Footage of the World’s Last Uncontacted Tribe, Deep in the Brazilian Amazon

in Video - Arts & Culture | February 7th, 2011

Here we have the first aer­i­al footage of an uncon­tact­ed tribe liv­ing in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon – a peo­ple liv­ing entire­ly apart from civ­i­liza­tion as we know it. The short clip, filmed for the BBC show Human Plan­et, fol­lows Jose Car­los Meirelles, who works on behalf of the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment to safe­guard the coun­try’s indige­nous peo­ple. The liveli­hood of these indige­nous peo­ples is con­stant­ly threat­ened by ille­gal min­ing and log­ging. And it’s Meirelles’s mis­sion to pro­tect this pop­u­la­tion by pub­li­ciz­ing their exis­tence. This footage was filmed at 1 KM dis­tance with a long tele­pho­to lens to min­i­mize dis­tur­bance. To learn more about this and oth­er uncon­tact­ed tribes, vis­it http://www.uncontactedtribes.org.

via @AlyssaMilano

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875 TEDTalks in a Neat Spreadsheet

in TED Talks | February 6th, 2011

A quick fyi for TED heads in our audi­ence: Right here, you can find an online spread­sheet that lists 875 TEDTalks, with handy links to each indi­vid­ual video. This evolv­ing Google doc will give you access to more than 265 hours of “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple.” Because the page is updat­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to book­mark it and keep tabs on the new addi­tions.

On a relat­ed note, TED has also just rolled out TED­Books, a new dig­i­tal book series that deliv­ers pow­er­ful ideas in 20,000 words or less. That’s about 1/3 the length of a tra­di­tion­al book. TED­Books are cur­rent­ly being sold for $2.99 through Ama­zon as “Kin­dle Sin­gles.” You can learn more about the ini­tia­tive on TED’s blog or via Brain­Pick­ings, or sim­ply vis­it Ama­zon to pre­view the first three books in the series:

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What if Tarantino Directed the Super Bowl Broadcast?

in Film, Television | February 4th, 2011

What would it look like if our great direc­tors took cre­ative con­trol over the Super Bowl broad­cast? Slate imag­ines it, show­ing you how Quentin Taran­ti­no, David Lynch, Wes Ander­son, Wern­er Her­zog and Jean-Luc Godard would put their cin­e­mat­ic stamp on the broad­cast. The clip gets bet­ter as it moves along…

Enjoy the big game. And, if movies are more your thing, don’t for­get to vis­it our big list of 340 Free Movies Online. Films by some of the great direc­tors men­tioned above appear on the list.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter!

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Watch Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse (A Little NSFW)

in Comedy | February 4th, 2011

What to do after the Apoc­a­lypse? This lit­tle pub­lic infor­ma­tion film was made (wink, wink) by the “Aus­tralian Board of Civ­il Defence” dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s. Found some­where in an old uni­ver­si­ty archive, the film, now new­ly dust­ed off, is being shown for the first time. Note: It’s a tad unsafe for work…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duck and Cov­er: The 1950s Film That Taught Mil­lions of School­child­ren How to Sur­vive a Nuclear Bomb

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

Hiroshi­ma After the Atom­ic Bomb in 360 Degrees

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Wunderkind Fun

in Literature, Music, Science | February 3rd, 2011

Only 2 years old, ‘lil Rose from Seat­tle aces her Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments game. Next up, a play date with 3 year old Jonathan who con­ducts the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th for laughs, and anoth­er pal, Samuel, who recites the poet­ry of Bil­ly Collins and Lord Alfred Ten­nyson. I’m feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter about our future…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Paris Underground

in History | February 3rd, 2011

The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, the Lou­vre – these famous mon­u­ments draw mil­lions of tourists to Paris every year, to the part of the city that lives above ground. Few tourists get to the oth­er part of the city, the part that lives and breathes beneath the sur­face. This month, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic has ded­i­cat­ed its fea­ture arti­cle and pho­to gallery to sub­ter­ranean Paris, tak­ing you into the caves and cat­a­combs that twist and turn beneath the city streets. Pro­duced by NPR and Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, the video above fol­lows “cat­aphiles” who trav­el through the dark side of the City of Light.

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Star Wars is a Remix

in Art, Film | February 3rd, 2011


Kir­by Fer­gu­son is back. Last Sep­tem­ber, the writer/director released the first of a four-part film series – Every­thing is a Remix – that teas­es apart the long his­to­ry of artis­tic “remix­ing.” This first short film con­cen­trat­ed on the artis­tic bor­row­ings of musi­cians and writ­ers, with Led Zep­pelin and the Beat writ­ers get­ting the major focus. Now, with his sec­ond film, the atten­tion turns to film, and par­tic­u­lar­ly to the homages and bor­row­ings of George Lucas’ Star Wars. Aki­ra Kuro­sawa films, Spaghet­ti west­erns and John Wayne west­erns, clas­sic wartime movies, Leni Riefen­stahl pro­pa­gan­da films, Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis – they’re all remixed into the epic space dra­ma. The film wraps up with Fer­gu­son look­ing at Quentin Taran­ti­no and his own remix­ing ten­den­cies. And that sets the stage for parts 3 and 4 – a project that you can help finance in your own mod­est way. I’m sure Kir­by will appre­ci­ate your gen­eros­i­ty…

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams

in Art, Film, History | February 2nd, 2011

The first Wern­er Her­zog 3D film will hit the cin­e­ma screens this spring, and the new trail­er paves the way for it. The 89 minute doc­u­men­tary, Cave of For­got­ten Dreams, brings Her­zog down into the Chau­vet-Pont-d’Arc Cave dis­cov­ered in 1994. Locat­ed in South­ern France, this cave, nor­mal­ly kept off lim­its to the pub­lic, hous­es the old­est cave paint­ings ever dis­cov­ered. We’re talk­ing paint­ings dat­ing back over 30,000 years and all still pre­served in pris­tine con­di­tion. Just as Las­caux left Picas­so in awe, the Chau­vet cave paint­ings inspired Her­zog to use 3D tech­nol­o­gy to cap­ture the char­coal fig­ures, the ear­li­est expres­sion of our artis­tic yearn­ings.

Don’t miss our ear­li­er post, An Evening with Wern­er Her­zog.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.