Shooting Down Pictures

I love that Roger Ebert’s Twitter wallpaper is the last shot of one of my all time favorite films. But of course, it was his writing that turned me on to it.

I’m grateful for his acknowledgement, and even more grateful for the article that drew his attention, on, of all places, The Wall Street Journal. Thanks Eric Kohn for deeming my efforts newsworthy.

And update on Thursday’s screening: half the seats have been reserved, so if you’re thinking of coming, you might want to let me know to put you on the list, just in case…

http://calendar.swarthmore.edu/calendar/EventList.aspx?fromdate=3/24/2010&todate=4/22/2010&display=Month&type=public&eventidn=5891&view=EventDetails&information_id=19176

On Tuesday March 30 at Swarthmore College, Vice President of Programming Kevin B. Lee will speak about issues in contemporary Chinese cinema and his work with dGenerate Films.

Following Mr. Lee’s talk will be a screening of Fujian Blue, a 2007 film by Weng Shouming, that has played in various international film festivals and won the Dragons and Tigers Award at the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival.

The China Film Journal writes that the film is “an absorbing narrative of deeply felt characters, a trenchant social commentary, and a tone poem to a nearly-lost generation.”

Admission Free. Sponsored by SAO as part of the APIA Heritage Month, Film and Media Studies program, FFS, Movie Committee and FOTS.

Location Information:
Science Center, Room 101
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore, PA

I’m pleased to announce that the Shooting Down Pictures Fansub Challenge has a winner. Peaceful Anarchy answered my call to produce English fansubs for the mile-a-minute dialogue for Luis Garcia Berlanga’s Placido, and has thus earned the $150 prize ($10 more than I advertised! I really need to pay more attention to my own blog).

You can download the .srt file by right-clicking here. It’s also been uploaded to some movie file share sites, which are where you can find the movie itself. Feel free to give feedback on both the movie and the subs – I think this film is an absolute masterpiece and hope that others feel the same.

My, it’s been quiet here for some time. What have I been up to? I guess things fell off on this blog about the time I went to Berlin – so maybe I should link to my coverage for The Auteurs. You’ll note special attention paid to the films of Yasujiro Shimazu and to the Forum Expanded installations, both of which were the most exciting things I saw in Berlin. Here’s a video I shot of the James Benning installation Tulare Road (hope he doesn’t mind), which is particularly amusing for one German infant’s interactive participation with it:

LOVE STREAMS (dir. John Cassavetes, 1984)

WHEN: 6:45 pm, Monday 29 March 2010
WHERE: Room 471, 20 Cooper Square (Bowery and East 5th)
ALL WELCOME.  Refreshments – stiff, copious – provided.

“Making a film has been compared, by many good directors, to a love affair.  What hasn’t been said is that this film, the recipient of the love, is the victim of an organized orgy.” (Cassavetes)

LOVE STREAMS is John Cassavetes’s last film.  He made it as he was dying of cirrhosis of the liver.  Critically disavowed, yanked off screens after just a few weeks, only briefly available on video in the States, it’s the story of the close relationship between Robert, a feckless lush (played by Cassavetes) who’s “writing a book on night life”, and Sarah (Cassavetes’s real-life wife Gena Rowlands), who describes herself as a “very happy person”.  Both are alive, lonely, lost.  Both, in their different ways, are quietly howling with grief.  Then comes the goat.

John Cassavetes’s films, Jim Jarmusch has written, are about “love, about trust and mistrust, about isolation, joy, sadness, ecstasy and stupidity”.  For that reason, their stylistic distinctiveness, and for their fierce and galvanic independence, they’ve long been touchstones for equally fierce, equally galvanic directors such as Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas and Pedro Almodovar.  LOVE STREAMS, in its rawness and desperation, its wild-eyed confrontation with human isolation and need, is hard to watch and equally hard to look away from.

LOVE STREAMS will be presented by Kevin B. Lee, a critic, filmmaker, and programming executive for dGenerate Films, a digital distribution channel for Chinese independent films. He contributes to ‘Time Out New York’, ‘Cineaste’, ‘The Moving Image Source’, and his blog Shooting Down Pictures, among other publications.

Part of the series THE SPEED OF YOUR HAIR: A series on love. Organized by Sukhdev Sandhu and The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture.

To think that it’s been over a year since the YouTube shakedown of 2009, when I temporarily lost my account during a particularly zealous effort to manage the content on YouTube containing copyrighted material, such as my video essays.  Well here we are a year later, and if anything there is even more copyrighted stuff to be found on the site – and we’re not just talking videos like mine that re-appropriate media, but entire feature films.

Continue Reading »

Due to unforeseen circumstances the screening of Love Streams has been postponed to a later date. Will announce once it is scheduled.

Fantasmagorie (1908) by Émile Cohl

100 Important Directors of Animated Short Films:  Background

This list of 100 important directors of animated short films was assembled in late 2008 to serve as a complement to “Brief Encounters,” a proposed list of 250 great short films (both animated and live-action) which was to be developed by the folks at the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? website.  Unfortunately, that 250-film list is in limbo, leaving our list without a home.

The “100 Important Directors of Animated Short Films” list is not intended to be comprehensive.  These are simply 100 directors whom we feel are important and deserving of increased recognition by film lovers.  For each director, we selected three “highly recommended” movies.  In addition, we included a category of “TSPDT 250 Greatest Shorts” to highlight any of these directors’ films which were tentatively slated to place on the abandoned Brief Encounters list.

This project was facilitated by Lee Price (lee-109) on the IMDb Classic Film message board.  Project team:  Lee Price, Robert Reynolds (Illtdesq), Jorge Didaco (jdidaco), Bill Kamberger (bkamberger), and Rob Tomshany (RobT-2), with additional input from animation fans on the IMDb Classic Film message board. Continue Reading »

While video essays have been the majority of my creative output for the past couple of years, I still keep a hand in other types of video production, especially when it’s for a good cause. I just received word that a video I produced for the Sikh Coalition has been accepted to the Spinning Wheel Film Festival in Toronto, September 25-27. The video, “From the Classroom to the Capitol” was produced for the Sikh Coalition’s first annual awards gala earlier in August.  It was posted on the Coalition’s YouTube page this week, and apparently the Spinning Wheel Festival caught it and liked it enough to add to their program.

I’ve been involved with the Sikh Coalition and the Sikh community for several years now, most notably through the production of a short documentary “Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity.” I’ve done a lot of work with the Coalition in building up their capacity to make videos on their own, thanks to a grant from Manhattan Neighborhood Network. The Sikh community remains one of the most misunderstood people in the U.S. and the victim of ongoing bias and hate attacks, often violent ones. The Sikh Coalition has done much since 9/11 to combat prejudice, defend people’s civil rights and educate the nation at large about the Sikh identity. I am extremely proud to be involved in these efforts.

Here’s the new video “From the Classroom to the Capitol”:

It’s been exactly two years since Ingmar Bergman passed away at the age of 89, leaving us with dozens of films, many of which are considered among the greatest ever made. On the anniversary of his death, it’s my privilege to present a compilation of the most valuable resources on Bergman available online, as well as ten of the most illuminating quotes about him, from filmmakers, scholars, and Bergman himself.

This array of information was compiled by a longtime friend on the IMDb Classic Film Boards who goes by the handle Antonius Block. Back when I was a regular on those boards Antonius was widely regarded as the person to go to about all things Bergman. Back then I was a bit of a Bergman naysayer, and Antonius patiently weathered many a row with me over some of his favorite films. Over time I’ve come to appreciate Bergman’s special qualities, much of which is reflected in the links and text that Antonius has resourcefully assembled: