­berg read the poem in 1956, in San Fran­cis­co, where it was first pub­lished and where it stood tri­al.

You can also hear Gins­berg fan James Franco—who played the poet in a film called Howl—read the poem over a visu­al­ly strik­ing ani­ma­tion of its vivid imagery. And if Gins­berg isn’t your thing, con­sid­er check­ing out the ALA’s list of chal­lenged or banned books for 2014–2015. (I could cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend Perse­po­lis.) While pro­hibit­ing books from the class­room may seem a far cry from gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship, Banned Books Week reminds us that many peo­ple still find cer­tain kinds of books deeply threat­en­ing, and should push us to ask why that is.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

Find great poems in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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