Somewhere to Disappear

You can buy the download of Alec Soth's excellent documentary "Somewhere to Disappear" for just one dollar at filmDIY. Highly recommended.

Somewhere to Disappear

This new documentary by Alec Soth looks fascinating.

"I paint with my back to the world"

Agnes Martin, Happy Holidays, Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, 1999 via.

I watched an interview with Agnes Martin on the documentary series Art City recently (streaming on netflix) -here are a few of her many memorable quotes,

"I paint with my back to the world"

"I've painted a lot of paintings about happiness. I paint about happiness, innocence and beauty - the feelings that we have that go beyond the world - that have no worldly cause."

"Doesn't matter where you are - if you bring your mind to a stop you will feel a light, delicate happiness - that's tranquility"

"Everybody's rushing so much in this life, that they don't take time to really look and find out what their response is - even to their own work."

"You only pay attention to things that you like...and when you go to the museum you just look at the paintings you like - you don't look at the ones you don't like and stop and criticize and all that..."

~Agnes Martin

Upcoming Werner Herzog film

read more about the project at the Guardian.

Currently Watching

I've been slowly working my way through two very beautiful, quiet and inspiring films.

"The Passion of Joan of Arc", 1928

The story behind the film is really interesting (via Wikipedia), "The original version of the film was lost for decades after a fire destroyed the master negative. Dreyer (the director) himself attempted to reassemble a version from out-takes and surviving prints, but he died believing his original cut was lost forever. In one of the most important discoveries in cinema history, a virtually complete print of Dreyer's original version was found in 1981 in a janitor's closet of an Oslo mental institution. This version is now available on DVD" - and streaming online through Netflix.

Also watching, "Into Great Silence" by Philip Gröning, 2005 - a documentary about Carthusian monks.

Full Frame Documentary Festival Poster Contest

For my graphic design readers; The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is pleased to announce its first-ever poster contest, to be produced for the 13th annual festival occurring April 8-11, 2010 in Downtown Durham North Carolina.

One design will be chosen to be printed in a limited edition run to be sold at the festival. The winning designer will receive a special “Artist” Priority Pass (a $500 value) for the 2010 festival as well as hotel accommodations for the duration of the festival.

Rape of Europa

I watched the Rape of Europa last night - a documentary about the theft and recovery of art during WWII by the Nazi regime. It was a fascinating film - highly recommended. I was especially interested in all the work that went into protecting works of art during the war - from packing and shipping works out of the Louvre, to building brick tombs to protect Michelangelo sculptures in Florence from possible bombings:

(during WWII)

present day (photo by flickr user noll)

Lessons of Darkness

I watched "Lessons of Darkness" on Netflix - Watch Instantly (great feature) and it was breathtaking. It is an absolutely stunning cinematic experience. The movie is from 1992, so by no means is this new news, but it was new to me and perhaps new to whomever is reading this. It is about the aftermath of the first Gulf War and the Kuwaiti oil fires, but has very little in the way of narration or dialog. Nearly the entire movie is filled with dramatic, beautifully bleak aerial shots of the fires, the oil drenched landscape, and the workers who are trying to put out the fires. At one point, the narrator (Herzog) introduces a perplexing change of events "Two figures are approaching an oil well. One of them holds a lighted torch. What are they up to? Are they going to rekindle the blaze? Is life without fire become unbearable for them?... Others, seized by madness, follow suit. Now they are content. Now there is something to extinguish again."

I highly recommend this film. If you enjoyed Baraka, or the Planet Earth series - you would surely enjoy this film as well. At only about 45 minutes, you've got nothing to lose.

The Course of Empire

I've been doing a lot of reading and watching lately about "Peak Oil" - the point at which the demand for oil exceeds the supply. Basically the world's oil supply is a bell-curve and at some point every oil well hits its maximum output. From there on it will produce less and less. The US oil supply peaked in the 1970s, which is why so much of our oil is imported now (and will increase to be so). Some scientists believe the world oil supply has already peaked, others believe it will happen in the next one or two decades.

I watched, "A Crude Awakening" recently, and I'm looking forward to my next netflix dvd called "The End of Suburbia", which more directly relates oil shortage or running out of oil with the collapse or decline of suburbia - an environment organized entirely around the automobile.

In a recent Kunstlercast, author James Howard Kunstler references a painting series by Thomas Cole called "The Course of Empire" in which the rise and fall of a empire is depicted through five paintings. Although our future world without oil may not be this bleak, it will be a much different future.

Thomas Cole's series "The Course of Empire" from 1834-36
The Savage State
Pastoral State
The Consummation of Empire
The Destruction of Empire
Desolation

Images from WikiCommons