ART TORRENTS

Gus Van Sant - Elephant (2003)
Monday, July 9, 2007

Screenshot's:

The reason why i would share this work, should be clear for anyone viewing the screenshots above. I've only seen the work once, and didn't really want to focus on anything else than the speed of the camera through the halls of the high school. So, high school shootings is not my focus here. I would actually recommend you to stop the movie somewhere around the middle. Review below.

Gus Van Sant's ''Elephant,'' has a premise so simple that in the abstract it borders on the banal. Plotless and stubbornly resistant to conventional narrative structure, the movie has its camera follow students around the halls and grounds of a high school in Portland, Ore., for a day, until violence erupts. ''Elephant,'' which has its premiere tonight at the New York Film Festival and opens commercially on Oct. 24, is the director's take on the murders that took place at Columbine High School.

The title comes from the British director Alan Clarke's 1989 rough-and-ready short film of the same name, a tough and dense look at the violence in Northern Ireland, which also didn't paste answers onto the problem. Mr. Clarke's short outraged or absorbed viewers in the way that Mr. Van Sant's movie, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, is likely to do. (Mr. Clarke's title referred to the aphorism about the elephant in the living room that goes ignored -- a problem that people refuse to face for so long that they are no longer even able to see it.)

This new ''Elephant'' will also confound people looking for solutions or villains, because it doesn't supply them. There's no narrator perched omnisciently over the events, nor the kinds of exaggerated melodramatics and pop music that teen movies employ to insistently nag at emotions. There are few recognizable actors, since Mr. Van Sant populated the movie with kids who had never acted before, heightening the realism and the tension.

''Elephant'' is a formalist exercise with real affection for the kids -- like the photographer Elias (Elias McConnell), who assuredly slips through the school while grabbing shots of his friends or whatever catches his eye. Elias has a lazy, physical confidence, and his natural charisma is emphasized by the chilled-out immediacy of the camerawork. And the young actor's star quality becomes part of the filmmaker's misdirecting our attention, too: since Mr. McConnell holds the camera like a protagonist, we're lulled into thinking the film is his story.

His being a photographer would be a cheap way into the movie, which Mr. Van Sant rejects. Instead, the camera floats from one life to another, flirting with Michelle (Kristen Hicks), a loner with a plaintive face who doesn't fit in with the other girls. She takes us to the climactic scenes.

The cinematographer Harris Savides summons all of his talents to romanticize the naturalism, yet the constant movement and long takes aren't petty virtuosity. This skill is a part of what was once considered directing -- an evenhandedness that we become accustomed to quickly. The camera darts through extended scenes filmed in one take, like charting the action in a high school cafeteria that ends in a dark clichéd joke: a gaggle of young divas matter-of-factly head to the bathroom to purge.

Mr. Savides's work has a low-keyed brilliance, demonstrating that a master's work needn't be showy. His résumé includes filming Calvin Klein commercials, and ''Elephant'' sometimes circles the willowy, young male hunks as if they were on a candy dish. (The sound design by Leslie Shatz adds to the reality, with the pinging, echoey ambient noises of a school that create a lingering sense of dread in those halls.)

''Elephant'' blends the warm-hearted randomness of the Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr's movies with the familial offhandedness of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the minimal realism of the documentarian Frederick Wiseman -- yet the influences are not arch film-grammar quotations crying to be spotted. Mr. Van Sant knows the subject matter will increase the audience's attention.

The movie is also a departure from the director's career streak of films along the lines of ''Good Will Hunting'' that dramatize aimless young men whose lives seem like dented cans. Instead, Mr. Van Sant gives ''Elephant'' a spartan yet elusive life by shifting the film's focus from one group of students to another; the camera actually drifts like a bored high school student.

The presentation is partly attributable to the fact that this picture was made for a premiere on HBO and the filmmaker decided against the wide-screen formatting that many directors select for made-for-television projects. ''Elephant'' even looks like the kind of film you'd see projected in a high school. It's framed like a box, which gives the movie the illusory, numbed lack of import of a driver's-ed instructional film, until it moves from pedestrian normality to being drenched with the aftermath of violence.

Unlike Michael Moore's documentary ''Bowling for Columbine,'' which was suffused with an angry man's frustration and passion -- he demanded that we absorb, and act on what he had concluded -- the distanced view of ''Elephant'' is deceptively calming. It starts with a car roaming down a street and slowly weaving out of control, sideswiping the parked cars in its path. We overhear the voice of an outraged teenage boy, and immediately have our expectations thwarted. The boy, John (John Robinson) -- a lanky waif with hair that looks as if it came off a L'Oréal box -- pops out of the car and shouts at the driver, his drunken father (Timothy Bottoms).

The movie builds anecdotally toward the violent climax, arriving at the homes of the killers, Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen), a pair of outsiders who spend time together compulsively in the way high-school boys do, something that can lead cruel peers to hiss about their love lives. Mr. Van Sant reinforces such attitudes by having the boys kiss each other before they pack their bags and head off to their awful mission -- an ambiguous scene that could be sexual or a proud Viking moment before leaving home.

Unfortunately, Mr. Van Sant also takes an easy way out in one instance. The boy assassins order their weapons through the Internet, something that is not only hard to do but also robs the entire movie of the plausibility that most of ''Elephant'' contains.

But the rest of the film more than compensates for this -- especially a moment where a muscular, imposing young African-American, Benny (Bennie Dixon), wanders into the frame like a hero -- a touch that mixes reality with another film cliché: the sacrificial black man.

And by the end of the movie, we realize where much of the power and clarity of the film comes from. By making the camera an observer, we get a perspective that often comes out of horror movies, a choice that whips the ordinary with the terrifying, an unforgettable mix.
Elvis Mitchell, NY Times, October 10, 2003

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at 1:39 PM  

Roland Barthes, Image Music Text(1977)
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Image Music Text brings together major essays by Roland Barthes on the structural analysis of narrative and on issues in literary theory, on the semiotics of photograph and film, on the practice of music and voice.

Throughout the volume runs a constant movement from work to text: an attention to the very 'grain' of signifying activity and the desire to follow - in literature, image, film, song and theatre - whatever turns, displaces, shifts, disperses.

Stephen Heath, whose translation has been described as 'skilful and readable', is the author of Vertige du déplacement, a study of Barthes. His selection of essays, each important in its own right, also serves as 'the best..... introduction so far to Barthes' career as the slayer of contemporary myths'.

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at 2:57 PM  

GOOD COPY BAD COPY - a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture
Saturday, June 9, 2007

http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/

Featuring, in order of appearance:

DR LAWRENCE FERRARA, Director of Music Department NYU
PAUL V LICALSI, Attorney Sonnenschein

JANE PETERER, Bridgeport Music
DR SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN, NYU

GIRL TALK, Musician
DANGER MOUSE, Producer
DAN GLICKMAN, CEO MPAA
ANAKATA, The Pirate Bay

TIAMO, The Pirate Bay
RICK FALKVINGE, The Pirate Party

LAWRENCE LESSIG, Creative Commons
RONALDO LEMOS, Professor of Law FGV Brazil

CHARLES IGWE, Film Producer Lagos Nigeria
MAYO AYILARAN, Copyright Society of Nigeria
OLIVIER CHASTAN, VP Records
JOHN KENNEDY, Chairman IFPI
SHIRA PERLMUTTER, Head of Global Legal Policy IFPI

PETER JENNER, Sincere Management
JOHN BUCKMAN, Magnatune Records
BETO METRALHA, Producer Belem do Para, Brazil
DJ DINHO, Tupinamba Belem do Para, Brazil

Directed by:
ANDREAS JOHNSEN, RALF CHRISTENSEN, HENRIK MOLTKE


Music:
RJD2
TRACK 72
PHOENICIA
JOHN TEJADA
REQ
SHEX
SANTOGOLD
REX JIM LAWSON
DR VICTOR OLAIYA
PHARFAR
GIRL TALK
DANGER MOUSE
MIKKEL MEYER
GNARLS BARKLEY
DE LA SOUL
NWA

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at 1:56 PM  

Critical Art Ensemble - Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health
Thursday, June 7, 2007

Marching Plague, the long-awaited new book from Critical Art Ensemble, examines the scientific evidence and the rhetoric surrounding biological warfare, particularly the development of anthrax and other bio-weapons, and makes a strong case against the likelihood of such weapons ever being used in a terrorist situation. Studying the history and science of such weapons, they conclude that for reasons of accuracy and potency, biological weapons lack the efficiency required to produce the widespread devastation typically associated with bioterrorism.

Why the public urgency around biowarfare, then, and why the channeling of enormous resources into research and development of tools to counter an imaginary threat? This is the real focus of Marching Plague: the deconstruction of an exceedingly complex political economy of fear, primarily supporting biowartech development and the militarization of the public sphere. The book addresses the following questions:

* Why is bioterrorism a failed military strategy?
* Why is it all but useless to terrorists?
* How have preparedness efforts been detrimental to public health policy?
* What institutions benefit from the cultivation of biofear?
* Why does the diplomatic community fail to confront this problem?

The book concludes with a brief examination of the actual crisis in global public health, arguing for the redirection of health research away from the military, and promoting a number of strategies for civilian-based preparedness and education.

The conditions from which Marching Plague emerged are nothing short of bizarre. Originally scheduled to appear in 2004, the manuscript was in the possession of Steve Kurtz—one of the text's collective authors—when he came under the intense scrutiny of the Justice Department and the FBI for suspected biological terror crimes. Made paranoid by their own rhetoric, the Feds failed to tell the difference between an art piece scheduled for installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and something more nefarious. Kurtz' house was sealed off, his research was taken (including the manuscript and his computers), and his colleagues and publisher were subpoenaed, all for some trumped-up charges of mail fraud. Two appendices in the book comment on the political ramifications of Kurtz' trial, and what it means for the culture of dissent in a time of authoritarian political life.

CAE provides readers with a sober assessment of the interests animating many-headed corporate bureaucracies and the showy illusions they project. More than that, CAE’s theoretical ideas are grounded in the lab work of their practical experience and experiments in art and culture. CAE has continued to do their work facing overwhelming pressure from law enforcement. This book is a testament to their commitments advocating freedom of research and the liberating potential of autonomous creative labor.
— Gregg Bordowitz, author of The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings

Related links:
Critical Art Ensemble site: http://www.critical-art.net/
CAE Defense Fund, more info on Steve's case: http://www.caedefensefund.org/

at 5:31 PM  

Heinz Emigholz - Schindlers Häuser (2007)

The film shows, in chronological order, forty buildings of the Austrian-American architect Rudolph Schindler (1887-1953) from the years 1921 to 1952. Schindler's pioneering work in southern California founds a particular branch of architectonic Modernism. All of the photography took place in May 2006. The film therefore offers a current portrait of urban living in Los Angeles that has never been documented in this form before.
"In 1975 I came by chance upon the Lovell House in Newport Beach. At first glance the building seemed both singular and sensible. But at that time I was occupied as a filmmaker with extremely time-analytical compositions, with no thought to architecture beyond the medium of time. It was only later that I expanded my filmic work to include questions and depictions of space. I had forgot about the encounter with the house until I recognized it again while filming in May 2006. At the end of the 1980s I first consciously took notice of one or two other houses in Los Angeles [by Schindler]. A few years later I developed the plan for the film series 'Photography and beyond'. And Schindler, after Louis Sullivan and Robert Maillart and alongside Adolf Loos, Bruce Goff and Frederick Kiesler, was the missing link to the present - at least as far as my sense of space is concerned."
(Heinz Emigholz on his first encounter with the works of Schindler, from an interview with Marc Ries)

It was not unusual to find packed houses at films like Heinz Emigholz's marvelously spare documentary "Schindler's Houses", in which a series of static images of forty homes designed by modernist architect Rudolph Schindler had the cumulative effect of becoming one of the most compelling textural portraits of urban Los Angeles ever filmed.


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at 1:28 PM  

Jessica Bassett - MegaStructures: Dubai Palm Island (2005)
Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Impossible Islands In the Arabian Gulf, the world's largest artificial islands are being constructed in the shape of massive palm trees. This ambitious engineering feat is part of a plan to transform Dubai into one of the world's premiere tourist destinations. Find out what it takes to create these fantasy islands.

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at 6:26 PM  

Jennifer Baichwal - Manufactured Landscapes (2006)

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as “stunning” or “beautiful,” and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.

The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.

Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.


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at 3:23 PM  

Robert Hughes - Visions of Space (2003)

First aired BBC4, 2003; ABC, 2004 In 'Visions of Space', Robert Hughes tackles the work and lives of three remarkable 20th-century architects: Albert Speer, Mies van der Rohe, and Antonio Gaudi - whose work did so much to shape the modern world. Hughes looks at how each one used space in different ways to express our response, respectively, to the power of religion (Gaudi), the power of the State (Speer), and the power of the corporation (Mies van der Rohe).

Albert Speer: Size Matters
In 1979 Robert Hughes met and interviewed Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, for his landmark series, Shock of the New. Speer died shortly afterwards. Twenty-three years later Hughes discovered the long lost tape of that unique conversation and was inspired to travel back to Germany to examine the legacy of a man who was, for a brief period, the most powerful architect in the world.


Mies van der Rohe: Less is More
This episode features the German architect, Mies van der Rohe, who moved to America and discovered the face of the modern corporate city. In this highly personal account, Hughes follows in Mies' footsteps looking at how an architect who began his career making kitschy, Hansel and Gretel style houses with pointy roofs, little windows and squat floorplans transformed himself into the master of international modernism - the architect of light and space. Mies is the father of the contemporary vogue for loft living - what he was building in the 1920s still looks futuristic now. Similarly, his New York masterpiece the Seagrams Building provided the blueprint for the modern office building - without Mies no major city on Earth would look as it does. But despite his undeniable impact there is something in Mies' work that Hughes finds shockingly neglectful of real human needs. This master builder could spend days working out how to turn a corner with a skilfully placed beam and totally ignore the legitimate wishes and desires of those who used his buildings.

Antoni Gaudi: God's Architect
Robert Hughes returns to Spain to explore the legacy of Antoni Gaudi, the last great cathedral builder of the 20th century.
Gaudi was an intensely Catholic celibate who, despite his austere life, created some of the most sensuous buildings ever known. On his journey through Gaudi's life and work, Hughes (an ex-Catholic himself) explains how a man as religious and conservative as Gaudi could become such an innovative 20th-century giant.


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at 2:56 PM  

Peter Sutherland - Pedal (2001)
Monday, June 4, 2007

In Pedal, Sutherland documents bike messengers competing in the 2005 Cycle Messenger World Championships in New York City. Going straight to the center of this urban subculture, Sutherland serves up compelling portraits of the competitors from dozens of countries, in motion and at ease, checking out each other’s bags, lingering over modifications to bikes and bodies. Between events like sprints, distance racing, and skid contests, Sutherland shows us the riders’ elegant physicality, complex individuality, and unique community that crosses boundaries of race, gender, age, and class. And he doesn’t shy away from the blood and bruises that come part and parcel with the messenger’s life. Sutherland delves deep into the world of the messengers—a world usually seen from the outside—and returns with a dynamic document that evokes the unbridled anarchy and energy of its inhabitants.



















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ps. i will post a karagarga sign up link in the very near future.
pps. I'm currently getting my hand's on various new object's, fx. a movie about Park Fiction from Hamburg.

at 10:31 PM