Archive for documentaries
3.22.10
the great white northern lights
This beautifully shot doc just premiered at SXSW. S’gonna be gooood. (That Jack sure wears a kilt well.) The Playlist raves…
Raw, rough-hewn and yet roaring with an electric vitality Emmet Malloy’s “The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights” is the blueprint for music docs that all filmmakers should strive for: ones that are loose, feel like they have a sense of danger to them and crackle with life. Without spoiling too much, the concluding, wordless scene is flooring. On the 10th anniversary of the band’s existence — still to this date their last show ever played so far — Jack White takes to a piano, exhausted, to play “White Moon.” It’s not for anyone other than Jack himself and Meg who quietly saddles up next to him on the piano bench. As White moans through the devastating catharsis of the song, Meg begins to gently weep as Malloy’s team silently captures the moment. It’s utterly breathtaking and quivers with emotion and magical, unspoken depth. Did the band break up in that moment? (That’s the rumor, they haven’t played since). It is a goodbye or happy tiresome tears for 10 years on the road or just of the moment? We may never know and it’s as beautiful a scene as anything burned onto celluloid we’ve seen this year.
10.30.09
collapse
This is the documentary I wanted to make after I finished my Buckley film back in 2003. I even begun pre-production on it with a friend. It was going to be called “The Shift.” However, my research was so depressing and so overwhelming (and so frightening after I spoke with a man who worked consulted for a Pentagon think tank), I decided it best for my mental health not to immerse myself in this material for several years. Thankfully, Chris Smith did! Smith, one of my inspirations (he made one of my all time favorite docs, American Movie), has taken on a subject – THE subject – that I have been obsessed with for the past decade… the collapse of society as we know it. If you know me, then I’ve already chewed your ear about this a million times. And, I’m not talking about a collapse unfolding over the next few decades, but a radical spike in chaos over the next few years culminating in some pretty wild stuff that acts as a catalyst for systemic change. I truly believe that we all happen to be alive at the apex of a cycle that’s been winding to a close for hundreds (maybe thousands of years.) It’s like those of us who are alive at this juncture in history have won a bizarre lottery. This is no longer a slow unfolding, it’s the official turn of the tide.
Collapse, while highlighting the chaotic scenario as independent writer/researcher Michael Ruppert sees it, will also inevitably venture into what “knowing” this kind of information does to a person like Ruppert. Once you look behind the curtain of what mass media presents and investigate what’s really going on inside all of our major institutions from the Federal Reserve to Agribusiness, it’s enough to make even the most staunch optimists cynical, hopeless and paranoid. And, honestly, just because the word *conspiracy* is uttered around some of these topics, does not mean we should throw out the baby with the bath water. There are half-truths, lies and manipulations everywhere these days. Sometimes we have to open ourselves up to selective bits & pieces of conspiracies in order not to qualify as fools. It’s a delicate balance. My only worry is that the film is not going to delve into why this coming collapse will, ultimately, be one of the best things that could happen for this world – even if it’s going to be a rough ride for a bit – but I will save the post collapse discussion for another day!
This is definitely one of the must-see documentaries of the year. (It’s getting stellar reviews.) GO SEE THIS FILM when it opens on November 6th and we’ll talk…
6.6.09
food, inc.
Viva la food revolution!
With a constituency limited to anyone who eats, “Food, Inc.” is a civilized horror movie for the socially conscious, the nutritionally curious and the hungry. Yes, it has a deceptively cheery palette, but helmer Robert Kenner’s doc — which does for the supermarket what “Jaws” did for the beach — marches straight into the dark side of cutthroat agri-business, corporatized meat and the greedy manipulation of both genetics and the law. Doc biz may be in the doldrums, but “Food, Inc.” is so aesthetically polished and politically urgent, theatrical play seems a no-brainer, though it won’t do much for popcorn sales.
[...]
Disturbing as it is, “Food, Inc.” doesn’t present some doomsday scenario. People can make a difference, it says: After all, look what happened to Big Tobacco.
– Variety
12.1.08
rip: a remix manifesto
Synchronicity. After obsessing over Girl Talk all weekend, I just received an email from Tripwire about Brett Gaylor’s documentary Rip: A Remix Manifesto, which received a standing ovation at the International Documentary Film Festival held in Amsterdam this past weekend (and received the Dioraphte Audience Award.) The film “explores the legal and artistic ramifications of the mash-up using Greg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk as the central figure.”
Here’s some more about the film:
Imagine a world where ideas and culture, from “Happy Birthday” to Mickey Mouse, are horded under lock and key by copyright laws. Even ideas that could lead to a cure for cancer would be off-limits. Stop imagining now, because this is the world you live in. Although pop culture giants such as Walt Disney and the Rolling Stones built on the past to produce their art, the door is closing behind them.
I’ve been making a documentary for over 6 years that explores this issue: RiP: A Remix Manifesto.
Digital technology has opened up an unprecedented global economy of ideas. RiP explores the robber barons and revolutionaries squaring off across this new frontier as the film journeys from the hallways of Washington to the favelas of Brazil. Our central protagonist is Gregg Gillis, the Pittsburgh biomedical engineer who moonlights as Girl Talk, a mash-up artist rearranging the pop charts’ DNA with his incongruous entirely sample based songs. Along the way, I met key figures on the complexities of intellectual property in the digital era, among them Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, culture critic Cory Doctorow, Brazilian musician and Minister of Cultural Affairs Gilberto Gil, and Jammie Thomas, the single mom successfully sued by the RIAA for illegal downloading.
*P.S. If you’re fascinated by this ‘conversation,’ you might also enjoy this presentation by Lawrence Lessig wherein he addresses a range of subjects from Free Culture to corruption (with Net Neutrality, privacy, cyberlaw, copyright and Democratic politics in between).
4.10.08
american teen
Speaking of John Hughes’ 80’s teen movies, here’s a documentary I’m excited about. American Teen. It was directed by Nanette Burstein who won a directing award for it at Sundance 2008. Everything I’ve read about this film says that it’s a funny, hopeful, engrossing film that follows a group of Warsaw, Indiana high school kids from September to graduation their senior year. Love the obvious poster riff. Marketing is everything, isn’t it? Opens this July in the states.
Update: watch trailer “>here.
1.10.08
where in the world
.jpg)
In effort to make the world a safer place for his baby, Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me) goes looking for bin Ladin in his next film, Where in the World Is Osama? I like it.
6.14.07
come undone
Me, dealing with music licensing. (Painting by Neil Faber.)
4.6.07
A Man Among Wolves
National Geo is running a show about wolfman, Shaun Ellis, on April 16. Watch this preview!
[Photo: Jim Bradenburg]
About the archives
Welcome to the archives here at Cherry Coloured . Have a look around.
