I just found this wonderful little video directed by Dewey Nicks of superstudio for Jade Castrinos (of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros):
There’s something unexpectedly vital about the video that blooms out of Nicks’ decision to use layered live audio where most music videos just stick the studio recordings on top. It’s not the take-away show idea, either, which from the very start was a familiar idea–a stripped-down concert video. This is something new entirely: edited like a music video (which is to say, edited heavily), recorded like a take-away show, you get pulled in to the reverie of the song–eternal, omnipresent, out of time and space, whether you’re on the beach or in a park or getting in your car or following a toddler in a devil-jumpsuit down the stairs, the way a good piece of music lingers under your breath for a day, or a week.
Yesterday, NPR.org’s picture show blog featured the work of Kate Stone. I knew Kate at Bard, but had missed her thesis show; boy, am I grateful to NPR for cluing me in to what I’d missed.
In her most recent work, Kate explores a space with her camera, prints the photos, reconstructs the space in three dimensions, and then re-photographs the scene. In At The Seams, Kate disassembles and reassembles strangers’ houses, leaving doors poking out of the floor and fans reproducing across empty rooms. In Wunderkammer (which translates to ‘cabinet of curiosities’), the stuffed animals at a museum seem to step right out of their displays. (more…)
Devon Sproule’s lovely brand of sweet, sophisticated folk has been a constant companion of mine since high school. Her album Upstate Songs was the first music I ever felt was really mine, my own; music I listened to privately, and shared only after careful consideration, with people I thought might, somehow, understand.
I’m honored to call Devon a friend, and thrilled to announce Ain’t That The Way, our music video inspired by the first track off her upcoming album, ¡Don’t Hurry for Heaven!
See the video here.
Check out Devon’s website here, and her myspace, too.
¡Don’t Hurry for Heaven! is currently a UK import only. Devon’s other albums are all available on iTunes.
We at Saint Eliot are very proud to be based in Boston, where (nearly*) all of us were born and raised. Until now, however, all we’ve had to show for our allegiance to our favorite city is gentle accents and fashion sense reminiscent of most english professors.
But today, I’m very pleased to announce Saint Eliot’s collaboration with Nuestra Communidad Boston and Youthbuild Boston at the launch of their historic partnership, The Greening of Blue Hill Ave.
The Greening of Blue Hill Ave is a new partnership between YouthBuild and Nuestra which aims to reverse the devastation caused in the low income and predominantly minority neighborhoods of Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester by decades of discriminatory banking and insurance practices referred to as redlining.
Saint Eliot and Company is proud to be a partner of these organizations and to assist in their fight to educate, support and empower the people of Boston.
This video was produced by Company filmmakers Matt Paley and Brian Barth, along with frequent Company collaborators Sasha Winters, Christian Kiley, and Jeff Kulig.
See the film here.
Check out the new website for the partnership here. Also, be sure to check out Nuestra’s website, and Youthbuild’s.
____________________________
*Adam is from Oklahoma City. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I hear the barbecue is great.
I just stumbled on (not stumbled upon, thank you–I do my internet research old school) this beautifully executed, remarkably simple Ok Go video. Ok Go went from indie band to… well, bigger indie band, largely because of their wonderful videos, which are marvels of efficiency and flair.
But I’m not embedding this video because of how much I enjoy it (although I do, very much). I’m embedding it because Damian Kulash (the lead singer of Ok Go) is asking us to. All of us. (more…)
Jefferson Bull Fermor, as a boy.
Faith Healer, Adam Hirsch’s 2009 senior thesis film, has been almost as elusive in the past few months as its subject, Jefferson Bull Fermor. No longer! Adam finally taped together the last few pieces and scrounged enough up to get it out. I’m happy to point you to two newly published excerpts from the film.
Much more content to come.
At long last, I’ve located a high quality upload of the infamous Spike Jonze Fully Flared video.
Saki Knafo (of the NYTimes) wrote of Jonze’s short video work:
“There are no clear motivations driving the people in these videos, no explanations for their absurd predicaments, and when you watch them, you might wonder whether Jonze’s own creative decisions were motivated by anything other than an impulse. An implicit question precedes his artistic choices: Wouldn’t it be cool if . . . ? Wouldn’t it be cool if we made Christopher Walken fly? Wouldn’t it be awesome if we rigged a staircase with blast caps?”
Yet I’d argue that this is more than a particularly well-executed Jackass vignette by the co-creator of Jackass. Yeah, it’s cool. But it is the simplicity and restraint–seven tricks in four minutes–that gets me. Unlike Jackass, this isn’t just “wouldn’t it be cool if…” with the cameras rolling; the success of the work is in its execution. The slow motion does triple duty: it cranks up our level of anticipation before the trick, revels in the elegance and grace of movement during, and, after, allows us to examine the shades of exhilaration, determination, and surprise in the faces of the skaters. Credit Lance Accord if you must–certainly, don’t deny him his due–but remember that, in the midst of such chaos, it takes a director of vision to create something beautiful.
It is my privilege to direct your attention to Rickets, a little experiment in abstraction conducted by our very own Brian Barth. Rickets marks Brian’s first foray into landscape filmmaking. It’s also the first full St. Eliot project to appear on our website.
Many more to come.
The trailer for the Tom-Ford-directed-gay-period-suspense-drama, A Single Man, is up on youtube.
Tom Ford–formerly of Gucci, then of, well, Tom Ford–explained to the press during the Venice Film Festival (where the film made its debut) that cinema has been a direction he’s wanted to move in “forever,” and called A Single Man is “the most personal thing I’ve ever done; a pure expression.”
Ms. Longworth, for whom I’ve previously professed my love, gave the film an A- at Toronto, calling it both gorgeous and affecting.
I’m skeptical (more…)
Sad blogosphere news: Karina Longworth, founder of Cinematical and, more recently, head (and only) critic for Spoutblog, is looking for a new internet home. She and Spout have reached the end of their contract agreement and have decided to part ways. I mention this here because Karina is the only reason I read Spoutblog, and Spoutblog is a website that I check daily. Karina’s reviews are–like those of any good critic–not always in accord with my views, but always to my liking. (more…)
I realized this morning that this blog is being misused. That is, underused.
I think it’s because Adam and I view a website as somewhat official—did you hear that everything uploaded to the internet is eternally accessible, in fact just barely hidden, FOREVER? Even if you delete it?—and therefore, not a place to admit that, yes, I had Shanghai Noon on VHS, and no, I’ve never seen La Strada, even though, not a week and a half ago, I acted like I had when Brian talked about it, as I do every time Adam mentions it. Oh, also, I own it. I took the plastic wrap off so that you couldn’t tell it hadn’t been watched. Like Gatsby.
Ahem. I’m here to explode our stiffness once and for all.
(more…)
Our good friends Billy and Jason over at Delicious Design League–otherwise known as the geniuses behind the Bullseye and Faith Healer postcards and posters–are selling the hand-printed posters on their website.
Some Enchanted Summer Evening:
New Movie Shorts by Local Filmmakers Have New England Premiere at the Brattle
Cambridge, July 10, 2009— Consider it a glimpse of things to come.
On July 10th, the Brattle will host two short films by first-time directors. The first, Faith Healer, blurs the line between documentary and fiction. When the faith healer at the center of his documentary disappears, director Adam Hirsch reconstructs his subject’s life through interviews with family and friends. Mr. Hirsch unravels the documentary form, searching for a moment of truth in what he regards as a manipulative and illusory medium. The result is an engrossing mystery, a cunning satire, and, most compellingly, a love story.
The second film, Bullseye, is a keenly observed story about growing up in New England. Writer-director Matt Paley has an eye for the nearly imperceptible changes that accompany the big moments: the private smile of a child who’s suddenly the center of attention; the bounce in the step of a teenager in the glow of a first sexual experience. There are a million shades of heartbreak in there, too. Candid performances from local teenagers breathe new life into the well-worn coming-of-age genre; Mr. Paley crafts a deceptively simple story that is satisfying without becoming sentimental.
Both Mr. Hirsch and Mr. Paley are graduates of Bard College’s experimental film program. Beyond their marked influences (Mr. Paley takes some obvious cues from Bard professor and Wendy and Lucy director Kelly Reichardt, while Mr. Hirsch’s epistemological experiment touches on the work of avant-garde filmmaker/professor Peggy Ahwesh), both directors are concerned with breaking the film form down into its basic elements—image, sound, and language—and exploring the particular powers of each. That Mr. Hirsch uses this as a philosophical stepping-stone, while Mr. Paley is more interested in reshaping a classic story, makes for an enjoyably eclectic evening.
Faith Healer/Bullseye starts at 6 pm, followed immediately by a Q&A with both filmmakers, moderated by local writer Scott Haas. Tickets are $5. For more info, please contact Scott Haas by email at scotthaas@comcast.net, or by phone at 617-497-2114.
[a Letter to Robert Kelly:]
The film that taught me to cultivate silence — or, at least, made me aware of the flesh of the film itself — was Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love. Perhaps Wong Kar Wai doesn’t compare to Vigo or Epstein — his films certainly fall into the category of “sentimental loves stories in celluloid” — but I remember realizing, for the first time, that In the Mood for Love loses nothing from a subtitle-less viewing. I saw, in that, the hope of a fuller, richer, fleshier cinema.
Should cinema attempt to do all of its work visually? The question presupposes something essential to cinema about the moving image–that every art can be reduced to a single heart; painting to color, poetry to words (or, perhaps, their absence), drawing to the line, etc–and that the heart of cinema is not the dream of a complete representation of the world (as Bazin might argue).
Or, on the other hand, is cinema is in the unique position to utilize all of these languages? Should the film-maker, then, search every subject / idea / emotion /
[a Letter to Robert Kelly:]
Many film theorists subscribe to some belief of primacy—the primacy of the image over sound, of image over language, of sound over image, of language over image. My feeling, swayed ever so slightly by a few of these arguments, is that there is some work that each of these languages has more trouble expressing than the others. Some content is best left to the visual (and iconic), some to language (the purely symbolic), and some to sound only (indexical, leaving the audience some work of imagining). Obviously, this neat semiotic differentiation is a gross oversimplification; yet they do all three have different properties and effects.
Too often, in the imitation of ‘real life’, the modern filmmaker uses all three where one will do. It is sensory overload—we comprehend the moment thus created only dimly, and feel our emotions manipulated artlessly. The great filmmaker, utilizing all three languages simultaneously, captures something we already know, and have felt, and allows us to experience it as if for the first time. He searches not for new stories—the greater the filmmaker, in fact, the older the story he tackles—for he knows that he makes every story new and interesting by using these languages in new and unexpected ways.
Let me say now that I too have a theory of primacy: that of feeling over thought. My art is not philosophy; it strains against the intellectual weight of Brakhage and Bresson, and shies away from innovation for its own sake. I stumble in the dark for moments of feeling, for connection and coincidence, and the less thinking I do is most often the better. I idolize Truffaut, and merely tolerate (all but the earliest) Godard. I hold Cassavetes somewhere deep, a fire in my gut. My art will never be about language, or the limitations of language. But I have stories to tell, and the great storytellers do not waste their tools.
It is commonly said that the photographic image cannot convey religious experience. Wasn’t it Maya Deren, after all, who, after be granted access to film the most intimate ceremonies of the voodoo practitioners of Haiti, went back to the United States with hours of footage and wrote an ethnography instead?
And so we discuss with the poet the limitations of poetry, with the musician the limitations of music, with the photographer the limitations of the photographic image.
I think of Cassavetes as embodying all, all that is wrong with film. Brakhage was not an intellectual — his IQ –he proudly boasted– was 84. He was an artist of the senses, specifically sight/vision, and the greatest of those who worked in moving sight in our time. He was not a bougeois pseudo-intellectual (Cassavetes, Truffaut…) trying to tell sentimental love stories in celluloid. Cassavetes is Capra without the happy ending — the film stuff, the actual flesh of film, is equally dull.
If you’re a storyteller, and love film, look at Renoir’s Toni, or Tati’s anything, or Pasolini — the film tells the stories, is not just some not pretty pictures to accompany a script.
