IO FILMS

Photo

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:33:02 -0500

cineandreea: Happy Birthday Nadia ! 10 10 10 10 10

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:31:31 -0500

cineandreea:

Happy Birthday Nadia ! 10 10 10 10 10

Roy: Close your eyes. Can you see the stars? Alexandria:...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:17:53 -0500

Roy: Close your eyes. Can you see the stars?

Alexandria: No…

Roy: Rub them.

‘Time machine’ H.G. Wells & Robert Paul’s patent...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:14:34 -0500

‘Time machine’

H.G. Wells & Robert Paul’s patent application for a ‘Time Machine ‘A largely imaginary moment but one that combines, however hypothetically, the use of multiple projections and simulated movement (1895) — an early incantation of ‘virtual reality’

koekjesdorst: Joost Dekkers

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:03:36 -0500

koekjesdorst:

Joost Dekkers

Mapping Expanded Cinema

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:02:00 -0500

Expanded Cinema remains an elusive subject. It is perhaps at its most visible, and most actively engaged with, between 1965 and 1976. Yet its origins may well be latent in the earliest moments of cinema, not to mention modern visual media more broadly.

Inspired by George Macuinias’ Expanded Arts Diagram (1966), this chart is an attempt to map the key coordinates of Expanded Cinema. It is in no way exhaustive but is meant to give a sense of the various histories, connections and developments that make up the polymorphous nature of practices associated with ‘Expanded Cinema’. Currently, a refreshed interest in it is inspiring a new generation of ‘moving image art’ practices as well as exciting forms of scholarship.

Expanded Cinema Family Tree pdf here.

The map or ‘family tree’ is incomplete. There are no doubt other trajectories and interconnections. If you would like to revise, add or make amendments to the schema, please send corrections to:

Expanded Cinema,
The British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection,
Central St Martins College of Art and Design
107-109, Charing Cross Road,
London, WC2H 0DU

Cinema in the age of innocence

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:53:44 -0500

Cinema in the age of innocence

"Expanded cinema does not mean computer films, video phosphors, atomic light, or spherical..."

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:51:41 -0500

“Expanded cinema does not mean computer films, video phosphors, atomic light, or spherical projections. Expanded cinema isn’t a movie at all: like life it’s a process of becoming’, i.e. a concept of presence more than it is a material of one kind or another.”

- Gene Youngblood

Cartoons are true to what the artist sees, not the subject. ...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:42:56 -0500

Cartoons are true to what the artist sees, not the subject. Think about it: did your family look the way you drew them when you were five? Lurid exaggeration comes naturally, for some reason. In school, there’s always one kid drawing something rude. Gay Telese wrote a story about the actor Peter O’Toole once, where a young O’Toole drew a penis on a picture of a horse, and defended himself (unsuccessfully) from opprobrium, by saying: “I was only drawing what I saw!” The urge to break taboos is stronger in artists. As Shaun Ladd and Tony Cook’s short documentary, Portrait, shows: cartoonist Ben Jennings is a proud addition to the line of pen and ink provocateurs. His sketches are tumescent with daring.

Beginning with a selection of Ben’s early (I’d say about eight-year-old) self-portraits, the film cleverly withholds any head shots. Even when Ben is speaking directly to camera, we only see the lower half of his face. The focus is always on his work. Ben draws satire with a scatological bent. He’s like Ralph Steadman with less violence, or Gerald Scarfe with more sex. The penis seems to be at the forefront of Ben’s work; vaginas run a close second. In keeping with the William Hogarth tradition of depicting life in excess, he’s fond of sweaty caricature. As he says, “twisted subject matter is just more interesting.” The documentary attempts to draw Ben out, using his cartoons to give us clues about the man.

In Terry Zwigoff’s film about Robert Crumb, someone says (of Crumb): “the only voice he had was his pen”. Ben Jennings isn’t that far gone, thankfully for him, but there is a little of Robert Crumb’s reticence about him. Like Crumb, he’s relentlessly self-effacing. Like Crumb, his drawings are sometimes mean. I’m not saying Ben has the same deep-rooted misogyny as Crumb, but he’s not afraid to plumb his psyche, and draw from the depths – the same as Crumb. Ben’s comic strip about Katie Price is a good example of creating from the unconscious. It’s full of weird prurience and unchecked thoughts. Like Crumb’s alternative comics, where women can be both monstrous and alluring, Ben’s artwork is characterised by unresolved feelings. Sex is disgusting, but it’s also omnipresent. Ben is like a pervy disciple, prostrate before the power of the crotch.

That’s a pretty daft way to put things, I know. But there’s no getting away from the sexual neuroses that seem to influence Ben’s drawings. He hasn’t made sex his exclusive focus. There are, thank God, no confessions of onanism while making a sketch (something Crumb, alas, has confessed to). However, even when Ben draws himself, his mouth becomes a sexual orifice. As he describes his relationship with his mother (in a deft and witty piece of editing) his hands are folded over a cartoon vagina. You get the sense that Ben, in a very British way, is sometimes mortified by what he’s drawn. His parents do not appear on screen. Their response, perhaps, has too many sides for the space of ten minutes.

Where Terry Zwigoff spent six years, and a two hour running time, tracing the internecine strife in Robert Crumb’s family, Shaun Ladd and Tony Cook have decided, wisely, to limit the scope of their short film. Ben Jennings is less of an outsider than Crumb. His cartoons have a recognisable pedigree. He doesn’t harbour a trenchant hatred for the modern world; he only wants to lampoon it. He’s as immersed in popular culture as anyone his age. For Crumb, such familiarity would be unthinkable. Distance distinguishes Crumb almost as much as his fetish for big butts. There’s a fissure in his heart. It’s not so with Ben. He’s almost effusive about his love for his mum. He only holds back his feelings because he’s British.

Documentary-maker Errol Morris once said: “The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.” That seems like a good axiom for those who draw (and those who look at) cartoons. A distorted reality is more accurate to what we see. Satirical cartoons have no patience for euphemism or modesty. They show us life in the raw, often nightmarish. Ralph Steadman’s drawings look like exposed nerves. The same visceral quality could be applied to Ben’s work. Let’s face it, he isn’t likely to be hired by The Beano. Sometimes he does set out to shock, but Portrait isn’t a film about sensationalism. It’s about the insatiable urge to draw. Ben can’t picture himself without cartoons.

James Tatham for Movie Waffle and 10 Films

The Another Earth Issue (Black) by Kai & Sunny. LWL

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:26:22 -0400

The Another Earth Issue (Black) by Kai & Sunny. LWL

Make Thick My Blood (Origin8 24 Hour Fast Film)...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:39:00 -0400

Make Thick My Blood (Origin8 24 Hour Fast Film)

Cinematographer – Ben Cotgrove, Editor - Cameron Dunlop, Producer – Josh Hammond, Director – Josh Beattie / Ennui Pictures, Sound Design – Josh Beattie / Ennui Pictures

Official Entry for 2011 Origin8 Fast Film Competition. Winner: Best Cinematography (Ben Cotgrove), Best Sound Design (Joshua Beattie) and Best Performance (Jade Paskins).

Every murder puts ‘me’ centre stage. Whether it’s force majeure, or a crime of passion; politically expedient or just having fun: murder is an act of narcissism. A rival ego gets snuffed out. Like dousing a light, so you can see the dark. Murder devours. The great difficulty, after, is how you live with yourself. Most people can’t countenance themselves as killers. So the impulse turns, becomes an urge to forget. It’s rational, of course, to disbelieve nightmares. We renounce what we consider defiled… unless we can’t; unless we feel guilt. Josh Beattie’s short film, Make Thick My Blood, is about the trap of conscience. A murderer can walk, or shamble, from a crime scene. But the act of killing cuts through denial.

We don’t see the moment when it happened. The young woman – the assailant – is running as the film begins. She looks panicked, freshly bereaved. There’s blood on her clothes. At first, you might mistake her for the victim of an attack. She gets in a car. It seems like she’s got away. Then a timecard flashes 08:36. And the screen turns red. The young woman is wiping blood off the floor. The man she killed is lying in the next room. She packs a bag and runs out the door. A timecard flashes 07:18. We hear snatches of an argument. The young woman – blood-spattered – walks into the street. At that moment, she looks as if she can’t go on. The title card flashes. And you realise, when you saw her running, she was on the loose.

“Make thick my blood” is a line from Macbeth. It’s Lady Macbeth’s appeal, to summon the strength to murder Duncan. She prays to the spirits “that tend on mortal thoughts”: “stop up the access and passage to remorse… and fill me…full of direst cruelty.” This from the same woman who will later cry, famously: “Out, damned spot!” And lament that “the old man… had so much blood in him.” In her, Shakespeare created both a monster and someone all too human. Ego dooms her. She can’t survive being responsible for a man’s death. Knowledge of the act is like a knife that splits her open. It’s as if his blood spills from her veins. Remorse transforms her into a wraith. So haunted is she by what she’s done.

Macbeth is a tragedy. Like all Shakespeare’s tragedies, it’s the lead characters who suffer. The moral is not: fear murderers, but fear becominga murderer. As the critic Harold Bloom once wrote: “[the play]…reaches out to our own apprehensiveness, our universal sense that the dreadful is about to happen, and that we have no choice but to participate in it.” It’s the age-old anxiety about monsters; that they might be human, like us, and by extension: we might be monsters too. If you tell a story from the point of view of a killer, you humanise them. If the killer experiences regret, we can understand. The act – the killing – becomes separate from the person. Suddenly, there’s no quarantine between them and you.

Make Thick My Blood isn’t thrilled by murder, or the getaway. Its tone is elegiac; it doesn’t aim for suspense. The music throughout has a suspended feeling, barely there, like a grieving relative at a funeral. There’s a marked absence of other people on the streets. Jade Paskins, in the lead, is alone with her mistake. The film constantly seeks to emphasise her isolation. Even the voices we hear are echoes from the recent past. It’s as if a hush has fallen; the ominous quiet of disaster. We don’t need to see the body. The blood spells it out. What I liked was how the house seems hollow, after the murder. There’s a shot where the camera pulls back from the front door, and I was struck by how empty the rooms appear, devoid of signs of life. The people who lived here have vanished. The whole neighbourhood seems struck down by a plague. And this young woman – the cause – is alone with her guilt.

What’s it like to know you’ve killed someone? I imagine: sleepless nights, gnawing dread. Your future snipped, as if the tips of your fingers had been cut off. And every day after, all you see is the bloody remains. The worst mistakes reinforce how unfair time is. That’s what it really means to be haunted: not to see ghosts, but to see what can’t be changed. To live this way is to live in despair. Macbeth’s most famous speech – “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” – is about living without hope. In Josh Beattie’s short film, the young woman is at the beginning of a descent. She has years of torment ahead of her; the murder dark and virulent… coiled inside her head. Sadly, you can’t stanch a memory.

Another great talent: Jaro Minne, student of University College...

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 06:13:00 -0400

Another great talent: Jaro Minne, student of University College of Ghent, faculty of fine arts - film. He has also a lifeguard licence. A good mix for a film director .

Andreea discovered Jaro’s short Dandelion on Vimeo and James wrote an inspiring review:

” All kids are savages, playing counting coup with the world. Civilisation abuts them from all sides, yet somehow, they keep their wildness untouched. Being half-formed is a big help. They don’t get moulded until they’re in their teens. Before that, before clothes and sex start to matter, they might as well live out in the fiimeo elds. There’s a ruggedness that comes with not caring what you look like; a pygmy stoicism about scrapes and cuts. Ill-mannered, uncouth, gauche in the extreme; kids aren’t cut out for domesticity. They chafe at etiquette because it goes too slow. Kids are driven by impulse. In Jaro Minne’s new short film, Dandelion, two boys pass the time in volatile idleness. Roughhousing, for them, is a kind of idyll.

The first shot shows a concrete bridge and a scruffy verdant hill. Two brothers have come to play here. I could view the bridge as a metaphor – the brief span of childhood – but I’ll refrain from over-analysis, and call the bridge a bridge. The two boys appear to be the only ones who know this spot. There are no other kids around. No adults to spoil their fun. It’s a summer’s day; you can hear the birds chirruping, see dandelions in bloom. The bare-chested boy kicks at the flowers and the bridge. His brother wheels his bike up the hill. They play dead. They hit each other. They behave the way boys do. And all the while, their inner lives flutter: now happy, now sad, inconstant, cruel, lolling. They’re fringed with grace.

Jaro Minne quotes Harmony Korine as an influence, and his aesthetic is certainly present, along with that of Lynne Ramsay and David Gordon Green (early DGG, that is, not the guy who morphed into Mel Brooks). There’s no narrative, as such, in Dandelion; rather, this is life as it happens, unperturbed by story. The lack of dialogue gives a feeling of privacy, as if, without speech, you can better hear the boys’ thoughts. The private self is best observed in silence. These boys don’t have the right words, in any case, to describe who they are. For that, it takes a third party – be it a writer, or a director – someone who can sift meaning from empty hours. It isn’t that anything pivotal happens in these two minutes; it’s more like, the essence of childhood is evoked. Every child has an undefended face. It’s the reason why they’re bored so often: they’ve no defences to maintain.

Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher came to mind, as I watched the older boy lost in reverie. In Ramsay’s film, there’s a scene where a boy goes exploring in an unfinished housing estate – walls grey as death – and suddenly, through a window frame, he sees a corn field behind a house, and it’s as if his youth was beckoning him to play. He forgets the house. Like the boys in Dandelion, he’s not tethered to the world of things just yet. To be a child properly, you have to be a child outdoors. Nature compliments the unruly hearts of kids. House and home may civilise children, but it doesn’t represent them best. For that, you need bucolic surroundings; preferably, with lots of flowers that could be mistaken for weeds.

Jaro Minne keeps his camera distant from the two boys. Close-ups are kept to a minimum. He wants behaviour to speak. The foetal pose of the boy sat on the bridge says a lot about his vulnerability. In the same way, the last shot, where the bike-rider decides to walk, is fraternal without being cute. This isn’t a sentimental portrait of childhood. Minne doesn’t view innocence as bliss. Instead, it’s the unthinking aspect he’s drawn to; the way kids behave without the need to know why they do what they do. These boys are at an age just before the onset of introspection. Their innocence comes from not looking in the mirror. Playtime isn’t messing around, it’s what defines them. The present – this! – is all there is.

A juvenile has no thought of the future. Kids don’t tend to make many plans. “When I grow up…” is a deferral tactic, at best. Most of the time, it’s simply what grown-ups want to hear; a promise that you’re going to stop acting like a kid. In time, you don’t even have to make promises. Age makes you think of the future. Family makes you circumspect. But you can still treasure your reckless years. François Truffaut’s famous paean to youth, The 400 Blows, ends with the hero, Antoine, running away from the world. The boys in Dandelion remind me a lot of him. In both films, you can hear carefree birds in the background. The clamour of cities is far away. We’re on a jaunt. Being a kid is all about escape. “

RISE: Hannah Nagle The 17-year-old photographer might have...

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:27:10 -0400

RISE: Hannah Nagle

The 17-year-old photographer might have interned with Mario Testino but it was her Gustave Klimt-inspired glitter images that impressed Dazed & Confused editors to spot out her talent.

” At the tender age of 17 not many people can say they wholeheartedly know what they want to be, Hannah Nagle on the other hand is different. This young aspiring photographer holds steady the optimistic visions in her photography, knowing exactly where she would like to take it, and by delving into the teenagers work there is much reason to believe. After spending a week with the iconic fashion photographer Mario Testino, only one can presume that Hannah is learning from the very best as she strides to gain a foothold in the ever competitive world of fashion photography.

Although some would say such youth is wrapped in innocence and naivety, you couldn’t suggest this when observing the sheer confidence of her exposures, with the standout pieces being the manipulated shots of her sister in a Gustav Klimt inspired style. Nagle has a clear path ahead of her where the same for her compatriots is less crystal. Intrigued, we asked a few questions about her arrival into photography and of the work that caught our eye…”

More pictures and her interview here

http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/11010/1/rise-hannah-nagle

RISE: Hannah Nagle Being 17 years-old and working under Mario...

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:22:27 -0400

RISE: Hannah Nagle

Being 17 years-old and working under Mario Testino is only part of the impressiveness that precedes Hannah Nagle’s shimmering images http://ow.ly/5QdWN

Golden Age of Hollywood. What’s...

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:08:00 -0400

Golden Age of Hollywood. What’s next ?

happyharry:

The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The period stretching from the introduction of sound to the court ruling and the beginning of the studio breakups, 1927/29–1948/49, is commonly known as the Golden Age of Hollywood.

In 1954, the last of the operational links between a major production studio and theater chain was broken and the era of the studio system was officially over.

Tick Tock directed by Ien Chi Winner of Best Director and Best...

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:52:22 -0400

Tick Tock directed by Ien Chi
Winner of Best Director and Best Picture at Campus MovieFest - the world’s largest student film festival.

Dying men are candid because they don’t expect to see us again. It’s their last day at work, so they don’t have to worry about causing offence, or making life awkward for themselves. They can scream if they want to scream; confess undying love; dynamite the unbearable niceties tomorrow enforces on us…and be real, for once. Even if “real” is another way of saying they don’t have to suffer the consequences of life. Deathbed candour is only as revealing as your faith in the supreme “revealing moment”. More likely, we don’t know the truth about ourselves five minutes before we die; instead, we know one truth: without the countdown, we’re all pragmatists.

In the short film, Tick Tock, a young man mistakenly believes he’s dying. A student prank leads him to think he’s overdosed on morphine pills. He reckons he has five minutes to live. What follows next is told backwards from when the five minutes are up. He tells his girlfriend he loves her. He tells his professor that his lectures suck. He tells a charity worker they can take all his money. And he tells his parents he wishes he had been a better son. Essentially, he behaves like a man on a whisky bender; frantic and sentimental in equal parts. Disorientation, for us, reflects the man’s fear. His life is apparently dissolving. Reverse chronology gives us the sense he’s being reeled in by death. For five minutes, he has no future.

Somewhat reminiscent of Run Lola Run with its ticking clock and sprinting hero, Tick Tock also wants you to question the forces which shape your life. Unlike Lola, the short isn’t concerned with predestination and free will, but rather five obstacles to personal fulfilment: Laziness, Indifference, Greed, Reputation, and Cowardice. Each in its own way stops us from being happy, and each is confronted when we believe we’re dying. As I’ve said, I’m not sure behaving with: Dynamism, Passion, Selflessness, Bravery and Lack of Ego…are any more human. But it is true we want to be well-thought-of when we die. The truest moment for me in Tick Tock is when the guy wants his wallet back. Though some might say he hasn’t learned anything if he’s still obsessed with material things, I would tell those people: we all need money, and the right make a U-turn.

One way to look at Tick Tock is as a high-stakes celebration of the simplicity of student life. Most forty-somethings would be hard-pressed to wrap up their lives in five minutes, but at eighteen, a quick “I love you” and a disgruntled “your lectures are stupid” pretty much rounds things off. It’s true, last words are often: “I love you”. And these are valid last words, and they do express something profound. But to discard all the finagling and the procrastination that make up life as somehow “untrue” seems juvenile. It’s as if you said: to be ambivalent was to be less human. But selfhood is muddy. For me, it’s the part of us that waits too long that’s most human; the stupendous, ignorant bliss of believing we have time.

Where a director like Gaspar Noe used reverse chronology to show us the gruesome tragedy of human lives (in Irreversible), here the focus is on living. Actions are not meaningless in Tick Tock’s universe. There’s no cynicism in this film. The hero’s retreat might be elegiac, but he runs so fast it’s as if he’s chasing death, with a view to stopping it, rather than speeding towards his inevitable doom. The film has enough creative energy to fuel a rocket. It’s composed as a tracking shot of which Brian DePalma would be proud. The image of a man running is so basic to cinema it’s like returning to Eadweard Muybridge and the first motion pictures. But the image works because it’s pure cinema; this action tells us everything.

I’m a believer in truth, but I have a soft spot for weakness. I think it’s ok if people bungle the last minutes of their lives. Or if people bungle their lives, period. The thing is, yes, Steve Jobs is right when he says “all external expectations…fall away in the face of death”, but that’s because they’re irrelevant then. And Steve Jobs is a billionaire. External expectations aren’t irrelevant if you’re going to live. Or if you’re forty, and unemployed. We sink or swim in this life based on negotiating “what is truly important”. What you value most isn’t always what pays the rent. Minutes from death, we long to be noble. After death, I bet we cherish wasted hours.

Latest Version of Friend by The Forty Thieves Josh Beattie -...

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:42:03 -0400

Latest Version of Friend by The Forty Thieves

Josh Beattie - Vocals, Banjo, Accordion, Piano, Percussion
Amela Duheric - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Piccolo, Flute
Jacob Clarke - Vocals, Cello, Violin
Matt Malone - Vocals, Guitarrón

slavicinferno: New The Immortals Trailer! This comes out the...

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:22:41 -0400

slavicinferno:

New The Immortals Trailer!

This comes out the same day as SKYRIM! My head just expoded!

"Cinema’s incredibly adept at manipulating point of view invisibly. It allows you to put the audience..."

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 16:58:31 -0400

“Cinema’s incredibly adept at manipulating point of view invisibly. It allows you to put the audience into the head of a character without the audience realizing that- that’s exactly what you’ve done.”

- Christopher Nolan (via thefilmdirectory)

Silverdocs: Congrats to Silverdocs Award Winners!

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 14:37:51 -0400

Silverdocs: Congrats to Silverdocs Award Winners!:

silverdocs:

Congrats to all of our award winners! Read on for a complete list of winning films and directors:

Sterling Award, Best U.S. Feature

Winner: OUR SCHOOL, directed by Mona Nicoara, Miruna Coco-Cozma

Special Jury Mention: THE BULLY PROJECT, directed by Lee Hirsch and WHEN THE DRUM IS BEATING,…