“Lift” — A Portrait of Life in a London High Rise

in Film, Life | June 8th, 2011

How do you ade­quate­ly por­tray life in a high-rise build­ing? Lon­don film­mak­er Marc Isaacs found a rather uncon­ven­tion­al answer to this ques­tion. He installed him­self inside the lift/elevator of a high rise on the East End of Lon­don. And for ten hours a day, over two months, he would ride up and down with the res­i­dents, with his cam­era point­ing at them. It is fas­ci­nat­ing to see how the res­i­dents react to him being there — some are sus­pi­cious or even hos­tile at the begin­ning. Oth­ers open up about their per­son­al lives and their dai­ly life in the build­ing. And then oth­ers bring him some­thing to eat, a chair to sit down on, or even lit­tle presents. The result is a mov­ing and “qui­et­ly fas­ci­nat­ing med­i­ta­tion on the mun­dan­i­ties of Lon­don life.” Writ­ing about the film, the Times Online put it best: “Isaacs has an astound­ing gift for get­ting peo­ple to open up to him and he uses film the way a skilled artist uses paint. The result is beau­ti­ful, heart­break­ing and pro­found­ly humane.”

Here’s some bonus mate­r­i­al: a review of “Lift” and Isaacs’ two oth­er short doc­u­men­taries “Calais” and “Trav­ellers,” a Sun­day Times arti­cle enti­tled “Marc Isaacs on his doc­u­men­tary art,” and an inter­view with Mark by The Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ers Group dfg.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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The Long Lost Video Game of Paris Review Editor George Plimpton?

in Literature, Random | June 8th, 2011

At first we thought it was either an Onion sto­ry or a joke: Mul­ti-tal­ent­ed author, actor, sports enthu­si­ast and Paris Review edi­tor George Plimp­ton (1927–2003) also achieved con­sid­er­able suc­cess in anoth­er medi­um: video games.

The Mil­lions points us to George Plimp­ton’s video “Fal­con­ry,” the game Plimp­ton helped devel­op for Cole­co­V­i­sion in the ear­ly 80’s. You can play it here, but first be sure to catch up on the back­sto­ry (click “Back­sto­ry” but­ton below the “Play” but­ton), which may or may not involve high stakes dou­ble-cross­es, hard­core sleuthings, and the child­hood obses­sions of fre­quent Dai­ly Show guest John Hodg­man. Max­i­mum Fun has also post­ed an old com­mer­cial for the game, which we’ve repost­ed above. (Our apolo­gies for the poor qual­i­ty. It was appar­ent­ly ripped from an old VHS tape).

If it turns out that we’ve been punked, it was worth it, if only for the joys of typ­ing the words “Plimp­ton,” “Fal­con­ry” and “Cole­co­V­i­sion” all in one sen­tence. The game isn’t bad either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Andrés Segovia, Father of Classical Guitar, at the Alhambra

in Music | June 7th, 2011


Andrés Segovia first vis­it­ed the Alham­bra, the sto­ried 14th Cen­tu­ry Moor­ish palace in Grana­da, Spain, when he was ten years old. “It was here,” he said, “that I opened my eyes to the beau­ty of nature and art. To be here is to feel one­self to be near, very near, par­adise.”

Segovia is often called the father of clas­si­cal gui­tar. As a young boy he learned to play fla­men­co, the tra­di­tion­al music of his native Andalu­sia, but by the time he was a teenag­er he was tran­scrib­ing Bach and oth­er com­posers, adapt­ing music orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for dif­fer­ent instru­ments. Over the course of his life­time, Segovia tran­scribed much of the clas­si­cal reper­toire, refined the stan­dard tech­nique, and estab­lished the gui­tar as a seri­ous instru­ment, bring­ing it out of the par­lors and into the con­cert halls.

In 1976, at the age of 84, Segovia returned to the Alham­bra to per­form for the doc­u­men­tary, Andrés Segovia: The Song of the Gui­tar. In the excerpt above, Segovia plays one of his favorite pieces, “The Leg­end of Asturias,” by Isaac Albéniz, who com­posed it for the piano as a pre­lude to his “Can­tos de España.” The com­plete doc­u­men­tary is avail­able on a two-film DVD, Andrés Segovia: In Por­trait.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gui­tar Prodi­gy from Karachi

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Saturday Night Fever: The (Fake) Magazine Story That Started it All

in Film, Music | June 7th, 2011

Thir­ty-five years ago today, New York mag­a­zine pub­lished “Trib­al Rights of Sat­ur­day Night,” a beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten paean to the danc­ing teens of the city’s bor­oughs. And the sto­ry focused on a work­ing-class dis­co dancer named Vin­cent:

Vin­cent was the very best dancer in Bay Ridge—the ulti­mate Face. He owned four­teen flo­ral shirts, five suits, eight pairs of shoes, three over­coats, and had appeared on Amer­i­can Band­stand. Some­times music peo­ple came out from Man­hat­tan to watch him, and one man who owned a club on the East Side had even offered him a con­tract. A hun­dred dol­lars a week. Just to dance.

“Vin­cent” become the mod­el for Tony Manero, the hero of John Bad­ham’s 1977 dis­co-gan­za Sat­ur­day Night Fever, a hit film which launched the 70’s hottest dance craze and the career of young John Tra­vol­ta. Plus it gave us the best-sell­ing sound­track album of all time and intro­duced the line dance, an exer­cise in ine­bri­at­ed com­mu­nal humil­i­a­tion that would dom­i­nate the dance floors of Amer­i­can wed­ding recep­tions for decades to come.

With all this to its cred­it, per­haps it should­n’t mat­ter that Nik Kohn’s arti­cle was more fic­tion than non-fic­tion, and that “Vin­cent” was, in Kohn’s own words, “com­plete­ly made up, a total fab­ri­ca­tion.” The osten­si­bly con­science-strick­en jour­nal­ist came clean in the Guardian in 1994:

My sto­ry was a fraud, I’d only recent­ly arrived in New York. Far from being steeped in Brook­lyn street life, I hard­ly knew the place. As for Vin­cent, my sto­ry’s hero, he was large­ly inspired by a Shep­herd’s Bush mod whom I’d known in the Six­ties, a one-time king of Gold­hawk Road.” [Ed. Note: The Guardian piece is not avail­able online, but it was quot­ed exten­sive­ly in Char­lie LeDuf­f’s 1996 arti­cle, “Sat­ur­day Night Fever: The Life”]

Mr. Kohn’s own life sto­ry is also worth a movie or two. In 1983, accord­ing to the New York Times, he was indict­ed on drug traf­fick­ing and con­spir­a­cy counts for the impor­ta­tion of $4 mil­lion worth of Indi­an hero­in. His nar­ra­tive abil­i­ties came to his res­cue once more, this time in the form of a plea-bar­gain in exchange for his tes­ti­mo­ny. His charges were reduced to pro­ba­tion and a $5,000 fine.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Bono Tells Graduates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

in Life, Music | June 7th, 2011


Back in 2004, Bono, the co-founder of ONE (an NGO that rais­es aware­ness of AIDS and pover­ty in Africa), received an hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. Of course, Bono is also the lead singer of U2, and he can com­mand the atten­tion of any large audi­ence. Speak­ing to Pen­n’s grad­u­at­ing class of 2004, Bono did­n’t give the usu­al advice — go forth and fol­low your pas­sion. No, the mes­sage was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. He urged the grad­u­ates to serve their age by betray­ing it, by “expos­ing its con­ceits, it’s foibles, it’s pho­ny moral cer­ti­tudes … and mas­sive moral blindspots,” Africa being per­haps the most glar­ing exam­ple. Then, his speech wraps up with this, the best lines saved for last.

Whether it’s this or some­thing else, I hope you’ll pick a fight and get in it. Get your boots dirty, get rough, steel your courage…, make one last pri­mal scream, and go. Sing the melody line you hear in your own head. Remem­ber, you don’t owe any­body any expla­na­tions. You don’t owe your par­ents any expla­na­tions. You don’t owe your pro­fes­sors any expla­na­tions.

You know I used to think the future was sol­id or fixed, some­thing you inher­it­ed like an old build­ing that you move into when the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion moves out or gets chased out. But it’s not. The future is not fixed, it’s flu­id. You can build your own build­ing, or hut or con­do.

My point is that the world is more mal­leable than you think, and it’s wait­ing for you to ham­mer it into shape.… That’s what this degree of yours is, a blunt instru­ment. So go forth and build some­thing with it. Remem­ber what John Adams said about Ben Franklin, “He does not hes­i­tate at our bold­est mea­sures but rather seems to think us too irres­olute.” Well this is the time for bold mea­sures and this is the coun­try and you are the gen­er­a­tion.

Amen Bono, catch you tonight…

You can find a full tran­script of Bono’s speech here.

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Cassini Solstice Mission: Saturn’s Moons Meet Nine Inch Nails

in Astronomy, Video - Science | June 7th, 2011

If you haven’t been fol­low­ing the Cassi­ni space­craft’s sec­ond mis­sion to Sat­urn, here’s a video that will hook you in. It fea­tures incred­i­ble black-and-white images of Sat­urn and its moons, all cap­tured by Cassini’s “cam­era” — also known as the Cassi­ni-Huy­gens Imag­ing Sci­ence Sub­sys­tem — and designer/director Chris Abbas, who edit­ed togeth­er footage from Cassini’s archive and set it to a great Nine Inch Nails sound­track.

Accord­ing to NASA, the Cassi­ni will con­tin­ue orbit­ing Sat­urn until May 2017. It has already dis­cov­ered some amaz­ing things about Sat­urn’s largest moon, Titan, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Titan’s cur­rent state, com­plete with its lakes, rivers, rain, snow, clouds, moun­tains and even vol­ca­noes, may tell us some­thing about what earth was like before life evolved. But Abbas’s short film would be beau­ti­ful to watch even with­out any knowl­edge of the sci­ence behind it.

via @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA:  The Fron­tier is Every­where

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Lauch­es Pho­to Archive on Flickr

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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10 Famous Philosophers in Words and Images

in Philosophy | June 6th, 2011

The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion has post­ed a nice set of por­traits called “Gallery of Minds,” fea­tur­ing images of 10 world-famous philoso­phers, includ­ing Richard Rorty, David Chalmers, and renowned philoso­pher and art crit­ic Arthur Dan­to, who also wrote a com­pelling intro­duc­tion. Dan­to focus­es on the visu­al artistry of the series’ pho­tog­ra­ph­er Steve Pyke, a long-time staff mem­ber at the New York­er, but we found the great thinkers’ own state­ments — their answers to the “why” of their cho­sen pur­suits — equal­ly, if not more, com­pelling. Here is MIT’s fem­i­nist meta­physi­cian Sal­ly Haslinger:

Giv­en the amount of suf­fer­ing and injus­tice in the world, I flip-flop between think­ing that doing phi­los­o­phy is a com­plete lux­u­ry and that it is an absolute neces­si­ty. The idea that it is some­thing in between strikes me as a dodge.

And Robin Jesh­ion, best known for a the­o­ry of sin­gu­lar thought which she calls Cog­ni­tivism, has this to say:

Phi­los­o­phy’s dis­tin­guish­ing val­ue? For me, it resides not so much in the big ques­tions’ mul­ti­far­i­ous answers, them­selves, nor, alas, in wis­dom attained through the exact­ing process of answer­ing them, but rather in how it invari­ably reminds us how lit­tle we real­ly do know. Phi­los­o­phy is, or should be, hum­bling — and is, for this, ennobling.

Final­ly, per­haps our favorite ‘mis­sion state­ment,’ from Jer­ry Fodor, the cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist who has worked out the­o­ries on the archi­tec­ture of the mind:

To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion, I became a philoso­pher because my par­ents want­ed me to be a lawyer. It seems to me, in ret­ro­spect, that there was much to be said for their sug­ges­tion.

via @brainpicker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

275 Cul­tur­al Icons: Great Artists, Writ­ers & Thinkers in Their Own Words

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

 

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Carl Gustav Jung Ponders the Meaning of Death (1959)

in Psychology | June 6th, 2011

On June 6, 1961, the great psy­chol­o­gist Carl Gus­tav Jung died at his vil­la at Küs­nacht, on the shore of Lake Zurich, Switzer­land. He was 86 years old.

Jung viewed death as a ful­fill­ment, rather than a nega­tion, of life. “As a doc­tor,” he wrote in his 1930 essay, The Stages of Life, “I am con­vinced that it is hygienic–if I may use the word–to dis­cov­er in death a goal toward which one can strive, and that shrink­ing away from it is some­thing unhealthy and abnor­mal which robs the sec­ond half of life of its pur­pose.”

To this end, wrote Jung many years lat­er in Mem­o­ries, Dreams, Reflec­tions, a per­son should fol­low his instinct and embrace myth: “for rea­son shows him noth­ing but the dark pit into which he is descend­ing. Myth, how­ev­er, can con­jure up oth­er images for him, help­ful and enrich­ing pic­tures of life in the land of the dead.”

Jung cer­tain­ly embraced the myth of an after­life, as evi­denced in this excerpt from an Octo­ber, 1959 inter­view with John Free­man for the BBC pro­gram Face to Face. The 40-minute interview–in which Jung talks about for­ma­tive events of his child­hood, his friend­ship and falling-out with Sig­mund Freud, and his views on reli­gion and death–can be viewed in its entire­ty here.

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:

Free Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyce’s Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932)

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Explains What Made Carl Jung Such an Influ­en­tial Thinker

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

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