Flex Is Kings

So many great projects to support on Kickstarter. The site's really creating a renaissance for artists who've had no outlet before. Count Flex Is Kings as another great one in the making, certainly worthy of your support.

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We Live in Public

Over on Razorfish's content strategy blog, my companero Rachel Lovinger and I discuss our reaction to Ondi Timoner's new documentary, We Live in Public. We IMed each other, then distilled down our conversation into a blog entry.

Snag Film

Documentary lover? Snag Films lets you watch docs online for free and embed promos for them (or snag them) on your site. Here's their most popular offering, Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me.

Saving the World With Video

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

- Article 19 of UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Tonight, I went to a panel at The New School, entitled "Saving the World, One Video at a Time." Each of the four panelists represented human rights organizations, which focus on the use of video (chiefly in the form of documentaries) to educate and promote social change. A few details about each of the agencies follows:

• Arts Engine - Maintains MediaRights, a database of some 7000 documentaries on the subject of human rights, available to educators, librarians, and activists. It also presents the Media that Matters film festival each June, a showcase for a dozen new short films on human rights issues.

• Human Rights Watch International Film Festival - Human Rights Watch selects documentaries from over 500 submissions to feature in this festival each year. The festival encourages film makers of any age and point of view to submit their work.

• Video Volunteers - a social media network, which focuses on issues pertaining to the poor in rural communities around the world. Maintains Channel 19, an online network for distributing community-produced media in India.

• WITNESS  - Encourages people to create videos about or depicting human rights violations and to submit them via The Hub, a sort of YouTube site for human rights videos.
  

The panel was organized by The Center for Communication and The New School's Department of Media Studies and Film.

Documenting Reality

The International Documentary Association (IDA) has named 25 Best Documentaries, only 13 of which I've seen. So plenty more viewing pleasure to be had. Hoops Dreams is number 1. Is it really that good? Three Michael Moore docs made the list. But only two by Errol Morris. And only one by Werner Herzog? Definitely something wrong there.

Right now, I'm finally watching Wim Wenders' lovely Buena Vista Social Club, which clocks in at number 20 on the IDA list, beating Woodstock, another music-themed entry.

In other documentary news, Gary Hustwit, the director of Helvetica, is working on his next documentary, Objectified, which will be about industrial design. If it's half as good as Helvetica, I'll be in line early for a ticket.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell

"Does a bullet know Christian from Muslim?"
- tagline from Pray the Devil Back to Hell, and a paraphrase from one of the interviewees

I had the opportunity this afternoon to see the excellent documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which one best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. It features several Liberian women, who lead the effort to capture the attention of Charles Taylor and the warlords, who had been terrorizing Liberia. These women banded together and eventually forced Taylor and the warlords to both to dialogue with them and to engage in peace talks with each other. They even played out a real-life version of Lysistrata along the way.

It's a tragic and often harrowing story that also proves extraordinarily inspiring in the end. Watching the film, I wondered what you'd have to do to nominate these incredible women for a Nobel Peace Prize. Because these women certainly went to greater lengths to forge peace than some who have won that prize.

The documentary also focuses on how Christian and Muslim women alike united in their cause, realizing that their common plight as humans had grown far more important to them than their religious differences. So too women from traditionally unfriendly ethnic factions joined together, aligning themselves against the war.

The film-makers have been showing the documentary around the world in similar places that are being torn apart by various factions. And already women are uniting in similar fashion, motivated and empowered by what they've seen.

Now, by the way, with Charles Taylor is on trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity, and Liberia's current President is Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first elected female head of state in Africa's history.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell just won Tribeca's World Documentary Competition. Last year Taxi to the Dark Side won that award and went on to win the Academy Award for best documentary. One can only hope for similar success for this year's winner.

Jihad for Love

I'm trying to determine whether the documentary A Jihad for Love has been released in the United States yet. Apparently not, though it's been released elsewhere and seems to be doing the rounds at college campuses across the country. It's been screened in Turkey and banned in Singapore. Directed by Parvez Sharma and produced by he and Sandi Dubowski, Jihad is a natural companion to Dubowski's excellent documentary Trembling Before G-d about gays within the Orthodox Jewish community. Jihad, of course, concerns the lives of lesbian and gay Muslims. You can follow developments for the film on the director's blog.

Additionally, if you know me and would like to see Trembling Before G-d, I have a copy I'd be happy to loan you. A follow-up documentary Trembling on the Road is also available with the 2-DVD set, which is the one I have.

Update: As noted in the comments, the U.S. release for Jihad for Love is May 21 at IFC here in New York City. Can't wait to see it.

Guantánamo

Bill Moyers gives us a recap of the excellent, if chilling documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. I can't imagine how anyone one could watch it or Michael Winterbottom's film The Road to Guantánamo and not conclude that there's been something terribly wrong and immoral going on down in Cuba.

This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court's ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. What does that mean, "outrages upon human dignity"?
- George Bush

Watch the Taxi to the Dark Side trailer

Update: Apparently, Discovery has dropped plans to air Taxi, since it's considered so controversial. When the truth is too controversial to show the American public, aren't we in a lot of trouble?

Director Alex Gibney:

In refusing to air the film, Discovery is perpetuating what has become the policy of this government: it is ok to employ torture, just not to show it.

Tens

My contribution to the end-of-year top-10 navel-gazing. With everything in one post for the sake of sheer laziness. Reserving the right to make adjustments between now and December 31st. The year ain't over yet! Not necessarily in order of preference (I have to be difficult), though the number ones are my favorite picks.

Movies

Anton Chigurh: What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss.
Gas Station Owner: Sir?
Anton Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.
Gas Station Owner: I don't know. I couldn't say.

- No Country for Old Men

1. No Country for Old Men - just when I thought maybe the Coen brothers were starting to flag, they come back with this astonishing piece of work
   
2. No End in Sight & Taxi to the Dark Side - saw the latter at TriBeCa Film Festival, so its wide release is 2008; ideally both films would be shown back-to-back on primetime television
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - *added 12/27
   
4. Michael Clayton - "I am Shiva, the god of death!"
5. Red Road - which I almost forgot about, but which was excellent, if harrowing
   
6. The Savages - alternately excruciating and hilarious
   
7. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - banner year for Phillip Seymour Hoffman
   
8. After the Wedding
9. This Is England - nobody went to see this - it was sensational
   
10. Helvetica - forgot this gem of documentary - *added 12/27

Update: Knocked out of the top 10

• Superbad - maybe Knocked Up if I'd seen it
• Lars and the Real Girl - better than advertised

Plus these 5 special mentions:

1. Lives of Others - actually an easy selection for near the top of the list, but, technically, I saw it last year
2. Blade Runner - The Final Cut - one of my favorite movies of all time - a sci-fi Casablanca - seeing it in the theater for the first time was a real treat
3. The Bourne Ultimatum - just because the trilogy is such a riot
4. Zodiac - I loved it, but it just didn't stay with me
5. The Wind That Shakes the Barley - as above
   

Plus these 5 I'm sure I'd love if I'd seen them:

1. Persepolis - looks gorgeous and I enjoyed the book
   
2. Rescue Dawn - Werner Herzog can do no wrong
3. Eastern Promises - neither can Cronenberg
   
4. Diving Bell & the Butterfly - nor Schnabel (Update: see above)
   
5. Control - how did I not get around to seeing Anton Corbijn's debut as a director?
   

Albums

Make up something to believe in your heart of hearts
so you have something to wear on your sleeve of sleeves
so you swear you just saw a feathery woman
carry a blindfolded man through the trees
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters

- The National, "Mistaken for Strangers" from Boxer

1. The National - Boxer - sorry, but LCD Soundsystem's had a couple of actual groaners; Boxer only had a song or two that were simply less beautiful than the others
   
2. Joan as Policewoman - Real Life (apparently, this came out last year; feel like this year to me); ravishingly good
   
3. Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur
   
4. Radiohead - In Rainbows
5. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
6. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (well, it was really good)
   
7. Feist - The Reminder
8. Grinderman
9. Blonde Redhead - 23
10. Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!
    

3 more definitely worth your time:

1. Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
2. NIN - Year Zero (partly for it's amazing viral marketing campaign; trust me, I never thought I'd see NIN in any list of mine either)
   
3. Atlas Sound - actually not out until next year; expect great things
   

5 I haven't gotten, but apparently need to:

1. M.I.A.- Kala
2. St. Vincent - Marry Me
3. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Kanye West - Graduation
5. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

Massively over-rated:

• The Good, The Bad, & The Queen
  

Books
Since I make no particular effort to read what's on current best seller lists, this is a list of the top 10 books I read this year, regardless of when they were published.

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you, something inside you. So all you can do is to give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand does not get in, and walk through it, step by step. There is no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverised bones.

- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

1. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
2. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
   
3. Remainder - Tom McCarthy
   
4. Martin Amis - House of Meetings
   
5. Moth Smoke - Mohsin Hamid
   
6. Out - Natsuo Kirino
7. Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
8. The Swallows of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra
9. Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
   
10. The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell - John Crawford

Tell me your favorites in the comments. I wouldn't want to miss anything.

Helvetica!

I love documentaries which focus on obsessions or which focus on one thing to the point of obsession (think Grizzly Man or Fast, Cheap and Out of Control), so I knew I was bound to love Helvetica. This enormously absorbing and amusing documentary traces the history and impact of the Helvetica font, interviewing both fans and caustic critics. It's surprisingly funny and features a great soundtrack, to boot.

I read an article a year or so ago about the psychological reasons behind why men wear khaki pants, and it occurred to me during the film that Helvetica is the khaki pants of fonts. It's a work horse, yes, but it's also eminently safe, it blends in doesn't take any chances. Which explains both why it's become so ubiquitous, but also why some designers despise it. There's a sense in which it's elegant in its simplicity, but it's also a default, when you don't want to ruffle any feathers - or, perhaps, when you aren't creative enough to use more elaborate fonts with confidence. A slew of designers make these points in the film, though, and in far more articulate a fashion than me. They also point out that designers can take using Helvetica as a challenge, taking the limitations it imposes and seeing how they can create something creative within them.

Great points on both sides of the argument. And a documentary well worth your attention if you're a writer, a designer, or a font aficionado.

Darwin's Nightmare

In an interview on the Darwin's Nightmare DVD ,director Hubert Sauper explains the power of the documentary:

We are so full of information ... but we don't have the right type of information in a way ...

What does it mean 5 million dead in the Congo? It's just a number ... You say, OK that's a lot of people. It's far away. It's so many people that you can't imagine. In the east of the Congo is a war since 7 or 8 years that every day as many people die as on the 11th of September in New York. Every day. So September the 11th is happening every day in the east of the Congo. It's so beyond anything you can describe or imagine. ... Most people don't even know the number, but it's not enough to know the number. We need this other type of information which is very processed, which is communicated through art a lot.

Ironically, the art of cinema communicates things that we knew already, but we didn't quite understand, didn't have consciousness. There's this huge gap, this huge missing link between knowledge and understanding ... and real awareness. So cinema can make you aware of something that you knew for 25 years. And suddenly it totally strikes you. And suddenly you go, Jesus, this is something I should have known or this is something I never thought of, but I knew it already.

It's very necessary to have this other type of more subtle and more processed and more poetic information. I think you need the power of poetry to understand the tragedy of our time or the complexity of our time.

Darwin's Nightmare is an excellent, though highly disturbing documentary about how planes fly empty to Lake Victoria in Tanzania only to fly tonnes of fish, perch specifically, out every day for Europeans and Americans who can afford to buy them--this while the villagers in the same area starve. Only sometimes, Sauper reports, those same planes deliver weapons to supply the wars in the same area.

Sauper's earlier documentary Kisangani Diary also appears on the DVD and it includes some of the most devastating imagery of starvation I've ever seen. human beings who appear dead, buried in rubbish, who are only recognized as alive when they open their eyes or move their limbs ever so slightly, too weak to extricate themselves. Horrifically shrunken babies abandoned by their parents, Rwandese refugees who fled the avenging Tutsis.

One can only hope more people will see these documentaries and others like them, dark as their subject matter may be, in the hope that we humans will move collectively, as Sauper suggests, beyond casual knowledge into active understanding, into consciousness.

Shut Down Guantanamo

Via Amnesty International, send a message to the President to shut down Guantanamo.

Also, if you haven't seen it (or if you're wondering what all the huff about Guantanamo is about), check out Michael Winterbottom's excellent amalgam of documentary and film, The Road to Guantanamo. It's out on DVD now.

Top 10 Movies of 2006

Quite late and in semi-intentional, but quite possibly fluid order (don’t ask me to commit! And if you have any complaints, read the subtitle on the blog, which has been there since day one):

10. The Queen - helps if you were raised in a Commonwealth country
9. Road to Guantanamo - strong offering from Michael Winterbottom -howe anyone could watch this and justify our handling of detainees boggles my mind. Oh yeah, no one watched it.
8. Little Miss Sunshine - simply irresistible
7. Volver - another wonderful film from Almodovar - is he capable of making a bad one?
6. Man Push Cart - excellent NY indie probably never coming to a theater near you
5. Deliver Us from Evil/Jesus Camp - two horrific and gripping documentaries about child abuse and, oh yeah, they're both about child abuse in religious circles.
4. L'Enfant - the Dardenne brothers offer another gripping, humanistic fable (see also Le Fils)
3. The Departed - just a whole lot of fun; and unlike some folks, I didn't even mind the ridiculous placement of the rat at the end of the film. Fit the flick's feel entirely.
2. Children of Men - see my review
1. The Aura - I might be one of the few people to include this in a top ten list, let alone at number one (could swap with Children of Men, though) - see my review

Honorable Mentions

Babel - writers act as gods when deciding the fates of their characters and Alejandro González Iñárritu makes for a bit of meanspirited God directing this one - I enjoy Thomas Hardy, for Pete's sake, yet I found the way the characters got repeatedly bludgeoned in this one rather disagreeable. Still, I'm tempted to slide it on up there into the top 10 because I find his filmwork so intoxicating.
Half Nelson - that Ryan Gosling sure can act
Little Children - disturbing and funny - great combination - consider moving into top 10
Miami Vice (confession: my Michael Mann weakness + Gong Li crush = multiple viewings)
Notes on a Scandal - Academy Award for Dame Judi
United 93 - see below
Update: Forgot about 13 (Tzameti), which came out here in 2006, but got a very small release. Excellent B&W film noir from Argentina. I'd even consider adding this to my top ten.

Haven't Seen Yet

The Good Shepherd, The Prestige, Pan's Labyrinth, Letter from Iwo Jima, Iraq in Fragments, Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The Proposition, Army of Shadows, Marie Antoinette, Venus, Dream Girls (and people think I see everything that comes out!) - Update: I've since seen The Good Shepherd and Pan's Labyrinth. Both of which were great, but I'll keep out of the top ten for now.

Overrated

Borat – I laughed a lot, but I guess all the hype killed it for me.
Scanner Darkly – maybe just because I’m such a huge Phillip K. Dick fan, I hate it when people dick around with his work. That said, it did make me laugh, made some pretty good points and loved the fact that he had himself under surveillance – very meta, post-modern, etc.
World Trade Center – I actually thought WTC a pretty gutless film – it only focused in any depth on the lives and families of those officers who survived the WTC scenario Stone depicted. United 93 was a sharp, steel scalpel compared to Stone's flimsy plastic spork. Who’da thought I’d ever say that about Stone? I wasn’t looking for conspiracy theories. Just a real strong dose of reality.
Inside Man - I thoroughly enjoyed this one; just don't think it was that great; and all its twists could be seen an hour off. Hey, I enjoyed Casino Royale, too – the last couple of Bond movies looked like stinkers and I skipped ‘em.

And Honorable Mention for Best Video Perfomance

The comedic stylings of one Stephen Colbert at the National Press Club coupled with George W. Bush at his side. (Over 3 million views on Google Video alone.)

Share the Wealth

Via Positive Sharing comes word that excellent documentary The Corporation has been updated and distributed for free online. Bittorrent away with a clear conscience. And pass on the word.

You might remember that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 was released in a similar fashion shortly before the last election. The Corporation's more even-handed, but just as enraging.

Frank Gehry in NYC

The new Frank Gehry building on the West Side Highway at 18th. It's right on the Hudson, only the dirty great big Chelsea Piers building must block a good view of it from the river.

I also watched the Sydney Pollack documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry this weekend.

I have a soft spot for Gehry's work, despite the criticism from some quarters, so I enjoyed it when Pollack asks Julian Schnabel (who tangentially is looking like the living embodiment of "The Dude" Lebowski) what he'd say if he had to criticize Gehry and Schnabel responds:

I wouldn't criticize him. Because I think it's like flies flying around on the neck of a lion. It's like watching a movie like Apocalypse Now and saying you think that Robert Duvall is over the top.

Also: See Frank Gehry and his design method on The Simpsons (in Spanish!).

I'm Your Man

"There is a crack in everything. That's where the light gets in."
- Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" from 1992's The Future

If you're a fan of Leonard Cohen, I heartily recommend Lian Lunsun's new documentary Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. Lunsun basically threw a concert with folks covering Cohen's considerable oeuvre, filmed it and interviewed those involved. Since U2, Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave, and Antony (of Antony & the Johnsons) among others were invited, the results are eminently watchable. I'm writing a review up for Skyscraper, so look for it (hopefully) in the next issue.

Fear Is Not What's Important

"Fear is not what's important. It's how you deal with it. It's not a matter of whether you feel it. It's how you manage it."

That's James Nachtwey in the excellent 2001 documentary War Photographer directed by Christian Frei. The temper of this subtle, but powerful documentary perfectly mirrors an extraordinary man, who one editor for Der Stern describes as appearing on the battle field in pressed jeans, an immaculate shirt and neatly parted hair. To watch Nachtwey in action is an astonishing thing. Considered the best in his field, he seems utterly unlike any combat photographer (or paparazzo) you could imagine. He's soft spoken, even described as shy, and he remains utterly, utterly calm and quiet in every situation he'd shown in.

Most impressive, however, is the philosophy behind his work:

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance. Yet, that very idea has motivated me.

For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war.

In a way, if an individual assumes the risk of placing himself in the middle of a war in order to communicate to the rest of the world what is happening, he is trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps that is the reason why those in charge of perpetuating a war do not like to have photographers around.

I watched another film this weekend which focuses on the theme of fear: Peter Greengrass's United 93. Like a lot of people, when I first saw the trailer for this movie (it's almost a documentary or cinéma vérité in its style), I was prepared for the worst. When I heard Greengrass was the director, I though maybe he'd pull it off. And he did. It's a tense and horrifying film that left the audience (myself included) largely speechless, as it should, and though there are heroes in the movie, they act as humans, planning on the fly, acting in a rush. There are no stirring aisle-way Agincourt speeches because that's not what happened. That's never what happens, despite what Hollywood's been feeding us for decades.

Still, these men were heroic in the most human sense. They were successful in overcoming their fear and attacking their hijackers, but their success didn't prevent their death. As we know, however, it likely saved the lives of many, many others.