Still in Motion

The Robert Drew Kennedy Films Collection

Today, Docurama has announced a tremendously exciting release: three seminal and historic documentaries of JFK, made by the legendary, Robert Drew.  In one two-disc set, they are offering Primary (1960), Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963) and Faces of November (1964).  The street date is the 29th of this month, but you can click on that big, fat yellow box to your lower right to order your own copy now.

Three of the most intimate and candid films about a US President ever captured on celluloid, Primary, Crisis and Faces portray John F. Kennedy's life from his time as a young senator from Massachusetts to his challenging years in the White House, to the aftermath of his assassination in November of '63.  Drew is one of the godfathers of modern cinema verité, and this is a must for anyone's collection.

I also want to mention here another staggering and intelligent piece of nonfiction cinema on the ramifications of Kennedy's death by director, Robert Stone, called Oswald's Ghost--you can read my thoughts here and order it through Amazon, another click to the right.

Let the Spirit Move You: Two Beauties to Go See in Theaters

Starting this month, there are two films playing in theaters in NYC that I'd like to recommend:  Bari Pearlman's Daughters of Wisdom is screening every Wednesday from July 23 to the last Wednesday in August at the beautiful Rubin Museum of Art.  The filmmakers entered the Buddhist Monastery called Kala Rongo in Nangchen on the northeastern plateau in Tibet.  An order of nuns lives in this remote, exclusively female, retreat.  It's an extraordinary look into a hidden culture and the amazing women who live there.  The film won the Audience Award at the Brooklyn International Film Festival last year, and also played at Mill Valley and Full Frame.  Click here for more info. 

Because I was up at Hot Docs back in April, I missed a lot of the Tribeca fest this year, but one thing I was sure to catch was a special screening of Lou Reed's Berlin by Julian Schnabel.  The movie is exquisite, and the other treat that night was getting to listen to Reed and Schnabel talk about the genesis and evolution of this cinematic dream.  (The moderator, Vanity Fair's music critic, Lisa Robinson, was apparently on the rag and was rather bitchy to audience members, but Schnabel made up for it in his warm and friendly way.)  The back story is that in 1973 when Reed released his haunting and poetic album, Berlin, it was critically panned and disregarded--a commercial flop, in other words.  Consequently, it had never been performed for live audiences in the thirty-three years since its release.  Then, in December of 2006, at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, the entire album was staged for five consecutive nights in front of sold-out (and pretty damned lucky) audiences.  

Musicians Fernando Saunders and Steve Hunter are some of the musicians who played on the original album and they, among others, join Reed on stage at St. Ann's with such unmitigated joy, it's really beautiful.  And it looks gorgeous, as well, thanks to Ellen Kuras' lush and intimate cinematography.  The Brooklyn Youth Chorus adds angelic backup singing and you can see that most of these kids (born decades after the original release of the album) have the same passion for this music and these songs as Reed and Schnabel do, even though the subject matter is dark, sexual, depressing, some might say, perverse; despite their youth, or maybe because of it, they convey all the pain and the transcendence inherent in these stories.  Add to this, a cinematic backdrop of fragile, slow-shutter black and white films directed by Schabel's daughter, Lola, with the stunning and highly emotive, Emmanuelle Seigner (one of the actors in Schnabel's recent work of genius, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) portraying Berlin's protagonist, Caroline.  Thanks to Schnabel's long-time producer, Jon Kilik, and producers Tom Sarag, Stanley Buchthal and Maya Hoffman, Schnabel and Reed resurrect Caroline and her lovers, and they live on in a joyous and celebratory film.  You cannot walk away from this without falling in love with Lou Reed.  And if you've always loved him, you'll love him even more.  Reed has plans to tour Europe this summer with the stage show as the film, released by Fortissimo, opens worldwide.

Films in Competition at Britdoc

One week from this Wednesday, the annual festival called Britdoc, fast becoming one of the premiere documentary festivals on the international scene, will welcome filmmakers, producers, commissioning editors, and other industry folk to Keble College at Oxford for its third iteration.  The themes this year are Comedy and Music, and they've announced their competition lineup, special guest appearances, and other programs.  I will be covering the festival this year and am very excited to attend.  (The fest's programmer, Maxyne Franklin, is also a member of the esteemed nominating committee for the Cinema Eye Honors.)  An initiative of the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation, the Britdoc festival brings together filmmakers and funders in an intimate setting and, currently, stages the only international pitching forum in the UK.

In honor of the comedy theme, The Yes Men (one of the funniest and most brilliant duos to appear in  film, fiction or non- I've seen) will be showing a work-in-progress.  And as part of the special music program, the fest will be presenting Robert Flaherty's seminal Nanook of the North (this man has been a big part of my life this year!) with a live soundtrack from the Shine Synchro System.  This sounds just as cool as the screening I saw in L.A. a couple of years ago of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, accompanied by a score from Sparklehorse.

The ten British documentaries in the feature competition this year are:  Blood Trail by Richard Parry; Chosen by Brian Woods; Day After Peace by Jeremy Gilley; Heavy Load by Jerry Rothwell (we played this at the Brooklyn Fest, but no one came, alas; his Britdoc pitch from '06 where he found his American funding for this feature is actually in the film); Life After the Fall by Kasim Abid; Man On Wire by James Marsh (already a multiple-prize winner); Starstruck aka Son of Eurovision by Jamie J. Johnson; The End by Nicola Collins; Thriller in Manilla by John Dower (as a rabid boxing fan, I will not miss this); and the well-loved Young@Heart by Stephen Walker, which has already had a very successful theatrical run in the States. 

There will also be a Best of Fests strand where programmers from the major international fests bring a prize-winner, i.e., Trouble the Water from Sundance; Up the Yangtze from the IDFA; Heavy Metal in Baghdad from Berlin; Obscene from Toronto; and At the Death House Door from SXSW.  Lastly, there's the Fourdocs British Short Doc Competition featuring five stellar short-form nonfiction pieces:  The Solitary Life of Cranes by Eva Weber; My Name is Karl by Moritz Siebert; Made in Queens by Nicolas Randall; Valley of the Goats by Leon Dean; and Sanctuary by Lovejit K. Dhaliwal. 

And, an exciting side note for moi:  This week, I will have an opportunity to interview one of the most prolific and intelligent documentary filmmakers around, the UK's own Kim Longinotto.  Her voice is an important one to add to my growing canon of female doc voices, and I'm thrilled that I'll be able to speak to her in person while here in London.  Thank you to my lovely friend, Sandra W., from More4! 

More about Britdoc in the coming days. . .

Calavera Highway and The Exiles in New York

Thoughts on the films and filmmakers I encountered at the Flaherty Seminar last month still reverberate, and I think back constantly on how impressed I was with the way everything fell together so gracefully, even though it was a lot of work--yes, it can be a lot of work sitting and watching films for nine hours a day.

Renee Tajima-Pena was a guest of the Flaherty this year, along with eleven other filmmakers (one of whom, Bahman Ghobadi, could only be there via the magic of cyberspace).  She brought her My America. . . or Honk If You Love Buddha from 1997, which we saw in a (chilly) outdoor screening on the beautiful grounds of Colgate University after a lovely lakeside picnic.  She also brought a wonderful short video called Skate Manzanar which she created for Roger Shimomura's "Amnesia," which premiered at the Bellevue [Washington] Art Museum in 2001.  The last piece we saw of hers at the seminar is a feature film that will have its broadcast debut on September 16 as part of this season's excellent PBS series, POV, executive produced by Simon Kilmurry.  Calavera Highway is the story of Armando Pena (Tajima-Pena's husband) and his brother, Carlos.  They carry their mother's ashes back to South Texas where they reunite with their five other brothers.  On this emotional and haunted journey, a long-buried secret is revealed, and many puzzles that have never been solved about their mother's life and the disappearance of their father during "Operation Wetback," the 1954 US government program that deported over a million Mexican Americans, are finally resolved.

This month, New York audiences will have a chance to see the film in the theater before the broadcast at its New York  premiere at the HBO/International Latino Film Festival.  It plays at 1:30 p.m. on the 23rd, and at the screening on the 27th at 3:30 p.m., filmmakers Tajima-Pena and Evangeline Greigo will be in attendance for a Q&A.  Both screenings are at the Clearview Cinemas at Broadway and Columbus.  

At Flaherty, we were also privileged to have an early morning screening of Kent McKenzie's The Exiles, made in Los Angeles in 1961 (a still from the film pictured above).  Starting Friday, July 11, for one week only, it's playing at the IFC Center.  Made forty-seven years ago and never released, The Exiles (which makes me incredibly nostalgic for a Los Angeles I remember from my early childhood) chronicles one crazy night in the lives of a group of young Native Americans who have come to the big city from reservations in New Mexico and Arizona.  They live in downtown L.A.'s Bunker Hill district near the Angel's Flight funicular.  With its astounding black and white photography and sophisticated cinematographic language, it's a work of art salvaged by Milestone, who distributed Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep last year.  Visit www.exilesfilm.com to learn more about the film's resurrection story and to watch the trailer.  If you can manage to go see it at IFC, I strongly encourage you to do so.

You Won't Believe What's Happening in the California Desert . . .

You also won't believe what's happening in the deserts in and around Dubai, but that's another story.  With which I will regale you as soon as I can talk about it coherently.  In the meantime, I've just reached London this afternoon from that crazy place, and even though it's pissing down rain, I'm glad to be here!

Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber's Full Battle Rattle is having its theatrical rollout at Film Forum today.  Please go see this in the theater--not only to support these talented guys and their amazingly accomplished and exciting nonfiction film, but because the film should be seen on the big screen.

I got to interview Moss and Gerber for Shooting People and our extensive conversation is up on their site right now.  Please enjoy by clicking here.  Bring a snack; it's long.  But it's well worth reading about their experience making this prize-winning piece.  You can also read my review about the film after seeing it in Toronto at Hot Docs here.  Yes, war is that weird.

NEXT, Please

It seems fitting that my 200th post features a film made by a filmmaker who was one of my very first in-depth interviews with an artist of the video persuasion.  I met Pablo Aravena at the AFI International Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2006, where his documentary, NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting, had its US debut.  I grew up knowing some of L.A.'s most notorious graffiti artists and have always had a love affair with this outlaw art form.  And Aravena's is one of the best films I've seen (five years in the making) on this global underground movement that transmigrates through cultures, languages and states of mind about the world in which we live.

There's a revamped web site on hand as the film moves from its long trajectory on the festival circuit (Aravena has been rocketing around the planet with it for several years, and its international screenings are usually accompanied by some kind of art exhibit, installation or special show featuring some of the film's featured artists) to a more retail-oriented model.  There will be an online store opening this fall that will sell DVDs of the film, as well as original artwork.  DVDs will be on the market in North America in November.

In the first commission to use its riverfront facade, and the first major public museum to display street art in London, The TATE Modern will present the work of six internationally acclaimed urban artists this summer.  Aravena is curating a two-day, six-film street art documentary program at the museum August 16 - 17.  This independent producer has created a superb case study in how to market and prolong the life of your film, and has expanded his oeuvre as a filmmaker into curating (both art and film), producing live events and shepherding his first film through the gauntlet of various indie distribution scenarios.  You can read my conversation with this sharp-minded and hard-working dude here.  Congrats on a great run, Pablo. 

IFC/Media Lab Studios' Documentary Production Grant

Currently, the Independent Film Channel is unveiling some production initiatives for filmmakers.  At Media Lab Studios on IFC.com, they are hosting an initiative to stimulate independent documentary filmmaking by asking for three-minute nonfiction pieces to be uploaded to the site by the 20th of this month (it's, suddenly, July!).  It can be a short or a three-minute trailer or preview for a longer project and can be on any subject.  They are offering $7,500 to the best of the lot and $2,500 to the runner-up.  The grant site is here, if you're interested in learning more.

Tribeca '08 Fellow, Hugo Perez

As I've mentioned here before, I'm doing a series of interviews for the newly launched Re:Frame Collection of several of the 2008 Tribeca Film Institute Fellows.  Hugo Perez received an Emerging Artist nod, and my interview with him is now posted here.  Perez (pictured with actress, Patricia Clarkson, narrator of his gorgeous Neither Memory Nor Magic) has produced an impressive body of work over the course of the past five years, both fiction and nonfiction, and the project he submitted to Tribeca is a feature script he wrote called Immaculate Conception--I've read it; it's wonderful.  This project will be his narrative feature directorial debut.

There'll be a bit of a lull in interviews over there for most of the summer since I'm about to skedaddle out of town to the Flaherty.  Hot on the heels of that, I have a month's worth of adventures out of the country--first in Dubai, UAE, and then I'll be hanging in London for a bit, ending my sojourn at Britdoc.  I know.  Don't cry for me, Argentina.

And I want to give a big shout-out to my blogger friend and mentor, Agnes Varnum, aka Aggie V (Mr. Schnack's moniker for this little spitfire that's taking Austin by storm).  She's celebrating the two year anniversary of her excellent blog, Doc It Out.  Right on, sister; a big happy anniversary to you!

Mardi Gras: Made in China

Indie filmmakers have a hard row to hoe these days.  This is not a news flash.  A lot of us bitch and gripe and moan about it, and then there are filmmakers like David Redmon and Ashley Sabin who just get on the horse and ride hard across the finish line--and beyond.  Not with just one project or two, but several.  And not just with their own fare.  Starting in the fall, they will be distributing for other filmmakers, as well, who also are the current crop of DIYers to wade into the fray of self-distribution, theatrical releases and all.

I first met Redmon and Sabin (pictured) when they curated an evening at the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series at Barbes in the Slope last year.  They brought a stunning short called Deconfliction that haunts me still, and Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project, another nonfiction flick that left me gobsmacked.  When I met them again at True/False in February, I mostly saw the back of David's head as he crouched over his computer screen editing his film, polite and friendly to all, but mainly oblivious to the chaos around him as he hunkered down and kept on working.

Redmon's latest film Mardi Gras: Made in China will distribute nationally on July 29 through Netflix, Blockbuster, Barnes & Noble, and other physical and virtual commercial outlets.  But right now, you can order the film through their new production and distribution company, Carnivalesque Films.  A nominee for the Grand Jury Award at Sundance, winner of some 20 national and international awards, theatrically released, curated by the Sundance Channel as a "Classical Festival Moment," and a Critic's Pick by Stephen Holden of the New York Times, this documentary is a personal essay writ large, as Redmon whipsaws us back and forth between the bacchanal of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and a factory in China, where thousands upon thousands of young people, some as young as fourteen, work for 10 cents an hour for 14-16 hour days breathing in toxic fumes to make the beads that are exchanged by very drunk people on Fat Tuesday, who then proceed to flash one another their privates, throw up at the end of the evening, discard their necklaces with the rest of the party flotsam, and go home to their Wal-Mart lives, having no idea (and most of them not caring a whit, either) where those shiny, multi-colored beads come from.  But hey! some of those jewels are also "recycled" and sent to soldiers in Iraq so they can celebrate Mardi Gras, too.  Oy vey.

The film is edited beautifully by Redmon, illustrating, in the best direct cinema style, the cultural divide that touches off some huge global issues, such as international trade, worker exploitation, sexism, economic stratification, and lithely, but blisteringly, touches off the collective consciousness of some of the revelers in the Big Easy.  The  duo formed a company whose ethos and main goal is to "explore how personal stories relate to complex social issues."  Redmon and Sabin co-directed two other films in that spirit, both award-winners, as well--Kamp Katrina (Ms. Pearl also stars in this film--and coming soon: Ms. Pearl the Musical!) and the lovely Intimidad: A True Mexican Love Story.

The DVD, through Carnivalesque, is really nicely packaged and showcases such bonus features like the PG version for schools and other educational markets (with a shorter running time and no boobies or erect men in nighties--blech), deleted scenes, clips from upcoming films, and a 16-year-old girl's diary, a new worker just arrived to the Tai Kuen Bead Factory in Fuzhou, China run by a bossman named Roger who wouldn't break a sweat in front of Mike Wallace, let alone the ever-respectful Redmon, as he lies through his teeth about his workers' happiness and satisfaction.  He's got an American name (he's Chinese) to match his American-style corporate greed.  "I feel so confident when I sit here!" he crows from his big leather office chair.  He's a very wealthy man; of course, he feels confident.  It's a wonderful film that elicits chuckles even as you're becoming increasingly depressed.  Not an easy thing to pull off.

Carnivalesque will also be releasing Ry Russo-Young's Orphans, Paul Lovelace and Sam Douglas' The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose, and an incredibly moving film out of post-Katrina New Orleans, Zach Godshall's Low and Behold, one of my favorite films from last year.  Visit and support Carnivalesque, an indie production and distribution company that self-supports these indie filmmakers so that they can go on to make their next project, and their next one.

Hell, use it as a model, why don't you?

Two Quickies

Just wanted to mention a couple of things before I dash off for the day:

I want to personally congratulate Mark Elijah Rosenberg, artistic director of Rooftop Films, program director, Dan Nuxoll and managing director, Genevieve Delaurier and their entire staff and crew on a stellar opening weekend for their 12th summer season.  I know of other local festivals and annual film events that have been around just as long, or longer, that don't begin to measure up to the professionalism, exciting programming and artistic potency that this organization has in its arsenal.  It's a bitch launching and keeping something going in New York City--finding your audience, keeping your audience and growing your audience is a full-time job.  With partners like Scion, IFC, indieWIRE, Indiepix Films, and others, they are obviously intent on kicking ass well into the next decade, and beyond. 

Last night's event in the East Village, on the rooftop of New Design High aka the "Open Road Rooftop," was fantastic and packed with hundreds of people, including downtown princess, Chloe Sevigny and the astoundingly prolific filmmaker and Academy-Award winner, Alex Gibney, in attendance, as well as the star of the evening, Mr. Clayton Patterson, photo and video documentarian, historian and keeper of the flame for the Lower East Side of our fair city, a place that is quite rapidly becoming monetized, corporatized and Disneyfied at an alarming rate.  A.R.E. Weapons opened with a blistering set, followed by the world premiere of Captured.  Big kudos to filmmakers Ben Solomon, Dan Levin and Jenner Furst for crafting a superb and riveting documentary.

Tonight, the special season opening weekend continues.  Click here for more info on the entire summer program.

Item Two:  On Wednesday, June 25, there will be a special downtown reception and screening during the 2008 Human Rights Watch Film Festival at 7:30 at Room Studio.  Cinereach, a supporter of the festival, will present the 2008 Cinereach Award, a $5,000 prize, to (the awesome) Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath for their amazing film, The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), the story of one family's epic journey from war-torn Laos to New York City, 23 years in the making.  Cinereach is an up-and-coming non-profit funded by a group of young filmmakers and philanthropists dedicated to promoting socially-conscious film.  We  will be hearing a lot more from this organization in the very near future.  There will be a conversation with Kuras and Phrasavath after the screening.

Re:Frame Launches

The Tribeca Film Institute has been working on the launch of a major project with Amazon.com to create a new digital marketplace for precious film and video works that have languished in archives, have extremely limited distribution, or have just been plain hard to find.  At last, Re:Frame is here.

As of yesterday, the service is now active through Reframecollection.org and I am happy to say that I will soon be one of the film curator/bloggers contributing regularly on the new site, specializing in hybrid nonfiction works and contributing a series of interviews with this year's TFI Fellows.  The core audiences are the educational and institutional markets, but I know there are many film fans out there whose taste goes beyond what even Netflix can provide.  Right now, about 500 works live on the site, from some of Sally Potter's works, to hard-to-find documentaries and experimental fare.

The service will be a nonprofit storefront for both short- and long-form film works, as well as providing rights holders a way to sell or rent downloads or DVDs through Amazon.  What really distinguishes the Re:Frame model is that it offers services to convert all works to a digital format from video free of charge, and will also offer conversion services from film formats to digital at a cost well below what most standard conversions run.  The digital copy is then returned to the rights holder while the work is retained in Amazon's archive.  The rights holder determines what to charge and will receive royalty payments amounting to 50% of any download or online rental, or a share of DVD sales.

Over the last two years, the Re:Frame Collection project, under the auspices of the Tribeca Film Institute run by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, has had financial support through grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.  The initiative was established to preserve film history and to make classic and rare works available to a larger community of students, artists, educators and film fans.  The hope is that close to 10,000 titles will be available in the next twelve months.

To learn more about the various deal structures for filmmakers and rights holders, and other information about the collection, visit the web site.

Latest News from Britdoc

This year's international program brings the "Best of Fests" to the UK, Keble College at Oxford, to be exact.  Five programmers have been invited to come from Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, the IDFA and SXSW and bring their favorite films from the '07-'08 season.  I'll be posting updates to the program as news is released.

This year's theme is COMEDY where participants will explore the link between "truth and taking the piss, the difference between laughing and crying and asking the question, should documentaries be serious?"  Larry Charles (pictured) is the star comedy guest and the director of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and Borat.  He's coming to Britdoc with his new film Religulous, which I'm really looking forward to seeing--I'm a huge Bill Maher fan.  He looks good on toast.

The lovely Ingrid Kopp will be running the film "surgeries" this year and they've just announced some of the industry folk signed up to conduct one-on-one meetings with attending delegates.  Filmmakers can get advisory meetings with Passion Pictures' John Battsek and post production advice from the experts at Molinare, two of the sponsors of this year's fest.  They will be joined by Cara Mertes of the Sundance Institute, John Courier of the Sundance Festival, Cynthia Kane of the ITVS Fund, Ryan Harrington of the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, Danielle DiGiacomo of Indiepix Films, Esther van Messel of First Hand Films, Jo McClellan of FilmFour and Himesh Kar of the UK Film Council.  More experts in funding, distribution, HD, marketing and online will be announced shortly.  Quite a stellar line-up.

Closing dates for the pitching forums are coming up.  The Big Pitch for feature-length nonfiction and the Short Pitch for innovative short-form docs are closing next Friday (the 13th!).  The Good Pitch, partnering with One World Broadcasting Trust, closes tomorrow, the 6th.  Click here for more info and applications.  Every project that's entered goes into the Online Pitch where funders, sales agents, distributors and filmmakers can browse through all the submitted goodies.

Lastly, Current TV and Britdoc are partnering to offer a chance to be part of this year's festival.  Send Current TV your idea for a short documentary (3 - 10 minutes) by the 4th of July.  If your pitch is selected, you'll be one of five filmmakers to receive a one-day pass to Britdoc, which includes a chance to meet with Current execs and pitch your idea in person.  Click here to download the form.

Special Flaherty Events in NYC

The 54th Annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar is only a couple of weeks away and, I'm happy to report that they're booked to the gills.  Fortunately, many of the works being shown at this year's seminar will be available to view for NYC audiences immediately following the seminar at the end of this month.  There will also be a Flaherty at BAM program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, September 12 - 14, right before IFP's Independent Film Week commences.

The Flaherty is bringing a special program to the MoMA featuring the films of Bahman Ghobadi (pictured).  His distinctive film works (a really fascinating, quite poetic, amalgam of narrative and documentary) explore the culture of the Kurdish people living in the border areas of Iran and Iraq.  His films will screen from June 23 through July 7 and include Turtles Can Fly, A Time for Drunken Horses, Half Moon, Life in Fog (which we're also exhibiting at Documentary Voices in Dubai in July), Daf (Tambourine), War is Over and Marooned in Iraq.  Click here for program details.

CEC ArtsLink, in conjunction with the Flaherty, will present new nonfiction works from Russia.  This is a free program of shorts screening at the Anthology Film Archives on July 1 at 7:30 p.m.  The program includes Children of the Great Lake by Anastasia Tarasova, Phantom of Europe by Igor Morozov and Beslan. The Right to Live. by Olga Stefanova.  All filmmakers will be present for a discussion following the screening.  An RSVP is needed to eryabova@cecartslink.org.  Click here for more info on the complete program.

Jon Reiss' BOMB IT in Theaters and on DVD

"I was, after the fashion of humanity, in love with my name, and, as young educated people commonly do, I wrote it everywhere."  This quote from Goethe's Poetry and Truth, 1811, opens Jon Reiss' astounding documentary on global graffiti writing, aka, "bombing."  In featuring street artists and graffiti writers from five continents, the film is the first to update the graffiti story from its inception to just yesterday.  Reiss gets really wonderful and substantive interviews with his subjects, modern-day philosophers along the lines of Goethe, who articulately and poetically describe all the various reasons they are compelled to create what they do--the methods, the risks, the personal ethos behind it all.  Nunca, an artist out of Sao Paulo, Brazil, tells us that, "Your name is the only thing you own; it's the first thing you have.  That is why you have to defend it."

Cornbread, Lady Pink, Shepard Fairey, bombing twin brothers, Os Gemenos, Sixe, (pictured) and many others, share access to themselves through their public art in very profound and moving ways.  There have been other superb films made on graffiti, however, they're usually mixed with stories of other subcultures like hip hop, the aural adjunct to the visual richness of this vibrant art form.  Five Sides of a Coin and Pablo Aravena's wonderful NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting both come to mind.  Reiss' film is a pure look at street art, starting with its roots in New York and Philly and going on to explore the underground scene in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Barcelona, Berlin, Capetown, Sao Paulo and Tokyo, ending up in Los Angeles, showcasing the graffiti art I grew up appreciating from the 10 and 405 freeways, among other places.

In every part of the globe, we hear echoes of similar ways of seeing the world, with most of these artists coming from the fringe of society, focusing on the unsanctioned "interference" of public spaces to discuss the culmination of its current, pervasive presence in the "legitimacy" of advertising--another instance of the purity of a subculture being co-opted by mainstream media to sell us more stuff we don't need, which in turn, begs the question, "If public space is a forum for discussion, which voices are allowed to be heard?"  The ones who pay big bucks to use it, I guess.

The DVD release coincides with a nationwide theatrical one.  Because of the startling clarity of the camera work, sharp editing and superb soundtrack, this is definitely a film worth seeing in the theater, if you're able.  And if you're watching it at home on DVD, crank it up and immerse yourself in this vibrant, vital world of street artist/philosophers who risk their lives every day to speak out and create a brilliant open-air museum of canvases for us all to ponder and enjoy.

Click here for information on the theatrical roll-out and here to order the DVD.

On the Road and Parallel Worlds

A couple of cool things for New Yorkers:  Next Wednesday and Thursday, the Paley Center will host two nonfiction premieres.  On the 28th at 6:00 p.m., a Sundance Channel Exclusive series will screen, On the Road in America, a 12-part series, "conceived with the intent to expose Middle Eastern audiences to the diversity and uniqueness of the United States."  June 4 is the Sundance Channel premiere.  The series follows three students from the Arabic world, accompanied by a Palestinian PA and an Israeli cameraman, as they traverse the country meeting people along the way.  Paley is screening highlights of episodes and the merry band will be there to discuss what they learned about our country.  Let's go listen to what they have to say, shall we?

Lots happening in the indie film world in the next little bit as we head into summer (Rooftop weather--yay!).  On Wednesday evening, as well, the IFC Center will host the Media That Matters Film Festival.  Ah, the life of a New Yorker, choices, choices, choices.  Pretty poster this year, too.

The next evening, Paley will screen the American premiere of Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives with Mark Everett.  Everett is the creative force behind the indie band Eels and he'll be there to introduce the US premiere of this BBC doc.  The film follows Everett's journey to understand the discovery his father, Hugh Everett, contributed to physics, the theory of parallel worlds.  Post-screening, some prominent physicists will join Everett to talk about his father's work and legacy fifty years on.  I will be the first geek in line for this one.  You also don't want to miss the opportunity to hear and see (he's very lovely) the wonderful Brian Cox.  I would wager this one will be a sell-out.

RSVP required to kfarina@paleycenter.org, free for IDA members.