ideas : People : stories.
the Human Being stuff
Rarely do I understand Felix Colgrave, but always do I appreciate him.
If he were a musician playing some impromptu riff, a guitarist heading off on a solo or a drummer swinging the sticks around in a maze of sound, I would sit back and - in perfect silence - listen.
Sometimes that’s how I feel about Mr. Colgrave and his art. I have no idea how he does it, so I just sit. Because it too is awesome.
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“In 2007, Errol Morris wrote a three-part series for the NY Times about a pair of photos taken by Roger Fenton of the Crimean War in 1855. Taken from the same position on the same day, one of the photographs shows cannonballs scattered on a road while in the other photo, the road is clear of cannonballs. Which one, Morris wondered, was taken first and why?” (via).
Although he can never answer why they were moved, he does conclude which one was taken first.
This doctoring of a photo reminds me of another famous photo (this was doctored by the Soviet Union) that was recently discovered as fraud. Both have been manipulated for very specific reasons, and both - in their altered version - caused quite a stir.
What’s interesting to me is although both are altered, only one seems to be morally wrong. The Soviet picture was manipulated to save ridicule and produce and makes the Soviets seem better than they are. Which is wrong.
This one, however, is making the situation worse for the purpose of drawing more people into the harshness of the war, so they’re more sympathetic, more involved. And that, to me at least, is an entirely different motive and one that can be argued. Do the ends justify the means? Sometimes.
And perhaps this is one of those times.
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Since the 1970's Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a barren wasteland, into a lush oasis.
Above my computer at work, a quote reads, “You know what’s stupid . . . crying, whining and complaining about your situation while doing absolutely nothing to try and change it.”
People like Jadav Payeng embody that truth.
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I really appreciated this video, and for a variety of reasons. For one, it was really well done! Especially the scene with the tea. For some reason, watching that little piece of paper that is connected to the tea bag drift down the mug as the water pushed the tea bag to the top was so incredibly satisfying and real. So too was the tension, the life, and the moments of every day married life.
There was also a great deal that I could relate to.
Strangely, one of them was a naked neighbor. While living in China, we absolutely saw the lives of others who lived just across the way. And yes, one of them loved to live life naked, and without curtains. Fortunately, our relationship with him was more like that of Ugly Naked Guy from Friends. We never knew him or met him outside on the street. We just noticed him, as we did the dishes or poured ourselves a late night tea. We never ordered binoculars.
We do, however, find ourselves much like the married couple in that we can sometimes spend time in our days wishing for other things. Things like peace and quiet and the ability to finish conversations. Or, just as the short film portrays, to be young and vibrant and social again. At times we even wish that life were different. That we were different.
Sometimes, we want to be young again.
And in that regard, this short film hit close to home. Which is why the ending - the reminder - was all the more powerful: life is not greener on the other side, it is greener where we water it.
And in order to water it, one must be present. Which I can often times have a difficult time doing. So too does my wife. She just does it in a different direction. While she tends to want to redo the past; I often long for a better future. Left alone, neither is all that helpful, but both have their role.
Just like the two neighbors experienced, considering the past and the mistakes made can impact and improve the future. It can also dull the present. Planning for a better future requires analyzing and improving the now - which is great! But it can also pull the joy out of the present.
In order to be healthy, both perspectives require a stable and consistent dose of living in and absorbing the present. Be it with a newly discovered relationship and the spontaneity and freedom it allows, or an experience and a routine relationship that is filled with diapers, bills, and occasional nights off, it is essential that we turn our backs to the window and absorb the present. Because whether we like it or not, it’s what we have. And whether we believe it or not, we have control over it. As well as our perceptions of it.
And that, for me at least, is an encouraging thought. It is also a great reminder to put away the phone, get on the floor with the kids or crawl onto the couch with my wife - no matter how tired I am.
If I don’t, I’ll spend my days staring out windows, missing and wishing for life.
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In this episode of Vox Almanac, Vox’s Phil Edwards explores the beginning of rotoscoping, a technique animators can use to create realistic motion. Invented by Max Fleischer of Fleischer Studios (and echoed and practiced by many others), it involves taking filmed footage and using it as a traceable model for animation. The results are fluid and natural in a way animation had never been before (via).
I just love short documentaries like this, where we see the evolution of animation - from dancing ghosts to The Hulk. I tend to see where we are, not where we’ve been, and lose sight of all the minds and steps and beautiful moments all in between.
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“You have to be at peace with the fact that something might happen, and you might not make it through,” says Alexandra de Steiguer, the caretaker for the Oceanic Hotel, in Brian Bolster’s short documentary, "Winter’s Watch." De Steiguer has spent the past 19 winters tending to the 43-acre grounds of the hotel, on Star Island, which sits 10 miles off the coast of New England. In the long, wintry off-season, she is the island’s sole inhabitant. (via)
Reminds me of The Light Between Oceans, the book not the movie (that was terrible) and really makes me want to visit the hotel during the winter months.
Can you imagine what you could do and think up with all that time?
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Great films have a habit of forcing me to scratch my head. And this one left a pile of dead skin on my shoulders. (gross. I know.)
Gene Roddenberry claimed at that “all art was an attempt to answer the question, ‘What is it all about?’” and I have taken that claim and held it up to almost every piece of worthy art I have come across.
For this one, I’m struggling to find an answer.
Here’s one take:
Negative Space is practically perfect. Like so many shorts I admire, the film incorporates multitudes of seemingly contradictory qualities: at a mere 5 minutes, there is really no wasted space, and yet it is exceedingly spare. Based off a celebrated Ron Koertge poem that clocks in at only 150 words, it allows for moments of subtlety and contemplation that are so necessary in visual storytelling—those perfectly blocked shots, held for an extra moment, that drive home the rich emotional interiority of its characters. It’s simultaneously one of the most humanistic films of recent memory, but it also stars no humans. Its stop-motion animation is expressive, detailed and grounded, and yet it has no compunction about taking off on flights of fancy, segueing via delightful transitions into fantastical asides that play with scale and setting.
And, most remarkably, none of these elements are simply stylistic choices, excuses for technical bravado, or kludgy compromises to the process of adaptation. They are all deep reflections of the film’s core themes, representing and enriching them. Adapting work from another medium is rare for shorts, but rarer still, in any medium, is an adaptation that exceeds the original. Negative Space fills in the subtext of Koertge’s poem, but doesn’t bludgeon it, and the insights and personal experiences the film’s creators bring to the source material prove additive rather than incongruent, elevating the work." - S/W Curator, Jason Sondhi (via).
But that doesn’t help. What themes are reflected? Enriched?
I agree that the artistic nature of the film is spot-on and “nearly perfect.” But what about the message? What is he trying to say?
And what poem does it help fill in? . . . oh. I found it. It’s called, Negative Space (huh) and is the narration to the film:
My dad taught me to pack: lay out everything. Put back half. Roll things
that roll. Wrinkle-prone things on top of cotton things. Then pants, waist-
to-hem. Nooks and crannies for socks. Belts around the sides like snakes.
Plastic over that. Add shoes. Wear heavy stuff on the plane.
We started when I was little. I’d roll up socks. Then he’d pretend to put me
in the suitcase, and we’d laugh. Some guys bond with their dads shooting
hoops or talking about Chevrolets. We did it over luggage.
By the time I was twelve, if he was busy, I’d pack for him. Mom tried
but didn’t have the knack. He’d get somewhere, open his suitcase and text
me—”Perfect.” That one word from him meant a lot.
The funeral was terrible—him laid out in that big carton and me crying
and thinking, Look at all that wasted space.
So what is the wasted space? Was it time spent apart? Wasted opportunities? Is his dad nothing more than a packed item now and no longer human . . . because he never was? Because he was only just a figure or title?
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Is he crying at his father’s funeral because he’s acknowledging that he should be thinking about something else? That he should be mourning the loss of his father and not the wasted space? That he should have a coffin full of memories to think about and talk about, rather than a phone full of simple texts that read “perfect” but which meant so much to a lonely son back home?
Should they have meant so much to a lonely son back home?
Maybe. Probably.
What do you think?
Man I love stop-motion films.
For more on . . .
-N- Stuff : My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes : My Grandfather, and the tools he left behind : Short Films
Islandia — is a Latin name for Iceland and relative to the old language since this film portraits primordial and rough nature of Iceland. For the short duration of the film, you will be transported to a place that easily could be a million years ago. From unbelievable landscapes and vast valleys to painting-like terrain and majestic waterfalls and lakes - this film shows the unparalleled beauty of Iceland and its unearthly glory (via)
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My grandfather didn’t leave me any journals, but he did leave me tools, and I cannot thank him enough.
I love these short videos - for a myriad of reasons. But what draws me to them the most is the idea of simple acts that carry with them great and lasting consequences. How we can live on beyond our days when we create or make something beautiful.
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-N- Stuff : Open Thoughts : On Parenting : My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes
For the past 10 years, street photographer Patrick Barr aka Tiger Hood has become a local legend known for bringing golf to the streets of NYC.
It’s a game that requires only three items: a golf club, a newspaper-stuffed milk carton, and a crate. What was initially just a way for Barr to pass time has gained traction from major news outlets and celebrities on a global scale. However, street golf seems to overshadow his true passion… photography. Barr’s archive consists of thousands of mind blowing film photographs of NYC from the 1990’s to 2000’s.
His goal was to preserve a time and place that he predicted would dissolve in the coming years. With his archive as evidence, he predicted correctly (via).
In a time that likes to embrace a, “Be content with what you have,” or, “make the best of what you’ve been given,” Tiger Hood is an example to us all.
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-N- Stuff : Inspiring films about Humans : Documentaries : The Tables, a short film by Jon Bunning
A few years ago, my wife and oldest son left me and my two youngest at the time home for 265 hours. I had a stable job, was on vacation from school, and help from various friends. My wife was coming home soon.
When she finally did make it back, I was sitting on the balcony of our 7th floor apartment, trying to process the time. Here’s a piece of what I wrote:
If you know {a single parent}, show ‘em some love. Make them dinner, wash their dishes, or babysit their kids. At the very least, by their coffee because I promise, they drink more than you. A beer wouldn’t hurt either:)
If you are one, you’re my hero. (via).
This film has all the same feels. Only worse.
This film is terrifyingly brilliant. I literally feel the heat, the fear, and the panic in the little car, and I cannot help but ache for everyone involved.
The mother loves her kids, no doubt. But she’s stuck. No babysitter, no grace from work, and three little kids who need their mother to work, pay the bills, and rush them to the bathroom.
The spectators want to care for the kids. Because they’re good and decent people. Yet, they don’t see the whole and perfect picture.
The child loves her mother.
And everything is absolutely not okay.
Ugh.
How many situations like the above could be avoided if we all acknowledged the single parents around us and gave them an extra helping hand? How many children would be saved in the process?
If you know a single parent, show them some love. Make them dinner, wash their dishes, or babysit their kids. At the very least, by their coffee because I promise, they drink more than you. A beer wouldn’t hurt either:)
If you are one, you’re my hero. Sincerely.
For more on . . .
-N- Stuff : Short Films : On Parenting : Single Parents
The film Caroline is produced by ELO films, a “co-writer / director duo Celine Held & Logan George. Their work as a team has premiered in competition at Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and at South by Southwest. They were named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s ’25 New Faces of Independent Film’ of 2017” (via).
You can see more of their work here.
“If making my detox public is gonna help somebody, even, literally, just one person, I’m all for it.”
With so much detachment and insincere living, I feel like these types of videos and “putting myself out there” moments will become more and more the norm. Which means the pendulum will be swinging into radical realism.
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“Maybe not everything is supposed to be comfortable?”
Heavyweight “is the show about journeying back to the moment when everything went wrong,” and then trying to pick up the pieces, make amends, or seek forgiveness. It’s a brilliant show. I’ve listed some of my favorite episodes here, or you can listen to all of them on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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Most images of 9/11 depict destruction on a massive scale. But Richard Drew’s quiet picture of one man falling from the towers conveys the tragedy of every life lost that day (via).
For seventeen years, I’ve struggled on how teach this moment. Is it enough to watch a short documentary? Facilitate a discussion? Spend a moment or two in silence? Because it never does.
As the date gets further and further buried in our minds and history books, I fear we will lose this moment, this terrible occurrence that immediately changed America (much like Pearl Harbor) to “something that happened a long time ago.” To something future generations can no longer relate to or learn from.
Then, a recent email from a great teacher provided a possible solution.
It read:
Over the summer, I read this creative nonfiction account of one man's experience on 9/11. It's incredibly good for teaching language and rhetoric while also honoring those who lost their lives in New York City seventeen years ago, and I will be giving it to my AP kids tomorrow. Give it a read, if you're interested; it makes for such a perfect teaching tool on such an important day.
The Falling Man is a critical moment because it “it’s a very quiet photograph . . . {and} people react to it . . . they feel they can relate to this photograph. That they might have been in the same situation and might have had to make the same choice the man in the photograph made.” Taking the time to consider the perspective of him and them and those around honors them because it remembers them.
And perhaps, that is all anyone can ask for. Remembering and honoring those lost on 9/11.
A look at the powerful connection between a pair of outdoor ping pong tables in the heart of New York City and the unlikely group of people they’ve brought together, from homeless people to investment bankers to gangbangers (via).
Love this documentary. The cinematography for sure is fantastic, but also it's message. It reminds me a bit of the kids in Detroit who are waging paintball wars as a way to battle against gang violence. Give people something to do, a purpose, and a way to find community, and they will (I believe) stop destroying neighborhoods, their neighbors, and themselves.
Also, Sergio is my favorite.
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so much depends upon the long dull train dusted with iron ore rumbling through the vast sands.
(an adaptation of The Red Wheelbarrow)
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To be clear, this isn't my dad. He didn't die nor does he have porno tapes. Also, this video isn't really about Charlie's dad's porn collection.
It's about forgiveness.
When his father died, Charlie Tyrell realized he knew next to nothing about him. Tyrell and his reticent father hadn’t been close; as a young adult, Tyrell had been waiting for “the strange distance he felt between them to close,” (via).
Then, rather suddenly, his father passed away, and Tyrell was left to discover who his father was, by looking at what was left behind.
“I had this lingering impulse to make a film about him that looked at our relationship. Then, I found [his] porno tapes,” Tyrell told The Atlantic. “I thought it would be an absurd and funny way to approach the subject. It's hard to talk about a deceased loved one without sucking all of the air out of the room. So, by approaching it with a sense of humor, I found a way to invite people into the story in a less weighty way.”
And it works.
For Tyrell, the making of this video "was emotionally draining at times." Which isn't hard to imagine, but it was also healing.
“This was me exposing mine and my family's relationship with our dad. But the process of looking at our relationship and shaping it into a story for a film allowed me to articulate my thoughts and feelings in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.”
Gene Roddenberry, the mastermind behind Star Trek, once said, "All art is an attempt to answer the question, 'What is it all about?'"
I think Tyrell's answer might be, "Assume the best. Look for the good. Before it's too late."
Thanks for reading!
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"Mark, a 60 year old fledgling storm chaser recently diagnosed with lung cancer, sets out across the Midwest with his friend's nephew in search of a tornado before the two month season comes to an end.
The film was in competition at Tribeca Film Festival 2018" (via).
THE LAST STORM from Liam Saint-Pierre on Vimeo.
My demons are smoking, depression, alcohol, cancer. There's a few. That's the way it is. Sometimes you get away in life and you don't have anything. Some people have a lot. That's just the way it is.
There's something deeply intriguing about this video, about the parallel of a man dying, a man who loves and chases the destructive beauty of storms, tornados, and life. And then, when he catches it, he hugs a friend and smokes a victory cigar.
At times, our fear and pain may seem unbearable. Our instinct may be to run, to retreat to avoid the fear and the pain. We need a vision, that begins within us. A vision feeds the soul.
That's the way I like to live.
Me too.
For more on . . .
-N- Stuff : A Peace with the Storm : Storm Chasers in the Wild
We're a long way from being civilized. We ain't no different than man was, five thousand years ago except we have technology that he didn't. But our characteristics, the way we think, the natural human ways, they're no different than man was five thousand years ago. We haven't changed a damn bit.
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-N- Stuff : Short Films : Inspiring Art
"Balloonfest in 1986 was a fundraiser for United Way and a chance to put Cleveland on the map, busting a record for simultaneous release of balloons set the previous year by Anaheim, Calif., on the 30th anniversary of Disneyland" (via). Instead, it turned into a disaster for the city of Cleveland, otherwise known as "The Mistake on the Lake."
"In the hours and days and weeks that followed," John Kroll writes, "the United Way executives who had engineered the feat were reminded of the basic law of gravity: What goes up must come down."
Down, in this case, on Burke Lakefront Airport, shutting down a runway there. Down on a pasture in Medina County, spooking a horse, whose owner would sue and later settle with the charity. Down on Lake Erie, blanketing the water just as a Coast Guard helicopter arrived to search for two missing boaters -- who would later be found, drowned; the wife of one of them also sued, and also settled. Down weeks later on the shores of the lake -- the northern shores, where Ontario residents found their beaches littered with thousands of deflated balloons (via).
I will say, that the initial picture, of the balloons wrapping around the dull city skyline, is pretty fantastic. It's also fairly indicative of humanity: the neglect of longterm ramifications for the pursuit of instant recognition and possible redemption.
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